whanae-clumps sifted and parted them; and here the determination of a twelve-foot whip could block and swing a hundred—two hundred—with the coming army to help.
Mogger was roaring from the scarp above. Ike, standing in his stirrups, whistled frantic appeals. Then Ted Douglas pelted past head-long. Lou took some payment at sight of his face.
Nakedly in sight of his fellows, the coward in Jimmie fought with his training. He fell back from his own mob where it stopped, pawing earth uneasily. He pulled the reins this way and the other; beat his mare; wrenched her back. Once he swung out his whip, but it dropped unspeaking.
Lives out-back are run on the army lines, and a man who fears his enemy—be it bucking horse or charging cattle or a plough in stony ground—takes something of the grade of a deserter in battle. Ted Douglas knew it. He had seen men out-casts on the cattle-camp before this day. Jimmie knew it. But his tongue was dried leather in his mouth, and his hands turned clammy on the reins. Down the hog-backed spur he saw Douglas coming, and the chill air bore a shout with a prayer in it. The charging mob crashed into the loafers, bunched and turned them, and the red, roaring thunder swerved away to the right. Along the very lip of the gully Douglas was coming.
