A Veldt Official Part 11

CHAPTER NINE.

"LOVE THAT IS FIRST AND LAST..."

"Now you will have to take care of me," began Mona, after some minutes of silence, as they started slowly to ride round beneath the cliff.

"A heavy responsibility for any one man during a whole hour or more."

"You have not found it so hitherto?"

"Oh, then there were two of us. We took the risk between us. Hallo!"

he broke off, "that's a fine specimen!"

She followed his upward glance. A huge bird of prey had shot out from the cliff overhead and was circling in bold, powerful sweeps, uttering a loud, raucous scream.

"As good a specimen of a _dasje-vanger_ as I ever saw," went on Roden, still gazing upward. "Now, I wonder if a Snider bullet would blow it all to pieces at that distance!"

"You'll never bring it down with a bullet?" said Mona eagerly.

"Not, eh? Perhaps not."

The great eagle, jet black save for her yellow feet standing out against the thick dusky plumage, floated round and round in her grand gyrations, her flaming eye visible to the spectators as she turned her head from side to side. Roden, without dismounting, put up his rifle.

Simultaneously with the report a cloud of black feathers flew from the n.o.ble bird, who, as though with untamable determination to disappoint her slayer, shot downward obliquely, with arrow-like velocity, and disappeared beyond the brow of the cliff overhead.

"You were right," said Roden, slipping a fresh cartridge into his piece.

"I did not bring it down, for with characteristic perversity, the ill-conditioned biped has chosen to yield up the ghost at the top of the cliff, whereas we are at the bottom."

"Oh, can't we go up to it? This is much better game than those poor little rhybok. But, wherever did you learn to shoot like that?"

"We can go up!" he replied, purposely or accidentally evading the last question. "That gully we pa.s.sed, a little way back is climbable. But you had better wait below. It will be hard work."

"So that's how you propose taking care of me--to leave me all alone?

Not if I know it. The place looked perfectly safe."

Safe it was: a narrow, staircase-like _couloir_, consisting of a series of natural steps; the rocks on either side heavily festooned with thick ma.s.ses of the most beautiful maidenhair fern. Leaving the horses beneath, they began the climb, and after a couple of hundred feet of this they stood on the summit of the mountain.

The summit was as flat as a table, and covered with long coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, billowing in the fresh strong breeze which swept it like the surface of a lake. Around, beneath, free and vast, spread the rolling panorama of mountain and plain.

"Ah! this is to live indeed!" broke from Mona. "I don't know that I ever enjoyed a day so much in my life."

The other did not immediately look at her, but when he presently did steal a keen, but furtive glance at her face, there was something there, which, combined with the tone wherein she had uttered the above words, set him thinking.

"I don't see anything of the _dasje-vanger_," he said, at length; "and yet this is about the place where it should have fallen. It may have fluttered into the long gra.s.s, but couldn't have gone far with that bullet hole through it. Now, you search that way, and I'll search this."

For a few minutes they searched hither and thither; then a cry from Mona brought him to her side.

"This is the place," she said. "Look!"

She stood as near as she dared to the brow of the cliff, pointing downwards. On the very verge, fluttering among the gra.s.s bents, were several small feathers, jet black, and such as might have come out of the breast of the great bird. Roden advanced to the brink.

"This _is_ the place!" he declared, leaning over. "And, look! there lies our quarry, stone dead. The spiteful brute has chosen a difficult place, if not an inaccessible one."

"Where? Let me see. Hold my hand, while I look down, for I don't half like it."

This he did, and shudderingly she peered over. From where they stood the cliff fell for about twenty feet obliquely, but very steep, and grown over with tufts of gra.s.s, to a narrow ledge scarcely two feet wide; below this--s.p.a.ce. But upon this ledge lay the great eagle, with outstretched wings, stone dead, its head hanging over the abyss.

"I can get at it there, fortunately," muttered Roden.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going down to pick up the bird."

"You are not."

He stared.

"But I want it," he urged. "It is too fine a specimen to be left lying there."

"Never mind; you can shoot another. Now, don't go, don't!"

Again he recognised the expression which came into her face, as with startled eyes and voice which shook with the very _abandon_ of her entreaty, she stood there before him. What then? He had seen that look in other faces, but what had come of it!

"I am going down," he repeated.

"You cannot; you shall not. It is too horrible. You will be killed before my eyes. Won't you give it up because _I_ ask you?"

"No."

There were men who would have given a great deal to have heard Mona Ridsdale speak to them in that tone, who would willingly have risked their lives, rather than have refrained from risking them, at her request. This one, however, answered short and straight and with brutal indifference, "No."

They looked at each other for a moment, as though both realised that this was a strange subject for a conflict of will, then she said,

"So you will not give it up?"

"No. It is an easy undertaking, and for me a safe one."

She turned away without another word, and he began his descent.

This, however, was less simple than it looked, as is usually the case, or rather, so appallingly simple that a slight slip, or the loosening of a gra.s.s tussock, would send the average climber whirling into s.p.a.ce.

But Roden Musgrave was an experienced hand on mountains, and thoroughly understood the principle of distributing his weight. In a very short s.p.a.ce of time he was standing on the ledge, and had picked up the dead bird.

"I can't throw it up," he cried, for the benefit of his companion, who, once he had began his descent, had not been able to resist watching its progress, and lying flat on the brink was marking every step. "It's too heavy. I shall have to sling it around me somehow."

"Make haste and come out of that grisly position," was all she replied.

And her definition of it was not an unmerited one. The ledge was hardly wide enough to turn upon, and from beneath they had both seen the great rock wall, in its unbroken smoothness, considerably upwards of a hundred feet in height.

Then with the dead eagle slung around him, he began his return, inch by inch, step by step, holding on by every tuft of gra.s.s or projecting stone, carefully testing each before trusting any portion of his weight to it--she the while watching every step with a fearful fascination.