V
The sun really was low in the heavens. The breeze came at last from the sea and freshened the air and lifted the sweet crushed scent of the trampled dry grass. It was time for the last events of the sports. Everybody was eager, revived by the approach of evening, and Jack felt the drunkenness of new delight upon him. He was still vague, however, and unwilling even to think of Monica, much less seek her out.
The black-boys’ event, with unbroken buckjumpers, was finishing down by the river. Joe Low, with a serious face but sparkling eyes, went riding by on a brumby colt he had caught and broken himself. Jack sat alone under a tree, waiting for the flat race, in which he was entered, and feeling sure of himself.
Easu came dancing up on the raw chestnut that had been sent up from the coast along with the police horse. He wore spurs, and had a long parrot-feather in his hat.
“Here you young Pommy Grant,” he said to Jack. “Ketch hold of me bit while I fix me girths a bit tighter, and then you c’n hold your breath while I show them Cornseeds what.”
He had a peculiarly insolent manner towards Jack. The latter nevertheless held the frothy chestnut while Easu swung out of the saddle and hitched up the girth. As he bent there beside the horse, Jack noticed his broad shoulders and narrow waist and small hard, tense hips. Yes, he was a man. But ugh! what an objectionable one! Especially the slight hateful smile of derision on the red face and in the light-blue, small-pupilled eyes.
But he dipped into the saddle again, and once more it was impossible not to admire his seat, his close, fine, clean, small seat in the saddle. There was no spread about him there. And the power of the long, muscular thighs. Then once more he dismounted, leaving Jack to hold the bridle of the chestnut whilst he himself strolled away.
The other farmers were waiting on their horses, so serious and quiet: in their patience and unobtrusiveness, so gentlemanly, Jack thought. So unlike the assertive, jeering Easu.
Lennie came up and whipped the pin out of Jack’s favour. It was a rosette of yellow ribbon, shiny as a buttercup, that Monica had made him.
“Here, what’re you doing!” he cried.
“Aw, shut it. Keep still!” said Lennie.
And slipping round, he pushed the pin, point downward, into the back saddle-pad of the chestnut Jack was holding. That wasn’t fair. But Jack let be.
The judge called his warning, the Cornseeds lined up, along with Joe Low and a young yellow-faced dairyman and a slender skin-hunter, and a woolly old stockman. Easu came and took his chafing horse, but did not mount.
“One!” Easu swung up, standing in his stirrups, scarce touching the saddle-seat.
“Two! Three!” and the sharp crack of a pistol.
Away went the scraggy brumby and Joe, and like a torrent, the dairyman and the skin-hunter and the stockman. But the chestnut had never heard a pistol shot before, and was jumping round wildly.
“Blood and pace, mark you;” said the judge, waving towards the chestnut. “Them cockeys does their best on what they got, but watch that chestnut under Red Ellis. It’s a pleasure to see good horse-flesh like them Ellises brings up to these parts.”
Easu, seeing the field running well and far ahead, wheeled his mount on to the track at that minute, and sat down.
The chestnut sat up, stopped, bucked, threw Easu, and then galloped madly away. It was all so sudden and somehow unnatural, that everybody was stunned. Easu rose and stared, with hell in his face, after the running chestnut. People began to laugh aloud.
“Oh, Gawd my fathers!” murmured Tom in Jack’s ear. “Think of Easu getting a toss! Easu letting any horse get the soft side of him! Oh, my Gawd, if I’m not sorry for Easu when that crowd o’ Reds sets on to him with their tongues to-morrow.”
“I’m jolly glad,” said Jack complacently.
“So am I,” said Lennie. “An’ I did it, an’ I wish it had killed him. I put a pin under the saddle-crease, Tom. Don’t look at me, y’needn’t. I’ve had one up again ’im for a long time, for Jack’s sake. D’y’ know what he did? He put Jack on that Stampede stallion, when Jack hadn’t been on our place a fortnight. So he did. An’ if Jack had been killed, who’d ha’ called him a murderer? Zah, one of the blacks, told me. And nobody durst tell you, cos they durstn’t.”
“On Stampede!” exclaimed Tom, going yellow, and hell coming into his brown eyes. “An’ a new chum my father trusted to him to show him round.”
“Oh well,” said Jack.
“The sod!” said Tom: and that was final.
Then after a moment:
“If the Reds is going over the jumps, you go and get Lucy, Len.”
“I likes your sperrit, Tom. I was goin’ to anyway, case they get that dark ’oss.” Lennie threw off his coat, hat, and tie, then sat on the trodden brown grass to take off his boots and stockings. Thus stripped, he stood up and hitched his braces looser, remarking:
“Jack Grant said he’d bash Easu’s head for ’im if he said anything to me after I beat ’im over the jumps, so I was goin’ to risk it anyway.”
Jack had said no such thing, but was prepared to take the hint.
The chestnut had been caught and tied up. Down the field they could see Easu persuading Sept to ride a smart piebald filly that had been brought in. Sept was the thinnest of the Reds. The jumping events continued away on the left, the sun was almost setting.
“Hurry up there for the final!” called the judge.
Sept came up on the delicate piebald filly which they had brought over from their own place. She was dark chestnut, and with flames of pure white, she seemed dazzling.
“That’s the dark ’oss I mentioned!” said Len. “Gosh, but me heart is beatin’! It’ll be a real match between me and him, for that there filly can jump like a ’roo, I’ve watched ’er.”
Joe Low rode up to the jumping yard, and lifted his brumby over. The filly danced down and followed. Lennie was in the saddle like a cat and Lucy went over the rail without effort.
When the rail was at five feet two, Joe Low’s brumby was done. Lucy clipped the rail and the filly cleared it. Sept brought his creature round to the judge, with raised eyebrows.
“No y’ don’t,” yelled Lennie, riding down the track hell for leather, and Lucy went over like a swallow. Sept laughed, and came down to the rail that was raised an inch. The filly sailed it, but hit the bar. Lucy baulked. Len swung her round and came again. A perfect over.
Next! The filly, snorting and frothing, tore down, jibbed, and was sworn at loudly by Easu standing near. Sept whipped and spurred her over.
But at that rail, raised to five feet nine, she would not be persuaded, though Lucy cleared it with a curious casual ease. The filly would not take it.
“Say, Mister!” called Lennie when he knew he was winner. “Raise that barrier five inches and see us bound it.”
He made his detour, brought Lucy along on twinkling feet, and cleared it prettily.
The roar of delight from the crowd sent Easu mad. Jack kept an eye on him, in case he meant mischief. But Easu only went away to where the niggers were still trying out the buck jumpers. Taking hold of a huge rogue of a mare, he sprang on her back and came bucking all along the track, apparently to give a specimen of horsemanship. The crowd watched the queer massive pulsing up and down of the man and the powerful bucking horse, all in a whirl of long hair, like some queer fountain of life. And there was Monica watching Easu’s cruel, changeless face, that seemed to have something fixed and eternal in it, amid all that heaving.
Jack felt he had a volcano inside him. He knew that Stampede had been caught again, and was being led about down there, securely roped, as part of the show. Down there among the outlaws.
Away ran Jack. Anything rather than be beaten by Easu. But as he ran, he kept inside him that queer little flame of white-hot calm which was his invincibility.
He patted Stampede’s arching neck, and told Sam to saddle him. Sam showed the whites of his eyes, but obeyed, and Stampede took it. Jack stood by, intense in his own cool calmness. He didn’t care what happened to him. If he was to be killed he would be killed. But at the same time, he was not reckless. He watched the horse with mystical closeness, and glanced over the saddle and bridle to see if they were all right.
Then, swift and light, he mounted and knew the joy of being a horseman, the thrill of being a real horseman. He had the gift, and he knew it. If not the gift of sheer power, like Easu, who seemed to overpower his horse as he rode it; Jack had the gift of adjustment. He adjusted himself to his horse. Intuitively, he yielded to Stampede, up to a certain point. Beyond that certain flexible point, there would be no yielding, none, and never.
Jack came bucking along in Easu’s wake, on a much wilder horse. But though Stampede was wild and wicked, he never exerted his last efforts. He bucked like the devil. But he never let himself altogether go. And Jack seemed to be listening with an inward ear to the animal, listening to its passion. After all it was a live creature, to be mastered, but not to be overborne. Intuitively, the boy gave way to it as much as possible. But he never for one moment doubted his own mastery over it. In his mastery there must be a living tolerance. This his instinct told him. And the stallion, bucking and sitting up, seemed somehow to accept it.
For after all, if the horse had gone really wicked, absolutely wicked, it would have been too much for Master Jack. What he depended on was the bit of response the animal was capable of. And this he knew.
He found he could sit the stallion with much greater ease than before. And that strange, powerful life beneath him and between his thighs, heaving and breaking like some enormous alive wave, exhilarated him with great exultance, the exultance in the power of life.
Monica’s eyes turned from the red, fixed, overbearing face of Easu, to the queer, abstract, radiant male face of Jack, and a great pang went through her heart, and a cloud came over her brow. The boy balanced on the trembling, spurting stallion, looking down at it with dark-blue, wide, dark-looking eyes, and thinking of nothing, yet feeling so much; his face looking soft and warm with a certain masterfulness that was more animal than human, like a centaur, as if he were one blood with the horse, and had the centaur’s superlative horse-sense, its non-human power, and wisdom of hot blood-knowledge. She watched the boy, and her brow darkened and her face was fretted as if she were denied something. She wanted to look again at Easu, with his fixed hard will that excited her. But she couldn’t. The queer soft power of the boy was too much for her, she could not save herself.
So they rode, the two men, and all the people watched them, as the sun went down in the wild empty sea westward from hot Australia.