Men of Men - Smith Wilbur - Страница 63

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Louise turned her head towards the figure on the front seat of the high-wheeled phaeton which was parked beyond the course markers. Her face was pale, the freckles standing out on her cheeks; and her head was bared so that the thick dark braid of hair thumped against her shoulder.

Mungo Sint John smiled back at her over the heads of the crowd, and shrugged slightly, so that Louise was forced to turn back to Pickering.

"Very well, then," she agreed. "But the stake. We have not agreed the stake."

"Major Ballantyne," Pickering called to where Zouga stood at Tom's head. "You have laid out the course. Now will you be good enough to name the stake."

Then a strange thing happened. For the first time since Zouga had met her, Louise Sint John was uncertain of herself. Nobody else seemed to notice it, perhaps it was merely that Zouga had become highly receptive to every shade of her voice and expression. But he was certain that he saw something dark move in the blue depths of her eyes, like the shadow of a shark beneath the surface of the sea, and she took a pinch of her soft lower lip between her white teeth and again she glanced almost furtively at Mungo Sint John.

It was not Zouga's imagination. Mungo Sint John did not return Louise's glance with his usual amused indulgence.

He was looking at Zouga and under his calm was a small undercurrent of unease, like an eddy at highwater when the tide turns.

Zouga raised his voice so that it would carry to Sint John.

"Firstly, the loser will publish at his or her own expense upon the front page of the Advertiser in terms dictated by the winner, an acknowledgement of defeat."

"A composition I shall enjoy." Louise had swiftly recovered her poise. "And what else, Major?""A payment by the loser to a charity of the winner's choice of," Zouga paused, and both man and woman watched his face with outward calm, "of the sum of one shilling!"

"Done!"

There was a slightly jarring note in Louise's laugh, relief perhaps, and though Mungo Sint John's expression did not alter, the tension went out of his shoulders.

"missis Sint John. You are under starter's orders," Pickering called through his speaking trumpet. "Be so good as to bring your mount under control."

"He is under perfect control, sir," she called back, and Shooting Star put his head down and lashed out with both back hooves towards the crowd.

"If he is under control, Missus, then so is my motherin-law," called a wag, and there was a hoot of laughter.

"On the count of three then," Pickering intoned, his voice hollow and solemn through the trumpet. "One."

Shooting Star backed up against the crowd, and they scattered as he bucked.

"Two."

He went into a tortured high-stepping circle, so tight that his nose almost touched the toe of Louise's boot in the fancy silver stirrup.

"And three." Louise lifted her left hand. Shooting Star came smoothly out of the circle, for the first time facing the start line, beginning to pace towards it majestically, and the pistol shot was a brief blurt of sound which sent the stallion sweeping away with an irresistible rush that made the slight figure on his wide back seem vulnerable and childlike.

There was no horse on the diamond fields that could match that first blazing burst of speed, the gap between the two horses opened, but not so dramatically as the watchers had expected. Tom's awkward gallop took him over the ground at surprising speed, and he was not following directly in Shooting Star's tracks.

"She's going wide, Thomas," Zouga told him with satisfaction, and Tom cocked his ears back to listen. "They aren't going to chance the river. Well, we didn't really think they would, did we?"

Directly ahead of Zouga the river started a lazy series of loops, symmetrical hairpin turns, winding back upon itself like a dying python.

Zouga had placed the red flag so that the direct line would cross the river-bed twice, and like most southern African rivers the banks were sheer, dropping ten feet to the dry sand and isolated rocky pools strung along the course. Each crossing was a trap in which a horse could break a leg and a rider his neck.

The alternative to the crossings was to ride wide, taking a circuit out beyond the meandering river course; but that almost doubled the distance to run to the first flag.

Already Shooting Star was a distant flying shape far out on the right, showing at intervals through gaps in the thorn scrub, marked by a little pale feather of dust flung up by his hooves.

"Here we are," said Zouga, and under Tom's ugly Roman nose the ground opened abruptly.

Zouga gave him a slack rein, and Tom hardly checked on the brink of the steep day bank. He sat down, and skidded over the edge on his fat round haunches, his forelegs sticking out stiffly ahead of him, and they toboganed down into the river bed and hit the sand in a scrambling tangle; and then Tom was up and lunging for the far bank, going half up before the dried clay crumbled under his hooves and they slid back again, Tom stifflegged and trembling with exertion.

Zouga circled him once in the clinging white sand and then put him to the bank again, and he went up in a determined series of buck-jumps, shifting his weight before the clay could break under his hooves, and they flew out over the top and were running again, the next bend of the river a quarter of a mile ahead.

At the next crossings Tom had the knack of it and they went down the bank and out the other side without a check. Under Tom's hooves the grass exploded into a whirl of noisy wings, and, with a wild harsh cry that would have panicked another horse, a big black-bellied bustard shot up into the air. Tom rolled a disdainful eye at the bird, steadied and gathered himself on the river bank of the last crossing and went down into it in a slide of dust and rolling pebbles.

As they came up the far bank the red flag was two hundred paces dead ahead.

Zouga swivelled in the saddle and looked out on his right hand.

"Good for you, Tom," he called. "You'"We made a mile on them."

Far out across the plain, the golden horse was just swinging wide of the last bend of the river, and Louise was bent low on his neck, pushing him at reckless speed over the rough going.

"If she rides like that for a shilling, "Zouga broke off, and himself leaned into the rhythm of Tom's gallop. A mile was such a slim margin, and the stakes he was riding for were enormous. His fortune, his dream, nay his very existence, was at stake.

"Go, Thomas, go!"Zouga whispered grimly into the long furry ears, and Tom stabbed at the earth with his awkward hump-backed gait.

Zouga did not look back again; he knew the stallion was bearing down on them, fast, too fast, but Zouga dismissed them from his attention and slid the carbine from the leather boot at his knee and opened the breech, checking the load.

The targets were white china soup plates, the range two hundred yards, extreme range after a gallop like this.

The stewards were waving their hats to guide him up to the firing line.

"This way, Major."

Zouga dropped the reins as he reached the low barrier of thorn branches that marked the firing line, and Tom came up short. He swung up the carbine, and fired as the butt slapped into his shoulder. One of the far-off specks of white burst and vanished. He cranked another round into the chamber, and glanced over his shoulder.

The stallion was still half a mile away, but coming on with a war drum of hooves.

Zouga fired again, but Tom was blowing between his knees, heaving with the effort of the wild gallop.

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