“Gaunt’s at his old game,” said one of the crowd.
“Ay, he takes it straight as it comes. Sakes, how he sticks to his business!”
It was not then that eagerness began to show itself among the onlookers. Much depended on the down-hill scamper, but more on that stubborn climb up the hill-face which, from below and in the sun-glare, showed steep as a house-wall.
Bownas of Shap was playing his old game, too. They could see him turning warily along the dingles, instead of facing the high bluffs. He counted on saving wind and gaining speed, as he had done in other struggles of the kind; but he had not run against Reuben Gaunt before.
The onlookers—and every face now was turned to the moor with fine expectancy—could see Gaunt keeping a straight line for the summit, though now and then he seemed to be pulling himself forward by sheer grip of the tough heather that hindered his feet no less than did the steepness of the moor.
They were lost for awhile, Bownas and Gaunt, in the shadow of the highest ridge. At the ridge-top, pencilled clear against the hard blue of the sky, stood the turning-post and the man who guarded it. Then, out of the shadowed space, Gaunt’s figure showed; he had gone straight as a gunshot, and, without turn or halt, had reached the flag.
Peggy could not rest quiet in the road below. She had climbed to the brink of the moor by now, and three or four of the crowd had followed her. It was Peggy’s day, and she wished it to be full. Gaunt might be this and that, she told herself, her eyes fixed on the moor above; but she would forgive him fickleness and all if she could dance on the green to-night, and know that he was the winner of the race.
“Gaunt climbs like a wildcat,” said a tough, old yeoman, standing at Peggy’s side.
“Climbs like a man,” answered Peggy, and kept her eyes on the hill-top.
Bownas had reached the flag by now, and had turned to follow Gaunt down the moor. From below, Peggy o’ Mathewson’s could hear the eager uproar of the crowd. None thought of the seven stragglers who followed; it was a race between the homelander and the “foreigner,” and Gaunt himself, though the blood was surging in his ears, could hear a stifled echo of the roar that meant good-will to him.