) at Denver's, where he would be welcomed
jubilantly by all--even the baby who had never seen him--for there was
"something about the man." And, until late on the night of his return,
he and Jack would sit by the fire in winter, or outside on the woodheap
in summer, and yarn long and fondly about the Wide Places, and strange
things they knew and understood.

How sudden things are! Ben was back (just in time for the holidays and
the Mudgee races) out of the level lands, where distance dwells in her
halls of shimmering haze, after following her for five years.

They were riding home from the races, the women and children in carts
and buggies, the men and boys on horseback--of course. They raced each
other along the road, across short cuts, through scrub and timber, and
back to the slow-coming overloaded vehicles again, some riding wildly
and recklessly. Jack Denver was amongst them, his heart warmed with
good luck at the races, good whisky to wet it, and the return of his old
mate. "We're as good as the best of the young 'uns yet, Ben!" he cried,
as they swung through the trees. "Ain't we, you old--?"

And then and there it happened.

A new chum suggested that Jack had more than he thought aboard and was
thrown from his horse; but the new chum was repudiated with scorn and
bad words and indignation by bushmen and bushwomen alike--as indeed he
would be by any bushman who had seen a drunken rider ride.

"I learnt him to ride when he was a kiddy about so high," said old
Break-the-News Fosbery, resentfully gasping and gulping, "and Jack
wasn't thrown." It was thought at first that his horse had shied and run
him against a tree, or under an overhanging branch; but Ben Duggan
had seen it, and explained the thing to the doctor with that strange
calmness or quietness that comes to men in the midst of a life's grief.
Jack was riding loosely, and swung forward just as the filly, a fresh
young thing, threw back her head; and it struck him with sledge-hammer
force, full in the face.

He was dead, even before they got him to Anderson's Halfway Inn. There
was wild racing back to town for doctors, and some accidents; one horse
was killed and another ridden to death. Others went as a forlorn hope in
search of Doc. Wild, eccentric Yankee bush "quack," who had once saved
one of Denver's little girls from diphtheria; others, again, for Peter
M'Laughlan, bush missionary, to face the women--for they couldn't.

Big Ben Duggan, blubberin