ESS was not able to get away from the Ridge as soon as she had
expected. Mr. Sinclair sent word that he would not be over for two or
three days, and as not a man could be spared from the work to drive her
down, she had no choice but to stay.
The position was embarrassing for her, but Steve saved it being too
much so by avoiding her and saying no more than “Good Morning” or “Good
Evening” when they met. He quieted Aleck’s grumbles at seeing so little
of him by saying that he could not understand why it was, but he was
most confoundedly sleepy all day, and spent long hours in his bunk.
Aleck thought that possibly he was feeling his wounds more than he
would confess, and did not press the point, especially as he could
plainly see that there was something decidedly wrong with Steve, and
that he was far from being his old careless, happy self.
But Steve was sick enough of his unusual inaction, and he jumped at the
chance that Scottie gave him of a day’s work in the hills amongst the
cattle.
“I’m terrible short-handed, Steve,” said Scottie, “an’ the beasties
will be as wild as deer, I’m thinkin’. So if ye think ye’re fit enough
tae tackle them an’ the Whistlin’ Hills, I’ll be real glad o’ yer help.”
“I’m your man, Scottie,” said Steve, briskly. “If my old bones won’t
stand another day in the saddle after all this rest, it’s time I knew
it, and started looking for a job as a picker-up in the wool sheds or
something else I can’t break my tender carcase over. I’m on, Scottie.”
Apparently most of the men were for the job in the Whistling Hills, for
the full force turned out next morning.
All the Thunder Ridge men were delighted over the chance of a turn
amongst the cattle. They were all stockmen, and sheep work was not at
all to their liking, although of course they had to do that when it was
wanted.
When Steve rode up from the horse paddock, he found Ess standing in the
yard talking to Scottie. Whip Thompson cantered up whooping joyously,
and cracking his long stockwhip in a series of Maxim-like reports, his
horse prancing, and sidling, and snatching, and reefing at the bit as
he came.
“Hi, hi! Walk up, canter up, gallop up!” shouted Whip, “If any o’ you
chaps has any little childer ye want whippin’, send ’em along to me,
an’ I’ll do the job wi’ promptness an’ despatch. Send ’em along to Whip
Thompson at the old address,” and “Crack—crack—crack” went the long
whip.
“Whip,” called Ess, “you once promised to let me see some proper
whip-play. Come along now.”
“Whip-play!” cried Whip. “Stand still then, Miss. Don’t flinch.” Ess
stood still, and a rapid running fire of reports thundered about her
ears. The action was so quick that she could hardly follow the flying
thong with her eyes, and the loudness of the reports half deafened her.
“Stop, please stop,” she called, “my ears are cracking.”
Whip never ceased the play of his arm and wrist, but walked his horse
clear of the others and spun a ring of cracks in a wide circle above
his head, sitting straight and motionless in his saddle with his arm
straight up, and only the wrist moving. Then he flung the thong high in
the air, twisted his body round and swung the whip down again in a
sharp crack that bit at the ground immediately behind him, and sent a
puff of dust jumping in the air. Crack, crack, crack, he went round the
circle again, this time just flicking the ground at each crack, the
ring of the leaping spurts of dust showing where the lash was falling.
Ess clapped and bravoed as the last snap finished the circle and lifted
the last puff of dust before the first one had completely floated away.
“That—that’s nothing,” jeered Never-Never Jack. “A school kid c’d do
that with a tuppenny toy whip.”
“He could, eh?” grinned Whip, and lifted Never-Never’s hat whirling
from his head. “P’raps he c’d do that, too,” and the whip snapped
viciously round Jack’s feet, lifting a cloud of dust at every stroke.
“P’raps he c’ud cut your corns for you, Mister Bloomin’ Never-Never
Jack. Will I cut ’em for you—through the boot an’ all?” “Get out, you
lunatic,” cried Jack, uneasily. “None o’ yer games.” “Will I take the
pipe from your teeth?” laughed Whip, and the lash snapped a foot from
Jack Ever’s face. Jack hastily snatched the pipe from his mouth and
held it behind his back.
Another man brought an old felt hat from the hut and flung it to Whip.
“Practice on that,” he called, and Whip picked the hat up on the point
of the lash and cut it down again. The thing leaped, and danced, and
spun, and twirled under the flying whip strokes, and then as it fell
again Whip cut at it with the strength of wrist, and arm, and body
swing, each blow splitting the stout felt as if it had been slashed
with a knife.
“Will ye stan’ still again, Miss?” cried Whip. “I won’t hurt you,” and
he flung two sweeping strokes across the front of her skirt, ending
each with a sharp crack. Ess heard rather than felt the strokes, so
light were they, but she looked down on her dark dress and could see
the cross stripes of white dust where the whip had passed from hip to
ankle. “Lend me another whip someone,” said Whip. “You Steve, you carry
a decent length o’ leather.” Steve flung his whip, and Whip stooped and
picked it up with his left hand, his right never ceasing to whirl and
crack his own whip. Then for a couple of minutes he gave a display of
double-handed work that made Ess’s eyes ache to follow. The two thongs
wriggled through the air like flying snakes; they chased each other in
hissing circles; they crossed and bit out at the air front and rear,
and reversed and repeated; they cracked separately, and together, and
then in an alternating running volley like a bursting Chinese cracker.
“Anybody got a tanner or a bob?” said Whip, and when a coin was thrown
on the ground, he walked up to it, and then away for a full thirty
feet. “One, two, _three_——” he cried, and at _three_ his left-hand whip
shot out and cracked, and the coin spun twinkling into the air for a
dozen feet, “——an’ _go_,” cried Whip, and the right-hand thong hissed
and cracked, and the spinning coin vanished. “Pure fluke,” jeered Jack
Ever. “He couldn’t pick it up so straight in the air an’ cut it away
again once in a hundred year.” “Get away you,” shouted Whip, “unless
you want both the ears cut off you,” and the lashes sang round and
cracked venomously on either side of Jack’s head. “You wi’ the
cigareet,” said Whip, “stan’ still till I knock the ash off for you,”
and he walked towards the man, measuring the distance with his eye. The
cigarette was half smoked, and at the first light crack the ash
vanished. “Little boys shouldn’t smoke,” said Whip—and the cigarette
stump flicked from the man’s lips.
Whip finished with a thunderous double report, swung the thongs in a
sweeping curve, and caught the crackers back in his hands on their
short handles.
The men laughed and clapped, and Ess drew a long breath. “It’s
wonderful,” she cried. “Thank you, Whip. You really must give me a
lesson on how to use one.” Ned Gunliffe had stepped over to her side,
and a pang went through Steve as he saw the air of proprietorship with
which Ned laid his hand on her arm. “But surely, Miss Lincoln,” Steve
drawled, “er—I fancy you can use one already,” and he leaped lightly
into his saddle and pulled his horse round without waiting for an
answer. “Now, why was I ass enough to say that?” he muttered to
himself. “She’s bitter enough now, without my rubbing it in.”
But when they came into the hills and got to work on the cattle, Steve
forgot everything else in the wild delight of tearing over the rough
ground, heading and turning the mad rushes of the cattle, picking them
out of the gullies and sending them flying headlong to join the
bellowing mob. His horse was as clever a stockman as he was, and
enjoyed the game to the full as much as he did himself. He would wait
the most frenzied charge as still as if carved in stone, till the last
possible moment, then the great haunches would sink, and with a bound
and a rush he would avoid the sweeping horns and whirl round and lay
Steve cleverly alongside at just the right distance for the long whip
to get in its work. The lightest touch on the rein would bring him
round in his own length as if spun on a pivot; the slightest pressure
of the knees would send him hurling forward from an easy canter into
his hardest gallop.
“Hi! hi!” yelled Whip, as he came thundering past on the heels of a
dozen wild-eyed cattle. “This is something like, Steve. This is man’s
work, hey?” as Steve raced alongside him. The cattle fled bawling and
threw themselves with a crash into the main mob, and the horses behind
them propped and wheeled expertly. “Why don’t you learn to ride, you
sailor?” shouted Steve, laughing, as Whip lifted a couple of inches in
the saddle.
“Hold them there—hold them,” shouted Scottie from the rear, and Steve
and Whip fled clattering round to the head of the mob and beat them
back as they began to break out of it.
“Look at Darby,” said Whip, delightedly pointing along the hillside.
“That cow’s goin’ to prod a hole in ’im for luck.” Darby was bringing
down a little cluster of cattle he had collected on one of the spurs,
and one brute had turned on him and was making a series of fierce
charges. Darby was riding his “Blunderbuss,” a big raking brute of a
roan, with a head like a claw-hammer and a mouth as hard as beaten
brass, and on the sloping hillside it had hard work to keep clear of
the viciously lunging horns. Darby was wrenching at his horse’s head
and chopping at the bullock with his whip, lifting the hair at every
chop, till at last, as the horse dodged one of its rushes and it swung
past, Darby “tailed” it and sent it rolling headlong.
“Get at ’im, Darby,” yelled Whip, and as the brute struggled to its
feet Darby “got at ’im,” and the stockwhip fell hissing and stinging
till the brute scrambled up and, tail in air, bolted headlong down the
slope. But the rest of the cluster had scattered, and Steve put spurs
to horse and raced up and along the hillside, the loose stones sliding
and trundling down the hill from his track like sparks from a rocket.
“Did ye see that poker?” shouted Darby, as they swept the herd together
and headed them down the hill. “Did ye see ’im, Steve?” “No,” said
Steve, innocently. “What was he doing?” “Doin’—the brute,” spluttered
Darby, wrathfully. “’E nearly poked my ’orses’ ribs in, and ’e’s tore a
hole in my trousies from yonder to yesterday. I’ll ’poke’ ’im,” and he
spurred closer and snicked viciously at the discomfited “poker.”
“Take a couple o’ men an’ try along the Whale-back, Steve,” said
Scottie later, and Steve called to Jack Ever and Whip Thompson and
cantered off.
The Whale-back was a long hill shaped roughly, as its name described,
covered with boulders and fallen logs, scored down its sides with dry
water courses and, where the tail sank, thinly covered by scattered
trees. It was rough and risky going, but the men took it end to end,
riding as if it were level as a billiard table. When they came to where
the head of the hill fell away in slopes and cliffs too steep for horse
or bullock to keep a footing, they turned and began to beat back
through the boulders and gullies, picking up a stray bullock here and a
couple there, till they were driving thirty to forty of them back
towards the slope of the “tail.” The mob went crashing down through the
timber, and Jack and Whip drew rein and let them go.
But Steve yelled, and swung his whip, and lifted his horse over a
fallen trunk, and went thundering in pursuit at a gallop. “What’s wrong
wi’ Steve these days?” said Jack Ever. “You’d think ’e was tryin’ to
break ’is blanky neck.” “Never was wot you’d call a cautious or a
careful sort o’ rider, but blow me if ’e isn’t madder’n ever,” agreed
Whip, dodging round a boulder and taking a deep gully in his stride.
“Look at that now,” ejaculated Whip, as the bullocks plunged into the
timber, and Steve drove in hard on their heels.
The cattle were nimble on their feet and agile as deer, and they
stormed crashing through the trees at full gallop. Steve rode with his
head stooped to avoid the branches that swept over his head, and would
have flung him headlong if one had caught him, and his horse leaped and
twisted over the logs and between the rocks, in and out of steep-sided
holes, and whirled inch-clear past standing trees, all at top speed.
Cattle and horseman burst out of the trees, and as Whip and Jack
cleared the timber well behind them, they were careering full tilt down
the slope.
“See that,” said Whip, and “Clever work, but useless risky,” commented
Jack, as he watched.
The cattle had reached the dip at the foot of the Whale-back’s tail,
and when he saw that they were going to scatter and try to break up the
steeper slope beyond instead of turning down the hillside to the
valley, Steve touched the horse with the spur, surged past them, and
wheeled them downhill. The cattle and he poured down together in an
avalanche of stones and earth, and the long snarling roar of their
slide came back to the two men above, mingled with the steady cracks of
the stockwhip.
“He’s mad,” said Whip, “stark crazy,” as he watched horse and man and
beasts shoot headlong out into the valley, and turn and gallop down it.
“Where did you boys get to?” said Steve, grinning as the other two
cantered in. “Get to?” said Whip. “I know where _you_ dash near got to,
an’ that’s a place hotter’n anything roun’ here.”
“You’ll break your silly neck one o’ these days,” grumbled Never-Never.
“And what if?” said Steve, lightly. “What’s a neck more or less,
anyway?”
“Not much to you, maybe,” grunted Whip, “but I’d rather keep mine to be
hanged with.”
All the stock that were gathered were drifted slowly down the valley
till nearly dark, and steadied down and halted while the men lit their
fires and made their camp.
It had been a suffocatingly hot day, and now after dark they could hear
the faint growl of thunder back in the hills and see the flicker of
lightning. The cattle were restless, and for long after the men had
finished supper refused to settle and lie down, and continued to move
and stir, lowing uneasily. Double guards went on to ride round the mob
in case they showed signs of breaking, and the rest of the men sat by
the fire with their saddled horses near at hand, and ready in case of a
sudden call for quick work.
When Ned Gunliffe finished his turn of guard and came in to the fire,
Steve was sitting in the glow of the firelight.
He had his pipe in his mouth and a cake of tobacco in his hand, and was
fumbling in his waistcoat pockets for a knife, when Ned saw him pull a
twisted piece of paper out and look at it, and absent-mindedly unfold
and read it. He sat with the paper in his hand, looking into the fire,
till suddenly Ned’s voice roused him.
“Another billet-doux, Steve?” he said, with the faintest suspicion of a
sneer.
A scowl flashed over Steve’s face.
“Yes,” he said; “perhaps you’d like to know who it’s from next.”
“Can’t say it interests me,” retorted Ned, and Steve laughed a taunting
little laugh.
“No?” he said. “I thought it might. It’s not so long since you showed a
decided interest in my affairs, though, and not for the first time.”
He refolded the note and thrust it back in his pocket, and Ned made no
reply, although Steve caught the glance of hatred he threw at him.
Towards midnight the cattle quietened down, and in another hour they
were nearly all lying down and resting.
“I think we’re safe tae turn in now,” said Scottie. “Those beasts have
had a good bucketin’ round, an’ they should lie quiet enough for the
rest o’ the nicht. But keep yer horses saddled an’ close handy in case.”
Some of the men were nodding over the fire, but on the word they all
rose, and there was a general unstrapping of blankets and preparations
for sleep.
Suddenly, and without an instant’s warning, there was a quick rustle
from the herd. A rattle of clicking horns ran through them, there was a
heaving and stamping, a single loud bellow, a yell from the man on
guard, and they were on their feet.
“Quick, lads,” shouted Scottie. “Mount an’ ride roun’ them.”
But it was too late. With a deep sullen roar like prisoned waters
bursting their barriers and pouring into the valley, with a shaking
thunder of hoofs that set the solid ground quivering, the mob broke in
mad stampede.
They were coming straight for the camp, and every man there knew what
it meant if they burst on it before they could mount and gallop clear.
There were no orders given and none were needed. Each man simply
dropped everything and leaped for his horse, and flung himself to the
saddle. Steve had been in the act of rolling in his blanket when the
first warning came. He flung the blanket from him and ran with the
rest. Ned Gunliffe was just ahead of him, and as he passed Steve’s
horse to reach his own beyond it, Steve could have sworn he saw Ned’s
wrist jerk his whip forward. In the darkness and rush it was a thing he
could never be certain of, but certain it was that his horse leaped
suddenly and set off at a canter—the horse that Steve had trained to
stand still in any turmoil, till his hand was on its neck. He whistled
loud and shrill, and his horse stiffened its forelegs and propped and
slid a yard, and stood stock still. Steve ran and caught its mane and
called to it, and it sprang forward with a bound as he swung to its
back.
Steve was boiling with rage, and swore a bitter oath between clenched
teeth to settle with Ned Gunliffe for his trick, but meantime he had
other things to think of.
The roar of the oncoming mob was close on his heels; he was stretching
at full gallop over sticks and stones he could not see till he was on
them; black night stretched in front of him, and the pounding hoofs
behind.
“Open out—open out. Get on the flanks an’ haud them together,” roared
Scottie. But the men were edging out of the track of the mob already.
In the darkness, and over country that was risky enough to gallop over
in broad daylight, there were too many chances of taking a fall. And
where a fall is merely a fall, with a sporting chance of broken bones
at ordinary times, there is no chance about it if the fall is in front
of a stampeding mob. If man or horse went down, it would be never to
rise again, and the flying feet would cut the flesh from the bones and
hammer the bones to splinters, and leave a broken, bloody pulp stamped
into the dust behind them. So the men swung out and clung to the
flanks, and were satisfied to keep themselves on their saddles and
their horses on their feet, and to ply the lashes in biting cuts and
cracks.
It was no use trying to hold or stop the stampede yet—that would come
later. All they could do was try to turn the head up the long hill that
ran on one flank, and keep the leaders from swinging to the other side,
where a maze of gullies and precipitous ridges would have caught and
killed the biggest half of them.
The herd breasted a spur and topped the crest, and rolled over and down
the other side without slackening their pace for a single breath. They
edged downhill towards the valley again, in spite of all the men, and a
fusillade of whip-cracks, and a hail of stinging cuts could do. They
crashed into a strip of wood, smashing the smaller trees and bushes
flat as if a cyclone had uprooted them, and the men opened out and
stooped their heads, and tore on with them till they leaped clear of
the trees again, and then edged in again and strove with whip and shout
to turn the leaders uphill.
They succeeded at last, and as the steepness of the rise told and the
pace slackened a little, the horsemen shot to the front, and the long
whips came into play, slashing, snapping, and cutting. The leaders
flinched and shrank back from those terrible thongs, that cut through
hair and hide, and the pace slackened perceptibly again. The men fought
desperately to hold them before they topped the crest of the hill. If
once they were over that and went off again, there would be no holding
them till the night was spent, and the whole drove was scattered and
broken, and hundreds of them maimed and crippled and smashed, in the
gullies and along the foot of the cliffs.
“Swing them, lads—swing them,” screamed Scottie, his voice hoarse and
cracked with shouting. “Haud them tae the left—tae the left,” as the
head of the column struggled over the top of the rise. And the men
swung the cruel punishing lashes, and screamed, and coo-e-ed, and flung
their horses bodily on the face of the mob, and beat it back and drove
it in on itself, till it curled back and thrust its head deep into its
own centre. The rest was easy. All the men had to do was keep turning
the flood back and swinging it round in a curve, till gradually the
whole mass was walking or trotting in one solid revolving wheel. It
still had to be kept solid, and every now and then a spoke of the wheel
would thrust out, and the wheel would check. But the men fell on the
spoke, and with hand and tongue hammered it back into the wheel, that
moved slower and slower, and finally stopped. It still rippled and
heaved restlessly, and threatened to sway and break again, but the
movement was always caught and smothered in time.
“Lat them open oot a wee,” called Scottie, and the men rode in a wider
circle, and let the jambed mass slacken, and loose, and spread itself,
and—the stampede was over.
“Is everybody here, an’ whole?” asked Scottie, riding up to a group of
men who had slid down from their panting horses, but stood with a foot
ready to lift to the stirrup.
“Where’s Darby—where’s Darby the Bull?” someone asked.
“I fancies I saw that bell-mouthed brute of his charge full belt into a
tree,” said Whip. “Well, he’ll have bust that ugly hammer-head of his
at last,” said another man. “Hope he hasn’t bust Darby’s as well.”
“Bust the bloomin’ tree more like,” said Never-Never, but just then a
faint coo-ee came from far below. Steve lit a match, and held it
screened by his outstretched waistcoat, and showing to the valley
below, and presently another coo-ee and the answering wink of a match
showed the signal was seen. Darby the Bull toiled heavily up the hill
to them. “Where you been, Darby?” “Did you stop an’ ’ave a snooze in
camp?” “Didn’t you know we was shiftin’?” showered on him. Darby
grunted.
“Shiftin’? I think you was shiftin’. Some o’ you shifted in such a
hurry you come without yer boots, an’ some more o’ you without jackets.
I brought my boots an’ jacket _an’_ my blanket. Anyone else stop to
bring a blanket?”
Nobody else had, and Darby grinned provokingly, although he said no
more.
“And there were some,” said Steve Knight, “who ran in such a hurry that
a whip was flicking round a bit too promiscuously. One flick caught my
horse, I fancy, and started him off and nearly left me there.”
There was a deep silence, which Darby broke.
“Whoever it was should have ’is own whip laid about ’im. That’s what
I’d do if it ’ad a bin my ’orse.”
“If I was dead sure it wasn’t an accident, I’d have something more to
say,” said Steve; “but I’ll let it slide—meantime.”
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