She smiled at this vehemence, but it reinforced a growing respect for
Perris.

Then, rather absurdly, it irritated her to find that she was taking him
so seriously. She remembered the ridiculous song:

"Oh, father, father William, I've seen your daughter dear.
Will you trade her for the brindled cow and the yellow steer?"

Marianne frowned.

The shout of the crowd called her away from herself. Far from broken by
the last ride, the outlaw horse now seemed all the stronger for the
exercise. Discarding fanciful tricks, he at once set about sun-fishing,
that most terrible of all forms of bucking.

The name in itself is a description. Literally Rickety hurled himself at
the sun and landed alternately on one stiffened foreleg and then the
other. At each shock the chin of Arizona Charley was flung down against
his chest and at the same time his head snapped sideways with the uneven
lurch of the horse. An ordinary pony would have broken his leg at the
first or second of these jumps; but Rickety was untiring. He jarred to
the earth; he vaulted up again as from springs--over and over the same
thing.

It would eventually have become tiresome to watch had not both horse and
rider soon showed effects of the work. Every leap of Rickety's was
shorter. Sweat shone on his thick body. He was killing Arizona but he
was also breaking his own heart. Arizona weakened fast under that