“Get back, boys; we’ll wait and fight it where it’s shorter,” said the father. “Hooray!” Tom exclaimed; “here they come!” First a man on a pony, then a boy on a bicycle, two more friendly helpers in a trap, all coming to help as fast as they could; and later, a motor-car from the big house on a hill miles away, and crammed with helpers, hooted its arrival.
Some had brooms or beaters, and some took branches, but all fell to with a will, yet as they worked, the cloud of smoke seemed to get blacker and heavier. Instead of mounting into the sky like a pillar of cloud, it hung about their heads until they could hardly breathe. The sky became black, and still the fire defied their efforts.
A boy looked up and yelled, “Rain!” He had felt a drop on his face. Someone felt another, but they were not leaving anything to chance, and smacked steadily away at the smouldering herbage.
Then the rain began to come down steadily until everyone had a wet shirt. When the danger was over the volunteers began to move off, saying they must be going, in spite of entreaties to come back to the farmstead. They knew that the wife with her baby would be sore put to it to entertain so many. But one or two who lived farther off were persuaded to come along, and to these the colt-hunter expatiated a dozen times on the fortunate circumstance of the ponies running from the fire, and taking the road through the wood to the farm. As Tom said, the skewbald rang the firebell for them.
XV.—THE WANDERERS
Skewbald, now a four-year-old, had in late August succeeded to the leadership of the company with which he had been running. The stallion which had lorded it over the herd had been “caught in,” and Skewbald had stepped into his place as the acknowledged superior of the young males. It was destined to be a temporary supremacy, for, as a skewbald, he could not be welcomed as a breeding stallion; his coloration was too pronounced. Self-coloured browns and bays were considered to be truer to the forest type. Skewbald’s lot was to be that of a pit pony.
No young stallion challenged him to battle twice, for Skewbald possessed, besides strength, a spirit, a quickness of movement together with a power of deciding rapidly, and when roused, a fighting temper which boded ill for an enemy.
As a future pit pony he had the merit of not being too tall, but he was perfectly proportioned, and his carriage and ease of movement proclaimed his fitness as an instrument of strength and speed.