In some extraordinary fashion Pettigrew had contrived to stay in the saddle up to the end, and in the saddle he remained while the pony scrambled back on to its feet. It was an open question which of the two was in the worse shape. Pettigrew was barely able to sit upright. His heart was thumping in the most alarming manner, and there was a strange roaring sound in his ears. The pony stood stock still, head down, its smoking sides heaving, the picture of exhaustion.
A humane man, Pettigrew reflected, would have dismounted at once, to give the animal a chance to recover. But he was not feeling in the least humane at the moment towards this beast, for a great many perfectly sound reasons. Besides, he had grave doubts whether in his present state, if he once got off its back, he would ever be able to get on again; and tired though he was of riding, the prospect of walking appealed to him now even less.
He looked around him. They were, he found, on a broad, level track, almost on the floor of the valley into which he had been looking from the heights above such a short time before. The roaring in his ears resolved itself into the sound of the stream, less than a hundred yards away. Straight ahead of him he could see what was evidently a ford. The track led directly to it and on the other side ran parallel to the stream until lost to sight in a wood-the same wood, he now realized, as that into which the deer and its pursuers had vanished not so long before. Then, quite suddenly, as he watched, the scene, already vaguely familiar, ceased to be anonymous. Place-names, long buried in some hidden recesses of his brain, sprang to life. The Ling Water, he told himself. And Martyrs Ford. Coney Wood, and-down the valley out of sight-Coneywood Mill, where he had seen his first stag killed.
It was a comfort to know exactly where he was, because it helped him to determine what he was going to do. Of one thing he was quite certain. He was not going to try to return the way which he had come, even supposing there was a practicable way back up the hill. He had taken the pony on to Bolter’s Tussock to look for its rider. It was only too plain that he had found him. After his recent experiences, it was easy to imagine how that unfortunate came to be lying where he was. It was only sheer luck-or the mercy of Heaven, according to how you looked at it-that had saved him from becoming this horrible pony’s second victim of the day. But the discovery had left him with a certain obligation. He could not, this time, simply ride away and say nothing. Besides, he would have to explain his possession of the pony to somebody, and the sooner the better. He decided to be on his way at once. But which way?
While he hesitated, the pony settled the matter for him by suddenly coming to life and walking stiffly but purposefully towards the ford. Pettigrew was content to let it go. In that direction lay civilization, as represented by Coneywood Mill, and there was always the chance of falling in with the hunt before then. It was taking him away from Sallowcombe but that couldn’t be helped. The problem of getting home must settle itself later on.
The pony walked halfway across the ford and put its nose down into the water. Remembering a cautionary chapter in Black Beauty, Pettigrew tried to restrain it, but he might have been pulling at the bed of the river for all the difference that his efforts made. The beast slaked its thirst thoroughly and then consented to splash its way to the other side.
Once on the path again, the indomitable animal broke into a trot. Pettigrew, almost too weary to rise in the stirrups, let it jog on for what seemed an interminable distance on a very rough surface under trees with very low-hanging boughs. Presently the track was joined by another, larger path which came down the hill through the woods on their right. Evidently this was the way that the body of the hunt had come, for the imprints of their hooves were everywhere. The pony seemed to notice it also, for it lengthened its stride, making a gait already uncomfortable almost insupportable. Clearly it was as anxious for the company of its kind as Pettigrew himself. He was thankful when rounding a bend, he saw a man on horseback just ahead of him, moving at walking pace in the same direction.
The pony consented to slow down as they approached and signalled their presence by bumping heavily into the stranger’s hindquarters. The rider looked round. He was evidently a native and not a visitor, which was all to the good. Pettigrew wasted no time in apologizing.
“I want your help,” he said crisply. “There’s a man been killed up on the moor, and I’m on his pony.”
“Eh?”
The man was evidently very deaf. He had also, Pettigrew now observed, an absolutely villainous face.
“Eh?”
It is not easy to shout when one is as pumped as Pettigrew was, but he did his best.
“There’s a man been killed,” he bellowed. “Killed!”
The stranger gave a sudden hideous grin of comprehension.
“Killed!” he said. “Oh, ay-they’m killed all right, I reckon. Down to Coneywood Mill, I shouldn’t wonder. You’d best hurry!”
A stout stick descended with a crack just behind the pony’s saddle, and Pettigrew was carried helplessly away down the path at a smart canter, pursued by contemptuous laughter.
Fortunately for Pettigrew, who felt that by now he had plumbed the depths of humiliation, his mount soon began to show that its stamina was not after all quite inexhaustible. It was the best part of a mile to Coneywood Mill, and before that distance had been covered the canter had been reduced to a rather weary and perfectly manageable trot.
The fellow had been right. They had certainly killed.
Pettigrew pulled up to find himself at a scene which had not altered in essentials since he had been ceremonially blooded at the same spot all those years ago. In the little meadow that here separated the wood from the stream a close knot of interested spectators marked where no doubt the huntsman was breaking up his deer. A short distance away the pack was impatiently awaiting the remarkably unattractive portion of the carcase that would shortly fall to its share. And all around, the members of the field, for the most part dismounted, ate their sandwiches, sipped at their flasks, lit their pipes, and explained to one another how singularly well they had gone that day.
Pettigrew pushed his way on to the grass and looked round him, feeling suddenly at a loss. He had come there to report a violent death, and now he could see nobody to whom to report it. His immediate neighbour, a stout, self-satisfied young man, was holding a horse a good deal better bred than himself while he explained in penetrating tones exactly what had been wrong with the huntsman’s tactics. Neither he nor the sharp-featured girl to whom he was talking looked as though they would be in the least interested in the information. Pettigrew moved on and passed in succession three small girls in jodhpurs giggling in a group, an extremely handsome young woman who was running her hands down her horse’s off hind leg while addressing the creature in quite startlingly foul language, and two earnest young sportsmen who proved to be in anxious colloquy about the forthcoming ballet season. None of them seemed to Pettigrew appropriate recipients of his news. He glanced round at the pedestrian onlookers. Although quite a small crowd had collected, for once it did not include a policeman. None of the others stood out as the type of person to whom one should confide a delicate matter of this kind.