It all came so abruptly that neither of them could afterward reconstruct the scene with any degree of accuracy. Probably in scrambling down the steep slope of the bank Bennett had loosened the earth or smaller stones that hitherto had been barely sufficient support to the mass of earth, gravel, rocks, and bushes that all at once, and with a sharp, crackling noise, slid downward toward the road from the overhanging bank. The slip was small, hardly more than three square yards of earth moving from its place, but it came with a smart, quick rush, throwing up a cloud of dust and scattering pebbles and hard clods of dirt far before its advance.
As Rox leaped Lloyd threw her weight too suddenly on the reins, the horse arched his neck, and the overhead check snapped like a harp-string. Again he reared from the object of his terror, shaking his head from side to side, trying to get a purchase on the bit. Then his lower jaw settled against his chest, and all at once he realised that no pair of human hands could hold him now. He did not rear again; his haunches suddenly lowered, and with the hoofs of his hind feet he began feeling the ground for his spring. But now Bennett was at his head, gripping at the bit, striving to thrust him back. Lloyd, half risen from her seat, each rein wrapped twice around her hands, her long, strong arms at their fullest reach, held back against the horse with all her might, her body swaying and jerking with his plunges. But the overhead check once broken Lloyd might as well have pulled against a locomotive. Bennett was a powerful man by nature, but his great strength had been not a little sapped by his recent experiences. Between the instant his hand caught at the bit and that in which Rox had made his first ineffectual attempt to spring forward he recognised the inequality of the contest. He could hold Rox back for a second or two, perhaps three, then the horse would get away from him. He shot a glance about him. Not twenty yards away was the canal and the perilously narrow bridge—the bridge without the guard-rail.
"Quick, Miss Searight!" he shouted. "Jump! We can't hold him. Quick, do as I tell you, jump!"
But even as he spoke Rox dragged him from his feet, his hoofs trampling the hollow road till it reverberated like the roll of drums. Bracing himself against every unevenness of the ground, his teeth set, his face scarlet, the veins in his neck swelling, suddenly blue-black, Bennett wrenched at the bit till the horse's mouth went bloody. But all to no purpose; faster and faster Rox was escaping from his control.
"Jump, I tell you!" he shouted again, looking over his shoulder; "another second and he's away."
Lloyd dropped the reins and turned to jump. But the lap-robe had slipped down to the bottom of the cart when she had risen, and was in a tangle about her feet. The cart was rocking like a ship in a storm. Twice she tried to free herself, holding to the dashboard with one hand. Then the cart suddenly lurched forward and she fell to her knees. Rox was off; it was all over.
Not quite. In one brief second of time—a hideous vision come and gone between two breaths—Lloyd saw the fearful thing done there in the road, almost within reach of her hand. She saw the man and horse at grapples, the yellow reach of road that lay between her and the canal, the canal itself, and the narrow bridge. Then she saw the short-handled geologist's hammer gripped in Bennett's fist heave high in the air. Down it came, swift, resistless, terrible—one blow. The cart tipped forward as Rox, his knees bowing from under him, slowly collapsed. Then he rolled upon the shaft that snapped under him, and the cart vibrated from end to end as a long, shuddering tremble ran through him with his last deep breath.
V.
When Lloyd at length managed to free herself and jump to the ground Bennett came quickly toward her and drew her away to the side of the road.