"Let her go, Olly," Ed. yelled.
The men threw off the bags they had been holding over the horses' heads. The leaders sprang out and swayed; the coach rocked to the shock; the steady old wheeler leapt forward. The colt under the whip, trying to throw himself down on the trace, leapt and kicked, but the leaders dashed forward; the coach lurched and was carried along with a rattle and clash of gear, Ed. Ventry, the reins wrapped round his hands, pulling on them, and yelling:
"I'll warm yer.... Yer lazy, wobblin' old adders—yer! I'll warm yer.... Yer wobble like a cross-cut saw.... Kim ovah! Kim ovah, there! I'll get alongside of yer! Kim ovah!"
Swaying and rocking like a ship in a stormy sea, the coach turned out of the town. Armitage thought its timbers would be strewn along the road at any moment; but the young horses, under Mr. Ventry's masterly grip, soon took the steady pace of the old roadsters; their freshness wore off, and they were going at a smart, even pace by the time the Three Mile was reached.
"Seemed to have something on his mind," Ed. Ventry said afterwards. "Ordinarily, he's keen to hear all the yarns you can tell him, but that day he was dead quiet."
"'Not much doin' on the Ridge just now, Mr. Armitage,' I says.
"'No, Ed,' he says.
"'Hardly worth y'r while comin' all the way from America to get all you got this trip?'
"'No,' he says. But, by God—if I'd known what he got——"
It was an all-night trip. Ed. and Mr. Armitage had left the Ridge at six o'clock and arrived in Budda township about an hour before the morning train left for Sydney. There was just time for Armitage to breakfast at the hotel before he went off in the hotel drag to the station. The train left at half-past six. But Ed. Ventry had taken off his hat and scratched his grizzled thatch when he saw a young, baldy-faced gelding in the paddock with the other coach horses that evening.