Lucy stopped dead, practically on her haunches, but her impetus carried her over, and she was slithering down into a loose gravelly hole. Jack jumped off, to find himself face to face with the biggest boomer kangaroo he had ever imagined. It was the Old Man, sitting there at the bottom of the gravel-hole, in the hollow of a barren she-oak, his absurd paws drooping dejectedly before him and his silly dribbling under-jaw working miserably.
"He's trying to get the wind up for another fly," thought Jack, standing there as dazed as the 'roo itself, and feeling himself very much in the same condition. Then he wondered where the doe and Joey were, and where all the other hunters. He hoped they wouldn't come. Lucy stood by, as calm as a cucumber.
Jack took a step nearer the Old Man 'roo, and instantly brought up his fists as the animal doubled its queer front paws and hit out wildly at him. He wanted to hit back.
"Mind the claws!" called somebody, with a quiet chuckle, from above.
Jack looked round, and there was Lennie and the heavy horse, the horse head-down, tail up, feet spread, like a salamander lizard on a wall, slithering down the grade into the hole, Lennie erect in the stirrups. Jack gave a loud laugh.
And the Old Man, either possessed of a sense of humour or terrified to death, seized the nearest thing at hand—which happened to be Jack; grabbed him, gripped him, hugged him in desperate fury, and tried to get up his huge, flail-like hind leg, to rip up the enemy with the toe claw. One stroke of that claw, and Jack was done.
In terror, anger, surprise, Jack jumped at the kangaroo's throat, as far as the animal's grip would let him. The 'roo, trying all the time to use his hind legs, upset, so that the two went rolling on the gravel together. Jack was in horrid proximity to the weird grey fur, clutched by the weird-smelling, violent animal, in a sort of living earthquake, as the kangaroo writhed and bounced to use his great, oar-like hind legs, and Jack clung close and hit at the creature's body, hit, hit, hit. It was like hitting living wire bands. Somebody was roaring, or else it was his own consciousness shouting: "Don't let the hind claw get to work."—How horrible a wild thing was, when you were mixed up with it! The terrible nausea of its powerful, furry, violent-blooded contact. Its unnatural, almost obscene power! Its different consciousness! Its overpowering smell!
The others were coming back up the stream-bed, jumping the rocks, towards this place where Jack had fallen and Lennie had come down after him. Easu was calling off the dogs, ferociously. Tom rushed in and got the 'roo by the head.
Lennie was lying on the gravel laughing so hard he couldn't stand on his legs.