She managed to hold the horse in until her kodak was put safely in its case, but her temper, as well as Goldie's, was roughened. She hated spoiling a film, which she was perfectly sure she had done.
Goldie felt the sting of her whip when she brought him back into the road, and, from merely fretting, he took to plunging angrily. Then, when Beatrice pulled him up sharply, he thrust out his nose, grabbed the bit in his teeth, and bolted down the hill, past all control.
"Good God, hold him!" shouted Sir Redmond, putting his horse to a run.
The advice was good, and Beatrice heard it plainly enough, but she neither answered nor looked back. How, she thought, resentfully, was one to hold a yellow streak of rage, with legs like wire springs and a neck of iron? Besides, she was angrily alive to the fact that Keith Cameron, watching down below, was having his revenge. She wondered if he was enjoying it.
He was not. Goldie, when he ran, ran blindly in a straight line, and Keith knew it. He also knew that the Englishman couldn't keep within gunshot of Goldie, with the mount he had, and half a mile away--Keith shut his teeth hard together, and went out to meet her. Redcloud lay along the ground in great leaps, but Keith, bending low over his neck, urged him faster and faster, until the horse, his ears laid close against his neck, did the best there was in him. From the tail of his eye, Keith saw Sir Redmond's horse go down upon his knees, and get up limping--and the sight filled him with ungenerous gladness; Sir Redmond was out of the race. It was Keith and Redcloud--they two; and Keith could smile over it.
He saw Beatrice's hat loosen and lift in front, flop uncertainly, and then go sailing away into the sage-brush, and he noted where it fell, that he might find it, later. Then he was close enough to see her face, and wondered that there was so little fear written there. Beatrice was plucky, and she rode well, her weight upon the bit; but her weight was nothing to the clinched teeth of the horse; and, though she had known it from the start, she was scarcely frightened. There was a good deal of the daredevil in Beatrice; she trusted a great deal to blind luck.
Just there the land was level, and she hoped to check him on the slope of the hill before them. She did not know it was moated like a castle, with a washout ten feet deep and twice that in width, and that what looked to her quite easy was utterly impossible.
Keith gained, every leap. In a moment he was close behind.
"Take your foot out of the stirrup," he commanded, harshly, and though Beatrice wondered why, something in his voice made her obey.
Now Redcloud's nose was even with her elbow; the breath from his wide-flaring nostrils rose hotly in her face. Another bound, and he had forged ahead, neck and neck with Goldie, and it was Keith by her side, keen-eyed and calm.
"Let go all hold," he said. Reaching suddenly, he caught her around the waist and pulled her from the saddle, just as Redcloud, scenting danger, plowed his front feet deeply into the loose soil and stopped dead still.
