The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
Kid might have told her that a capacity for appreciation of what lay back of the rodeo would be necessary for that, but he did not want to start a discussion and so he made no reply whatever. Instead he turned and led her down past the spiral tunnel and down the passage that ended at the chutes, all new and yellow and smelling of fresh lumber. They were empty now and deserted, though soon they would be the focus to which a hundred thousand eyes would be drawn. The Kid could not expect her to thrill to that thought, as her father would.
"This is the line of chutes where they saddle the horses," he said simply, and led her on to the stout plank corrals of the bronks, and told her they were the bucking horses.
"Why, they look gentle and nice!" she exclaimed. "What is it you do to the poor things to make them buck?"
"Do?" For the first time the Kid was betrayed into looking at her straight. "Why, nothing except crawl on and try to stay. What did you think we did?"
"I've heard of all sorts of vile things that Dad says aren't true. Brads in the saddle skirts, acid on their backs—"
"Say!" the Kid's eyes flamed. "Do these horses look as if they'd had things like that done to them? They've been in other contests this summer—you don't see them scarred up, do you? Not even spur marks. Sleek as seals, every one of them."
She stood on her patent-leather slipper toes and peered between the planks. The Kid, breathing hard with indignation, watched her. Brads in the saddle skirts, eh? It was as if she had accused him personally of such a deed.
"Say, I'd like to know where you get that stuff!"
"Why, the antis, of course. And you choke poor little calves almost to death, and slam them down and bust them, and the poor steers that you torture until they fall in agony—why, the papers are full of the horrors—" Her big eyes gazed at him with such reproach the Kid could have shaken her.
"And you believe that blah? Say, listen a minute!" The Kid took a long breath and spoke at length and straight from the shoulder while she stood leaning back against the wall and watched him wide-eyed. "And that's what you do to the greatest American sport we have to-day—the only all-American sport we've got!" he finished hotly.
"You talk just like Dad," she told him. "But the antis say that's all blah too, as you call it. Can you tell me you don't think these poor horses would be gentle if they were treated with kindness and consideration?"
"Kindness and con—Say!"
The Kid was off again for another five minutes or so. She waited patiently until he had finished and came back with other idiotic charges which had to be refuted. All in all, they were two hours and more in making the round, and they became personal and abusive before they were half through.
"And your father calls you Dulcie!" the Kid exclaimed exasperatedly after a particularly sharp jab of her sarcasm.
"Oh, don't let that worry you, calf-choker. Dulcinea is in memory of a much-prized great-grandmother and is not meant to mislead any one concerning my nature."
"One is not easily misled, so long as you're able to speak, Miss Harlan."
That seemed to please her, though the Kid had certainly not intended it so.
"And now, I want to go again to the chutes where you dreadful cowboys shoot the poor bronks to make them buck," she said. "You're holding out on me, anyway. I've only been around one side. Let's go back past the chutes where they shoot—"
"Say, you know perfectly well that's not true—" And then he stopped, brought up short by the realization that she was laughing at him. He saw it in the gleam of her eye, in the furtive little dimple beside her mouth, just glimpsed before it vanished.
"You've been kidding me all along," he charged sternly. "I'm the original dumb-bell or I'd have known you were just trying to get a rise out of me."
"Not necessarily. Perhaps your experience with girls is limited," she suggested, trying him further.
"It sure is," the Kid bluntly admitted. "Girls simply don't rate with me, that's all." An ungallant remark made more so by his absolute sincerity.
"And yet, it's just possible that you don't rate with girls," she struck back with velvet sweetness.
"Maybe I don't—I never noticed." The Kid turned impatiently from this purposeless sparring. "But even if you've been kidding, you must have had something to go on. You didn't think up all that cruelty stuff out of your own head, did you?"
"I should say not! Don't you read the papers? Didn't you know there's been a fight to stop this brutal, senseless rodeo? That's what the antis call it," she explained. "They've been making a terrible row about it. They say it's worse than bull fights. Commercialized cruelty, they call it; not sport but a brutal exhibition of all the savage instincts of man. Where have you been, that you don't know about it?"
"Why, it's a—a rotten lie! It—"
"Yes, you told me all that," Miss Dulcie interrupted. "But you're one of the—the—"
"Savages," he supplied darkly.
"Thank you; one of the savages they're howling about. Dad's a savage who likes to look on." She turned her head and looked up into his handsome, gloomy face, and for a moment met his eyes with resentful questioning.
"So you see," she said finally, "you're both prejudiced in your own favor. What you say is bound to be more or less colored with your own ideas. I've heard so much of the other side that I'd want something more convincing—"
"Then you weren't kidding?"
"Not altogether. Perhaps scarcely any. It does seem brutal and—and savage."
"No more so than any other sport. How about polo? How about racing? A bucking horse bucks because he wants to, same as a running horse loves to run and a polo pony loves the game. If you're going to spread around the sympathy," he said impatiently, "the riders need more than the horses, seems to me. Bronk riding is a darned sight harder on the man than it is on the horse."
"Well, that's his own affair. The horse doesn't make the man ride, does he?"
"He sure does!" The Kid laughed shortly, twisting her meaning with deliberate intent. "A man's got to ride if he stays aboard."
"But he doesn't have to get in the saddle!"
"Oh, no—a man doesn't have to do anything, much, unless he wants to. He can eat and sleep and call that living, if he likes. But if a man's a rider he can't be satisfied to let any horse on earth throw him off. And there are horses that are just as proud of not letting any man on earth stay on their backs. So there you are; the game is to see which wins, the man or the horse."
"And you, being a rider, are going to kick and strike those poor horses to make them buck, and be terribly proud if by any chance you are able to stay on their backs?"
"You said it."
"Well, I hope they throw you off, Mr. Montana Kid. I shall pray that every horse you force to buck throws you off!"
"Don't figure too much on getting those prayers answered, then, because I'll certainly be right there on top when the whistle blows!"
"So you say. And I suppose you mean to choke those poor little calves and bust them?"
"Oh, sure! Why do you think I rode all the way from Montana, except to do all these brutal things?"
"I only wish we had the privileges extended to the old Romans, of turning thumbs down—"
"Your thumbs would be purple from the rush of blood to the nails, I suppose. Nice, gentle little savages, aren't you?"
"It isn't savage to want to protect poor dumb animals—"
"By slaughtering all the poor dumb cowboys?"
"I can see you mean to be sarcastic," she said blandly, "but you are merely following my line of thought. I am not savage; I am merely standing up for the right."
"Well, you must