Here Jack slid quietly to the ground and patted the colt’s neck, who snorted, but when soothed was apparently quiet. Barrington gained courage, and taking out his watch, gave it to Ernest to hold.
‘Ten minutes,’ he said; ‘and now I’ll bet you all a couple of pounds each, that if I come off, not one of the lot of ye can ride him up to the stockyard and back.’
The bet was taken all round. Mr. Barrington with a confident air advanced, and getting Windsor to hold the colt closely and firmly, mounted easily and rode off. The young horse apparently took no notice of the change of riders for some time, but walked steadily off along a bank which led to the sheep-drafting yard. Barrington was charmed with himself, and with his mount, whom he immediately decided in his own mind to be an animal of fine disposition, in danger of being spoiled, as was usual in the colony, by rough breaking. As he turned back, after about five minutes’ ride, he concluded to favour the company with a trot. He therefore touched the colt with his heel and slacked the rein.
Now, whether, as was very possible, though a fair and very bold horseman, he did not sit with the glove-like adherence to the pigskin’s surface which characterised Mr. Windsor’s every movement, we have no means of knowing; of matters of fact, however, as eye-witnesses, we can judge. The chestnut glanced nervously back with his Albino-tinged eyes, made a rapid swerve, then a diving headlong plunge, instantaneously arrested. This threw forward the incautious Barrington, while with sudden frenzy the now fully-aroused animal bounded galvanically upward with his back arched, and dropped with his mouth wrenched resistlessly from the rider’s hold and almost touching the ground.
The suddenness of the act, joined with the convulsive force of the propelling power, first tended to place Mr. Barrington in a somewhat leaning position. From this he was prevented from recovering his place in the saddle by the lightning-like rapidity of the recurring headlong plunges. Strong, fearless, and elastic with the glorious activity of early manhood, he made a desperate struggle to retain his seat; but the deerlike, sidelong bounds, instantaneously reversed, gave him no chance. Failing to follow a terrific side leap, his equilibrium was disturbed, the corresponding swerve sundered him and the saddle still farther, while a concluding upward bound on all fours, ‘propping,’ so as to progress backward rather than otherwise, shot him forward as from a catapult, head first and clean delivered.
‘Ugh! ugh! shall I ever—ugh, ugh—get my wind again? Ugh—you savage, unnatural son of a—ugh—gun—what right have you to be called a horse at all? Sure no one but a blackfellow, or Mexican, or a native, Banks, me boy, could expect to sit on such a baste of prey. Here’s an order for five pounds, Charley, ye villain; they’re good, as yet, and now go ride him yourself, and let me enjoy myself looking on.’
Mr. Windsor, on another horse, was by this time in pursuit of the excited animal, which kept snorting, kicking, and otherwise protesting against any other interference with his natural rights.
‘He can buck a bit,’ said Charley Banks, coolly girding himself for the fray by taking off his coat and tightening a leathern strap which he wore round the waist, ‘but if you hadn’t come forward, Paddy, the first time he propped, he mightn’t have gone to market at all. Here goes.’
The chestnut was soon secured by the agile and deft Windsor, and held by that horse-tamer, ready for Charley Banks to bestride. Having divested himself of his coat, he advanced with perfectly unembarrassed mien towards the alarming chestnut. Staring with homicidal glare out of his white-rimmed eyes, the successful combatant was standing perfectly still, but in a constrained and unnatural position.
Before putting his foot in the stirrup, Mr. Banks examined with long-practised eye the gear and accoutrements.