“Get at ’im, Darby,” yelled Whip, and as the brute struggled to its feet Darby “got at ’im,” and the stockwhip fell hissing and stinging till the brute scrambled up and, tail in air, bolted headlong down the slope. But the rest of the cluster had scattered, and Steve put spurs to horse and raced up and along the hillside, the loose stones sliding and trundling down the hill from his track like sparks from a rocket.
“Did ye see that poker?” shouted Darby, as they swept the herd together and headed them down the hill. “Did ye see ’im, Steve?” “No,” said Steve, innocently. “What was he doing?” “Doin’—the brute,” spluttered Darby, wrathfully. “’E nearly poked my ’orses’ ribs in, and ’e’s tore a hole in my trousies from yonder to yesterday. I’ll ’poke’ ’im,” and he spurred closer and snicked viciously at the discomfited “poker.”
“Take a couple o’ men an’ try along the Whale-back, Steve,” said Scottie later, and Steve called to Jack Ever and Whip Thompson and cantered off.
The Whale-back was a long hill shaped roughly, as its name described, covered with boulders and fallen logs, scored down its sides with dry water courses and, where the tail sank, thinly covered by scattered trees. It was rough and risky going, but the men took it end to end, riding as if it were level as a billiard table. When they came to where the head of the hill fell away in slopes and cliffs too steep for horse or bullock to keep a footing, they turned and began to beat back through the boulders and gullies, picking up a stray bullock here and a couple there, till they were driving thirty to forty of them back towards the slope of the “tail.” The mob went crashing down through the timber, and Jack and Whip drew rein and let them go.
But Steve yelled, and swung his whip, and lifted his horse over a fallen trunk, and went thundering in pursuit at a gallop. “What’s wrong wi’ Steve these days?” said Jack Ever. “You’d think ’e was tryin’ to break ’is blanky neck.” “Never was wot you’d call a cautious or a careful sort o’ rider, but blow me if ’e isn’t madder’n ever,” agreed Whip, dodging round a boulder and taking a deep gully in his stride.
“Look at that now,” ejaculated Whip, as the bullocks plunged into the timber, and Steve drove in hard on their heels.
The cattle were nimble on their feet and agile as deer, and they stormed crashing through the trees at full gallop. Steve rode with his head stooped to avoid the branches that swept over his head, and would have flung him headlong if one had caught him, and his horse leaped and twisted over the logs and between the rocks, in and out of steep-sided holes, and whirled inch-clear past standing trees, all at top speed.
Cattle and horseman burst out of the trees, and as Whip and Jack cleared the timber well behind them, they were careering full tilt down the slope.
“See that,” said Whip, and “Clever work, but useless risky,” commented Jack, as he watched.
The cattle had reached the dip at the foot of the Whale-back’s tail, and when he saw that they were going to scatter and try to break up the steeper slope beyond instead of turning down the hillside to the valley, Steve touched the horse with the spur, surged past them, and wheeled them downhill. The cattle and he poured down together in an avalanche of stones and earth, and the long snarling roar of their slide came back to the two men above, mingled with the steady cracks of the stockwhip.