tickled our ponies' flanks and in a short while we was within roping distance of our bunch-quitting steer.

The horse I was riding wasn't even what you'd call half broke, I couldn't get him to line out straight ahead like Hippy could his. Hippy was riding a well-broke horse and even though he was ornery at times he sure savvied the cow, so that's how come that the first rope that sailed over the big steer's horns was Hippy's, and all was done so quick and neat that the steer didn't know there was a cowboy near him till he felt hisself lifted off the earth and jerked down to lay. His head was at the place his tail had been and it didn't take half a second to make the change.

All would of been well, and Mr. Steer's senses would of been jarred back to behaving normal again, but just at the wrong time Hippy's horse started to fighting his head which caused the rope to slack up. In another second the steer was up, and bleary-eyed looks us over.

Hippy was just about to take another fall out of the steer when that horse of his bogged his head and went to bucking. It was then that I tried to get the steer to put his attention on me, but he seemed more interested in Hippy and the bucking horse, and knowing what the slack of a rope would do in the mix up of a bucking horse and a mad steer I done my best to keep the steer away and the rope tight. But that daggone wall-eyed critter had other intentions, and after making a pass at my horse with his long horns he let out a beller and headed straight on for Hippy and the bucking horse he was trying to make behave.

I let my rope sail as he went by and a neater throw never was made, the loop made a perfect circle as it was about to settle over the steer's horns, and being so sure that I had him is what spoiled my catch. I pulled up my slack a shade too soon and instead of catching two dangerous horns I caught a lot of air.

From then on things happened too fast for me to build another loop and make another throw. There was a mixture of steer, horse, horns, winding ropes, and a man. Natural like I thought of my sixshooter, but I never drawed it on account that Hippy was so much everywheres and

seeming like all at once. I wondered what made him hang on when he should of quit, and right about then I noticed something that made me lose my tan. ... Two wraps of the rope was around Hippy's waist, he was tied to the saddle, and what scared me still more was how I seen the saddle was slipping and getting on the horse's side.

I'd often told Hippy to start a smudge with that damned centre-fire rig and get hisself a real saddle, and right then I wished I'd done it for him, but it was too late to worry about that at that time. I sat on my horse feeling like a daggone fool cause I didn't do anything, but there was nothing I could do, not a thing. I could only watch for a chance, and that much I was sure doing.

The steer was going around and around and trying to get a solid dig with his horns. I could of shot him easy enough, but it'd made things a lot worse on account that his dead weight on the rope against the live weight of the horse would of sure made a heavy drag on the rope, and being that rope was around Hippy's waist he'd sure been cut in two.

Finally a break came, which right then seemed to me for even worse. The steer while circling around the horse and trying to get his horns to working had connected with that pony's hoofs and his nose had been pounded on till there come a time when he figgered it'd be best to leave that horse and man have it out by themselves. He made another jab with his horns and missing went right on for the open country. He went on for about thirty feet, the length of rope that was left, and when he hit the end that was still around his horns he hit it so hard that it took his head and feet away from him and he was stretched on his side.

That sudden jerk daggone near took the horse off his feet but as luck would have it the rope had tightened just when he was close to the ground instead of being up in the air. The jerk of the rope never interrupted him none at all and instead he seemed to buck all the harder.

I got a glimpse of the saddle being jerked from the side of the horse till it went under his belly, and still fastened to it by two wraps of the rope which near

cut him in two was Hippy, and in the worse place a man could be. His head and arms was under the horse's chest, and his legs was dragging on the ground while it looked like that ornery pony was reaching under with his hind legs and kicking that cowboy to pieces.

I sort of wanted to close my eyes for a second for I thought sure Hippy was going to be kicked and dragged into scattered remains, but my eyes didn't close none at all. Instead, and in less time than it takes to tell it I was off my horse, had my knife out, and luck being with me for once I got a holt of the rope. . . . I never seen such a hard rope to cut as that one seemed to be right then. I whittled at it and was jerked around a trying to keep a holt of it till I thought my eye teeth would jar loose, but finally she came apart, the two thousand pounds of earth tearing critter and horse-flesh was separated and the coils that'd wrapped around Hippy's waist let go.

The cowboy slipped to the ground and the wild pounding hoofs of the bucking horse barely missing him went on over leaving him, clothes half tore off, his body all twisted, and looking like dead.

I straightened him out quick as I could and to looking like human again, and I was sure some surprised to find after tallying up on where and how bad he was hurt that with all the rope marks around his waist, a few bruises and a busted ankle there was nothing about him that wouldn't heal up again.

It was a couple of days later when passing by where Hippy was laying in the shade of the chuck-wagon and recuperating that that cowboy hollered at me and says:

"Say Bill, I thought you knowed better than cut a good rope in the centre and spoil it like you did mine, you could of just as well cut it by the hondoo and saved it, couldn't you?"

I

VERA CRUZ

AWN startled the night, and you could feel the heat coming. There was no morning in the east, only peaks of fire on the sea rim. The lifeless water shrank to the heat and the lank wind drooped under the burden. The shore lay inert awaiting the hot impact of the day. Sky and water were pig-iron gray and the town grayed silver. The wan light on the pharos dwindled.

Mexico . . .

Thin towers of pale stone; domes of lilac tiles; red shanks of rusted cranes. . . . The west was shallow blue, spotless. Except for the hump of Orizaba rising white and frozen out of the dim valley.

A wave of heat submerged the reef of the morning, spattered the shore, waking

the three dirty buzzards limp on the gilt cross of the cathedral. The air was dead and hot. The silence was hot. Nothing moved but the heat.

The towers were lovely in the colorless light. Red balconies on white house fronts. Blue balconies on pale-yellow house fronts. Green balconies on paleblue house fronts. The windows were black and empty. Bill said: "I don't know why . . . This place makes me think of Richard Harding Davis." It did. That was curious. . . . The town looked adventurous and not quite real. Dark women began unfurling great white sheets on the balconies to hide the interiors from the direct beat of the sun. It was as though the whole place were getting under sail; an expedition of clumsy ships bound for the low tangle of the foot-hills. The day broke in a tumult of light and color. A column of soldiers in assorted uniforms came abruptly around the custom-house. Two buglers and four drummers played a pagan march of three descending and three rising notes. It was like a dance. We half