Meanwhile the sound above grew louder, and presently an object apparently travelling like a thunderbolt came out of the shadow.  It was, notwithstanding the speed it made, gambolling playfully, with head tossed sideways and tail in the air, and when Miss Deringham fancied it must turn aside for a tangled brake, went smashing straight through it.  As it emerged with an exultant flourish of head and tail two other objects became visible behind it, and Seaforth pushed forward when the mounted figures came sweeping down the mountain side.  Here and there they swung wide round a fallen tree, but they rode straight through raspberry-canes and breast-high fern, and Alice Deringham wondered when she saw that one of them was a girl.  She had left her hat somewhere in the bush, her hair streamed about her, the skirt was blown aside; but she held on with set lips and two vivid spots of colour in her warm-tinted face, a length or two behind her companion.  He was riding hard, and there was a red smear across his face where a branch had smote him.

Miss Deringham turned to watch them, realizing that whatever the steer risked, its pursuers were in peril of life and limb.  Sometimes one horse rose above fern and thicket, or twisted, apparently with the sinuosity of a snake, in and out amidst the clustered trunks, while once the girl lurched forward.  Miss Deringham gasped, but part of the fluttering skirt was rent away, and the little lithe figure swept on again.  The pair were, it was evident, closing with the steer, and the latter apparently cut off from the valley it made for by the ravine.  This was not, however, to prove an insuperable obstacle, for as Miss Deringham with difficulty edged her horse nearer, the beast charged straight at the hollow, and dropped into it.  Then, while she regarded its capture as certain, it rose into view again, and floundered up the almost vertical slope on the other side with no very obvious difficulty.  Miss Deringham, who found this riding down of a Canadian steer almost as exciting as anything she had seen when following the English hounds, regretted that the ravine with its fringe of undergrowth and litter of netted branches must apparently put a stop to the pursuit.  Though the width was not great, no horse, she fancied, would be expected to face it, and she watched the two figures flitting amidst the trunks to see when they would pull up.

There was, however, no sign that they intended to do so, and Miss Deringham gasped a little when Alton glanced for a moment over his shoulder.

“Pull him!” his voice reached her hoarsely, and she held her breath as she saw the man’s hand move on the bridle and his heels pressed home.  The horse swung clear of the thicket, plunged with head down, flung it up, and straightened itself again; there was a drumming of hoofs, and man and beast had shot forward from the bank.  It seemed an appreciable time before they came down amidst the fern, and then Miss Deringham drew in her breath with a little sibilant sigh.