Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/218

 yard, where he began again his heart-sickening atrocities upon the horse. He rodea circle around the whipping post, increasing the speed until the animal strained to its last pound of strength, Roberto leaning on the narrowing ring, an admirable figure, even in his despicable design.

Cunningly he drew the circle closer; nearer and nearer he approached the post. There was a murmuring near Henderson's window; caution made him draw back into the dark room. When he looked again presently, Roberto was throwing himself out of the saddle to save being crushed as the horse reared to fling itself backward with hoofs beating the air. Roberto had gained his poor desire. He had ridden the horse up to the post.

But it was a triumph marred, a victory only half won. The humiliation of being unseated before the owner of this unruly beast, who must be applauding its successful maneuver as Roberto scrambled to his feet out of the dust, was an abasement that no caballero could suffer to pass. Roberto had the reins in his hand while the horse was heaving itself up from the dusty turmoil of its hazardous fall.

Roberto drew the reins around the upright post, shortening them with adroit hand, dragging the unwilling beast up until its nose was within a foot of the thing it had fought so bitterly to avoid. A moment Roberto stood confronting the animal, as if to charge it with a greater terror of him by meeting it eye to eye. Then he seized its forelock,