His dreams had been shattered finally in the wood a month back, and for that dêbâcle the girl behind the rock must be held responsible.
CHAPTER XVII
Boy Sees a Vision
Joses when in liquor was wont to boast that his memory was good, and he was right upon the whole. But on this occasion he had forgotten something, and that something was Billy Bluff. Billy and Joses had met before, as Monkey Brand had pointed out to Mat, and had agreed to dislike each other. And when Joses began his stalk, Billy Bluff started on a stalk of his own.
Boy Woodburn, peeping between two rocks, watched with grim glee. Her senses, quick as those of a wild creature, had warned her long ago of the Great Beast's approach. For Joses to imagine he could take her by surprise was as though a beery bullock believed that he could catch a lark. The girl was almost sorry for the man: his fatness, his fatuity appealed to her pity. Alert as a leopard, she was not in the least afraid of him. In the wood, true, he had caught her, but her downfall there she owed to a sprain. Here in the open, in her riding things, she could run rings about her enemy.
Lying on her face behind the rock, she watched the little drama.
Billy Bluff, wet still from the sea, his hair clinging about his ribs, and giving him the air of a heraldic griffin, crept on the puffing fat man and hurled at him with a roar.
The assault was entirely unexpected.
"You—bear!" blurted Joses, the picturesque phrase popping out of him like a cork from a heady bottle of champagne.
He struggled to his feet, picked up a stone, and slung it at the charging dog.