The Big Flume dribbled suddenly on his head as he rode athwart the track nineteen feet below. He heard her roar above the growling thunder and the snap of the rain. Then he brought the pony up the gully side with hooked spurs.
“Three miles to Paddy’s Gully, yet,” he said, and flogged the pony across the tussock length of them.
Paddy’s Gully flume received direct from the race, and it was here that Ormond must strike if he would do more than Kiliat, now riding with his men from the penstock where blind terror chased them.
The shored-up channel was running full and angry by his knee when he passed out of the tussock to the flax swamp. The end of the world cut sheer off before him, and Ormond left the saddle and slung the rein to a broom root in two movements. He dropped down, hand over hand, with the chopper buttoned inside his shirt. The floor of Paddy’s Gully was riddled with fallen-in shafts, and Ormond went forward at a run, nosing among them by instinct. Every foot of the gully was trodden ground to him.
The roar of blood in his ears deadened the roar of thunder along the night. The snicker of lightning was against his cheek; and once, far behind, he heard the roan pony scream in fear. The moon swept out from the thick
