Page:Patches (1928).pdf/123

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ing to their comrades. "Get that ball! Poke it out! Play polo! Start the game! What are you doing, treading water?" Meanwhile the supporters of the cow-punchers were filled with glee and shouted their derision across the polo field.

The troopers attacked the little triangle from every side. They tried to spur their ponies through between the cow-punchers' ponies, but this crowding and pushing game was a part of the day's work for the bronchos for during the round-up season they did little else. They were in the habit of crowding a steer that weighed three or four hundred pounds more than they did, so in this football polo they were right in their element.

"I say," growled the captain of the troopers' team, after a couple of minutes of futile efforts to break through and get the ball, "if you don't want to play the ball let us have it. You will ruin the game."

"Oh, hurry up," put in another trooper, "you fellows will want to get home and milk the cows."

"We ain't in no hurry," growled Long Tom, "our cows will wait as long as your hosses."

Whenever the ball was in danger from one side of the triangle some one would tap it across to the other. Once it bounded out into the open and was nearly lost. But by this time the supporters of the