Sean understood and began to run towards the finishing line.
He drove through the crowd like a shark through a shoal of sardines.
Over their heads he saw the two horsemen galloping in across the
field.
Dirk was leading, standing in the stirrups to thrash Sun Dancer with
the whip. His black hair fluttered in the wind, and his shirt filthy
with thrown mud. Under him the filly danced on flying hooves and the
beat of them druninted above the rising roar of the crowd. Her body
was black and shiny with sweat, and froth flew from her gaping pink
mouth to form white lace on her chest and flanks.
Fifty hopeless yards behind her plunged the colt with Michael flogging
his heels into him with despair. Michael's face was twisted in an
agony of frustration. Grey Weather was finished, his legs loose with
exhaustion and his breath sawing hoarsely with each stride.
Sean tore his way through the press of bodies that lined the guide
ropes. He reached the front rank and shouldered two women from his
path. Then he stooped and ducked under the rope into the open.
Sun Dancer was almost up to him, hammering down in a crescendo of
hooves, her head nodding with each stride.
Dirk! Stop her!' roared Sean.
'Pa! Pa! Get out of the way Dirk screamed back at him, but Sean
sprang to intercept him.
'Pa! Sean was in front of him, crouching with arms extended. Too
close to swing Sun Dancer's head away from him, too late to stop her
charge.
'Jump, girl, jump,' shouted Dirk and gathered the horse with his knees,
feeling her respond with a bunching of her quarters; feeling her lift
her forelegs against her chest and drive upwards in a high parabola.
But sensing also the sluggishness of her exhausted body and knowing she
had not gone high enough to clear Sean's head.
An aching moment as Sun Dancer lifted clear of the ground, the
horrified groan of the crowd as her forelegs smashed into Sean and she
twisted in the air, falling. Dirk thrown, his stirrup leathers parting
like whip cracks. Then all of them down together in the grass. Shrill
screams of women in the crowd.
Sun Dancer struggling up again with a foreleg swinging loosely from the
knee, whinnying in the pain of broken bone.
Sean on his back, his head twisted to the side and blood from his torn
cheek dribbling into his nose and mouth so that his breathing snored
hoarsely.
Dirk with the skin smeared from elbows and one cheek, crawling towards
Sean, kneeling beside him, raising both hands clenched, hammering down
with them so that his fists splattered the blood, beating them into the
chest and slack, unconscious face of his father.
'Why did you? Oh, God, I hate you.' Shock and fury and despair.
'For you! You stopped me, you stopped me.'
Michael dragging Grey Weather down on his haunches, flinging from the
saddle, running to them, holding Dirk's arms, dragging him off,
fighting him.
'Leave him, you little bastard.'
