“Yoicks, tally-ho,” screamed Dolly, his hat flying and his shirt sleeves fluttering in the wind. He was on a good horse, but a dingo is a fast traveller when it is pressed, and for a little it held its own. Then Dolly began to gain, and he thundered up between two of the ridges with the spurs stabbing his horse’s sides at every leap, and his stockwhip slashing at the flying dog.
“Loose your stirrup—take your stirrup to him,” Aleck Gault shouted, and sat down and rode hard for the point where the ridge ran up and over the edge of the Cupped Hands. The grade was telling on the horse, and he was blowing hard, and the dog was gaining as they swept up and over the edge of the depression, and went racing down the other side. Dolly was still slashing with the whip, but the dog ran without swerving under the cruel cuts. “Wot was the good o’ that?” as Whip Thompson said afterwards to the contrite Dolly. “You might ha’ cut ’im in two ’alves wi’ that, an’ the ’alves would ha’ kep’ on runnin’.”
But Aleck Gault was up with the chase now, and, although the going was rough enough to make most men thankful of a full knee-grip and both stirrups, he was bending over and unslipping a stirrup leather as he rode. He shot past Dolly, running the stirrup iron to the end of the leather as he went. The ground was dipping sharply; it was littered with boulders and loose stones, and rotten with rabbit holes, but the men went down it as hard as the horses could put foot to ground, leaving them to go with a loose rein and pick a path, and carry their own and their riders’ necks unbroken.
Aleck was almost alongside the dog, and was swinging the stirrup high for a blow, when he heard a warning yell from Dolly Grey. “Ware——” and the next second he found himself sliding full speed over a smooth slab of stone, as wide and as steeply pitched as the roof of a house. He was just conscious of the long harsh scrape of the horse’s hoofs beneath him, of the violent wrenching side lunge of its leg to save itself toppling and keep it straight, and he was down and in full gallop again. It was over before he could draw a breath, and he had no time or need to interrupt the swing of the stirrup that began at the top of the rock and ended half-a-dozen strides below it.
Straight and hard and true he hit with the full strength of his arm, and in the same breath his horse was down and rolling head over heels, and he was down with it.
“You finished ’im,” said Whip Thompson, when he recovered enough to sit up. “But ’e dash near finished you. You turned ’im over, and ’e mixed up in your ’orse’s feet an’—wallop. Must ’ave been heavy gorged to be run down so quick. ’Ow d’you feel? The ’orse is all right.”
Aleck tried to move his leg, and grunted at the pain.
“Broken,” he said, feeling it tenderly. “Nice job to get back to the Ridge with a broken leg. Get this boot off and slit my trouser leg up, Whip, and don’t stand there glaring like a stuck pig, Dolly. See if you can find a couple of straight sticks for splints; and kill your own dingo next time, please.”
And when he was brought in to the Ridge—fainting twice on the way—and Scottie came to see him, all he had to say was “I’m dead sorry, Scottie; I know you can’t well spare a man these days.”
He was more cheerful when Ess came over to see him, and he grinned at her and exulted openly. “You’ll have to nurse me, Miss Ess,” he said. “And Ned or any other man can say what he likes. Every man is wanted on the work just now, so you’ll have to tend the job.”