"All right," agreed Bud. "But I'll try it from the saddle. It comes more natural to me that way, and nine times out of ten you do all your roping from the saddle. Of course this isn't regular, for you don't generally rope standing objects," he went on. "Sock isn't used to that, and he expects a pull on the rope after I fling it. But I'll try for that stump you fellows have been mistreating," and Bud laughed.
He rode Sock, his pinto pony, off a little way, coiling his rope in readiness as he did so. Then, wheeling quickly, and with a wild, inspiring "Yip-yippi!" the young rancher came riding fast toward a low, broad stump the two other lads had, more or less successfully, been trying to rope.
His right hand shot out, palm up, his cousins noticed, and the rope went twisting and turning through the air, lengthening out like a long, thin snake, and almost hissing like one. Instinctively, as though roping a steer, Bud prepared himself for the pull that always followed.
Sock, the intelligent pony, braced his feet to hold back as soon as he sensed that Bud had thrown the rope. For Sock had been taught that he must always do this when a steer was being roped, and though he could distinguish between a stump and an animal, Bud's action seemed to call for co-operation on Sock's part.
The coils of the lariat whirled through the air, and, just as they were about to settle over the stump, there was a sudden movement in a leaf-filled hole beside the remains of what had once been a big tree.
Up out of this burrow, or hole, where he had been lying asleep among dried leaves and grass that concealed him from the boys, rose a human figure. He was so close to the stump and he rose up in such a manner leaning slightly over, as if dazed from too sudden awakening from a sound slumber, that he received the noose of Bud's rope fairly about his shoulders!
So suddenly did the man appear, popping out of the hole beside the stump like a Jack in the Box, that Sock was startled, and pranced back, exactly as he would have done in order to drag a refractory steer off its feet. And this was just what took place with the man.
The noose tightened about his middle and he was dragged over the flat top of the stump, yelling and shouting in protest.