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;