Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/119

Rh and paralyzed with fear. For an instant the air seemed to support her, inert, as if she were floating, aware of the horse below her, the flies above her, the footlights, and the crowded house. Then she felt herself falling, and with a panic-stricken convulsion of every despairing muscle she threw herself clear of the horse and came down on her feet in the ring.

A pain wrenched in her back. Her father caught her as she staggered. She saw that he was white with a spasm of fear that had brought the perspiration to his forehead. "Oh, you need n't be afraid," she said bitterly. "I ain't 'spoiled.'"

His face darkened with a different emotion. "You better look sharp, me girl," he threatened. "You 'll be fined for this, mind you."

"That 's all you 'd care about, if I broke me back."

"'Ere!" he signed to Burls to lead up the horse. "Get up there" he said to her, "an' do yer turn."

"I won't!" she said.

"Get up there!"

"I won't. I'm 'urt. I won't." She turned to Sutley. "'En!" she called in a fierce undertone.

Sutley had been trying to cover the break in the act by making a frantic dumb show of a man whose hook has been taken by a maskinonge; but at her cry his line broke and he ran to her to explain in pantomime that a fish two feet long (he measured it off in the air with trembling hands) had almost dragged him into the water. At the same time he asked, like a ventriloquist, without moving his lips: "What 's the matter?"