The whalebone whistled through the air, and came slashing down upon the dapple-grey's neck, within an inch of the hairy fingers, which were nevertheless snatched away. Moya had counted on this and its result. The animal was off at its best pace; but the desperate hands grabbed Moya's habit as it passed, and in another instant she was on the ground. In yet another she had picked herself up, but she never even looked for the horse; she fixed her eye upon her loathly adversary as on a wild beast; and now he looked nothing else, with canine jaw and one vile lip protruding, and hell's own fire in his wicked eyes.
Luckily her grip of the riding-whip had tightened, not relaxed; but now she held it as a sword; and it helped her to cow a brute who had the real brute's dread of the lash. But also she was young and supple, and the man was old. The contrast had never been so sharp; for now they were both in their true colours; and every vileness of the one was met by its own antithesis in the other. It was will against will, personality against personality, in an open space among the mallee and the full glare of a climbing sun, mile upon mile from human help or habitation. And the battle was fought to a finish without a word.
Moya only heard a muttering as the wretch swung round upon his heel, and walked after the dapple-grey, which had come to a standstill within sight. But she was not done with the blackguard yet. She watched him remove the lady's saddle, then carefully detach the water-bag, and sling it about himself by means of the stirrup-leather. Then he mounted, bare-back; but Moya knew that he would not abandon her without his say; and she was waiting for him with the self-same eye that had beaten him off.
He reined up and cursed her long and filthily. Her ear was deaf to that; but little of it conveyed the slightest meaning; her unchanged face declared as much. So then he trimmed his tongue accordingly.
"Sorry to take the water-bag; but through you I've forgot mine and my swag too. Better try and find 'em; they're away back where I camped last night; you're welcome to the drop that's left, if there is one. You look a bit black about the gills as it is. Have a drop to show there's no ill-feeling before I go."
And he dangled the bag before her, meaning to whisk it back again. But Moya disappointed him. She was parched with thirst, though she only realised it now. She neither spoke nor moved a muscle.
"Then die of thirst, and be damned to you! Do you know where you are? Blind Man's Block—Blind Man's Block! Don't you forget it again, because I shan't be here to remind you; a horse was what I wanted, and was promised, so you're only keeping that poor devil's word for him. Give him my blessing if you ever see him again; but you never will. They say it's an easy place to die in, this here Blind Man's Block, but you'll see for yourself. A nice little corpse we'll make, won't we? But we'll die and rot the same, and the crows'll have our eyes for breakfast and our innards for dinner! And do you good, you little white devil, you!"
Moya remained standing in the same attitude, with the same steady eye and the same marble pallor, long after the monster disappeared, and the last beat of the dapple-grey's hoofs was lost among the normal wilds of the bush. Then all at once a great light leapt to her face. But it was not at anything that she had heard or seen; it was at something which had come to her very suddenly in the end. And for a long time after that, though lost and alone in Blind Man's Block, and only too likely to die the cruel death designed for her, Moya Bethune was a happier woman than she had been for many an hour.