Another Doberman had her by the other wrist and with a trained flick of its muscular neck, twisted her to the ground. Then, by instinct reinforced by training, it went for the jugular.
Henty tried to push it away and, in her desperation, grabbed its jaw too hard with the Fist. She opened the Fist immediately she heard the bone crunch but the dog was never again going to attack anyone with a pulverized jaw. Henty flung it from her and reared up to run but she was in the center of a circle of scowling red-faced men and women sitting high and mighty on their horses and wearing their red coats as some kind of a badge of merit; between the horses Dobermans were snarling pink and black gums and ivory teeth at her, barely restrained by their handlers.
“You silly woman, you have damaged two hounds for no sport at all,” the reddest-faced man of them all shouted at Henty, brandishing a hunting horn in one hand and a whip in the other. He flicked the whip and Henty felt the sting on her cheek. When she took her hand away there was blood.
“But— ” Henty said, flabbergasted.
She was drowned out by the angry roar of the MFH. “But me no buts, you poor-spirited thing! We will have proper sport or I shall know the reason. Now get up and run!” Again he flicked the whip; this time against Henty’s other cheek.
“That was unkind,” Henty said, catching the whip on the return swing and jerking hard. The MFH, roaring his anger, crashed heavily to the ground. While the rest of the Hunt was still rearing back at this lèse-majesté and trying to calm startled horses, Henty bounded on his hunter and, digging her heels in hard, set him to jump the impenetrable wall of Dobermans and handlers; the other horses instinctively gave way for one of their fellows. It took Henty a while to find the reins and get them into her hands, and put her feet into the stirrups. Only then could she feel safe on that bucking seventeen-hand high thoroughbred hunter.
Behind her, the MFH — a far less agile figure at ground level than on horseback — waddled around in a circle before making his choice of the rider he would dismount so that he could ride. The rider protested and the MFH physically jerked him from his saddle. Then the MFH rode around swatting at handlers who weren’t quick enough in releasing the Dobermans. By this time Henty was two furlong shead but it was bad form to set off ahead of the MFH, so the huntsmen they merely fidgeted and some of the bolder ones said things like, “I say,” or “Not cricket, that,” or “Jolly bad show, what,” referring to Henty’s dastardly deed in unseating the MFH.
“Used to hang horse-thieves in these parts,” said one woman.
“The hounds will never leave enough of her to hang,” another said regretfully. “Nothing like a good public hanging to instil respect for lornorder,” said a bewhiskered fellow whose advertising agency was called Motivation Inc. This earned respectful nods. Then the MFH blew his horn and they were away after Henty, dog handlers hanging onto their stirrups with feet touching or dragging along the ground every now and again.
Nebraska is criss-crossed by major and minor rivers and their associated streams and gullies, so that it is nowhere very flat, being made up of gently rolling plateaux and valleys. The Humble & Poor Hunt’s quarry was out of sight but that did not bother them one bit: they merely followed the baying of the pack, which was on her track and, from the sound of it, perhaps even in sight.
“Excellent hunting,” one of the backmarkers remarked to another, his customary shout passing for a conversational tone in the tumult.
“One shouldn’t say so—” remarked the addressee.
“—but all the more spice to have her on horseback,” the other added. “Bit of a cheek, grabbing the MFH’s horse.”
“Quite. She’ll regret it yet.”
“Hey George!” the first one raised his voice to stentorian shout and waited for the MFH to look around to acknowledge him. “It’s traditional to hang horse-thieves.”
George spluttered something and faced for'ard again but after three minutes he half-turned in his saddle to roar. “Sterling idea, Nicholas. If we get there before the hounds finish her, of course.”
Nicholas resisted the temptation to tell the MFH to get a move on then. That too wasn’t done, and he could be left behind if the better riders streaked ahead; he didn’t want to miss the fun.
“Who has a rope?” he called among the backmarkers. None carried a rope but they were all men and women of initiative:
“We’ll cobble one up from dog leashes or tackle,” said a woman who was a wheel on the sales side of the publishing house that had bought Henty’s sob-story.
CHAPTER 42
Henty hadn’t ridden since the pony her parents gave her for her twelfth birthday died. She had the greatest difficulty staying on that obstreperous hunter and keeping him heading in the right direction — and the baying of the hounds closing on her was not helping her equilibrium at all. The hounds came closer with every breath she took, relentlessly cutting down her slender lead. Henty was further demoralized by the knowledge that, even if she should manage to outpace the dogs, they would still have her scent to follow until she dropped from pure exhaustion and a Doberman could tear her throat out without any resistance from her. Fearfully she looked back — and marveled very briefly at the fabulous dawn outlining the Humble & Poor on the skyline behind her. But the Dobermans slavered after her much closer and were making a renewed effort now that they were almost within springing distance of their quarry.
Henty smacked the big bay’s shoulder with the rein-ends and dug her heels in too and, miraculously, he picked up speed. But now she found it even more difficult to hang on as the big horse galloped over the rough country. Only pride kept her from throwing her arms around the horse’s neck and merely hanging on for dear life. She swayed from side to side and was continually in the air, her bottom touching only intermittently and very, very briefly. When the horse jumped ditches or low obstructions, she thought she would be flung clear. She didn’t dare look behind her for fear of the horse taking a ditch or a bush while she was off-balance and throwing her.
But there was no need to look: already she was so attuned to the sound of the Doberman Pinchers that she was reasonably certain that, while they were not falling back and were easily holding their own, they were not gaining on her. The sound of their baying had changed, she thought. Henty was learning fast.
Over an apparently perfectly level stretch of country it wasn’t easy to judge when you were never still but being bounced up and down with great speed while being carried forward at even greater velocity. Henty dared to look back and saw the Dobermans were at least a hundred yards behind her. She sighed: small mercies were mountains of strength in her present predicament. Of course the horse couldn’t keep it up and then the dogs would catch her and tear her and the horse apart. But for the moment a hundred yards was as good as a mile.
Behind the dogs were the mounted hunters, riding hell-forleather, the leaders sitting up straight in the saddle though some of the backmarkers swayed almost as precariously as Henty. Henty hoped none of them had a rifle. She was probably within range of an expertly fired pistol and they would have at least a pistol to put down hurt horses and dogs. But Henty couldn’t go any faster without falling off.
When Henty turned eyes-front again, they were almost upon the river, racing along a railroad tract. “Oh! Oh, for a train to take me away!” Henty shouted her fear and frustration at the heavens. “Whoa! You stupid horse, stop! I don’t swim too good.”
The horse paid her no heed, keeping going at full pelt. Henty kicked her feet free of the stirrups so she wouldn’t be dragged down by the horse.
“Now she’s got to stop and water the horse and then we have her with her back to the river,” the MFH gloated and deliberately slowed his mount, forcing the whole hunt to slow behind him. “Mustn’t spook her,” he shouted. Nobody argued with him; none knew of anyone who had ever won an argument with George Ballantyne.
“Don’t you want to stop for a breath and a drink of water?” Henty hopelessly tried to coax the runawa
y horse.
The bay flicked his ears and increased his pace. Henty groaned, then laughed aloud. The horse was smart. A railway heading straight for a river — of course there was a bridge. In a flash they were on the bridge and, near the end of it, Henty dared look back again. She had gained another hundred yards on the riders and the bridgehead was providing a bottleneck for the pack of hounds. All those behind the very front rank, who were still on Henty’s trail, were fighting to get on the bridge first instead of waiting their turn in an orderly manner.
“Have you ever seen such cruelty,” George raged. “Not even a pause for breath or a drink for the poor horse!”
His fellows shook their heads sadly. “Shocking!” said Nicholas, summing up for all of them. “She deserves whatever she gets.”
“I’m not surprised at all that she’s an outcast from Society,” a redheaded woman said primly. “Cruelty to horses is also a hanging offence.”
CHAPTER 43
“Get those dogs sorted!” George shouted, laying about the handlers with his whip. “She’s escaping while you laze about, you wretched buggers.”
They looked at him sullenly but only briefly and none said a word of protest before running to do his bidding: they were all illegal immigrants from south of the border and after a year’s service they would be rewarded by the Humble & Poor in the person of their ubiquitous, energetic paid secretary sponsoring them for US residence permits.
By the time they finally did get the dogs sorted out. Henty was four or five furlongs ahead of the riders and the main body of dogs. But that was small consolation to her, because the leaders of the pack, the most vicious and persistent of the Dobermans, had made it onto the bridge before the general mêlée among the crush of dogs broke out. Now these dogs were right behind her and gaining. She could hear them panting and when she could no longer prevent herself casting a terrified look behind her she could see their pink tongues lolling out of the sides of their mouths with their exertions. But they did not seem tired and the blank brown eyes regarded her expressionlessly, fanatically. They could and would run her down and tear out her throat, those eyes told her.
“That stupid woman is going to let the dogs pull my horse down.” George’s voice was high-pitched with anger. “Move!” In his anger he forgot the time-honored usages of the hunt and reverted to his everyday speech.
“But our horses—”
“Do you want her to escape justice, Madam?” the MFH roared and set his horse across the bridge. Though Henty was further in front of them than at any time since the hunt began, they could see her clearly because she was keeping to the line of the rail. If the horse couldn’t outrun the Dobermans on the level, Henty thought, perhaps its longer legs and taller stature would give it an advantage in the rough. She therefore headed the big bay to the left, using considerable power with the Fist to do so: he was a headstrong horse in more than one sense of the word. Henty suspected the horse was running so hard to get away from George rather than to save her.
When next she looked back, she had gained maybe ten yards on the dogs but the Hunt had turned after her and was gaining on her again. Ten yards gained on those dogs was like nothing and the red-coated hunters would soon be there to spur the dogs on or catch her themselves.
How Henty wished she'd kept that car!
The bay launched himself into the air and barely cleared a big stream, his hind legs scrambling for purchase on the steep far bank. The impact of the landing sent Henty over his head, flying in a high parabola to land heavily on her back. Henty was thoroughly winded; she wanted to be ill; she was certain her back was broken. But she clenched her teeth and rolled upright and scrambled across to the horse and, pausing only for a fraction of a second to stare at the frenzied Dobermans jumping into the water from the far bank, managed to swing a leg over the saddle just as the bay rose to his majestic height. She would never have gotten back on if he had been standing.
The horse set off immediately. Henty, all thought of pride now consumed in fear and the urgent need for breath, clung to his neck and let him have his head.
Behind her, the leaders of the Humble & Poor had jumped the stream more or less cleanly but the middle ranked riders landed in the river on top of the dogs and the backmarkers on top of them. Nobody counted the handlers, already in the water to help the dogs up the far bank, who got their heads stove in or their necks broken by having horses land on them. It was a disaster.
George shouted stentoriously to sort out the mess. He was a master organizer but, even so, it took him eight minutes to restore order, to appoint a deputy to shoot the injured horses, to boost the rest of the dogs up the steep bank of the stream (during which operation many handlers and two members of the Hunt were savaged), and to set off once more in pursuit of Henty.
But he wasn’t worried she'd get away. The leaders of the pack had made it up the riverbank before the horses had landed in the river and they could still be heard baying in pursuit of Henty. There was a clear trail for the remaining dogs to follow, even without the aural direction.
Henty swayed with fatigue and she fancied the horse wasn’t going as strongly as it used to. It was now full morning with a blistering sun and she had been going at this pulverizing pace for hours without rest, after a night without sleep, and with no breakfast.
But mainly her thirst was killing her. Henty hardly knew that the Dobermans had caught up with her until one jumped for her ankle. She jerked her foot away, into the horse’s side. The horse thought the sharp pain was caused by the impertinent dog and stopped, kicked the dog in the head to crush its skull, and then started grazing.
Henty landed face down. First she heard the sickening thud and then she felt it throughout her battered body. With the last of her energy she pressed the Fist on the ground to roll her over so that at least she could breathe. The three remaining dogs were aiming for her head with gaping jaws, ready to grab her head in those concrete crushers and shake her to break her neck if her skull didn’t collapse first. Now they paused, waiting for Henty to expose the softer target of her jugular instead.
Henty saw the pink gums and the teeth but she was gasping for breath and had no energy to spend to defend herself. That enforced lack of resistance was Henty’s good fortune.
As she lay there, quite still except for her chest heaving for breath, the dogs thought she was submitting. It was their instinct — and couldn’t be taken from them by any amount of training and selective breeding to accentuate their vicious streak — to let another animal who passively exposes the jugular lie unmolested, though they would stand over it and, at the first sign of movement, tear out its throat.
Henty, a country girl, of course knew this, but she would never have remembered to lie still in her panic at the dogs coming straight for her throat. But, once she had caught her breath, though she was still heaving for more air, her mind had a break to catch up with her reflexes and she remembered. She therefore lay quite still until the Humble & Poor Hunt rode up and the handlers pulled the dogs, snarling from frustration at being deprived of their quarry, away from her.
“Poor-spirited!” George shouted at her from a safe distance. “Cowardly horse-thief.”
The tear jerk publisher pointed. “There’s a marina on the river there. Plenty of rope to hang a horse-thief.”
“And a derrick to serve as a gallows,” Nicholas added enthusiastically.
“Excellent!” boomed George. “After we hang her, we can have a picnic breakfast on the river-bank, what?”
CHAPTER 44
We are easy to manage, a gregarious people, full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries. — Robinson Jeffers
“Do you have any last words?” George roared at Henty.
Henty looked at up at the little crane to which the rope about her neck was tied. George already had his hand on the lever that would raise the boom — and raise her, at the other end of the rope, by her neck. Her hands were tied behind her back. One of the handlers started t
ying her feet but a woman leaned down from her horse to flick her crop across his back.
“Don’t be silly. Watching them kick is half the fun.”
“Yes,” Henty said. “What makes you think you’re human?”
George spluttered. Slowly his pudgy red hand pressed down on the lever. The Humble & Poor members cheered and clapped their hands and shouted. “Good old George!” Henty felt her neck stretching and came up on her toes. Then the rope tightened around her neck and her air was cut off. She gasped and that cost her more air she could ill afford. Already there was a red haze in front of her eyes. She had resolved not to kick but now she couldn’t help herself. It consumed more precious oxygen and tightened the rope around her neck another notch.
Henty pulled with the Fist against the ropes on her wrists. The rope cut cruelly into her unprotected right wrist but she hardly felt it. Then she had the Fist twisted so that her left wrist was broad-side on to the right and she twisted the thumb of the Fist around to hook it in the rope. In front of her eyes the red haze had changed to black. She no longer heard the Humble & Poor or the Dobermans they had released to snap at her swinging feet. She concentrated solely on her thumb in the Fist, twisted through the rope on her wrist, one hard twist with the Fist, the rope cutting excruciatingly into her unprotected right wrist, then it snapped.
Henty’s hands flew instinctively to her throat to relieve the painful constriction there on her breathing, though she knew this was a fatal mistake. But the rope was already pulled into the flesh. There was no way to get her fingers between her flesh and the rope.
“Noooo!” Henty shouted at herself — though it was all in her mind. She forced the Fist to the rope above her head and twisted it this way and that, hauling herself higher, ignoring the searing pain of the rope tightening and her killing need for air, to twist the rope around the Fist. Then, with a flexure of her fingers inside the Fist, Henty parted the rope.