“That’s right,” she said.
Lamont was very much of a misogynist, and was impatient of the sex and its foibles, but there was something in this girl that disarmed even him. Her very voice sounded caressing, and the quick lift of the deep blue eyes—well, it was dangerous, might soon become maddening. She had appealed to him from the very first, he admitted as much deep down in his heart of hearts, but there, and there only. Now, amid this sunny, light-hearted scene, as he looked at her he thought how, under other circumstances, he might have talked to her differently. But the horror invisibly brooding on yonder sunlit hill was still to be reckoned with, and now another anxiety was deepening within his mind. The witch-doctor had not yet arrived, and his presence was essential to the carrying out of the plot—and its frustration.
The tent-pegging, like the racing, proved, for the most part, poor; so much so indeed that it was hard to work up any great enthusiasm over it, though there was abundance of chaff. At the end, however, flagging interest revived, for now the win lay between Lamont and Orwell, the resident magistrate. Tie after tie they made, always neck and neck, and it became a question whether it would not end in a tie. There was plenty of excitement now, and shouting. Then there was dead silence as the two men awaited the word for the last time.
Lamont settled down to his saddle. He would win, he felt, to miss would be impossible. They were off. His lance was unerringly straight for the peg. But as they thundered along he looked up—only one lightning-quick glance, and then—his lance ploughed up the bare turf while that of his adversary whirled aloft, the wedge of wood impaled upon it hard and fast. And amid the roar of cheers that rent the air, Lamont recognised that that quick side-glance he had been betrayed into taking had lost him the day.
But that look—which had clouded his brain and unsteadied his wrist—not upon her for whom he was here in these modern lists was it directed, but upon a red object moving among the groups near the entrance gate of the enclosure.
Chapter Twelve.
The Red Signal—Or the White?
“Why—it is. It’s old Qubani,” said Driffield.