“He could, eh?” grinned Whip, and lifted Never-Never’s hat whirling from his head. “P’raps he c’d do that, too,” and the whip snapped viciously round Jack’s feet, lifting a cloud of dust at every stroke. “P’raps he c’ud cut your corns for you, Mister Bloomin’ Never-Never Jack. Will I cut ’em for you—through the boot an’ all?” “Get out, you lunatic,” cried Jack, uneasily. “None o’ yer games.” “Will I take the pipe from your teeth?” laughed Whip, and the lash snapped a foot from Jack Ever’s face. Jack hastily snatched the pipe from his mouth and held it behind his back.
Another man brought an old felt hat from the hut and flung it to Whip. “Practice on that,” he called, and Whip picked the hat up on the point of the lash and cut it down again. The thing leaped, and danced, and spun, and twirled under the flying whip strokes, and then as it fell again Whip cut at it with the strength of wrist, and arm, and body swing, each blow splitting the stout felt as if it had been slashed with a knife.
“Will ye stan’ still again, Miss?” cried Whip. “I won’t hurt you,” and he flung two sweeping strokes across the front of her skirt, ending each with a sharp crack. Ess heard rather than felt the strokes, so light were they, but she looked down on her dark dress and could see the cross stripes of white dust where the whip had passed from hip to ankle. “Lend me another whip someone,” said Whip. “You Steve, you carry a decent length o’ leather.” Steve flung his whip, and Whip stooped and picked it up with his left hand, his right never ceasing to whirl and crack his own whip. Then for a couple of minutes he gave a display of double-handed work that made Ess’s eyes ache to follow. The two thongs wriggled through the air like flying snakes; they chased each other in hissing circles; they crossed and bit out at the air front and rear, and reversed and repeated; they cracked separately, and together, and then in an alternating running volley like a bursting Chinese cracker.
“Anybody got a tanner or a bob?” said Whip, and when a coin was thrown on the ground, he walked up to it, and then away for a full thirty feet. “One, two, three——” he cried, and at three his left-hand whip shot out and cracked, and the coin spun twinkling into the air for a dozen feet, “——an’ go,” cried Whip, and the right-hand thong hissed and cracked, and the spinning coin vanished. “Pure fluke,” jeered Jack Ever. “He couldn’t pick it up so straight in the air an’ cut it away again once in a hundred year.” “Get away you,” shouted Whip, “unless you want both the ears cut off you,” and the lashes sang round and cracked venomously on either side of Jack’s head. “You wi’ the cigareet,” said Whip, “stan’ still till I knock the ash off for you,” and he walked towards the man, measuring the distance with his eye. The cigarette was half smoked, and at the first light crack the ash vanished. “Little boys shouldn’t smoke,” said Whip—and the cigarette stump flicked from the man’s lips.
Whip finished with a thunderous double report, swung the thongs in a sweeping curve, and caught the crackers back in his hands on their short handles.
The men laughed and clapped, and Ess drew a long breath. “It’s wonderful,” she cried. “Thank you, Whip. You really must give me a lesson on how to use one.” Ned Gunliffe had stepped over to her side, and a pang went through Steve as he saw the air of proprietorship with which Ned laid his hand on her arm. “But surely, Miss Lincoln,” Steve drawled, “er—I fancy you can use one already,” and he leaped lightly into his saddle and pulled his horse round without waiting for an answer. “Now, why was I ass enough to say that?” he muttered to himself. “She’s bitter enough now, without my rubbing it in.”
But when they came into the hills and got to work on the cattle, Steve forgot everything else in the wild delight of tearing over the rough ground, heading and turning the mad rushes of the cattle, picking them out of the gullies and sending them flying headlong to join the bellowing mob. His horse was as clever a stockman as he was, and enjoyed the game to the full as much as he did himself. He would wait the most frenzied charge as still as if carved in stone, till the last possible moment, then the great haunches would sink, and with a bound and a rush he would avoid the sweeping horns and whirl round and lay Steve cleverly alongside at just the right distance for the long whip to get in its work. The lightest touch on the rein would bring him round in his own length as if spun on a pivot; the slightest pressure of the knees would send him hurling forward from an easy canter into his hardest gallop.
“Hi! hi!” yelled Whip, as he came thundering past on the heels of a dozen wild-eyed cattle. “This is something like, Steve. This is man’s work, hey?” as Steve raced alongside him. The cattle fled bawling and threw themselves with a crash into the main mob, and the horses behind them propped and wheeled expertly. “Why don’t you learn to ride, you sailor?” shouted Steve, laughing, as Whip lifted a couple of inches in the saddle.
“Hold them there—hold them,” shouted Scottie from the rear, and Steve and Whip fled clattering round to the head of the mob and beat them back as they began to break out of it.
“Look at Darby,” said Whip, delightedly pointing along the hillside. “That cow’s goin’ to prod a hole in ’im for luck.” Darby was bringing down a little cluster of cattle he had collected on one of the spurs, and one brute had turned on him and was making a series of fierce charges. Darby was riding his “Blunderbuss,” a big raking brute of a roan, with a head like a claw-hammer and a mouth as hard as beaten brass, and on the sloping hillside it had hard work to keep clear of the viciously lunging horns. Darby was wrenching at his horse’s head and chopping at the bullock with his whip, lifting the hair at every chop, till at last, as the horse dodged one of its rushes and it swung past, Darby “tailed” it and sent it rolling headlong.