Easu, seeing the field running well and far ahead, wheeled his mount on to the track at that minute, and sat down.
The chestnut sat up, stopped, bucked, threw Easu, and then galloped madly away. It was all so sudden and somehow unnatural, that everybody was stunned. Easu rose and stared, with hell in his face, after the running chestnut. People began to laugh aloud.
"Oh, Gawd my fathers!" murmured Tom in Jack's ear. "Think of Easu getting a toss! Easu letting any horse get the soft side of him! Oh, my Gawd, if I'm not sorry for Easu when that crowd o' Reds sets on to him with their tongues to-morrow."
"I'm jolly glad," said Jack complacently.
"So am I," said Lennie. "An' I did it, an' I wish it had killed him. I put a pin under the saddle-crease, Tom. Don't look at me, y'needn't. I've had one up again 'im for a long time, for Jack's sake. D'y' know what he did? He put Jack on that Stampede stallion, when Jack hadn't been on our place a fortnight. So he did. An' if Jack had been killed, who'd ha' called him a murderer? Zah, one of the blacks, told me. And nobody durst tell you, cos they durstn't."
"On Stampede!" exclaimed Tom, going yellow, and hell coming into his brown eyes. "An' a new chum my father trusted to him to show him round."
"Oh well," said Jack.
"The sod!" said Tom: and that was final.
Then after a moment:
"If the Reds is going over the jumps, you go and get Lucy, Len."