ound his
wrist.

A yard is no place for a man when an infuriated bull is raging around
it. Everybody leapt for the rails except Sax. Was there not some way
of helping his friend? The steer saw him and charged. Round the yard
once, twice, it rushed, Vaughan dragging along at the back, and
hindering it so that he undoubtedly saved his friend from a very nasty
accident. Round the yard the third time. Sax was too dazed to leap
for the rails, and the animal was too close for him to climb them.

Everybody had been so intent on the sudden turn which events had taken
that they had not noticed an almost naked black-fellow who had left the
lasso and had climbed quickly along the top of the rails. He was a
stranger, and had come in that morning and had taken a hand at the
yards like any other black would do, hoping for a feed and a stick of
tobacco. But now he seemed to be full of energy and courage. When
everybody else was gasping with astonishment, he lay on the top rail as
flat as a lizard.

Sax came round the third time, and the shaggy head of the steer was
lowering for a toss, when the native's black arm reached down suddenly
and grabbed the white boy by the belt and swung him clear off his feet.
He was not a second too soon. The steer charged by, and Sax was safe.
The stranger native had put out so much of his strength that he could
not recover himself, and he overbalanced, still keeping hold of the
white boy, and rescuer and rescued toppled over backwards into the
other yard. Sax was winded and the black-fellow was the first to get
up. He scrambled to his feet and walked away, not only from the yards,
but away from the station altogether, as if he did not want to be
recognized. But as he was getting between two rails, he put his left
hand on one of them, and Sax saw that the two middle fingers were
missing. It was the same black who had brought the sprig of
needle-bush.

Excitement was by no means over in the branding-yard. The infuriated
bull, cheated of one victim, now turned its attention to Vaughan. It
wheeled quickly, and in so doing twisted the rope, which Vaughan was
still holding, round the boy's body. He could not escape. He was at
the mercy of a wild steer.

The sudden and unexpected rescue of Saxon Stobart had roused the white
men, so that when the bull turned on its helpless victim, they were
ready. But what could they do? What could a mere man possibly do
against a full-grown steer?