He stopped with something like triumph, and the echoes rolled forth majestically, to be drowned in a cataract of approval.
Wild Bill raised a meaty hand. “An’, folks, he ain’t no Drrrug-store Cow-boy neither! (Laughter) Folks, I know you’re rrrar-in’ to see ’im, so I won’t take up no more of yore time. La-dees and Gentle-men, I take Grrreat Pleas-ure in intro-ducin’ the Grrreat-est Cowboy in the Worrrld, the hombre who put the Rrrrroarin’ Ole West on the Silv-ah Screen!.. A-merri-cah’s Grrrand Ole Man of the Mo-vies — THE ONE AN’ ON-LY BUCK HORNE! Let ’er rip!”
They tore the roof down. And, of course, leading the chorus of assorted bellows, roars, thunders, screams, and shrieks was one Djuna Queen, yelling himself a lovely olive-green in the face.
Ellery grinned and glanced at Kit Horne. She was sitting tensely forward, an anxious expression on her soft brown features, watching the eastern gate of the arena with eyes of troubled gray-blue.
A uniformed attendant, very small and puny at this distance, manipulated the doors, they swung back, and out into the glare of the amphitheatre galloped a magnificent horse, a powerful animal with shining tight flanks and proudly tossing head. On his back sat a man.
“Buck!”
“Buck Horne!”
“Ride ’im, cowboy!”
Horne leaned forward in his saddle, riding with fluent ease, the gallant old buckaroo. In a roped-off section of the box-tier a band struck up. There was an unearthly din. It was like opening night of the circus in Kankakee, or West Tannerville, Ohio. Djuna was banging his palms together madly. Kit had sunk back with a smile.
Ellery leaned forward and tapped her knee. She turned, startled. “Nice animal he’s riding!” shouted Ellery.
She threw back her head and laughed from a full throat. “He certainly ought to be, Mr. Queen! He cost five thousand dollars.”
“Phew! A horse?”
“A horse. That’s Rawhide, my favorite, my gorgeous pet. Buck wanted most especially to ride Rawhide tonight. Said it would bring him luck.”
Ellery sat back, smiling vaguely. The man on horseback had doffed his splendid black ten-gallon hat, bowing right and left, and had urged his animal forward with his knees until they pulled up near the eastern turn of the oval after almost a complete circuit of the track, below and a little to the right of the guest-box in which the Mars party sat. He sat astride like an old god, with perfect ease; the brilliant lights caught the metal and leather glints on his rich Western regalia, the glints on his white hair where it blanketed his neck below his hat-brim. The horse posed like a model, proudly, his sleek right forefoot delicately extended before him.
Kit rose, a smartly gowned young woman, filled her deep chest with air, opened her red mouth, and gave vent to a long ululating cry which raised the short hair on Ellery’s nape and brought him, blinking, to his feet. The Inspector grasped the arms of his chair. Djuna jumped a foot. Then Kit quietly sat down, grinning. In the din the man on horseback half-turned his head as if searching for someone.
Someone behind Ellery said venomously: “Slut!”
Ellery said hastily to Kit: “The call of the wild, eh?”
Her grin had vanished. She nodded pleasantly, but her little brown jaw tightened and her back was soldier-stiff.
Ellery turned casually. Big Tommy Black was sitting forward, elbows resting on his knees. He was whispering to Mara Gay. Julian Hunter smoked a cigar silently in the background. Tony Mars was staring as if hypnotized at the arena.
Wild Bill was roaring frantically against the surge of noise. The band played: “Ta-ra!” several times, fortissimo, its uniformed conductor waving his baton desperately. Then Horne himself held up his hand for silence, and it came with a gradual subsidence of sound after the lapse of mere seconds, like a thunderous sea receding swiftly from a deck.
“La-dees and Gentle-men,” shouted Wild Bill. “I want to thank ya, an’ Buck wants to thank ya, one an’ all, for this Won-der-ful Rrrrecep-shun! Now the first e-vent will be a Rrrrip-Snortin’ Ride aroun’ the A-re-nah, with Buck leadin’ Forrrty Rrrri-ders in a Hell-Bent-fer-Leather Chase! Just the way he used to lead th’ posses after the Dirrrt-y Vill-’ins in his movin’ pitchers! That’s just a starter, an’ then Buck’ll get down to bus’-ness, per-formin’ In-div-id-u-al Feats of Horrrse-man-ship an’ Sharrrp-shoot-in’!”
Buck Horne pulled his hat firmly down on his forehead. Wild Bill hefted his revolver from the holster, pointed it at the roof, and once more pulled the trigger. At the signal the eastern gate swung open again and a large cloud of riders, men and women on wiry Western horses, charged out on the track, whooping and waving their hats. At their head rode Curly Grant, his head bare and his hair gleaming; and One-Arm Woody, upon whom for the moment all eyes centered; for his mastery with one arm of the dappled brute he was riding was amazing. Then the chapped and throat-swathed cavalry swept on around the farther, northern length of the track, racing toward the west...
Ellery twisted his neck and said to the Inspector: “Our friend Wild Bill may be heaven’s own gift to the great outdoors, but he really should brush up on his arithmetic.”
“Huh?”
“How many riders did Grant bellow would follow Buck Horne on this epic-making charge around the arena?”
“Oh! Forty, wasn’t it? Say, what in time’s got into you?”
Ellery sighed. “In my unreasonable way — probably because Grant was so specific about the number — I’ve been counting ’em.”
“Well?”
“There are forty-one!”
The Inspector dropped back with a snort, and his gray mustaches quivered with indignation. “You... you... Oh, shut up! By God, El, sometimes you get my goat. What the devil if there are forty-one, or a hundred and ninety-seven!”
Ellery said placidly: “Your blood-pressure, Inspector. At the same time—”
Djuna whispered with ferocity: “Oh, shush!”
Ellery shushed.
The milling riders came beautifully still on the southern length of the oval, and once more silence fell. They were lined up in twos, a long string of them; Curly Grant and the one-armed Woody at their head were still some thirty feet behind the lone figure of Buck Horne.
From the center of the arena, where he sat his horse like an elevated ringmaster, Wild Bill rose in his stirrups and bawled: “Ready, Buck?”
Behind him on the trestled platform Major Kirby had disposed all his cameras; the photographers were taut, motionless, awaiting the word.
The single rider on the track swung his body a little, drew a big old-fashioned gun from his right holster, poised it muzzle roofwards, pulled the trigger, and out of the explosion came his voice: “Shoot!”
Forty-one arms dipped into forty-one holsters behind him, forty-one guns leaped into view... Wild Bill from his commanding position shot straight up in the air, once. Then Buck Horne’s broad shoulders hunched, he leaned slightly forward, and his right arm still pointing the gun at the roof, hurled his horse ahead on the tanbark track. At the same instant the entire cavalcade swirled into a roaring motion picture of sound, uttering piercing cowboy yells. In an incredible flirt of time’s tail the horses had sped along the track to almost directly below the Mars box, led by that gallant figure on Rawhide some forty feet ahead now, just rounding the farther side of the eastern turn.