nd Joan tried to carry off the situation in
cavalier fashion.

"Too much talk along you fella boy," she said severely. "Too much talk,
too little work. Savvee?"

Gogoomy made no reply, but, apparently shifting weight, he slid one foot
forward. The other boys, spread fan-wise about her, were also sliding
forward, the cruel cane-knives in their hands advertising their
intention.

"You cut 'm grass!" she commanded imperatively.

But Gogoomy slid his other foot forward. She measured the distance with
her eye. It would be impossible to whirl her horse around and get away.
She would be chopped down from behind.

And in that tense moment the faces of all of them were imprinted on her
mind in an unforgettable picture--one of them, an old man, with torn and
distended ear-lobes that fell to his chest; another, with the broad
flattened nose of Africa, and with withered eyes so buried under frowning
brows that nothing but the sickly, yellowish-looking whites could be
seen; a third, thick-lipped and bearded with kinky whiskers; and
Gogoomy--she had never realized before how handsome Gogoomy was in his
mutinous and obstinate wild-animal way. There was a primitive
aristocraticness about him that his fellows lacked. The lines of his
figure were more rounded than theirs, the skin smooth, well oiled, and
free from disease. On his chest, suspended from a single string of
porpoise-teeth around his throat, hung a big crescent carved out of
opalescent pearl-shell. A row of pure white cowrie shells banded his
brow. From his hair drooped a long, lone feather. Above the swelling
calf of one leg he wore, as a garter, a single string of white beads. The
effect was dandyish in the extreme. A narrow gee-string completed his
costume. Another man she saw, old and shrivelled, with puckered forehead
and a puckered face that trembled and worked with animal passion as in
the past she had noticed the faces of monkeys tremble and work.

"Gogoomy," she said sharply, "you no cut 'm grass, my word, I bang 'm
head belong you."

His expression became a trifle more disdainful, but he did not answer.
Instead, he stole a glance to right and left to mark how his fellows were
closing about her. At the same moment he casually slipped his foot
forward through the grass for a matter of several inches.

Joan was keenly aware of the desperateness of the situation. The only
way out was through. She lifted her riding-whip threateningly, and at
th