While yet he was untying the first of the ropes from the animal’s bleeding nostrils, Clare’s fingers all at once refused further obedience, his eyes grew dim, and he fell senseless at the bull’s feet.
“Don’t tell Nimrod!” he murmured as he fell.
“Oh, that explains it!” cried the man with the pitchfork to his mate. “He knows the cursed brute!” For Clare had hitherto spoken his name to the bull as if it were a secret between them.
Neither had the sense to perceive that the explanation lay in the bull’s knowing Clare, not in Clare’s knowing the bull. They made haste to lay hold of the ropes. Nimrod stood motionless, looking down on his friend, now and then snuffing at the pale face, which the thorough-bred mongrel, Abdiel, kept licking continuously. Noses of bull and dog met without offence on the loved human countenance. But had the men let the bull feel the ropes, that moment he would have been raging like a demon.
The men of the caravan, admiring both Clare’s influence over the animal and his management of him, grateful also for what he had done for them, hastened to his help. When they had got him to take a little brandy, he sat up with a wan smile, but presently fell sideways on his elbow, and so to the ground again.
“It’s nothing,” he murmured; “it’s only I’m rather hungry.”
“Poor boy!” said a woman, who had followed her brandy from the house-caravan, afraid it might disappear in occult directions, “when did you have your last feed?”
She stood looking down on the white face, almost between the fore-feet of the bull.
“I had a piece of bread yesterday afternoon, ma’am,” faltered Clare, trying to look up at her.
“Bless my soul!” she cried, “who’s been a murderin’ of you, child?”