The Fire Trumpet Part 65

One more strong, loving embrace, and he is gone. He throws himself upon his horse, which Sam has with difficulty been holding, and its impatient hoof-strokes ring through the empty street as he turns for one last look at the graceful figure waving him a farewell from the gate, and for the moment he feels inclined to retrace his steps, go straight back and resign the post which, all unsought, has been thrust upon him, and allow the war to take care of itself as far as he is concerned.

And Lilian, returning to the deserted room, now so desolate and empty to her, as the dawn reduces the light of the candles to a pale garish flicker, feels the tears welling up afresh as she reproaches herself for not having kept him at any cost, for round her heart is a terrible foreboding of evil to come--how, when, and in what form the future will reveal. Yet the feeling is there.

We must follow the wayfarer. Throughout the whole day he rode mechanically forward, absorbed in his own thoughts. A heavy storm drove him for shelter to a wretched roadside inn; but ever impatient to be moving, he left before it was nearly over. The roads wet and slippery with the rain rendered progress slow, so that by the time it grew dark he was still some miles from Hicks' farm, where he intended to pa.s.s the night.

"I'm afraid we've lost the way," he ruminated, as having gone some distance up a long, bush-covered valley, he began to feel rather out of his bearings. "Sam! Where the devil are we?"

"Don't know, Inkos. I never was here before. Look. There's a house!"

"So there is. We'll make for it," and, picking up their horses' heads, they approached the dwelling, which was a sorry-looking affair. Darker and darker it grew, and a drizzling shower began to fall. Suddenly a light gleamed from the ill-closed window, and at the same time a man's voice, raised high in expostulation, reached their ears--a voice not unfamiliar to Claverton, withal, and in its tones he caught his own name. Quickly he dismounted.

"Sam," he whispered. "Take the horses out of sight, there, in the bush--quietly, d'you hear? And if you hear a row, come and look after me without a moment's loss. You'll soon see which way to shoot."

"Yeh bo 'Nkos," replied the ready-witted native, whose eyes sparkled with excitement. Then silently, and with a rapid glide, Claverton made his way round to the back of the house. Through a c.h.i.n.k under the window-joist he could see the interior of a room--a mouldy, disused room, with damp, discoloured walls, and rotting beams festooned with cobwebs; but the place wore a look of familiarity to him, even as a sight or a sound which now and then will strike our imaginations as in no wise to be accounted for save in the previous experience of a dream.

For a moment he was puzzled; then it flashed upon him that he was looking into the room where he and Ethel Brathwaite had taken refuge on the night of the storm. Yes; there was the very place where she had slept and he had covered her with his cloak, and where she had sat when terrified by the wolf; and, straining his gaze further, he almost expected to see that quadruped's footsteps in the dust by the half-open door. A fire burnt in the middle of the room, and there by the side of it lay the very stone he had used for a seat. It all seemed so strange that he seriously began to think he must be dreaming.

But he was wide awake enough as the sound of voices was heard, and two men entered the room from outside, closing the door after them. And in one of them Claverton recognised his recruit of yesterday; the other he had never seen before. He was an Englishman--a tall, dark man, well made and erect of carriage, evidently a gentleman by birth, and yet with a certain sinister expression that would have led the watcher to regard him with distrust even had he not heard his own name brought into the conversation.

"It's all right, Sharkey," this one was saying.

"Your ears must have played you tricks. There's no sign of any one moving."

"No, there ain't. Well, now, Cap'n, about this devil Claverton?"

"Yes, I'll be as good as my word. One hundred pounds, this day six months."

"Make it two, Cap'n; make it two. He's a devil to deal with--a very devil. You don't know him as well as I do."

"No; one. Not another stiver. And now, are you downright sure that Arthur Lidwell and Arthur Claverton are one and the same man? Could you swear to him?"

The mulatto laughed--a hideous, hyaena-like grin--showing the long, sharp, canine teeth which had gained him his repellent sobriquet.

"Swear to him?" he cried. "I'd swear to him in a million! I recognised him directly I set eyes on him in the crowd at 'King.' But the young lady spotted me sharp as a needle, and I had to hide. She does seem awful fond of him. Why, when I--"

"Drop that d.a.m.ned nonsense, Sharkey, and stick to the point?" exclaimed the Englishman, with a deep frown.

"Very sorry, Cap'n. Well, I was going to say, I knew him, and, what's more, he knew me."

"The devil he did!"

"Yes. He recognised me first when I met him on the road on Sat.u.r.day, riding with the young lady; then afterwards I spoke to him, but he was that high and lofty! I told him my name, and watched him closely; then I called him by his name that he carried up there--just let it slip, like--and, would you believe it?--he never winced!"

"Didn't he?"

"No, he didn't. Says he: 'Never saw you before in my life!' as cool as you please. Ah, he's a plucky devil is Lidwell; he always was!" said the mulatto, with a sigh of admiration.

"Why do you owe him a grudge?" asked the other, curiously.

"He knocked me down once, Cap'n--hit me here, bang on the nose." And the speaker's features a.s.sumed a look of deadly malice. "He shot me, too, and left me for dead. I could forgive him that, but not the whack on the nose."

"So help me Heaven, I'll repeat that operation with interest before you're many weeks older, friend Sharkey," muttered the watcher, between his set teeth.

"And then--one hundred pounds," went on the fellow. "Hist! I'm certain I heard something." And both men sat in an att.i.tude of listening. For a moment there was dead silence; then the Englishman rose. "I'll just take a look round, to make sure," he said, producing a revolver and going out into the night, while Claverton, drawing his own weapon, crouched there, covering the angle of the tenement round which he expected his enemy to appear; for that this man was, for some cause or other, his deadly enemy was obvious. He would have the advantage of him, however, for his eyes were accustomed to the darkness, whereas the other had just come out of the light. For a moment he waited--anxious, expectant--but no one appeared; then he heard the two men's voices inside again, and, peering through the crevice, saw the Englishman return, shutting the door behind him.

"All right; there's no one moving. You do hear the most unaccountable noises, though, in this infernal bush at night."

"Ha, ha, ha! So you do, Cap'n; and you'll hear plenty more when you get up there to the front among the Kafirs," said the other, with a mocking laugh. "When do you leave?"

"As soon as I get my command. Now, no tricks, Sharkey. In three months this fellow must have disappeared. No violence, mind; _but he must be induced to leave the country_;" and he emphasised the words with a significant look into the other's face. "Mind, you mustn't hurt him."

"All right, Cap'n. I've joined his levies. What d'you think of that, hey? I'm not a bad shot, you know, and there's no fear of my mistaking a Kafir for any one else, or any one else for a Kafir, eh? Ha, ha, ha!"

and the villain winked his yellow eyes with a murderous leer.

The Englishman's dark features grew red and then white. "By Jove, Sharkey, but you're a knowing one," he said. "I'm deuced glad I ran against you. One hundred pounds, fair and square."

"Bight you are, Cap'n. One hundred pounds, and," sinking his voice to a whisper, every word of which was audible to the listener, "in three months he'll be out of your way, never fear."

The gloom spread around, pitchy black, and the rain pattered upon the bush and upon the crouched form of the man who, with his eye to the c.h.i.n.k in the wall, and gripping his revolver, witnessed these two calmly plotting his death, for there could be no mistaking the drift of their scarcely veiled hints. A wave of fierce wrath surged up in his heart as he gazed upon his would-be murderers. Why should he not quietly walk round and, flinging open the door, shoot the pair dead? It would be but the work of a moment. Then came the cold but none the less dangerous caution which always stood his friend--dangerous to the objects of his resentment in proportion as it preserved to him his own coolness. It would not do. How could he prove to the world at large that he had done it to save his own life? No. He would keep a close eye upon this ruffianly mulatto, and then the first time they were in action he could easily turn the tables on his sneaking a.s.sa.s.sin by shooting him quietly through the head--_in mistake for one of the enemy_--and he laughed sardonically at the thought of hoisting the villain with his own petard.

He had no compunction, no nice scruples of honour in such a matter as this. It was _vae victis_. The other had put the weapon into his hand.

And who was this Englishman who seemed bent on pursuing him in such a deadly manner? Who was this secret foe, so eager and anxious to plant the a.s.sa.s.sin's steel in his back? And as the firelight flickered into the corners of the grim old room, lighting up the faces of these two midnight plotters, Claverton scanned every feature of the reckless lineaments of the arch-schemer again and again, but could detect nothing familiar in them. He had never seen the man before.

Suddenly the latter rose.

"Well, now I shall be off," he said. "I leave it to you, Sharkey.

Here's something to go on with," and there was a c.h.i.n.k as of gold as he pa.s.sed something into the mulatto's hand, who clutched it greedily. "We understand each other. Now, the sooner you join your regiment the better," he added, with a harsh laugh. "Good-bye. Are you going to stay here to-night?"

"Why, yes, Cap'n; it's warm and dry."

"Ha, ha! Supposing Claverton should want to off-saddle here. That would be a joke--eh?"

"He's better employed, that devil," replied the Cuban mulatto, and he chuckled to himself as the other pa.s.sed out, frowning. And the listener heard the sound of footsteps, and then the tread of a horse receding in the distance. The man was evidently riding away up the kloof.

Left to himself Sharkey got up, fastened the cranky door, and threw some more wood on the fire. Then he took out his pipe, filled and lighted it, and drawing his blanket around him, lay down, prepared to make himself thoroughly comfortable. He grunted once or twice as his pipe went out, and then with a muttered imprecation threw it down, and, pulling the blanket over his head, began to snore. A few moments more, and the watcher arose and softly stole away into the bush, for he was revolving a merciless and coldblooded plan.

"Sam!"

"Inkos?"

"Tie the horses up and come with me. You remember the scoundrel we enlisted yesterday?"

"Yeh bo 'Nkos."

"Well, he is in that place, and you and I are going to take him.

Directly I kick down the door, you will follow on my heels and collar him. Now come."

They stole back to the house, and Claverton took the precaution of once more peeping in. The mulatto lay quite still, rolled in his blanket, evidently asleep. Then he returned to the front of the building.

"Now, Sam--ready!" he whispered.