bound water at bottom. The blue glint that all men hated shot into his eyes as he rounded his own haul with haste. They were a mixed haul: two-year-olds, poddies and pikers; a half-dozen moth-eaten mothers, and a scrub bull of ten years which had never been branded. Lou had played with him all down the hill, putting a blind deviltry into him with the lash, and the sweat and foam mixed with the blood on his quarters. Skilfully, and unseen, Lou switched the drive on to Jimmie’s spur, and drew in to watch developments. And in all the hush of sky washing round the bare scrubby spur, and the jutting breast of the hill, there was only the dry clack of hoofs, and the great bell-note of the red piker as he shouldered through the young bulls and the cows.
With dust to guard and cover them the frightened mob broke down the tussock for the spur-tip. Above Lou four men came into sight on the hill-top. Lou laughed. The game was not then for him only. A choice lay with Jimmie. Had it been another man there would have been no choice; but Lou, sitting easy in the saddle, knew the fall of the die before it was thrown.
The roar and crackle of broken scrub blew out on the wind. A dead rimu jarred when the crush struck it. The toss of glinting horns and white spume made foam above the billowing backs. Stray cabbage-trees and low
