" The sprints were run on the
straightaway which was more than the necessary quarter of a mile but
occasionally there was a longer race and then the field had to take that
dangerous circuit, sloppy and slippery with dust. The land enclosed was
used for the bucking contest, for the two crowning events of the
Glosterville fiesta, the race and the horse-breaking, had been saved for
this last day. Marianne Jordan gladly would have missed the latter
event. "Because it sickens me to see a man fight with a horse," she
often explained. But she forced herself to go.
She was in the Rocky Mountains, now, not on the Blue Grass. Here riding
bucking horses was the order of the day. It might be rough, but this was
a rough country.
It was a day of undue humidity--and the Eagle Mountains were pyramids of
blue smoke. Closer at hand the roofs of Glosterville shone in the fierce
sun and between the village and the mountains the open fields shimmered
with rising heat waves. A hardy landscape meant only for a hardy people.
"One can't adopt a country," thought Marianne, "it's the country that
does the adopting. If I'm not pleased by what pleases other people in
the West, I'd better leave the ranch to Lew Hervey and go back East.
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