“I’ll be off,” said Steve, “at once, if anyone can loan me a horse.”
“Come up and have a bite an’ a sup o’ hot tay at the house, Steve,” said the trooper. “Sure, the missus’ll bate me black if I let ye go widout that.”
“I can’t, Dan,” said Steve, earnestly. “While I’m eating, she might be drowning that very minute. The food would choke me.”
“Ye can have my horse,” said a man. “Come wi’ me an’ bring yer saddle. Ye can leave ’im at the Creek, for the flood will bring ye down back to hereabouts, I suppose, an’ you’ll not be gettin’ back for im.”
Steve went with him at once, and ten minutes later was cantering hard out of the town.
The road was soft, but level and fairly good, and he kept the horse at a hard canter, and sometimes at a gallop, almost all the way, only pulling him down to a walk to breathe him at long intervals. He was in a fever of impatience, and kept peering out into the darkness towards the river. The growling mutter of the waters came up to him, and the hiss and beat of the rain, but no other sound, and he struck the spurs in again and scurried on.
A light was burning in the house at Battle Creek Station, and at the sound of his horse’s hoof-beats a door opened and a man stood framed in the light. Steve rode up to him and flung the reins over his horse’s head and leaped down.
“You have a boat somewhere here?” he said. “I want to borrow it, please. There is a man and a girl out on the Coolongolong flats and——”
“God help them,” said the man. “But take the boat an’ welcome. I’m Dick West, an’ I’ll just let the boss know, an’ come an’ get the oars an’ things. Put your saddle in the shed, and you’ll find a feed for the horse in the box there. Then come over here an’ I’ll be ready.”
Steve hurried off with the mud-splashed weary horse, and fed him, and was back in five minutes, and found Seaman Dick waiting for him with a suit of oilskins on, a coil of rope and pair of rough oars over his shoulder, and a puffing pipe in his mouth, with the bowl turned upside down.