"Jack, here, can get pardners enough to keep him going fer a week--judging by the eyes them Spanish girls have been making at him since the duel and the horse-breaking.
"Say! How about that sassy-eyed Picardo girl?
I ain't seen you and her in speaking distance all day; and the way you was buzzing around her when I was down here before--" "Say, Jack," Dade interrupted, diplomacy winning against politeness, "I never dreamed you'd have the nerve to try that fancy corkscrew throw of yours before all that crowd.

Why, after two years to get out of practice, you took an awful chance of making a fool of yourself! Y'see, Bill," he explained with a deliberate garrulity, "that throw he made when he caught the horse was the finest bit of rope-work that's been done to-day.

I don't believe there's another man in the crowd that could do it; and the chances are they never saw it done before, even! I know I never saw but one man beside Jack that could do it.

Jack was always at it, when we happened to be laying around with nothing to do, and I know he had to keep his hand in, or he'd make a fizzle of it.

Of course," he conceded, "you didn't miss--but if you had--Wow!" He shook his head at the bare possibility.
Jack grinned at him.