A Veldt Official Part 22

He was settled, anyhow; but what about the rest?

For contrary to expectation the savages had designed to seize this position from both sides at once. While he had been playing such havoc with one division the other had crept up to occupy the ridge on the side he could command least--for it was a little above him--and indeed had occupied it; for he could see a movement or two among the rocks in the rear of the spot where he had dropped the last enemy.

And now he began to realise that he was in a hard, tight place. The newly arrived force of Kaffirs was already beginning to fire down into the hollow beneath. Those whom he had driven back into cover, on learning that they had only one enemy to deal with, would soon find a way of coming up.

And indeed this promised to be the case, for now the savages began to shout and call to each other; and all the while the fire upon those in the hollow beneath grew hotter and hotter. Ammunition was probably not profusely plentiful with those four homeward-bound whites, and might soon be exhausted.

Just then the enemy's fire suddenly ceased. What did it mean? Away down the river bank, Roden from his elevated perch could see the stirring of the bushes; and his quick practised eye, following the movement, could see it was a _retreating_ one. Then against the now declining sun something gleamed and shone forth again in many a sparkle of glittering light. It was the gleam of arms.

Away across the plain, advancing at a hard canter, came a number of mounted figures. A glance was enough. It was a patrol, and a strong one. They were saved.

But only just in the nick of time.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

A DARK MYSTERY OF THE VELDT.

The predominating impulse in the mind of Roden Musgrave when he awoke the next morning in Darrell's tent, in the Main Camp, was to saddle up his horse, and betake himself back to Doppersdorp as quickly as his steed could convey him thither; and as he stepped forth, and his eye wandered over the array of tents, and waggons, and fires, and cooking pots, and accoutrements, and men of all sorts and sizes, Dutch burghers and town volunteers, and Fingo and Hottentot levies, the impulse grew stronger still. Here was a huge ma.s.s of different phases of humanity, hundreds strong, and now that he was here the a.s.sociations of the place failed to interest him, for he was familiar with them all. The sort of adventure which held any fascination for him was of the nature of that which he had gone through the day before; but all this organised crowd under arms was devoid of attraction for him. He had seen it all before.

Darrell, whose tendency never inclined to minimising any exploit in which he had borne a part, had spread the account of the day's scrimmage far and wide; and how Roden had saved the position, and shot down half-a-dozen Kaffirs in less than that number of minutes. This soon grew to a full dozen, and so on, which to Roden himself was mightily distasteful. For, the affair over, and he and his comrades in safety, his wish was, if anything, that he had not shot anybody at all. He would gladly have brought back the slain Kaffirs to life again, if that were possible; but anyhow, he saw nothing to brag about in the fact of having shot them. He was thoroughly sick of all reference to the matter.

Conquering, however, his homing impulses, he suffered Darrell to persuade him into taking part in a two days' patrol, which turned out a deadly monotonous affair; for no sign of an enemy did they see, and a cold, drizzling rain fell the whole time. Mightily glad was he when it was over, and they returned to the Main Camp, and more than ever was he resolved to start back for Doppersdorp on the following morning.

"Where on earth did you pick up your ideas of arranging a fight, Musgrave?" said Darrell, as, having finished their supper of ration beef and Boer brandy, they and two or three others were taking it easy in the tent of the former, their pipes in full blast. "Any fool could see you were no new hand at that sort of thing, by the way in which you grasped the ins and outs of the position the other day."

"Oh, I saw something of the Indian wars out West a few years ago. By the way, Darrell, what was the name of that lunatic we picked up the other day, armed with only a quince switch?"

"Bolton. He's a law-agent, and broker, at Barabastadt. And, confound him, he forgot to give me back the revolver I lent him."

"Serves you right for being such a fool as to lend it him. Now that's a thing I'd never do. I'd see him hanged first. If the fellow had lost his gun by accident, it would be another thing; but to go about without one, out of mere swagger and bounce, and then come down on the first sensible cuss he meets, to rig him out with his! No, no. It's a little too thin."

"That's how fellows come to grief in war-time," struck in another man.

"They get so confoundedly careless, and at last they do it once too often. It always happens. I say, Musgrave, tell us something about that Indian business. Are the redskins as good at a fight as Jack Kaffir?"

"They're just as good at one as any fellow need wish. But now, if you don't mind, I'm most confoundedly sleepy, and would as soon turn in as not." And in a very few minutes, in spite of the talk and discussion going on around him, he was fast asleep.

Roden held to his resolve and, notwithstanding all persuasion to the contrary, he started soon after sunrise. To many a man, not more timid than his kind, that return journey of seventy or eighty miles, the bulk of it over the hostile ground, might well have seemed a formidable undertaking, the more so that it was a solitary journey. This one, however, entered upon it with no great concern. He had brought off riskier things than that, he said in his casual way, in reply to misgivings more than once expressed by Darrell and the rest. As for the solitary side of the matter, he rather preferred it. Fighting was out of the question. It would be a case of leg-bail entirely, and that was a game at which one could play better than two. Again, the presence of one was more likely to pa.s.s unnoticed than that of two.

"You keep your weather eye skinned, Musgrave, and a particularly bright look-out for small gangs," was Darrell's last injunction having ridden a few miles out from camp with him. "Sandili is trying to slip through into the Amatola at one rush, but sending that, he's sending his chaps through in driblets. Shouldn't wonder if you fell in with a patrol or two. But if you're spotted by the n.i.g.g.e.rs, no matter how few, leg it; do you hear? leg it; for you never know how many more are close by."

"Pho! They ain't mounted, and if they were, wouldn't know now to ride.

I've raced a whole day in front of a wild, mad, yelling war-party of Sioux devils; and if your John Kaffir can make things warmer than that, Darrell, he's welcome to try."

"Eh? The deuce you have!" said Darrell in amazement. "Here, I'll come a mile or two farther, and let's have the yarn."

"No, no. I don't feel like yarning--anyway just now. Well, so long.

No fear about me. I'm not going to turn up missing."

The ride, though lonely, was a delightful one. The day was of unclouded loveliness and the air fresh and exhilarating as a cordial. Away on either hand stretched the grand open country, rolling in wide gra.s.sy plains, heaving up into rugged and stony ranges, here and there deepening into a bush-grown river-valley. The life of the wild veldt was never still--the cheery whistle of spreews, glinting from spray to spray in sheeny flashes of light, and the metallic, half-grating note of the yellow thrush; the soft shout of the hoopoe, echoing from the distance, mingling with the softer voices of doves, which were das.h.i.+ng alarmed from the grotesque heads of the plumed euphorbia, disturbed by the horse's tread. Great webs lay spread from bush to bush, each containing several huge spiders, black and h.o.r.n.y; and of these the horseman would now and again receive a shower right in his face--not being always able to guide his horse so as to clear them. But the insects, though hideous, were quite innocuous, and, relis.h.i.+ng the encounter as little as the human party to the same, dropped off immediately upon contact. Buck, too--the wary bushbuck and dainty little duiker--would rustle up with a mighty disturbance, to bound away in the scrub or long gra.s.s, flas.h.i.+ng a white flag of defiance.

"Game lies close--that's a good sign," meditated the horseman. "But it goes like the devil once it is up--that's a bad one. Well, it may be a good one too, meaning only that this section has been well patrolled."

It was tantalising, very, as he watched the animals bound away in gracefully flying leaps, affording the sweetest of shots from the saddle. But he who now rode there dared not pull a trigger, for it might easily cost him his life, and that was a possession he did not want to lose just then.

It was an exciting ride withal--keenly so; for every turn of the way might bring him face to face with an enemy. If he topped a rise of the ground, might he not run right into the teeth of a hostile band on the other side? As he rode along the slope of a bush-clad hill, for he avoided the bottom of defile or ravine, he more than half expected the "whizz" of missiles from the ambushed savage lurking concealed above.

Yes, it was an exciting ride, a perilous ride, yet he travelled at an easy pace, knowing better than to fall into the blunder of pressing his steed in order that it might the more quickly be got over.

At first he enjoyed the exciting possibilities of the journey--the strong dash of peril--as, keenly on the alert, he urged his steed forward. It reminded him of old times. But each and every excitement has its limits, and as the hours went by the tension relaxed, the strain upon his nerves subsided. He began to think upon other matters than potential danger. That last farewell under the stars--the recollection of it coursed sweet and warm through his being; his pulses bounded with the very gladsomeness of living. Soon they would meet again, and--what a meeting!

For this voluntary absence of his had borne its fruit. But a few days; yet it had seemed to need only this to consolidate and weld this strange, bewildering love of his latter-day life. In the rough duties he had voluntarily undertaken during that brief period--the patrolling, the tireless bivouac under the stars; the shots exchanged with the lurking enemy; the jovial, but not very boisterous revelry of camp life--that image was ever-present, sweet, smiling, radiant-eyed; and try as he might, he could not banish it.

Now the shadow of a cloud swept across his path, together with a gleam of blue lightning. Creeping stealthily up, their jagged outlines gradually obliterating the blue arch, leaden cloud-piles were spreading, and puffs of hot wind set the gra.s.ses singing. In sharp, staccato boom, the electric voice spoke overhead, but no rain fell. It was a dry thunderstorm, often the most perilous.

He was riding just beneath the apex of a long, spa.r.s.ely-bushed ridge.

Already, as he began to descend, the lightning was darting down upon the height in vivid streams, which the sharp, startling thunder-crack seemed to accompany rather than to follow.

"This is getting a trifle sultry, and the veldt here is crusted with ironstone," he said to himself. Then turning his horse, he held ever downward. Half-darkened, the scene was now desolate enough--the long slopes of the kloof, and the ridges cut clear against the livid thundercloud. Down in the hollow several "bromvogels," the great black hornbill of South Africa, were strutting amid the gra.s.s, uttering their drumming ba.s.s note. These flapped away heavily on the near approach of the horseman, and rising high overhead, were soon winging their aerial course seemingly to the thundercloud itself.

Suddenly the horse stopped short, and, with ears c.o.c.ked forward, stood snorting, with dilated eyes gazing upon the dark line of bush in front.

Roden's meditations took to themselves wings, and drawing his revolver, as more convenient at close quarters than the rifle, s.h.i.+fted the latter into his bridle hand, and sat for a moment intently listening.

Not a sound.

It was a nerve-trying moment. The savage war-shout, the crash of firearms, the "whiz" of a.s.segais--that was what it would only too likely bring forth. Still silence, save for the ba.s.s grumblings of the thunder.

Then there was a winnowing of wings, and a huge bird arose. Roden knew it for a vulture, of the black and non-gregarious kind. A vulture!

That meant the presence of death.

So far rea.s.sured, for the bird would not have been there had the scrub concealed living men, he cautiously made his way between the bushes to the spot whence he had seen the funereal scavenger arise, and again the horse started and s.h.i.+ed, spinning half round where he stood. One glance, and the secret was out. In the long gra.s.s lay the body of a man--a Kaffir.

It had been that of a savage of splendid proportions--tall, broad, thick-set, and muscular. It lay upon its back, staring upward with lacerated eyeless sockets, their contents torn out by the black vulture.

Otherwise it was untouched.

Stay--not quite. From a great jagged hole in the chest a very lake of blood had welled, staining the long gra.s.s. It was a bullet hole; the sort of gap made by a heavy Snider missile. The man had been shot. But how? when?

The body was quite naked, and whatever it might have owned in life, in the shape of weapons or other requisites, had disappeared. From its aspect, not many days could have elapsed since death. It was a ghastly find, this black, rigid corpse, with its eyeless sockets and teeth bared and set; a ghastly find in the subdued gloom of the shadowing thundercloud, with the blue lightning playing down upon the lonely veldt. But there was worse to follow.

For, exploring farther, Roden came with equal suddenness upon several corpses, half a dozen at least. All were contorted as in the agonies of a violent death, and all were riddled more or less with bullet wounds.

What was the secret of this conflict here, he wondered? Who had been engaged in it? Whose the victory? Would he next come upon the bodies of those of his own colour? Looking up suddenly his eyes fell upon a most melancholy object. It was the charred remnant of a burned house.

Now the mystery stood explained. Those whose remains he had found had been shot down by the inmates; slain in self-defence. But, those inmates! Clearly the savages had been victorious; and--what of the inmates?

The walls stood, the dirty whitewash showing livid in contrast to the black, charring action of the names. The roof had fallen in, and the empty apertures, where the windows had been, gaped wide like the staring, sightless sockets of the corpse. The house had been of no great dimensions, and was clearly the dwelling of some small farmer. A low, crumbling sod wall shut in a sorry-looking "land," containing now only a few trampled cornstalks; and hard by were the broken-down fences of a sheep kraal.

Strong-nerved as he was, Roden Musgrave could not repress a quickening of the pulses, a shrinking of the heart, as he drew near to explore the interior of the ruin. What further dread secret was he about to light upon? The mangled corpses of the white inmates, entombed beneath their own roof-tree, a prey to the devouring a.s.segai of the savage? He expected nothing less.