There was the flash of teeth, a grunting tug at the cinchas,
a cloud of dust, and Jasper Lane, foreman of the Oro outfit, was in the
saddle. The cloud of dust, following the roan pony, grew denser. Above
the dun cloud a sombrero swung to and fro fanning the outlaw's ears.
Jasper Lane had essayed to ride the Yuma colt once before. His broken
shoulder had set nicely, in fact, better than Bull O'Toole's leg which
had been broken when the outlaw fell on him. Billy Squires, a young
Montana puncher working for the Oro people, still carried his arm in a
sling. All in all, the assembled company, as Brand Williams mildly put
it, "were beginning to take notice of that copper-colored she-son of a
cyclone."
Jasper Lane plied spurs and quirt. The visiting cowmen shrilled their
delight. The pony was broncho from the end of her long, switching tail
to the tip of her pink muzzle.
Following a quick tattoo of hoofs on the baked earth came a flash like
the trout's leap for the fly--a curving plunge--the sound as of a
breaking willow branch, and then palpitating silence.
The dun cloud of dust settled, disclosing the foam-flecked,
sweat-blackened colt, oddly beautiful in her poised immobility. Near her
lay Jasper Lane, face downward.
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