Part 8
The American carried the man to the shade of a tree. He heard the chink of coin, which he divined to be his own property, especially when he found his pockets empty. Then he waited. The man opened his eyes, and looked at his preserver. “What?” he spluttered, having lost some front teeth. “Yes, my friend,” said the other, “I am still here, and a good job for you. I might have left you to bleed to death, and serve you right. I think you took rather more risk than you knew,” producing a revolver from a hip pocket and replacing it. “Well, your legs and back seem all right, and after a rest you should be able to make the road and get help. You don’t deserve it, but I think I had better see you there. No, don’t worry,” as the man’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to give you up. You seem to have been well beaten about, without my trying to get you more punishment.”
The man sat motionless; the double shock of the stallion’s attack, and being confronted by the victim of his brutal violence, for the moment bereft him of speech and power to stir.
After a while, he attempted to rise, stammering that it was time he made a move. His rescuer helped him up, and the man tried to feel in his pockets. “All right, friend,” said the American, “I have got my own back.”
As the injured man proceeded, his strength failed and he began to stumble. The other had to support him, to prevent further injury to the shattered arm. The road reached, the man sank by the wayside, exhausted.
A cart drawn by a forest pony came along. The driver stopped. “Why, who be this? Not Bill Nokes again? What’s he been up to this time?” he asked with emphasis. The American hastily explained that he had found the man lying injured in the forest. “Put him in. I’ll soon have him in the hospital at Lyndhurst.”
They laid the man on the floor and made him as comfortable as possible. “You coming, sir?”—to the American. “No,” he replied. “I cannot be of any further use, and I have to return for my property.”
He walked back with a splitting headache, a sore head, and a wonder in his heart that among the kindly forest folk he should have encountered an alien, and a black sheep at that. He found his goods where he had left them, and seeing the cudgel lying near, added it to his burden as a memento. He spied also a lock of chestnut and white hair, sawn from the skewbald’s mane by the rope, and put it into an envelope. Then he said to himself: “Better get out of this. My scalp wants seeing to, and the people may wonder how I came by a broken head.”
He consulted a time-table and estimated (there were no hands to his watch) that he could catch a train by walking across country, to Southampton. “I’ll hunt up that doctor who treated me before, and get my head patched up.”
When the American went to the surgery two days later for a final inspection the doctor held out a local paper, saying, “Here are some items which may interest you.” A pencil mark stood against a paragraph entitled, “Strange Death of a Forest Pony,” which related how Skewbald had been found by a keeper. The rope had caught in a snag near a deep pit, and in his efforts to free himself, the pony had fallen down, and broken his neck. “Well, doc.,” said the patient, “I did more mischief than I expected, when I fooled around with that rope, but I will put it right when I get to town.”
“Look at the next page,” said the other. This item was headed, “Forest Man injured by a Pony?” and narrated that a man picked up grievously injured, was doing well in hospital and pronounced out of danger. It went on to say: “He is a somewhat notorious character and well known to the police. Curiously, after his injuries had been seen to, and while in a state of delirium, he frequently muttered imprecations on ‘that —— skewbald.’ Elsewhere we detail particulars of the mysterious death of a fine skewbald forest stallion belonging to a well-known forest commoner, Mr. J. Smith. It is conjectured that the man may have lassooed the pony (though it is not known that he possessed any such skill with a rope), and in some way was taken at a disadvantage by the animal, which attacked him, and escaped, only to meet its death shortly afterwards. The man’s injuries are such as might have been caused by a stallion’s teeth and hoofs. Such aggressive behaviour on the part of a forest pony is of the rarest.”
A few days later, Skewbald’s owner received a letter with a London postmark. “Dang me!” he said, turning it over; “who be this from?” and getting no answer from the envelope, opened it, when out came a draft for £40, and a letter in business terminology from a firm of solicitors intimating that a client of theirs, having heard through the Press of the death of his pony, hoped that the owner would accept the enclosed sum as indemnity for his loss. “Well, well!” exclaimed the delighted but bewildered man, “this beats all. The thing gets stranger and stranger. I’m sure that varmint Bill Nokes never roped the poor beast. Now, these people write as if someone owed me the money. I’d better harness the pony and get this in the bank before anything else happens.” And not until he had got the draft safely to the bank, and had seen the clerk initial it, did he really believe that the skewbald’s loss had been made good.
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TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.
Some illustrations were moved to facilitate page layout.
End of Project Gutenberg's Skewbald, The New Forest Pony, by Allen W. Seaby