“Where are those extra pulleys?” he demanded. “And I want the reins.”
He squeezed the thick rope through the sheave, took the side-strain with a rooted matai and two pulleys added, and began the game anew with the fall-rope shrieking above the tense hum of quivering chains. The stump rocked and groaned, moved an inch, settled back. Mogger beat out a place for his bar and stood on the end of it for leverage. He escaped a broken neck by methods best known to himself when he came up headlong from the pit to grasp Buck about the middle and bring him to earth. Randal was tired to his heart, and the argument that scattered in sputtering laughter did not interest him. He sat on the jack, staring down the grey length of the gully where a thousand little fires from the root-piles built through the weeks fluttered and winked wicked eyes. They were telling Randal that there were a thousand more fires to make before his work was done, and that, until that day, there would be no peace for him. Because it is required of every man that he bring his duties full tale to the Judgment Seat.
Then Art Scannell came break-neck down the gully, sitting loose and graceful as the black mare took the burning raffle with little sideway jumps and flirtings and great full-extended leaps. Beside the team Art wrenched her back on her haunches, and the very
