Blunderbuss was sprawled over the log on his belly, swaying and kicking and scraping frantically, till he tilted over and slid on to his forefeet, and hunched his hindquarters over.
“See-saw yerself,” said Darby, scornfully, as Jack took the log with a leap. “You’d find it better’n comin’ your way,” he added, as Jack’s horse missed its footing and went rolling.
Jack dragged him up again, but cursed luridly as he saw the hanging foreleg and watched the dip-and-heave limp as he made him walk.
“Sprained ’is shoulder,” shouted Jack. “Go on—I’m out of it.”
So they left him cursing there, and ten minutes later Whip Thompson fell out at the Trickle—and a wild joke the name of the Trickle was that night, as it foamed down fifty yards wide, and boiled about the horses’ knees. Whip’s horse stumbled and went to his knees in it, and staggered up and went down again, and up again and out the other side, with Whip wading beside him.
“Broke both ’is knees,” said Whip to the next man to ride through. “I’ll get back an’ join Jack.”
At “The Ditch” Darby’s horse refused to take the three-foot drop to the water below the undercut bank, and the others had to leave him there, standing in the water up to his waist, his foot braced against the bank, and his hands twisted in the wet leather of the reins, as he strained and hauled to pull his Blunderbuss in on top of him.
All the others kept the ranks till they came to the Axe-Cut and the Creek. The path down the Axe-Cut was running water like a young river, and the rock track under it was slippery as wet slates. They went down it in kicking, struggling heaps, the men dismounted, and the horses plunging and shooting down, partly on their four feet, partly on their gathered haunches, and partly anyhow.
As they picked themselves up at the foot of the Cut, they halted a few minutes to breathe the blowing horses and readjust the displaced saddle gear.
“I’m thinkin’ it wull be chancy wark at the Creek,” shouted Scottie above the droning roar of the rain and the hiss of the water cascading down the Cut. “Seein’ there’s as much water in the ither burns, the Creek’s like tae be runnin’ a banker.”