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Page 12
Meakim gave a low, comfortable laugh of content. "It makes me smile,"
he chuckled, "every time I think of him the day he came up them
stairs. He scared me half to death, he did, and then he says, just as
stiff as you please, 'If you'll leave me alone, Mr. Meakim, I'll not
trouble you.' And now it's 'Meakim this,' and 'Meakim that,' and 'have
a drink, Meakim,' just as thick as thieves. I have to laugh whenever I
think of it now. 'If you'll leave me alone, I'll not trouble you, Mr.
Meakim.'"
Carroll pursed his lips and looked up at the broad expanse of purple
heavens with the white stars shining through. "It's rather a pity,
too, in a way," he said, slowly. "He was all the Public Opinion we
had, and now that he's thrown up the part, why--"
The pig-sticking came to an end finally, and Holcombe distinguished
himself by taking his first fall, and under romantic circumstances. He
was in an open place, with Mrs. Carroll at the edge of the brush to
his right, and Miss Terrill guarding any approach from the left. They
were too far apart to speak to one another, and sat quite still and
alert to any noise as the beaters closed in around them. There was a
sharp rustle in the reeds, and the boar broke out of it some hundred
feet ahead of Holcombe. He went after it at a gallop, headed it off,
and ran it fairly on his spear point as it came toward him; but as he
drew his lance clear his horse came down, falling across him, and for
the instant knocking him breathless. It was all over in a moment. He
raised his head to see the boar turn and charge him; he saw where his
spear point had torn the lower lip from the long tusks, and that the
blood was pouring down its flank. He tried to draw out his legs, but
the pony lay fairly across him, kicking and struggling, and held him
in a vise. So he closed his eyes and covered his head with his arms,
and crouched in a heap waiting. There was the quick beat of a pony's
hoofs on the hard soil, and the rush of the boar within a foot of his
head, and when he looked up he saw Miss Terrill twisting her pony's
head around to charge the boar again, and heard her shout, "Let me
have him!" to Mrs. Carroll.
Mrs. Carroll came toward Holcombe with her spear pointed dangerously
high; she stopped at his side and drew in her rein sharply. "Why don't
you get up? Are you hurt?" she said. "Wait; lie still," she commanded,
"or he'll tramp on you. I'll get him off." She slipped from her saddle
and dragged Holcombe's pony to his feet. Holcombe stood up unsteadily,
pale through his tan from the pain of the fall and the moment of fear.
"That _was_ nasty," said Mrs. Carroll, with a quick breath. She
was quite as pale as he.
Holcombe wiped the dirt from his hair and the side of his face, and
looked past her to where Miss Terrill was surveying the dead boar from
her saddle, while her pony reared and shied, quivering with excitement
beneath her. Holcombe mounted stiffly and rode toward her. "I am very
much obliged to you," he said. "If you hadn't come--"
The girl laughed shortly, and shook her head without looking at him.
"Why, not at all," she interrupted, quickly. "I would have come just
as fast if you hadn't been there." She turned in her saddle and looked
at him frankly. "I was glad to see you go down," she said, "for it
gave me the first good chance I've had. Are you hurt?"
Holcombe drew himself up stiffly, regardless of the pain in his neck
and shoulder. "No, I'm all right, thank you," he answered. "At the
same time," he called after her as she moved away to meet the others,
"you _did_ save me from being torn up, whether you like it or
not."
Mrs. Carroll was looking after the girl with observant, comprehending
eyes. She turned to Holcombe with a smile. "There are a few things you
have still to learn, Mr. Holcombe," she said, bowing in her saddle
mockingly, and dropping the point of her spear to him as an adversary
does in salute. "And perhaps," she added, "it is just as well that
there are."
Holcombe trotted after her in some concern. "I wonder what she means?"
he said. "I wonder if I were rude?"
The pig-sticking ended with a long luncheon before the ride back to
town, at which everything that could be eaten or drunk was put on the
table, in order, as Meakim explained, that there would be less to
carry back. He met Holcombe that same evening after the cavalcade had
reached Tangier as the latter came down the stairs of the Albion.
Holcombe was in fresh raiment and cleanly shaven, and with the radiant
air of one who had had his first comfortable bath in a week.
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