Hilda Wade, a Woman with Tenacity of Purpose Part 28

"We have him now!" I cried, in a voice of triumph. And Colebrook echoed, "We have him!"

We sprang down quickly. "Take him alive, if you can!" I exclaimed, remembering Hilda's advice. "Let us find out who he is, and have him properly tried and hanged at Buluwayo! Don't give him a soldier's death!

All he deserves is a murderer's!"

"You stop here," Colebrook said, briefly, flinging his bridle to Doolittle to hold. "Doctor and I follow him. Thick bush. Knows the ways of it. Revolvers ready!"

I handed my sorrel to Doolittle. He stopped behind, holding the three foam-bespattered and panting horses, while Colebrook and I dived after our fugitive into the matted bushes.

The thicket, as I have said, was impenetrable above; but it was burrowed at its base by over-ground runs of some wild animal--not, I think, a very large one; they were just like the runs which rabbits make among gorse and heather, only on a bigger scale--bigger, even, than a fox's or badger's. By crouching and bending our backs, we could crawl through them with difficulty into the scrubby tangle. It was hard work creeping.

The runs divided soon. Colebrook felt with his hands on the ground: "I can make out the spoor!" he muttered, after a minute. "He has gone on this way!"

We tracked him a little distance in, crawling at times, and rising now and again where the runs opened out on to the air for a moment. The spoor was doubtful and the tunnels tortuous. I felt the ground from time to time, but could not be sure of the tracks with my fingers; I was not a trained scout, like Colebrook or Doolittle. We wriggled deeper into the tangle. Something stirred once or twice. It was not far from me. I was uncertain whether it was HIM--Sebastian--or a Kaffir earth-hog, the animal which seemed likeliest to have made the burrows. Was he going to elude us, even now? Would he turn upon us with a knife? If so, could we hold him?

At last, when we had pushed our way some distance in, we heard a wild cry from outside. It was Doolittle's voice. "Quick! quick! out again!

The man will escape! He has come back on his tracks, and rounded!"

I saw our mistake at once. We had left our companion out there alone, rendered helpless by the care of all three horses.

Colebrook said never a word. He was a man of action. He turned with instinctive haste, and followed our own spoor back again with his hands and knees to the opening in the thicket by which we had first entered.

Before we could reach it, however, two shots rang out clear in the direction where we had left poor Doolittle and the horses. Then a sharp cry broke the stillness--the cry of a wounded man. We redoubled our pace. We knew we were outwitted.

When we reached the open, we saw at once by the uncertain light what had happened. The fugitive was riding away on my own little sorrel,--riding for dear life; not back the way we came from Salisbury, but sideways across the veldt towards Chimoio and the Portuguese seaports. The other two horses, riderless and terrified, were scampering with loose heels over the dark plain. Doolittle was not to be seen; he lay, a black lump, among the black bushes about him.

We looked around for him, and found him. He was severely, I may even say dangerously, wounded. The bullet had lodged in his right side. We had to catch our two horses, and ride them back with our wounded man, leading the fugitive's mare in tow, all blown and breathless. I stuck to the fugitive's mare; it was the one clue we had now against him. But Sebastian, if it WAS Sebastian, had ridden off scot-free. I understood his game at a glance. He had got the better of us once more. He would make for the coast by the nearest road, give himself out as a settler escaped from the ma.s.sacre, and catch the next s.h.i.+p for England or the Cape, now this coup had failed him.

Doolittle had not seen the traitor's face. The man rose from the bush, he said, shot him, seized the pony, and rode off in a second with ruthless haste. He was tall and thin, but erect--that was all the wounded scout could tell us about his a.s.sailant. And THAT was not enough to identify Sebastian.

All danger was over. We rode back to Salisbury. The first words Hilda said when she saw me were: "Well, he has got away from you!"

"Yes; how did you know?"

"I read it in your step. But I guessed as much before. He is so very keen; and you started too confident."

CHAPTER IX

THE EPISODE OF THE LADY WHO WAS VERY EXCLUSIVE

The Matabele revolt gave Hilda a prejudice against Rhodesia. I will confess that I shared it. I may be hard to please; but it somehow sets one against a country when one comes home from a ride to find all the other occupants of the house one lives in ma.s.sacred. So Hilda decided to leave South Africa. By an odd coincidence, I also decided on the same day to change my residence. Hilda's movements and mine, indeed, coincided curiously. The moment I learned she was going anywhere, I discovered in a flash that I happened to be going there too. I commend this strange case of parallel thought and action to the consideration of the Society for Psychical Research.

So I sold my farm, and had done with Rhodesia. A country with a future is very well in its way; but I am quite Ibsenish in my preference for a country with a past. Oddly enough, I had no difficulty in getting rid of my white elephant of a farm. People seemed to believe in Rhodesia none the less firmly because of this slight disturbance. They treated ma.s.sacres as necessary incidents in the early history of a colony with a future. And I do not deny that native risings add picturesqueness. But I prefer to take them in a literary form.

"You will go home, of course?" I said to Hilda, when we came to talk it all over.

She shook her head. "To England? Oh, no. I must pursue my Plan.

Sebastian will have gone home; he expects me to follow."

"And why don't you?"

"Because--he expects it. You see, he is a good judge of character; he will naturally infer, from what he knows of my temperament, that after this experience I shall want to get back to England and safety. So I should--if it were not that I know he will expect it. As it is, I must go elsewhere; I must draw him after me."

"Where?"

"Why do you ask, Hubert?"

"Because--I want to know where I am going myself. Wherever you go, I have reason to believe, I shall find that I happen to be going also."

She rested her little chin on her hand and reflected a minute. "Does it occur to you," she asked at last, "that people have tongues? If you go on following me like this, they will really begin to talk about us."

"Now, upon my word, Hilda," I cried, "that is the very first time I have ever known you show a woman's want of logic! I do not propose to follow you; I propose to happen to be travelling by the same steamer. I ask you to marry me; you won't; you admit you are fond of me; yet you tell me not to come with you. It is _I_ who suggest a course which would prevent people from chattering--by the simple device of a wedding. It is YOU who refuse. And then you turn upon me like this! Admit that you are unreasonable."

"My dear Hubert, have I ever denied that I was a woman?"

"Besides," I went on, ignoring her delicious smile, "I don't intend to FOLLOW you. I expect, on the contrary, to find myself beside you. When I know where you are going, I shall accidentally turn up on the same steamer. Accidents WILL happen. n.o.body can prevent coincidences from occurring. You may marry me, or you may not; but if you don't marry me, you can't expect to curtail my liberty of action, can you? You had better know the worst at once; if you won't take me, you must count upon finding me at your elbow all the world over--till the moment comes when you choose to accept me."

"Dear Hubert, I am ruining your life!"

"An excellent reason, then, for taking my advice, and marrying me instantly! But you wander from the question. Where are you going? That is the issue now before the house. You persist in evading it."

She smiled, and came back to earth. "Oh, if you MUST know, to India, by the east coast, changing steamers at Aden."

"Extraordinary!" I cried. "Do you know, Hilda, as luck will have it, _I_ also shall be on my way to Bombay by the very same steamer!"

"But you don't know what steamer it is?"

"No matter. That only makes the coincidence all the odder. Whatever the name of the s.h.i.+p may be, when you get on board, I have a presentiment that you will be surprised to find me there."

She looked up at me with a gathering film in her eyes. "Hubert, you are irrepressible!"

"I am, my dear child; so you may as well spare yourself the needless trouble of trying to repress me."

If you rub a piece of iron on a loadstone, it becomes magnetic. So, I think, I must have begun to acquire some part of Hilda's own prophetic strain; for, sure enough, a few weeks later, we both of us found ourselves on the German East African steamer Kaiser Wilhelm, on our way to Aden--exactly as I had predicted. Which goes to prove that there is really something after all in presentiments!

"Since you persist in accompanying me," Hilda said to me, as we sat in our chairs on deck the first evening out, "I see what I must do. I must invent some plausible and ostensible reason for our travelling together."

"We are not travelling together," I answered. "We are travelling by the same steamer; that is all--exactly like the rest of our fellow-pa.s.sengers. I decline to be dragged into this imaginary partners.h.i.+p."

"Now do be serious, Hubert! I am going to invent an object in life for us."

"What object?"

"How can I tell yet? I must wait and see what turns up. When we trans.h.i.+p at Aden, and find out what people are going on to Bombay with us, I shall probably discover some nice married lady to whom I can attach myself."

"And am I to attach myself to her, too?"

"My dear boy, I never asked you to come. You came unbidden. You must manage for yourself as best you may. But I leave much to the chapter of accidents. We never know what will turn up, till it turns up in the end.