‘You’re getting her!’ Simon Cheyneys slapped his knee. ‘Hing on! Hing on, lads, or she’ll master ye! Ah!’
Sailor’s left hind hoof had slipped on a heather-tuft. One of the men whipped off his sack apron and spread it down. They saw Sailor feel for it, and recover. Still the log hung, and the team grunted in despair.
‘Hai!’ shouted Cattiwow, and brought his dreadful whip twice across Sailor’s loins with the crack of a shot-gun. The horse almost screamed as he pulled that extra last ounce which he did not know was in him. The thin end of the log left the dirt and rasped on dry gravel. The butt ground round like a buffalo in his wallow. Quick as an axe-cut, Lewknor snapped on his five horses, and sliding, trampling, jingling, and snorting, they had the whole thing out on the heather.
‘Dat’s the very first time I’ve knowed you lay into Sailor—to hurt him,’ said Lewknor.
‘It is,’ said Cattiwow, and passed his hand over the two wheals. ‘But I’d ha’ laid my own brother open at that pinch. Now we’ll twitch her down the hill a piece—she lies just about right—and get her home by the low road. My team’ll do it, Bunny; you bring the tug along. Mind out!’
He spoke to the horses, who tightened the chains. The great log half rolled over, and slowly drew itself out of sight downhill, followed by the wood gang and the timber-tug. In half a minute there was nothing to see but the deserted hollow of the torn-up dirt, the birch undergrowth still shaking, and the water draining back into the hoof-prints.
‘Ye heard him?’ Simon Cheyneys asked. ‘He cherished his horse, but he’d ha’ laid him open in that pinch.’
‘Not for his own advantage,’ said Puck quickly. ‘’Twas only to shift the log.’
‘I reckon every man born of woman has his log to shift in the world—if so be you’re hintin’ at any o’ Frankie’s doings. He never hit beyond reason or without reason,’ said Simon.
‘I never said a word against Frankie,’ Puck retorted, with a wink at the children. ‘An’ if I did, do it lie in your mouth to contest my say-so, seeing how you——’