don’t let Art out of the door. I’ve got to navigate the cutting in two acts.”
Murray disappeared. Randal wrapped the reins twice round his wrists, and took hold with fingers taut as Harveyised steel. With his nerve in his hands and eyes he wrenched the team sharp to the left, and braced himself between upright and foot guard as the coach took the curve on one wheel. Great cliffs shot up overhead. Beneath the mare’s feet spumed shingle rattled down to far hurry of water. The clay bottom was greasy with recent rains, and the boat-ribbed demon lost footing, floundering ten yards with his weight on the man on the box. He recovered at a vein of scoria, with his nose in the manuka edging the cutting, and Randal felt his sinews crack as he bore with both arms to the leftward still.
Curve and curve and curve; with ever a nine-foot track, and the grade of one in five; and ever the unchecked gallop, and the sway of the clumsy coach. The wash of the water talked louder, swept up, and ran low through the wheels. Across the half-dried river bed, foul with broken trees and sand spits and sharp rocks that struck back fire to fire, Randal followed the ford as he might. Each day he took it at a paced trot. He had not passed it before on a hurricane. The cutting beyond was rotten and the underway patched. Randal knew each of the white sign posts of warning
