At the end of the second quarter he found his first pony waiting for him and once more the saddle and bridle and the mail bags had to be shifted. At the end of the third quarter the second pony was again waiting and the shift was again made. So it will be seen that this race was also a race of dexterity in shifting the trappings of the horses as well as a race testing the speed of the ponies. A slip with the bridle or saddle, or the mail sacks and the race was lost.
The cow girl bucking contest was also a spectacular event and awaited with eager interest because of the fact that the contestants were women. The horses that they rode were not the outlaws that the men rode in their contest, instead they were what are called show buckers, horses that had been trained and encouraged to buck, horses that enjoyed bucking and took it as a sort of game. They never tried to kill their riders, but they did try to dismount them and these cow girls stuck to their saddles like leeches. Crowhopping, sunfishing, straight bucking, and swapping ends were nothing to them, even when a horse stood on his hind legs they did not mind, provided he did not try the back throw. These maneuvers were so tremendous that the average horse-women gasped with fear just to watch them and they breathed a sigh of relief when the contest was over.
