There was no lack of interesting things to do that first day at the . There was one half-hour, to be sure, when five of the Happy Hexagons sat a little quietly on the front gallery and tried to talk as if there were no such thing as a windmill, and no such person as a girl who could climb to the top of it; but after Genevieve and Mrs. Kennedy, arm in arm, came through the front door—with eyes indeed, a little , but with lips cheerfully smiling—every of fled. Genevieve, once more in her pretty frock, was again the alert little hostess, and very soon they were all off to inspect the flower garden, the vegetable garden, the cow corral, the sheds, the stables, and the blacksmith's shop, not forgetting Teresa, the cook, who was making tamales in the kitchen for them, nor Pepito, Genevieve's own horse that she rode before she went East.
"And we'll have the boys pick out some horses for you, too," cried Genevieve, smoothing Pepito's coat in response to his welcoming whinny of delight. "I'm sure they can find something all right for us."
Tilly's eyes brightened, so, too, did Bertha's; but Cordelia hastily, her eyes a bit distrustfully on the spirited little horse Genevieve was petting.
"Oh, but I don't believe they'll have time to hunt up horses for us, Genevieve. Really, I don't think we ought to ask them to."
"Maybe we won't, then—for you," teased Tilly, . "We'll just let them take time for ours."
It is a question, however, if that afternoon, even Tilly wanted to ride; for, according to Cordelia's notes that night in "Things to do," they saw a broncho "bursted."
It was Mr. Tim who had said at the dinner table that noon:
"If you young people happen to be on hand, say at about four o'clock, you'll see something doing. Reddy's got a horse or two he's going to put through their paces—and one of 'em's never been saddled."
, to Mr. Hartley, Mrs. Kennedy objected a little.
"Are you sure, Mr. Hartley, the girls ought to witness such a sight?" she asked uneasily. "Of course I don't want to be too strict in my demands," she went on with a little twinkle in her eyes that Mr. Hartley understood. "I realize the West isn't the East. But, will this be—all right?"
"I think it will—even in your judgment," he assured her. "It's no professional broncho-buster that they'll see to-day. I seldom hire them, anyway, as I prefer to have our own men break in the horses— as we're lucky enough to have three or four skillful ones right in our own . There'll be nothing or rough to-day, Mrs. Kennedy. Only one beast is wild, and he's not really vicious, Reddy says. Genevieve tells me the girls have heard a lot about broncho-busting, and that they're wild to see it. They wouldn't think they'd been to Texas, I'm afraid, if they didn't see something of the sort."
"Very well," agreed Mrs. Kennedy, with visible .
"Oh, of course," went on Mr. Hartley, his eyes twinkling, "you mustn't expect that they'll see exactly a parade drawing baby carriages down Street; but they will see some of the best horsemanship that the state of Texas can show. I take it you never saw a little beast whose chief aim in life was to get clear of his rider—eh, Mrs. Kennedy?"
"No, I never did," the lady; "and I'm not sure that I'd want to," she finished decisively, as she turned away.
The new horse proved to be a little bay mustang, and the fight began from the first moment that the settled about his untamed little neck. As Tilly told of the affair in the Chronicles of the Hexagon Club, it was like this:
"We saw a broncho this afternoon. Reddy busted it, and he was splendid. Mercy! I shall never think anything my old Beauty does is bad again. Beauty is a and a saint beside this jumping, , creature that never by any chance was on his feet properly—except when he came down hard on all four of them at once with his back humped right up in the middle in a fashion—and I suppose that wasn't 'properly.' Anyhow, I shouldn't have thought it was, if I had had to try to sit on that hump!
"But that wasn't the only thing that he did. Dear me, no! He danced, and rolled, and up and down—'pitching,' Mr. Hartley called it. And I'm sure it looked like it. First he'd try on his two feet, then he'd give them a rest, and take the other two. And sometimes he couldn't seem to make up his mind which he wanted to use, or which way he wanted to turn, and he'd change about right up in the air so he'd come down facing the other way. My, he was the most uncertain creature!
"It didn't seem to make a of difference where the horse was, or what he did with his feet, though. Reddy was right there every time, and all[114] ready, too. (Yes, I know a pun is the lowest order of wit. But I don't care. I couldn't help it, anyway—it was such a ready one!) There he sat, so loose and easy, too, with his quirt (that's a whip), and it looked sometimes just as if he wasn't half trying—that he didn't need to. But I'm sure he was trying. Anyhow, I know I couldn't have stayed on that horse five minutes; and I don't believe even Genevieve could. (I said that to Mr. Tim Nolan, and he laughed so hard I thought I'd put it in here, and let somebody else laugh.)
"Of course every one of us was excited, and the boys kept shouting and cheering, and yelling 'Stay with him!' and telling him not to 'go to leather'—whatever that may mean! And Reddy did stay. He stayed till the little horse got tired out; then he got off, and led the horse away, and some of the other boys went through a good deal the same sort of thing with other horses, only these had all been partly broken before, they told us. But, mercy, they were bad enough, anyhow, I thought, to have been brand-new. Reddy did another one, too, and this time he put silver half-dollars under his feet in the stirrups: And when the little beast—the horse, I mean, not Reddy—got through his antics, there the half-dollars were, still there in the same old place. How the boys did yell and cheer then!
"After that, they all just 'showed off' for us, throwing their ropes over anything and everything, and playing like a crowd of little boys on a picnic, only Mr. Hartley said they were doing some 'mighty fine roping' with it all. Their ropes are mostly about forty feet long, and it looked as if they just them any old way; but I know they don't, for , just before we went in to supper, Reddy let me take his rope, and I tried to throw it. I aimed for a post a little way ahead of me, but I got Pedro, the Mexican cowboy, behind me, right 'in the neck,' as Mr. Tim said. Pedro grinned, and of course everybody else laughed horribly.
"And thus endeth th............