ate not
just yet. You had no business to win that tent-pegging. I had backed
Mr Lamont."

The Magistrate laughed.

"Let me tell you, Miss Vidal, that you had backed the right man then.
In fact it's inconceivable to me how he missed that last time, unless
the sense of his awful responsibility made him nervous. It would have
made me so."

Again, many a true word uttered in jest. The speaker little knew that
he had stated what was literally and exactly the case.

"Nonsense. I wonder where Mr Lamont has got to. He hasn't been near
me since."

"That I can quite believe. He's afraid. I know I should be."

"Nonsense again, Mr Orwell." And talking about other things they
turned away, quite forgetting the old witch-doctor. There was one,
however, who was not forgetting him--no, not by any means.

The while Jim Steele, the latest rejected of Clare, was very drunk in
the bar tent. When we say very drunk we don't mean to convey the idea
that he was incapable, or even unsteady on his pins to any appreciable
extent--but just nasty, quarrelsome, fighting drunk; and as he was a
big, powerful fellow, most of those standing about were rather civil to
him. Now Jim Steele was at bottom a good fellow rather than otherwise,
but his rejection by Clare Vidal he had taken to heart. He had also
taken to drink.

He had noticed Clare and Lamont together that day, and had more than
once scowled savagely at the pair. Moreover, he had heard that Clare
had backed Lamont--and had made others do so--in the tent-pegging, and
now he was bursting with rage and jealousy. It follows therefore that
this was an unfortunate moment for the object of his hatred to enter the
tent, and call for a whisky-and-soda. Upon him he wheeled round.

"You can't ride a damn!" he shouted.

"I never tried. I prefer to ride a horse," said Lamont, setting down
his glass.

"But you can't," jeered Steele. Then roused to the highest pitch of
fury by the other's coolness, he bellowed: "Look here. Can you fight,
eh? Can you? Because if so, come on."

Something akin to intense dismay came into Lamont's mind at this
development. That this drunken, aggressive idiot should have it in his
power to dig not only his own grave--that would have been a good
riddance--but all their graves, was a new and startling development in a
situation that was already sufficiently complicated. For apart from his
horror and repulsion at being perforce a party to a drunk