made heroic efforts to be affable and at ease with the men who despised him; though each attempt touched a fresh nerve in his sensitive, self-conscious soul. And now, because from the veranda he could descry Gilroy and Sanderson up at the stock-yards, and because these men were the very two whose society he most dreaded, his will was that he must join them then and there.
He was a man himself; and if he could not get on with other men, that was his own lookout. No doubt, too, it was his own fault. It was a fault of which he swore an oath that he would either cure himself or suffer the consequences like a man. He may even have taken a private pride in being game against the grain. There is no fathoming the thoughts that generate action in egotistical, but noble, natures, whose worst enemy is their own inner consciousness.
Gilroy and Sanderson were in the horse-yard, leaning backward against the heavy white rails. Their pipes were in their mouths, and they were watching Sam Rowntree stalk a wiry bay horse that took some catching. Sam was the groom, and he had just run up all the horses out of the horse-paddock. The yard was full of them. Gilroy hauled a freckled hand out of a cross pocket to point at the piano-tuner's nag.
"Poor-looking devil," said he.
"Yes, the kind you see when you're out without a gun," remarked the wit. "Quite good enough for a thing like him, though." Some association of ideas caused him to glance round toward the homestead through the rails. "By the hokey, here's the thing itself!" he cried.
The pair watched Engelhardt approach.
"I'd like to break his beastly head for him," muttered the manager. "The cheek of him, spoiling our spell with that cursed row!"
The piano-tuner came up with a pleasant smile that was an effort to him, and pretended not to notice Sanderson's stock remark, that "queer things come out after the rain."
"You'll be glad to hear, gentlemen, that I've finished my job," said he, airily.
"Thank God," growled Gilroy.
"I know it's been a great infliction——"
"Oh, no, not at all," said Sanderson, winking desperately. "We liked it. It's just what we do like. You bet!"
The wiry bay horse had been caught by this time, and Sam Rowntree was saddling it, by degrees, for the animal was obviously fresh and touchy. Engelhardt watched the performance with a bitter feeling of envy for all Australian men, and of contempt for himself because they contemned him. The fault was his, not theirs. He was of a different order from these rough, light-hearted men—of an altogether inferior order, as it seemed to his self-criticising mind. But that was no excuse for his not getting on with them, and as a rider puts his horse at a fence again and again, so Engelhardt spurred himself on to one more effort to do so.
"That's your horse, Mr. Gilroy?"
"Yes."
"I saw the 'G' on the left shoulder."
"You mean the near shoulder; a horse hasn't a left."
"No? I'm not well up in horses. What's his name?"
"Hard Times."
"That's good! I like his looks, too—not that I know anything about horses."
Here Sanderson whispered something to Gilroy, who said carelessly to Engelhardt:
"Can you ride?"
"I can ride my own moke."
"Like a turn on Hard Times?"
"Yes! I should."
This was said in a manner that was all the more decided for the moments of deliberation which preceded it. The piano-tuner was paler even than usual, but all at once his jaw had grown hard and strong, and there was a keen light in his eyes. The others looked at him, unable to determine whether it was a good rider they were dealing with or a born fool.
"Fetch him out of the yard, Sam," said Gilroy to the groom. "This gentleman here is going to draw first blood."
Sam Rowntree stared.
"You'd better not, mister," said he, looking doubtfully at the musician. "He's fresh off the grass—hasn't had the saddle on him for two months."
"Get away, Sam. The gentleman means to take some of the cussedness out of him. Isn't that it, Engelhardt?"
"I mean to try," said Engelhardt, quietly.
A lanky middle-aged bushman, who had loafed across from the men's hut, here spat into the sand without removing the pipe from his teeth, and put in his word.
"Becod, then ye're a brave man! He bucks like beggary. He's bucked me as high as a blessed house!"
"We'll see how high he can buck me," said Engelhardt.
Gilroy was losing interest in the proceedings. The little fool could ride after all; instead of being scored off, he was going to score. The manager thrust his hands deep in his cross pockets, and watched sullenly, with his yellow eyelashes drooping over his blue eyes. Suddenly he strode forward, crying:
"What the blazes are you up to, you idiot?"
Engelhardt had shown signs of mounting on the off-side, but was smiling as though he had done it on purpose.
"He's all right," said the long stockman with the pipe. "He knows a thing or two, my word."
But his style of mounting in the end hardly tallied with this theory. The piano-tuner scrambled into the saddle, and kicked about awkwardly before finding his stirrups; and the next thing he did was to job the horse's mouth with the wanton recklessness of pure innocence. The watchers held their breath. As for Hard Times, he seemed to know that he was bestridden by an unworthy foeman, to appreciate the humor of the situation, and to make up his evil mind to treat it humorously as it deserved. Away he went, along the broad road between homestead and yards, at the sweetest and most guileless canter. The rider was sitting awkwardly enough, but evidently as tight as he knew how. And he needed all the grip within the power of his loins and knees. Half-way to the house, without a single premonitory symptom, the wiry bay leapt clean into the air, with all its legs gathered up under its body, its head tucked between its knees, and its back arched like a bent bow. Down it came, with a thud, then up again like a ball, again and again, and yet again.
At the first buck Engelhardt stuck nobly; he evidently had been prepared for the worst. The second displayed a triangle of blue sky between his legs and the saddle; he had lost his stirrups and the reins, but was clinging to the mane with all ten fingers, and to the saddle with knees and shins.
"Sit tight!" roared Gilroy. "Stick to him!" yelled Sanderson. "Slide off as he comes down!" shouted the groom.
But if Engelhardt heard them he did not understand. He only knew that for the first time in his life he was on a buck-jumper, and that he meant to stay there as long as the Lord would let him. A wild exhilaration swamped every other sensation. The blue sky fell before him like a curtain at each buck; at the fifth his body was seen against it like a burst balloon; and after that, Hard Times was left to the more difficult but less exciting task of bucking himself out of an empty saddle.
They carried Engelhardt toward the house. But Naomi came
