colt strained the rein still. Then, as buckets climb the dredge-ladder, they came one by one to the broken hill-track and paused. Randal dropped from the saddle, and slacked the mare’s girths. Murray’s face was alight as he followed.
“By Jingo, Lou,” he cried, “you’ve given me something to remember. And I’ve got my own horse! How the devil do you fellows do it!”
But Lou did not hear. He was watching Randal, and his eyes were shining. Randal’s neck was bloody where branches had torn it, and there was mud on his collar. His long hands fumbled stiffly with the buckles, and his pipe was dead between his teeth. But in the clear starlight his lean body moved untired, and his strong face showed hard and more resolute.
“You’re a man,” said Lou, underbreath. “But if it’s you and I for him, Randal, I’ll make you sit up.”
The men talked amid the clink of harness, and Moody swore as he tried to strike a match. But Murray stood aside with every nerve tingling, and a sudden marvelling at these sons of the hills who knew not exhaustion nor fear.
All God’s world is wise and terrible by night. But the hills, that through the centuries bare their breasts to the secrets that the stars tell them, receive an awful majesty which the
