in protest, as Dirk sawed her with the curb.
'Come round, swing them round.' Dennis's voice through the megaphone
boomed distortedly.
They turned in line and started walking up, twenty yards from the
start, two horses with the sunlight glowing on their polished skins.
Pale gold and dark red. The crowd sighed softly like wind in the
grass.
Ten paces and Sun Dancer was pushing forward, lengthening her stride,
crabbing a little.
'Hold your line! Keep together,' Dennis cautioned them, and Dirk
yanked her back roughly. The rims of his nostrils were flared and
white with tension.
Michael moved up beside him, holding his hands low. The big red colt
stepping high in the exaggerated action of an animal under restraint.
Quickening together over the last five paces, their riders hunching
lower in the saddles, they came to the posts.
'Go! ' bellowed Dennis, and
'Go! ' roared a hundred voices.
Still in line, matching each other's stride, they changed from a walk
into an easy, free, swinging canter. Both Dirk and Michael rising
slightly in their stirrups to hold them from headlong flight.
Half a mile ahead lay the swamp and beyond it five miles of mountain
and rough, rocky ground, of don ga and thombush.
They cantered down between the yelling lines and out of the funnel into
the open.
The crowd broke and scattered to various points of vantage and Sean ran
with them, un slinging his binocular-case, chuckling with excitement in
the general confusion of shouts and laughter.
Ruth was waiting for him beside the Rolls and he caught her around the
waist and lifted her on to the bonnet.
'Sean, you'll scratch the paintwork, ' she protested, as she clutched
at her hat and teetered dangerously on the high, round bonnet.
'The hell with the paintwork, ' he laughed as he climbed up beside her
and she clung to him for support. 'There they are!'
Far out across the field the two horses ran down towards the bright
green of the swamp. Sean lifted and focused his binoculars, and
suddenly they were so close he expected to hear the drumming of the
hooves. Grey Weather was pulling ahead, forcing powerfully with his
great boulders lunging into each stride and Sun Dancer trailed him with
her neck arched against the pressure of the bit. On her back Dirk sat
upright with his elbows pressed into his flanks as he held her.
'The little bugger is listening to advice,' Sean growled. 'I quite
expected him to be using the whip already.'
Across the distance that separated them Sean could feel as a tangible
thing Dirk's determination to win, he could see it in the way he held
his shoulders, he could see it in the rigid lines of his arms.
But what he did not see were the harsh lines of hatred in Dirk's face
as he stared at Michael's back ahead of him.
The beat of hooves changed its tone, no longer ringing on hard ground,
