The White Hand and the Black Part 30

Edala said nothing now. To have offered them hospitality after this outrage would have been to have shown that she feared them. The two girls slid from their saddles, and entered the house. Both were sick with apprehension. It was growing dusk now, and here they were at the mercy of these barbarians. Edala went to her room, and seizing her revolver slipped it into her blouse. But no one followed. Through the window they could see that the side saddles had been flung from the horses, to be replaced by a couple of ordinary ones which had been found in in the stable. Then two of the ringed men having mounted, the whole crowd moved off without another word.

The two girls looked after them, then at each other.

"No--no," said Edala, shaking a warning finger, as she saw the other on the verge of a breakdown--her own eyes were dimming suspiciously. "We haven't got to do that, you know. We've got to prove to ourselves that the old libel--only it isn't a libel--that the first thing women do in a difficulty is to howl, has its exceptions."

"Yes--yes. You are wonderful, Edala. I could not have believed that any girl could show the coolness and pluck you have shown. What's the next thing to do?"

"Do? Anything--everything rather than sit still and think. To-morrow early, we'll start for Kwabulazi."

"Yes. Let's. But now--do you think any of those horrible brutes will come here again to-night?"

"No--I don't. Those weren't our own people, you know, Evelyn, as I told you. I'm not sure, quite, what to do. If we weren't safe at Tongwana's I don't know where we shall be. So well start early so as to get there before it's hot. But--I forgot. Can you walk? It's thirteen miles every inch, and all our horses are gone."

"Yes. I think I can. At any rate I shall have to."

"Well we'll shut the shutters so that no light will leak out if there are any wandering gangs about. Come along and help me, Evelyn. We can't walk thirteen miles--we two feeble females--on nothing, you know."

The other saw the drift. Both were to be kept busy. There must be no time for thinking. It may be that each saw into the other's mind.

Soon a fire was started in the kitchen, and coffee brewed.

"I wonder what has become of Ramasam," said Edala, when they sat down to their meal. "He's an awful coward, and must have bolted with the others. Yet, I wonder how they first got the alarm. If it wasn't that old Patolo is as reliable as death I should have thought that he had cleared out all the cattle and goats, for decidedly someone has."

Evelyn had not noticed this little detail in the excitement and apprehension attendant on their strange home-coming. More and more she wondered at the other's strength, her almost awful coolness.

But in spite of their efforts real cheerfulness would not prevail.

Neither cared to open her heart to the other.

"I think we'd better get some sleep," said Edala presently. "We shall have to start soon after midnight."

"Hark! What's that?" The speaker's face had gone white, and under the circ.u.mstances, with her nerves all strung to high tension, even Edala had started.

A low, indescribably hideous, moaning noise had arisen. It came from the back of the house.

"Oh, it's nothing," she answered. "Come and see."

They went to the kitchen window, which looked out on the back. The moon had risen, and the ghostly light revealed the form of a large bull. He stood stamping and pawing the ground, uttering the while his hideous uncanny moanings.

"Oh, I'll soon scoot him," said Edala, returning to the pa.s.sage to take down a raw-hide whip. "Only it's not much use. The brute'll be sure to come back."

"Edala! You're never going out to face that dreadful beast!" cried Evelyn, laying a detaining hand on her arm. Edala laughed shortly.

"You'll see him run directly."

But before she could reach the door the animal was seen suddenly to run forward, and disappear behind the cattle-kraal, where his moaning, in various keys, recommenced. Then he trotted back, tail in the air, emitting a shrill, half terrified bellow. To one, at any rate, of those who witnessed this performance the effect was indescribably weird.

"What does it mean?" she said.

"Nothing. The cattle often come round and make that row around the place where the goats are killed. It's the blood, you know."

Then she suddenly stopped, for it flashed upon her that the spot at which the moaning of the bull was at its highest and most excited pitch was not that whereon the goats were killed.

"Anyhow, I'll just go out and scoot him. You stop here."

Evelyn watched her go outside. At sight of her the bull paused in his stamping and sc.r.a.pings and threw up his head, snuffing the air. Edala swirled the whip-lash as she advanced towards him--she would not crack it, for fear the sound might reach other ears. Then the beast lowered his head as if to charge her--backed a few paces--then thought better of it, and, turning, galloped madly away, uttering that--as it sounded in the silent and ghostly moonlight--shrill unearthly bellow.

Edala looked after the retreating beast. Her weaker instincts were all to return inside and bolt and bar the door. But some stronger motive to investigate took hold upon her--leading her steps to the spot where the beast had been most moved to his weird and mysterious rumblings.

As she turned the corner of the cattle-kraal her heart beat quicker, and her hand stole by sheer mechanical instinct to the b.u.t.t of the revolver inside her blouse, not that it would be of any use against that which she expected to see and--did see.

There, in the moonlight, just out from the fence, lay a form--a human form; and it did not require two glances to determine that it was a dead human form. Mastering her overpowering horror the girl advanced. The body was ripped right open, and in the dead face, its sightless eyeb.a.l.l.s upturned to the moon, she recognised that of the faithful old cattle-herd Patolo.

What was this? Old Patolo! Dear old Patolo, who had known her from her childhood! Never a time that she could not remember old Patolo. And now here he lay, barbarously murdered! A rush of tears came to her eyes, and with a fierce longing for revenge upon his brutal slayers, she unconsciously gripped the b.u.t.t of her revolver, and perhaps it was as well, or the shock of the awful sight might have had disastrous effects.

"Oh--hh!"

Edala turned quickly, at the shuddering exclamation, uttered as it was in accents of the most indescribable horror. Evelyn, dreading to be alone, even for a moment, had followed her out.

"Go back!" she cried. "You need not see this."

But Evelyn had seen it. Her face wore a set, stony stare.

"Come in. Come in," said Edala, in her most brusque commanding tone, taking the other by the arm. And then that hideous moaning sound arose just behind them, together with the stamp of feet. The great bull had returned, and stood, not ten yards from them, his ma.s.sive head, grim and formidable looking to the last degree in the moonlight. Evelyn collapsed. She slid to the ground in a dead faint.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

"THE PERILS AND DANGERS OF THIS NIGHT."

What was to be done? The great, grisly brute stood there pawing and sc.r.a.ping, keeping up the while his gruesome moanings, his shrill bellow.

But there was now a note of savagery in these: whether it was that the smell of blood, and a great deal of it, had worked him up, together with the fact of finding himself all alone, so far as his kind went--his voice took on that strange growling note which enraged cattle take on at times, and then--look out for mischief. And the girl stood, absolutely unprotected, the prostrate form of her friend lying there at her feet, helpless. Had any been there to see it her face wore the same look that it had worn as she stood holding the big stone ready to throw, what time Elvesdon came between her and the great snake.

She let go the whip-lash with a resounding crack in the direction of the menacing beast. He was of the large homed kind that would have been the delight of a _Plaza de Toros_, and looked horribly formidable, tossing his white sharp horns in the moonlight. Then he charged.

Edala did not yield an inch as she stood over the body of her friend.

She calculated her distance to a nicety, and as coolly as if she had been fly-fis.h.i.+ng, she sent out the whip-lash again. Fortunately the charge was a half-hearted one, and the cutting _voerslag_, catching the enemy full in the eyes, brought him up as sharp as though the cruel _banderillas_ had suddenly been stuck in his withers in the _plaza_ in old Spain. She gave him no law. Twice in rapid succession again she gave him the _voerslag_, and the blinded beast, mad with pain, backed, then trotted unsteadily away.

Edala's breathing came in spasmodic gasps as she watched him out of sight, and the reaction made her knees tremble beneath her. Oh hang it!

She must keep up, she told herself. She could not afford to follow Evelyn's example, or what would become of them both? So this girl, with the glorious gold-crowned head, alone there under circ.u.mstances of peril and horror, started to work out the situation for the safety of both.

"Come Evelyn. Pull yourself together, and get up!" she cried, half carrying, half dragging the other to the house door. "Lord! I shall have to shy a bucket of water over her yet!" she added almost savagely, panting from her exertion.

But this drastic remedy proved unnecessary, for Evelyn opened her eyes, then sat up, staring about her in a dazed kind of way.

"What is it? I've been dreaming--something horrible," she said.

"Yes, you have. Never mind. Buck up now, and come inside. It's beastly cold out here."