"Even you will admit that that's a good horse," said Jack to Bud, as the Mexican loped off at an easy, swinging gait, and the boys started into the barn.
"Oh, yes. He's all right; but give me my calico here for a traveler," said Bud, patting the neck of his beloved Chappo.
Poor Petticoats was certainly not an imposing-looking pony. She was a small buckskin, and appeared to be a good enough traveler; but she had an ewe neck, and a straggly tail, and a lack-lustre eye, very unlike Jack's glossy-coated, bright bay pony.
"I thought you said she was a quiet old plug," said Ralph, as his eyes fell on the mare for the first time.
"So she is, why?" asked Jack, who had been too busy tightening Firewater's cinch to notice the really remarkable antics of Petticoat.
"Well, look at that!" exclaimed Ralph, as Petticoats lashed out at him.
For a quiet steed, Petticoats certainly was jumping about a good deal. There was a restless look in her eyes. She rolled them back till only the white showed. Her ears were pressed wickedly close to the side of her not very shapely head.
"Say, she's acting queerly, for fact," said Jack. "Maybe she's been eating loco weed. Shall I ask Bud to look her over before you mount?"
"No, don't. He'd only josh me about her. I guess she's only restless. Just come off pasture, maybe."
So without a word to Bud, who had remained outside the barn while the boys were getting their ponies, Ralph swung himself easily into the saddle.
His body had hardly touched the leather before the placid – or, rather, supposedly placid – Petticoats leaped into the air with a spring which would have unseated a less-experienced rider, and then came down with all four feet stiffly braced together in a wicked buck.
If Ralph had been a less plucky rider, he would have been unseated, and almost to a certainty seriously hurt. As it was, however, he stuck to the saddle.
"Whoa, Petticoats, whoa!" shouted Jack, steadying his own pony, which was getting excited and prancing about as it saw the other's antics.
"W-w-w-what's the m-m-matter with her?"
The words were jerked out of Ralph's mouth, as Petticoats plunged and reared and gave a succession of stiff-legged bucks.
Jack had no time to reply before the buckskin, with a squeal and a series of running leaps, was out of the stable door.
"What in the name of the great horn spoon!" yelled the startled Bud, as a buff-colored streak flashed past him. The next instant, with a rattle of hoofs and an alarming crackling and flapping of saddle leathers, the little pony was off in a cloud of dust, headed for the desert.
"Locoed?" shouted Jack, as he and Bud Wilson dug their big, blunt-rowelled spurs into their mounts and started in pursuit.
"I dunno," muttered Bud, shaking a big loop out of his "rope," as they tore along at break-neck speed, "but we've got to catch him."
"Why? If he doesn't fall off he'll be all right. She'll soon run herself out."
"No, she won't, either. Since you've been East they've put through a big irrigation canal out yonder. That cayuse is headed right for it, and if the kid can't stop her, they'll go sky-whooping over the edge."
"Wow! We've got to get him."
"That's what. Spur up now, and get your rope ready. Now's your chance to show me you haven't forgot all I ever taught you about roping."
Jack unslung the thirty feet of plaited rawhide from the right hand of his saddle horn, and shook out a similar loop to Bud's. Both ponies were now going at the limit of their speed, and the distance between them and the runaway seemed to be diminishing.
"Will we get him in time?" gasped Jack.
"Dunno. There's the canal yonder. It's a twenty-foot drop."
The cowboy pointed dead ahead to where a dark, purplish streak cut across the dun expanse of desert.
"We've got to beat him to it!" said Jack, gritting his teeth.
CHAPTER III.
A RACE FOR LIFE
Fast as they raced on, Jack and the cow-puncher seemed to gain on the flying Petticoats with aggravating slowness.
"Consarn that mare, she's plumb locoed, I reckon!" growled Bud, as they rocketed along, flogging their ponies to renewed efforts with their heavy quirts.
"She runs like a quarter horse!" gasped Jack, his mouth full of alkali dust; for he had no neck handkerchief to pull up over his mouth, vaquero style.
But with their splendid mounts they were bound to gain on the suddenly crazed Petticoats, and gradually they drew so close that all three riders were blanketed by the same cloud of dust.
Behind them came a second great cloud, in which rode a score or more of riders from Maguez who had hastily mounted and galloped out to see the fun as soon as they heard there was a runaway.
"The canal!" shouted Jack suddenly.
A wandering breeze for a second swept aside the dust cloud before them, and showed the fresh, raw wound gaping in the level surface of the desert. It was fully thirty feet wide, and as the canal was a new ditch, its sides were almost as steep as a wall.
Bud Wilson said nothing, but set his lips grimly. With an imperceptible movement of his wrist, he gathered his trailing loop into the air and began to whirl it above his head, first slowly and then faster and faster. The rawhide loop opened out till it was ten feet or more in circumference.
"Now!" he yelled, and at the same instant the released loop went swirling through the air.
"Yip-yip!" yelled Jack.
Bud had won proudly many a prize for roping, and was the most expert man with the lariat in his part of the West. Had he wished, he could have roped the flying Petticoats by the heels. But to have done so would have been to have brought the crazed pony down with a crash, and probably have seriously injured, if not killed, her rider.
Swish!
The great loop settled as accurately as if hands had guided it about the maddened pony's neck. Bud took a twist of his end round the saddle horn and checked the calico.
"Got her!" screamed Jack. "Yi-hi!"
But there came a sudden shout of dismay from Bud.
The calico's foot had caught in a gopher hole, and over he went, turning almost a complete somersault.
Jack gave a shout of horror as he saw the catastrophe. He feared Bud had been killed, but the lithe bronco buster was up in a second, stumbling toward his fallen horse.
But the rope did not prove equal to the sudden strain put upon it by the collapse of the calico. The instant the pony had fallen, of course its full weight had come on the rawhide, instead of there being, as Bud had planned, a gradual strangling down of the runaway. It had been, in effect, a tug of war between the flying Petticoats and the suddenly checked calico.
Crack!
The rope twanged taut as a stretched fiddle string and parted with a snap just as Bud reached back into the hip of his leathern chaperaros for his Colt.
He had determined to shoot the runaway and risk disabling Ralph, rather than have the pony take the twenty-foot plunge over the brim of the canal. But at the moment his finger pressed the trigger there came a shout from Jack, who was now only a few paces behind Petticoats. The boy's hastily thrown lariat had missed altogether.
Before their horrified eyes, the runaway buck-skin and her rider the next instant plunged in one confused heap over the bank of the canal and vanished from sight.
Jack was within a breath of following them over the brink, but in the nick of time he wheeled the carefully trained Firewater round on his haunches and averted a second calamity.
Controlling his half-maddened steed, the boy pressed to the edge of the canal. The bank was new and smooth, and as