She had come up from behind them, and passed them on a rise, for Barrington disdained to breed horses for dollars alone, and there was blood well known on the English turf in the beast she rode.
By and by, a straggling birch bluff rose blackly across their way, but nobody swung wide.

Swaying low while the branches smote them, they went through, the twigs crackling under foot, and here and there the red drops trickling down a flushed, scarred face, for the slanting rent of a birch bough cuts like a knife.

Dim trees whirled by them, undergrowth went down, and they, were out on the dusty grass again, while, like field guns wanted at the front, the bouncing wagons went through behind.

Then the fire rose higher in front of them, and when they topped the last rise the pace grew faster still.

The slope they thundered down was undermined by gophers and seamed by badger-holes, but they took their chances gleefully, sparing no effort of hand and heel, for the sum of twenty dollars and the credit of being first man in.