Closer drew the horsemen at their steady, silent jog, the horses pricking their ears and getting on their toes as race-horses do at the start of a race.
"Be ready," said the shooter.

"Now!" The mob, with one impulse, wheeled, and set off at a heavy lumbering gallop, and the horses dashed in full gallop after them.

It was a ride worth a year of a man's life.

Every man sat down to his work like a jockey finishing a race, and the big stock horses went through the long grass like hawks swooping down on a flock of pigeons.

The men carried their carbines loaded, holding them straight up over the shoulder so as to lessen the jerking of the wrist caused by the gallop.
The surface of the plain was level enough, but frightfully bad going; the sun had baked the black soil till great gaping cracks, a couple of feet wide and ten feet deep, were opened in the ground.