“Their walk, and every one’s, seems ended here,” remarked Mrs. Sladen, pointing to a crowd of coolies, dandies, men, ladies, and ponies who were all jammed together and making a great noise.
“Of course, this is Toby Joy’s short cut, and most likely a practical joke,” exclaimed Jervis. “I believe he was at the bottom of the lost lunch too.”
The much-boasted short cut was likely to prove the proverbial “longest way round,” and now afforded a very disagreeable surprise to the company of merry pleasure-seekers. They had been descending a densely wooded shoulder of a hill, with the cheery confidence of ignorance, to where at one point an artificially banked-up and stone-faced road crossed a deep gorge.
The path, owing to the action of the rain, had slipped down, and there was now but a precarious footing across the breach, barely wide enough for a single pony—and that a steady one. Above, towered the hill, almost sheer; below, lay the blue shale precipice, clothed in fir trees, bushes, and brambles. To a hill coolie, or a person with a good head, it was passable; at least twenty had gone over, including Mrs. Brande in her dandy, who waved her hand jauntily as she was carried across. She was a plucky woman, as far as precipices were concerned.
Some who were nervous hesitated on the brink—they were torn between two conflicting emotions, hunger and fear; many were actually beginning to retrace their steps. Toby Joy, on his hard-mouthed yellow “tat,” was riding backwards and forwards over the chasm to demonstrate how easy it was, and bragging and joking and making himself so conspicuous that some of his misguided victims—including Colonel Sladen—would not have been at all sorry if he had vanished down the Khud.
Colonel Sladen’s hunger stimulated his temper. The traditional bear with a sore head was a playful and gentle animal, in comparison to him, at the present moment. He had been a noted horseman in his day, but being now much too heavy to ride, he was fond of bragging of his ponies, and thrusting that light weight, his unhappy wife, into positions that made her blood run ice, and then he would boast and say, “Pooh! the pony is a lamb! My wife rides him, rides him with a thread, sir;” and he would straddle his legs, and swagger about the club, and subsequently sell the animal at a high figure.
“A nasty place to ride across! Not a bit of it—it’s safer than doing it on foot. These hill ponies never make mistakes.” This he had remarked in his gruffest tone to Captain Waring, whose fair companion was literally trembling on the brink. “Wait—and just you watch how my wife will do it, on the Budmash—she will show you all the way. Milly,” he bellowed, looking up the hill, “come along, come along.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed, turning a face as white as death on Mark, “I really dare not ride across that place. I have no nerve now, and this is the shying pony.”
“Come on! Don’t you see that you are stopping up the road?” roared her lord and master, indicating the various people who were sneaking back. Then, as she joined him, he added in a lower tone—
“I would not be such a coward to save my life.”