Page:Son of the wind.djvu/421

RV 403 It was no chance that threatened. It was certainty; it came always, inevitably, the last stage of the fight. Carron could feel the approach of it now, the loosing of the one great terror. Memories of former, lesser battles swam through his head; memories of being dashed against stockades of rails and stakes. The dread he had known then of the stout, resisting substance, the crash against it, the injury, the pain, was as nothing to his present dread of being flung against the canvas and feeling it yield like silk. At what moment would this wild birth of the wind stumble upon his freedom? He was courting it as a reckless man courts his death, unaware of how near he comes to it. He would have it now! This was the instant—this the charge that could not be stopped!

Carron felt himself carried, helpless and light, as a cork on the current. The white edge of the canvas raced for him. The forest behind it seemed to march upon him. He flung his weight back in the saddle, elbows came hard back, knees pressed and wrists pulled hard and steady sidewise. Black trees moved in procession along his sight, and swung away from it; and around came the rocky banks of the stream, and the breadth of the inclosure was before him. Beneath him the body of the horse quivered like a delicate machine suddenly stopped.