She
headed for the Station at first. Then she wheeled round and set off for the
river through beds of burnt down jungle-grass, bad even to ride a pig over. In
cold blood I should never have dreamed of going over such a country at night,
but it seemed quite right and natural with the lightning crackling overhead,
and a reek like the smell of the Pit in my nostrils. I rode and shouted, and
she bent forward and lashed her horse, and the aftermath of the dust-storm
came up and caught us both, and drove us downwind like pieces of paper.
I don't know how far we rode; but the drumming of the horse-hoofs and the roar
of the wind and the race of the faint blood-red moon through the yellow mist
seemed to have gone on for years and years, and I was literally drenched with
sweat from my helmet to my gaiters when the gray stumbled, recovered himself,
and pulled up dead lame. My brute was used up altogether. Edith Copleigh was
in a sad state, plastered with dust, her helmet off, and crying bitterly. "Why
can't you let me alone?" she said. "I only wanted to get away and go home. Oh,
PLEASE let me go!"
"You have got to come back with me, Miss Copleigh. Saumarez has something to
say to you."
It was a foolish way of putting it; but I hardly knew Miss Copleigh; and,
though I was playing Providence at the cost of my horse, I could not tell her
in as many words what Saumarez had told me.
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