The horse threw his head down far between his fore legs at the start, and then went angling and zigzagging away over the hard ground in a wild career of humpbacked antics, which jarred Franklin to the marrow of his bones.

The air became scintillant and luminously red.

His head seemed filled with loose liquid, his spine turned into a column of mere gelatine.

The thudding of the hoofs was so rapid and so punishing to his senses that for a moment he did not realize where he actually was.

Yet with the sheer instinct of horsemanship he clung to the saddle in some fashion, until finally he was fairly forced to relax the muscular strain, and so by accident fell into the secret of the seat--loose, yielding, not tense and strung.
"Go it, go it--whooop-e-e-e!" cried Curly, somewhere out in a dark world.
"Ee-eikee-hooo! Set him fair, pardner! Set him fair, now! Let go that leather! Ride him straight up! That's right!" Franklin had small notion of Curly's locality, but he heard his voice, half taunting and half encouraging, and calling on all his pluck as he saw some hope of a successful issue, he resolved to ride it out if it lay within him so to do.