“That’s a quick way out of the difficulty,” said Blount, with an air of relief. “I really didn’t know what was going to happen. But won’t they bolt when they get to the other side of this natural bridge over the bottomless pit?”
“When they get to the end of this ‘race,’ as you may call it, there’s a trap yard that we put up years back for wild horses—many a hundred’s been there before my time. Some of us mountain chaps keep it mended up. It comes in useful now and again.”
“I should think it did,” assented his companion, with decision. “But how will they get in? Will your clever horse take down the slip-rails, and put them up again?”
“Not quite that!” said the bushman smiling—“but near enough; we’ll find ’em both there, I’ll go bail!”
“How far is it?” asked Blount, with a natural desire to get clear of this picturesque, but too exciting part of the country, and to exchange it for more commonplace scenery, with better foothold.
“Only a couple of mile—so we might as well step out, as I’ve filled my pipe. Won’t you have a draw for company?”
“Not just yet, I’ll wait till we’re mounted again.” For though the invariable, inexhaustible tobacco pipe is the steadfast friend of the Australian under all and every condition of life, Blount did not feel in the humour for it just after he had escaped, as he now began to believe, from a sudden and violent death.
“A well-trained horse! I should think he was,” he told himself; “and yet, before I left England, I was always being warned against the half-broken horses of Australia. What a hackney to be sure!—fast, easy, sure-footed, intelligent—and what sort of breaking in has he had? Mostly ridden by people whom no living horse can throw; but that is a disadvantage—as he instinctively recognises the rider he can throw. Well! every country has its own way of doing things; and though we Englishmen are unchangeably fixed in our own methods, we may have something to learn yet from our kinsmen in this new land.”
“I suppose there have been accidents on this peculiar track of yours?” he said, after they had walked in silence for a hundred yards or more.
“Accidents!” he replied, “I should jolly well think there have. You see, horses are like men and women, though people don’t hardly believe it. Some’s born one way, and some another; teaching don’t make much difference to ’em, nor beltin’ either. Some of ’em, like some men, are born cowards, and when they get into a narrer track with a big drop both sides of ’em, they’re that queer in the head—though it’s the heart that’s wrong with ’em—that they feel like pitching theirselves over, just to get shut of the tremblin’ on the brink feelin’. Your horse was in a blue funk; he’d have slipped or backed over in another minute or two. That was the matter with him. When he seen old Keewah skip along by himself, it put confidence like, into him.”