Chapter Five.
Hazel.
“A niece of mine’s coming up to-morrow to stay a bit,” announced old Hesketh, a few days later.
“Oh, but—I say, won’t we rather be making a crowd?” protested Dick. “Had no end of a jolly time, you know, Mr Hesketh; but—er—wouldn’t put you out for the world.”
“Don’t you bother your head about that, young buffalo hunter,” answered the old man. “You’re not crowding me any. I’ll tell you when you are. So you’ve had a good time, eh?”
“Splendid,” said Dick, heartily. “The shoot just is good, and as for this air, why, I never felt so fit in my life.”
Old Hesketh nodded, and surveyed the speaker approvingly. The latter certainly looked as he had declared he felt—fit. His face, tanned a fine brown, was the picture of health. Out all day and every day, often having to work hard for his sport, whether for hours among the cliffs and crags stalking klip-springers or reebok, or toiling up to some high ridge on the chance of getting a shot or two into the herd of baboons which usually frequented the other side, or one or other of the varied forms of sport the place afforded, Dick Selmes had attained the pink of hard condition.
“Well, then, don’t be in a hurry to run away,” rejoined old Hesketh. “Though I dare say it’s slow enough of evenings with a couple of old fellows like me and Greenoak.”
“Thanks,” remarked the latter drily, and Dick spluttered.
“Some one young about the place’ll make things more lively, anyhow,” went on the old man. “And there’s room and to spare, and a welcome for all.”
Needless to say, Dick Selmes devoted a good deal of the intervening time to speculation on the subject of the expected arrival. Even as his host had said, “some one young” would be an acquisition, and then he wondered how old Hesketh, who seemed about a hundred, could own a niece to whom that definition applied. A grand-niece perhaps he had meant. Then, too, would she prove an acquisition? And a vision rose up within his mind of some awkward, half-educated girl brought up on just such a place as this, unused to the refinements of life, proportionately without ideas, and possibly given to affectation. Nor was Greenoak in a position to enlighten him upon the point, knowing nothing of old Hesketh’s relations.
The next morning Dick Selmes was up before sunrise, and, taking his gun, went off on foot to a hoek where he knew he should find a troop of wild guinea-fowl. He was successful, too, and as the splendid game birds dropped, one after another—for he had managed to break up the troop, and they were thus lying well—the keen and unmitigated enjoyment of the sport for the next half-hour was such as to leave no room for any outside thought or speculation. Picking up the seven of them he could find—two were runners, and of course without a dog were hopelessly lost—he started back homeward.
Now, seven full-grown guinea-fowl slung round one constitute no light load over three miles of rough and stony ground, and by the time Dick Selmes reached the house he had had more than enough of such exercise. When he did so reach it he became alive to the fact that a Cape cart, outspanned, with its harness hung over the splashboard, stood before the door. Now his curiosity would be satisfied.
Flinging down the birds, he entered the living-room. It was occupied by one person, a female, and she vigorously dusting.
She turned as he entered. Heavens! What was this? Red hair, a broad face thickly sown with large freckles, a wide mouth, and forty if a day! So this was old Hesketh’s niece. “Some one young” had been his definition of her, and it was she who was to make things lively by reason of the said juvenility!
“As ugly as sin,” was his mental verdict. But aloud, politely, “Good morning. I must introduce myself. My name is Selmes; but—I don’t think your uncle was expecting you quite so early.”
The other stared.
“Ma what? Eh, but the laddie’s clean daft—or is it only haverin’ he is? Not but it’s a braw bit laddie too”—with an approving glance at Dick’s handsome face and tall proportions.
“Oh, Lord!” thought the latter, with a mental shudder. So this was the housemate who was to make them all young again with her youth and liveliness. Decidedly he must get Greenoak to invent some pretext for changing their quarters. Then the comic side struck him. Compared with himself, no doubt old Hesketh regarded this weird person, who talked broad Scotch, as “young.”
“You are very energetic,” he said pleasantly, for she had resumed her dusting. “Not at all tired after your trek, eh?”
“A’m never that,” was the decisive reply.
“Well, your uncle will appreciate your energy at any rate. We men, left to ourselves, are sure to let things of that sort slide,”—referring to her undertaking.
“Ma—what?”
“Your uncle, Mr Hesketh.”
“The laddie is daft,” she answered with decision. “Mon—but A have nae ony uncle.”
Dick stared, and was destined to stare more in about a second. A faint rustle behind him, combined with what sounded suspiciously like a suppressed gurgle, caused him to wheel sharply round.
Framed in the doorway stood a girl—an exceedingly pretty girl. She had a sweet oval face, dark hair, and well-marked brows, and lustrous eyes to match. These now seemed sparkling and dancing with merriment.
“I am Mr Hesketh’s niece,” began this wholly unexpected vision of beauty. “I suppose we are here earlier than we were expected,” and there was a suspicious unsteadiness in the tones, as if the speaker were gulping down an irresistible peal of laughter.
“Eh, but A do believe he’s been takkin’ me for yeerself, Miss Hazel,” spoke the red-haired woman; and poor Dick, now dead certain that the new-comer had overheard the foregoing dialogue, looked and felt about as big an ass as he had ever looked and felt in his life.
“It’s my old nurse, Elsie McGunn,” explained the girl. “We’ve been travelling ever so many hours, and now she’ll be taking the cart home again after breakfast, and even then can’t sit still and rest.”
“Indeed, I was just admiring such a display of energy,” said Dick, pleasantly.
“Deed, laddie, and ye were just admiring nothing at a’ aboot me,” retorted the plain-spoken Scotswoman, but quite good-naturedly.
The answer made opportunity for the girl to express her stifled feelings, and under cover of it she went off into the hearty merry peal of laughter whose main cause was the dialogue she had overheard between Dick Selmes and her unattractive retainer.
“You have been here before, I suppose, Miss Hesketh?” began Dick.
The other stared.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “But my name isn’t Hesketh—it’s Brandon. Mr Hesketh is my uncle on my mother’s side.”
“Of course. But, as you most likely know, your uncle is a man of few words, and, beyond mentioning the fact that you were coming, gave us no further information. He didn’t even tell us your name. Naturally I didn’t like to appear inquisitive.”
“Naturally,” assented the other; and again the laugh struggled in her eyes, evoked by the recollection of the comical situation for which that lack of inquisitiveness was responsible. “But now—as you have the advantage of me—I have told you who I am, suppose you tell me who you are.”
There was a sweet, sunny frankness about this girl, an utter absence of self-consciousness that made Dick stare. Did they grow many like her in this strange, fascinating country, he wondered? As he told her his identity a new interest came into her eyes, but wholly unsuspected by himself.
“Ay, and is yon Dick Selmes?”
The interruption proceeded from the wielder of the duster, in the further corner of the room.
“Elsie!” cried the girl, half horrified, half mirthful. “You are forgetting yourself. You needn’t be quite so familiar, at any rate.”
“Eh! An’ would we be makkin’ a stranger of the laddie?” tranquilly replied the irrepressible Scotswoman.
Dick burst into a hearty roar.
“Quite right, Elsie,” he cried. “I believe we’re going to be jolly good friends, you and I.”
This was a character, he decided—a howling joke. He was almost sorry she was going back again directly, whereas when he had first heard the announcement he had been anything but sorry. Then the sound of voices outside told that the master of the place and the other guest had returned.
Old Hesketh greeted his niece affectionately, but undemonstratively, as was his way.
“This is Harley Greenoak,” he said. “You may have heard of him.”
The girl’s face lit up with interest.
“I should think so,” she said, as she put forth her hand. “Who hasn’t?”
“Oh, about nine hundred million people, I suppose,” tranquilly answered the subject of this implied exordium. “I don’t expect that leaves many more in the world.”
“Well, there’s no one in South Africa who hasn’t, at any rate,” rejoined the girl. And Dick Selmes, confound it, was half ashamed of a sneaking satisfaction that Harley Greenoak’s beard was rapidly turning grey.
“That you, Elsie?” said old Hesketh, shaking hands with the privileged retainer. “Well, and you haven’t managed to pick up a husband yet? Ho, ho!”
“Yan’s the wurrd, Mr Hesketh. They’re to be had for the pickin’ up. But it’ll end in ma havin’ to come and tak’ care o’ yeerself, A’m thinkin’. Yan dust,” designating her recent work, “must have been lyin’ aroound for a yeer at least.”
This retort, naïvely ambiguous, given with perfect equability, raised a laugh among its hearers, who chose to read but one of its two potential meanings.
“Now, Uncle Eph,” said the girl, decisively. “We are going to get the breakfast ready, and it’s nearly ready now—and we’ve got a little surprise for you. I should prefer you all to go outside and amuse yourselves for the next quarter of an hour; in fact, till I call you in.”
This was a command there was no gainsaying. Old Ephraim gave a dry chuckle, reached for his pipe, and obeyed without a word. Harley Greenoak likewise. But Dick Selmes said—
“Do let me stay and help you, Miss Brandon. Why, it’ll be like a jolly picnic.”
She hesitated a moment.
“No,” she said. “We don’t want any men.” Then he followed the others.
When they returned they found she had been as good as her word. This was a surprise indeed. Dick Selmes, the only one given to expressing that emotion outwardly, was metaphorically rubbing his eyes. Where, for instance, was the soiled, coarse-textured old cloth, covering one end of the bare table—where the camp-kettle, handed from one to the other from its usual resting-place on the floor, as more coffee was needed? Where the weather-beaten enamel ware, the tin pannikins holding the milk and sugar, the cloudy spoons? Where, too, the dark-brown bread, and the mess badly and indifferently cooked in a frying-pan? Gone—wholly gone. Instead, a snowy cloth, bright, hissing urn, patterned china, roester-koekjes steaming white within. Chops, too, hot from the gridiron, juicy and crisp, and a great honeycomb reposing in a sparkling cut-glass dish. The metamorphosis was complete indeed.
“We’ll come to believe in fairy tales again soon,” said old Hesketh as he gazed upon this. “You haven’t let the grass grow under your feet—eh, Hazel?”
“No, Uncle Eph. I’m going to civilise you a bit, now that I’m here. You men get into shockingly careless ways. What’s the good of having all these nice tablecloths and tea sets if you don’t use them? So the first thing we did was to dig them out of the boxes where they were stowed away. Then we disestablished the old Hottentot cook—‘cook’ indeed!—and behold the result!”
“It’s great—great!” cried Dick Selmes with enthusiasm. Then, becoming guiltily aware that he might be seeming to disparage his host’s normal arrangements, he added lamely, “Er—of course, we do get—er—as you say, Miss Brandon, with nobody to take care of us. And—you’ve done it, and no mistake.”
Then old Hesketh put a few of his terse, laconic questions as to the welfare of those she had left at home, and characteristically dismissed the subject from his mind. Harley Greenoak, normally taciturn, said little; but Dick Selmes was a host in himself, and soon the conversation became a dialogue between these two young people. They were chattering away as if they had known each other all their lives.
Soon after breakfast the Cape cart was inspanned.
“I’m hopin’, sir,” said Elsie McGunn, just before she climbed to her seat, “that ye’ll nae be takkin’ it ill onything A may have said.”
“Not a bit of it, Elsie,” cried Dick, shaking her heartily by the hand. “Not a bit of it. Why, you’ve given us a thundering big laugh or two. What better could one say? Good-bye.”
“Ay, but yander’s a braw laddie,” whispered the Scotswoman to her charge, as they bade each other good-bye. “A braw laddie, and a guid one. Mind your hairt, lassie; mind your hairt.” And flicking her whip, she sent the cart jolting off down the winding stony road.
Chapter Six.
Harley Greenoak has Misgivings.
The coming of Hazel Brandon effected something like a revolution at Haakdoornfontein, for she was as good as her word, and at once set to work to reform the interior of that easy-going, happy-go-lucky establishment out of all recognition. The table department she kept going on the same lines as the initiation we saw her make, and the same extended to the rooms. No more dust, no more makeshifts. From all sorts of unsuspected places she fished out hidden things. Dick Selmes, for instance, coming in after a long day’s hunt, stared to find what magic had been wrought in his room. Snowy sheets and pillow-cases on the bed, things his host despised as feminine superfluities, equally snowy towels instead of the one cloudy one he had been forced to make shift with; the rickety three-legged washstand with its rusty tin basin had given way to a neat chintz-covered packing-case and patterned crockery—and the empty-bottle candlestick had been disestablished in favour of a brass one. On the same lines had the quarters of the other two been reorganised, except that old Hesketh drew the line at sheets. Blankets were good enough for any man, he declared, and flatly refused to court rheumatism at his time of life by sleeping between cold, glazy stuff like that.
Our friend Dick now began to overhaul his kit, and was conscious of searchings of heart as he realised that it was so limited. He had brought little more than absolute necessaries in the way of clothing. Greenoak had warned him that he would have to do without luxuries at Haakdoornfontein, and, by Jingo, Greenoak had been right up till now; but Greenoak, of course, had not been able to foretell the sudden irruption of a bright, refined, and exceedingly pretty girl upon their rough and ready mode of living.
And Hazel Brandon was all that. Such sunshine did her presence and merry spirits and winning ways create in this sober male household, that the two older members of the same felt almost uneasy, so incongruous did it seem to the quiet and somewhat sombre life of the place. The younger—well, he was in something of a whirl. One thing about the girl puzzled him, and that was how she could be so nearly related to his host. The latter he was very taken with. He was a dear old chap, as he was wont to say; but with all his sterling qualities, old Hesketh was certainly not quite his equal from a social standpoint. Yet this girl looked absolutely thoroughbred; was, too, in all her ways and ideas. She must have got it on her father’s side, conjectured Dick, perhaps correctly.
There was one thing about her that appealed to him if only that he believed he had encountered it in her for the first time. She was so absolutely natural and devoid of self-consciousness. True he had seen the counterfeit of this in other girls of his acquaintance, but it had not seemed to ring true. He had felt sure—again perhaps correctly—that they were doing it for effect; “crowding it on,” as he more tersely put it. But here he detected no trace of any such thing.
“Do you think I am such a feeble tottering creature, Mr Selmes, that I can’t even turn a door handle for myself?” she said one day, when he had bounded across the room—upsetting one chair and barking his shin against another in his anxiety to perform that onerous undertaking for her.
The words were said with a bright smile. Dick mumbled something.
“Well, I can, then. I’m not one of your helpless English girls who can’t even stick a stamp on a letter for themselves.”
“Oh, you’ve been in England, then?”
“Haven’t I! For three years. Not long, but still I went about a good deal.”
“Where?” he asked eagerly.
She named several places; one at which he himself had stayed on the occasion of a shooting party. Here was an additional link in common.
“Has our young buffalo hunter shot all the game on the farm, Greenoak?” said old Hesketh, one day as the two sat smoking on the stoep.
“Why?”
“Because he don’t seem over keen on going after it these days. His gun’ll get rusty if he don’t mind,” chuckled the old man, reaching a handful of tobacco out of his pocket and cramming his pipe.
“The young folks seem to have cottoned to each other,” he went on, between puns. The other had no need to follow the glance—for “the young folks” aforesaid had been visible to him for some time away down the kloof, and the sight, even before his companion’s remark, had set Harley Greenoak thinking.
So far his charge had given him no trouble. Twice he had got him out of a situation which would certainly have cost him his life; in other words, had saved his life twice. That, however, was all in the bond. He thought nothing of that. But here loomed a complication which neither himself nor Sir Anson had foreseen. Both had only taken into consideration mere difficulties or dangers of field and flood; but here was a new side to his responsibility. With his keen insight into character he had sized up old Hesketh’s niece on very short acquaintance; and his private opinion was that whoever succeeded in winning the affections of this girl—whether Dick Selmes, or anybody else—would be a very lucky fellow. But would Sir Anson be likely to share this opinion? That was the question, and in all probability one to be answered with a negative. He might have other views for his son, or he might object to the latter contracting any tie for the present—or all sorts of reasons. Harley Greenoak realised that he had some cause for anxiety.
If anything should come of this matter, and Sir Anson considered that he had failed in his responsibility, he would unhesitatingly forego any remuneration; but his anxiety rested on higher grounds than pecuniary loss. He had a great liking for his charge, and for his charge’s father, and, worse still perhaps, his reliability would stand impugned. Now, it was precisely for reliability that Harley Greenoak enjoyed a reputation little short of infallible, and of this he himself was aware, and, though secretly, was intensely proud.
He wondered if Hesketh—sly old fox—had brought about the situation with deliberate design, in order to do a good turn to his kinsfolk. It might well have been—and one could hardly blame him if it were so. Instinctively Greenoak realised that it would be useless for him to interfere at this stage. He had tried it at an earlier one, though “interfere” is too strong a word for the easy, natural, tactful way in which he had suggested they should move somewhere else. His charge, equally and naturally, but quite good-humouredly, had scouted the idea. Hesketh would be hurt, he had declared. He was no end of a jolly old chap, and he, Dick, wouldn’t offend him for the world. And then Haakdoornfontein was no end of a jolly place, with a different shoot, by Jingo, for every day in the year. And Greenoak had laughed drily, as he reflected that his charge’s enthusiasm for that form of sport had flagged perceptibly of late. But like a wise man and a tactful one he had known better than to push the suggestion further. Things must just take their course, he decided. A matter of this kind was a delicate one, and one in which the man most concerned must judge for himself. At any rate, it was clean outside his own province.
“These young ’uns, you know, will have their heads,” now went on old Hesketh, puffing out smoke. “I suppose we took our doses of foolishness, Greenoak, when we were at their time. Though, I dunno about me. It was just ‘yes or no’ with the old woman, ‘take it or leave it.’ She took it, and managed the place. I don’t know, either, that things haven’t been quieter—well, since I’ve managed it myself,” he added drily.
There lay the summing up of a lifetime; a hard, lonely, matter-of-fact, out-of-the-world lifetime. Greenoak nodded. He was not going to make any comment on the situation. He was not going to ruffle his old friend’s susceptibilities by any suggestion that Dick’s father might object, more or less strongly, to the said situation and its logical outcome. Old Hesketh’s social creed was simplicity itself: “Black’s black and white’s white, and one white man’s as good as another, and no better.” This Greenoak knew.
Again he wondered whether Hesketh had brought about the situation with a purpose. Hesketh was a mine of natural shrewdness, and here was scope for it. Dick Selmes had spent some three weeks on this wild and remote place, roughing it as he had probably never dreamed of roughing it, his sole companions one old and one elderly man—Greenoak was modest, you see. Then, enter a bright, pretty, taking girl, who makes the rough places, as by magic, smooth, imports the refinement to which his charge has been accustomed, with one sweep of the wand, and whose personality is in itself a supplement to the sunshine. No contrast could be more strongly marked. Assuredly if Hesketh had of his own intuition brought off such a dramatic stroke, why, Hesketh was more of a genius than the acquaintance of that rugged old recluse would have given him credit for being. But this reflection did not tend to lighten Harley Greenoak’s private disquietude.
Chapter Seven.
Good News.
“When are you going to shoot another back for us, Mr Selmes?” Hazel Brandon was saying. “As officer in charge of the Commissariat Department, it’s my duty to tell you that if you don’t we shall have to begin on mutton, and it’s your especial mission to keep us in game. So—when are you?”
“When you come and help me do it.”
“Help you? Yes—like the other evening when we went to voor-ly for a bush-buck over Slaang Draai, and you talked so much that although we sat there till it was dark none came out. Now what sort of ‘help’ is that?”
He looked down into the bright, teasing face, and thought he had seldom—or was it ever?—looked upon any sight which delighted him more.
“Well, you helped me to talk anyhow,” he said. “Now didn’t you?”
One form of sport was to gain a point overlooking this or that bushy kloof about an hour before sundown and sit still, waiting till the bush-bucks began to move. Thus a shot was to be obtained when one showed upon an open space. Dick Selmes, who had become a very fair rifle shot, had bagged several this way. The occasion to which the girl had referred was one on which he had persuaded her to accompany him—with the remit described.
“Never mind,” he went on, without waiting for her answer. “It was no end jolly all the same. Wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I seem to remember it became no end cold,” she laughed. “But you’re trying to get away from the point. You must go and shoot a buck for me this afternoon. Why, you hardly ever hunt now. You’re getting quite lazy.”
It was a coincidence that her uncle should be making substantially the same remark about a quarter of a mile away.
“Lazy! I like that. How about all those jolly rides we’ve been having? Lazy!”
“Well, I didn’t mean it in its strictly literal sense,” she answered. “Yes, I have enjoyed those rides.”
Hazel had been about a fortnight at Haakdoornfontein, and during that time she and Dick Selmes had become very friendly indeed. It was the old story—youth, mutual attraction and propinquity, and but for the fact that she was the stronger minded of the two, and adhered to a rigid resolution not to neglect her self-imposed household duties, it is probable that their elders would have seen very little of her or of either of them.
“You know, it was quite a surprise to me to find you and Mr Greenoak here,” she went on. “You know Uncle Eph by this time. Well, he never writes a word that he isn’t obliged to; so when mother sent a boy with a note to say I was coming, he just returned for answer ‘Glad to see her.’ That and no more.”
“By Jove!” cried Dick. “And you didn’t know we were here.”
“Not an atom. I expected to find him alone, as usual. He never has people here.”
“We ought to be flattered then. Greenoak thinks your uncle got him here on purpose to try and clear up that Slaang Kloof mystery. But that’s ancient history now, and he doesn’t seem to want us to go. He objected, quite strongly for him, when I suggested moving on.”
“Did he? He has taken quite a fancy to you. I never knew him so gracious to any man under about fifty before. He’s usually grim.”
“I think him a dear old chap,” said Dick, decisively. “Such a character too. Well, I’m jolly glad he didn’t take me at my word,” with a meaning look at the sweet sparkling face beside him; which look the owner of the said face chose utterly to ignore. But from the foregoing dialogue it is obvious that Harley Greenoak’s suspicions as to his host’s complicity in any possible complications with regard to his charge were without foundation in fact.
“I shouldn’t be surprised if Mr Greenoak was right, and that Uncle Eph did get him up here to clear up the mystery,” said Hazel. “Though none of you—not even you—will ever tell me what that mystery is,” she added reproachfully. “Well, never mind. I’m not going to press you to. I believe I’ll ask Kleinbooi though.”
Whereby it will be seen that Harley Greenoak’s advice to the other two concerned, to keep silence as to the nature of the Slaang Kloof mystery, had been rigidly adhered to.
Dick laughed. “You might as well ask that tree.”
“Does he know?”
“I don’t suppose he knows, but if he guesses he’d sooner hang himself than let on a word.”
“Do you know, Mr Greenoak has a reputation for clearing up mysteries. There was that haunted farm on the Sneeuw River in our neighbourhood. No one could stay there; all sorts of weird things happened. The new owner—who bought it for a song, on the strength of its dark reputation—got Mr Greenoak to investigate the affair, and he cleared it up to the satisfaction of all concerned; and the new people never had any more bother or disturbance. They’ve lived there ever since. But Mr Greenoak never let go a word as to what the mystery was or how he had put an end to it; no, not even to the owner himself.”
“Well, I shan’t ask him,” said Dick Selmes, very interested, “for it’s a dead cert that if he never told anybody else he won’t tell me.”
“There are other stories about him, too. Once he was instrumental in saving two Kafirs from being hanged—only just in the nick of time—for the murder of a Dutchman’s wife, by finding out that it had been done by the Dutchman himself.”
“Was the Dutchman hanged?”
“He would have been, only he got away to the Transvaal in time. He was safe there, of course.”
“Well, I hope if Greenoak gets on to any more enterprises of the kind he’ll cut me into them with him—that’s all,” said Dick. “Hallo! Here’s Kleinbooi.”
“Baas,” said the Fingo, saluting, “I got very good bit news. There’s a big tiger fast in the trap, up there, in Slaang Kloof. I go tell Ou’ Baas. He come quick shoot it.”
“Oh, good—and good again!” cried Dick. “We’ll go up there sharp.”
“Oh, never mind me. Only, I don’t feel inclined to run,” said Hazel, mischievously; for her companion in his excitement had started off with quick eager strides.
“So sorry,” answered Dick, contritely, at once falling back.
“Never mind,” said the girl, “go on ahead and tell them. Things in traps break loose sometimes if left too long. So the sooner we get there the better.”
“We? Are you going with us, then?” eagerly.
“Certainly. So tell them to saddle up a horse for me too. Now go on, and don’t lose any time, or the tiger may break loose before we get there and get clean away.”
Presumably everybody knows that there is no such thing as a tiger on the whole African continent—north, south, east, or west. What everybody, however, may not know is that in the southern section of the same, “tiger” is the colloquial word used to designate leopard, and that invariably; hence, of course, the trapped beast in this case represented not “Stripes” but “Spots.”
“Well, well,” said old Hesketh, when he was told, “that’s good news certainly. How was he caught, Kleinbooi?”
“By one fore leg, Baas. He seems fast, but it might be as well to go and shoot him, now at once.”
“Ja, that’s so. Tell Dirk to saddle up three horses—it don’t matter which—what’s that? Four?” turning to his niece, who had just joined them. “Four, did you say, girlie?”
“Certainly,” said Hazel. “I’m going too. I don’t why I should be left out of the fun.”
The old man chuckled.
“All right,” he said. Then ironically, “How long’ll you take getting ready? Half an hour?”
“Half a minute,” she answered, withdrawing to change into a habit skirt, and reappearing in not more than double the time named. Then they started. “Get back, you schelms, get back!” vociferated old Hesketh, whipping back the dogs, who, scenting sport, had sprung up, whining and yowling with delight. “We don’t want you to-day. They’d spoil the skin, you know, if they started to worry it,” he added in explanation to Dick. “Besides, some of ’em are bound to get badly chawed. A trapped tiger’s no joke to anything that gets within reach of the brute. Clear them out, Kleinbooi.”
This the Fingo did with the aid of sticks and stones, and much forcible expostulation, and the disappointed pack slunk back, to console itself by getting up a civil war on its own account.
“Don’t fire at anything on the way, Dick,” enjoined Greenoak, as they started. “No matter what gets up, let it go. Our catch might quite possibly pull himself loose if he got a sudden schrek.”
Dick nodded, and went on with his conversation with Hazel, by whose side it is hardly necessary to explain he was riding. Old Hesketh was shambling along on a correspondingly veteran steed, but he had no firearm. It didn’t require three men to shoot one trapped tiger, he had declared, and he wasn’t going to be bothered carrying unnecessary articles. Greenoak on this occasion had his .500 Express, and Dick Selmes his combination rifle and smooth-bore.
“I only wish the beast was loose,” said the latter to his companion. “There’d be rare fun in hunting him then.”
“You may still have your wish, Dick,” said Greenoak over his shoulder.
“I hope not,” said Hazel, quickly. “And yet—I oughtn’t to mind with two such dead shots beside me. Yes—I think it would be rather exciting.”
Secretly the girl was not quite at ease. They were in Slaang Kloof now. Riding beneath the cool shade of the trees, the dim sunlight falling in network patches where it struggled through the “monkey-ropes” trailing from bough to ground, there was a sense of dim mystery seeming to grow out of the place. So strongly did it affect her, that although not in the least given to hysteria, Hazel Brandon realised that were she alone here now, she would be conscious of a deadly fear. As it was, what if the trapped beast had broken loose, and in its mad rage were to pounce upon them suddenly? No, the thought was not a reassuring one.
Chapter Eight.
The Trapped Leopard.
Soon the forest began to lighten and the tall yellow-wood trees to give way to high scrub with open patches here and there. Here the Fingo, Kleinbooi, who had been striding on in front, his kerrie over his shoulder, now signed them to dismount. This they did, and the horses were made fast to convenient boughs.
Guided by Kleinbooi they walked cautiously forward, the three men in front, the girl just behind; Dick Selmes and Greenoak with their pieces in readiness. Then a vicious snarl, and the clank of iron told them that the object of their quest was reached, and that at any rate it had not yet succeeded in breaking loose.
A small runlet here trickled down the kloof in a chain of water-holes. Beside one of these, in a stony open space, stood a magnificent leopard. The great iron gin trap had caught the poor beast just above one front pad, and the powerful grip held him firmly.
At sight of his intending destroyers the creature sank down into a crouching attitude, uttering a hideous yell that was half a snarl, evoked by the renewed agony of the movement. His unwounded forepaw was over the trap, his hindquarters gathered beneath him as though for a spring, and his long tail waved viciously to and fro. A deep, hoarse, snarling growl issued from his throat, and in his yellow eyes was a perfectly fiend-like glare of helpless ferocity. His jaws were dropping great flakes of foam reddened with blood, for he had been plentifully licking his wounded limb.
“Oh, do shoot, and have done with it,” whispered Hazel, shuddering violently.
“Hold on, Greenoak. Don’t blaze yet,” said Dick Selmes, who had not heard. “I want to have a closer look.”
“Better not,” warned Harley Greenoak, who had already got his quarry covered. “He might break loose, or the chain might give,”—the trap was chained to a tree.
But the other laughed recklessly, and continued to advance—we dare not swear that the consciousness of having a certain form of gallery to play to did not add to his rashness. He halted within very few yards of the maddened beast.
The latter was now frightful to behold. He seemed to flatten himself lower in his crouch. The great speckled head literally opened, until, viewed in section, it resembled a crescent. The lips were drawn back from the formidable fangs till the contracted folds of the skin well-nigh closed the glaring eyes, and the infuriated snarl had become something terrific.
Suddenly every muscle in the beast’s body was seen to stiffen. With an appalling yell it flung itself forward. Dick Selmes was hurled to the ground, half stunned; his confused senses feebly conscious of the crash of a report, leading him to suppose he had been shot by accident.
“Well of all the complete young idiots I ever saw, you are the champion one,” cried old Hesketh, with excusable heat, having ascertained that his guest was uninjured. The latter laughed, rather feebly, for he felt sore all over.
“What’s the row, eh? Greenoak, I thought you’d shot me.”
“The row? Look there,” was the answer grimly given.
Dick screwed himself round. There lay the iron trap—empty, and further on, the spotted corpse of the great leopard. He himself was between the two.
“Lucky Greenoak’s got the eye of a hawk, and the quickness of a flash of lightning,” said his host, grimly. “I know I could never have got in that shot in time. How would you be feeling now if the brute’s spring hadn’t been cut short? He was stone dead in the middle of it when he knocked you over.”
“Did he knock me over then?” said Dick, rising to his feet.
“Rather,” answered Greenoak. “Even then the muscular contraction of his claws might have given you fits; but he made a bad shot—only hit you with his shoulder and knocked you flying.”
They gathered round the splendid beast, grim and terrible still in death. The heavy Express bullet had gone clean through the heart.
“By George, but I’ve had a narrow squeak for it!” ejaculated Dick. Then his glance fell upon Hazel Brandon, who was standing a little in the background, white and shuddering, and his heart smote him with self-wrath and contempt. He had thought to show off, and had only succeeded in frightening her, and making a most egregious ass of himself.
“Oh, Miss Brandon, I’m so sorry I’ve given you a scare!” he exclaimed penitently. “But it’s all right now. Come and look at the tiger—such a splendid beast.”
“Well, you did give me rather a fright,” she said, with a faint smile, while the colour returned to her cheeks. “But—what a splendid shot!”
“Wasn’t it!” answered Dick, whole-heartedly, at the same time not quite able to help wishing that the positions had been exactly reversed. He was conscious, too, that this was the third time Harley Greenoak had stepped between himself and sure and certain death. The latter was thinking the same thing, and was more than ever convinced that Sir Anson had spoken the bare truth in saying that he would find his charge no sinecure. The while he had drawn his sheath knife and was tucking up his shirt-sleeves.
“We’ll just strip off this uncommonly fine skin, Kleinbooi and I,” he announced imperturbably. “But as it isn’t a pleasant process to watch, I’d suggest that Miss Brandon should wait for us where we left the horses.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Dick, briskly. “Come along, Miss Brandon. We’ll wait there.”
Having thrown off her temporary scare, Hazel turned to her uncle and rated him soundly for having the trap set at all It was abominably cruel, she declared, unsportsmanlike too. The old man chuckled.
“Ho—ho! Not bad that, for a girl who’s been raised on a farm,” he said. “Don’t they ever set traps down at Windhoek then, or has your father got too many sheep and calves? I can tell you this beast has been taking toll of mine finely.”
“Well, why don’t you hunt him then, in fair and sportsmanlike fashion,” retorted the girl, “instead of setting an abominably cruel thing like that?”
“Hunt him? Ho—ho! Look there.”
He pointed to the upper end of the hollow, which was shut in by a wall of terraced rock and cliff. But many a dark hole and crack on the face of this showed that the towering rampart was honeycombed by caves and labyrinthine galleries.
“How are you going to get him out of these?” went on old Hesketh. “Why, all the dogs in the world wouldn’t get him out. He’d only have to skip from one hole to another. Eh, Greenoak?” The latter nodded.
“Well, it’s abominably cruel all the same,” repeated Hazel as she turned away. “Aren’t I right, Mr Selmes?”
“A trap that doesn’t kill outright always is cruel,” answered the diplomatic Dick, whose last wish in the world was to disagree with her. “I know I’ve often thought it hard luck on the rabbits at home when they got into one—poor little beggars.”
“Do you know,” she went on, jumping from one subject to another, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to have had the opportunity of meeting Mr Greenoak. What a splendid man he is! Isn’t he?”
“Rather. He’s a thundering good old chap.”
Hazel lifted an eyebrow.
“Old! But you surely don’t call him old. Why, he’s just in his prime. Oh, I see, you mean it as a term of comradeship,” she added.
“Er—yes. That was it,” agreed Dick, upon whose mind a very unwelcome qualm was beginning to force itself.
“So strong and cool and clearheaded,” she went on, “and such nerve. Why, he’s everything a man should be. Don’t you agree with me?”
“Most decidedly.”
“Ah, I like to hear a man speak well of another.”
“Why? Isn’t it usual?” said Dick.
“No. At least not within my experience. Almost invariably if I boom one man to another that other will either agree half-heartedly, or find something disparaging to say.”
“Well, even if I felt that way inclined, I should be an absolutely unspeakable cur were I to say anything of the sort about Greenoak, considering that this is the third time he has saved my life,” answered Dick.
“Is it? Oh, do tell me about the others,” cried Hazel, eagerly.
“I can’t tell you about the other because it comes into the mystery of this place, as to which, as you know, we are sworn to secrecy. But I told you the first. It was the night I shot the big buffalo.”
Looking down into the bright, sparkling eager face, Dick Selmes was conscious of that unwelcome misgiving taking even more definite hold of his mind. The eagerness with which she hung upon his words was not because they were his words. Greenoak of all people! Why, he must be old enough to be her father, concluded Dick, in his inexperience rather consoling himself with the thought.
“Yes, you told me that,” rejoined Hazel. “But you are only one of many. Harley Greenoak has the reputation of having saved countless lives and got no end of people out of difficulties of one kind or another, yet he never talks about it, they say. I can’t tell you how proud I am to have made his acquaintance.”
“Shall I tell him so, for here he comes?” said Dick, mischievously. “Now, or when you’re not there?”
“If you do I’ll never speak to you again. And yet I don’t know that I’d greatly care if you did.”
They had been waiting as directed, where the horses had been left, and now the other two were coming up.
“You’ve made a quick job of that, Greenoak,” said Dick.
“Yes. But I only took charge of the more difficult part, Kleinbooi’ll do the rest. It’s a good skin, Dick, and ought to look well in your hall, or wherever you stick up such things.”
Dick stared.
“But it’s yours,” he cried. “Why, it was your shot—and a jolly fine shot too. Don’t know where I’d have been but for it.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ve nowhere to keep trophies and you have. You’ll be able to hang it under the buffalo head.” And the speaker swung himself into the saddle, and resumed his conversation with old Hesketh.
“There!” exclaimed Hazel. “Isn’t that like him? And you hardly said thank you.”
“Greenoak doesn’t like much thanking. It seems to hurt him; sets him on the shrink, don’t you know.”
“I can quite believe that,” rejoined Hazel. “Now—you can help me to mount.”
The while, the subject under discussion was some way ahead, with Hesketh. They were in fact passing the scene of that other tragedy.
“Not much trace of that affair,” Hesketh was saying as he glanced keenly around. “Tell you what, though, I wonder yon tiger didn’t put an end to the ‘mystery’ long ago, and save us the trouble. Ho-ho!”
“I don’t,” rejoined Greenoak, quietly. “It’d have to be a very smart tiger indeed to get the blind side of a veteran Bushman. The ‘mystery’ was a darn sight more likely to scoff the tiger than the tiger was to scoff the ‘mystery.’”
Chapter Nine.
A Way Out.
Postal delivery at Haakdoornfontein was, as an institution, non-existent; and when old Hesketh desired communication with or from the outside world he obtained it by dispatching a boy to the nearest field-cornet’s, some sixteen or seventeen miles away. This, for obvious reasons, he did not do very often.
Harley Greenoak was seated on a stone, on the shaded side of the shearing-house, thinking. The shade was almost too cool, for there was a forecasting touch of crisp winter in the clear atmosphere and vivid blue of the cloudless sky. He could see the long, gaunt figure of his host, pottering about down at the lands, and every now and then from the kitchen at the back of the house, there came to his ears the clear tones of Hazel’s voice endeavouring to convey instruction into the opaque mind of the yellow-skinned cook. The sounds in no wise interrupted his train of thought; rather they fitted in with it, for in it the utterer of them bore her share.
From his pocket he drew forth a letter. This he spread out open before him, and began to study, not for the first time. It had arrived the previous evening, and was several days overdue, owing to Hesketh’s erratic postal provisions as set forward above. The writing was not easily decipherable, and the contents, well—they were commonplace on the surface, but beneath, to one well acquainted with the writer, meaning enough could be read. Now Harley Greenoak and the Commandant of the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police were very old friends indeed.
There was restlessness on and beyond the border. The Transkeian tribes needed watching, and some careful handling, and the Police might have work cut out for them. And, by-the-by, where was Greenoak now, and what was he doing; because if nothing in particular, added the writer, why shouldn’t he come up to the border and stay with him a bit, and have some talks over old times?
Such was the gist of the letter, but its recipient read deeper than that. Few men understood natives and their ways more thoroughly than himself, few men were as well known to and as thoroughly trusted by them, and none better. He foresaw a possibility of usefulness, of great usefulness; and when such was the case, it must be a very grave impediment indeed that Harley Greenoak would allow to stand in his way.
Hazel Brandon had not exaggerated in her estimate of his character; and time after time his natural gifts had found for him the opportunity of being of service to his friends—often to the saving of life—and that without hope or thought of reward. And here stood forth another such opportunity; but—how would it fit in with the charge he had undertaken? As it happened it would so fit in.
Every day of late he had been growing more anxious; every day he had seen reason for desiring to get Dick Selmes away from Haakdoornfontein. Every day seemed to draw the two young people together more and more. This, under other circumstances would have been nothing but satisfactory, but—what of his own responsibility towards the father of his charge? If the affair was more than skin deep, if it had reached a serious stage on both sides, why they could both very well afford to wait; Dick until he had consulted his father, and so until his—Greenoak’s—charge was at an end. Then he could return, on his own responsibility, and if he succeeded in winning this girl, why in the thinker’s estimation he would be very lucky, as we have said. That would be the only straight and satisfactory solution of the difficulty, decided Greenoak.
And towards such solution the Commandant’s letter seemed now to open a way. If he read Dick’s character aright, the prospect of a certain amount of adventure would irresistibly appeal. They would respond to the invitation and join his old friend; and he would show his charge some of the phases of border life, as in any case he had intended eventually to do.
“Well, Mr Greenoak, and have you decided the knotty point yet? It must be a very knotty one.” And the speaker’s winsome face, framed within an ample and snowy kapje, sparkled with sheer light-heartedness.
“That’s just what I believe I have done,” he answered, looking up at her. He had of course been aware of her approach, but he was one of those who can concentrate their powers of thought independently of external distractions.
“It must have been an extremely knotty one,” she went on, her glance resting on the sheet still grasped in the brown muscular hand, “because for nearly an hour you might as well have been a statue.”
“Does a statue fill and light a pipe two or three times an hour, Miss Brandon?” he asked drily.
“You’ve got me there,” she laughed. “But you were so absorbed that you don’t seem to have noticed that the shade has gone off this side of the shed long ago. Why, the sun’s coming down full upon you.”
“Is it? Why, so it is,” he said, rising. “I suppose I didn’t notice it because I’m so used to it. Lovely morning though.”
“Isn’t it? Well, I want you to do me a favour, Mr Greenoak. Will you?”
“Certainly. I shall be delighted.”
“But you don’t know what it is yet.”
“I know that you would not ask me, or anybody, to do what is absurd or impossible.”
“Thanks, that’s quite pretty, really it is. I thought you up-country men never went in for making compliments.”
“Mayn’t we tell the truth? That is only straightforwardness, you know.”
“There is another compliment,” laughed the girl. “Why, Mr Selmes himself could hardly go on piling them up like that.”
“Ah, he’s young. They come more naturally from him, like the difference between the roll of a well-greased waggon wheel and that of a creaking one,” rejoined Greenoak, with a good-natured smile.
“Now that’s a delightfully quaint and characteristic simile,” laughed the girl. “I must really store it in mind for future use.”
“Is it worth it? But aren’t we getting a bit off the road? What is this ‘favour’?”
“I want you to take me for a walk, if you have nothing better to do—or think about,” she added mischievously.
“If I were to say ‘How could I have?’ you would tax me with making compliments again, I suppose. But wouldn’t you rather ride?”
“No. Sandy’s a bit lame, and Bles is away down the kloof, and by the time he was got up I should have lost all inclination to do either. And there’s no other horse on the place that’ll stand a skirt. We’ll take the path by Goba’s vee-kraal to Bromvogel Nek. There’s a lovely view from there, and this is just the day to sit and enjoy it.”
“When will you be ready?”
“I’m ready now if you are. Are you? Well then, come along.”
Hazel chatted briskly as they took their way along the winding and somewhat stony bush-path, but her companion said little. He preferred to hear her talk. There was that in the light-hearted gaiety of this bright, sweet-natured child that appealed powerfully to the strong, lonely, self-contained man, that almost made him sigh for his past youth. He liked to hear her talk, and simply talk. That in itself was a pleasure to him. At the same time he was wondering with what object she had persuaded him to accompany her; the last thing in the world that would have occurred to Harley Greenoak being that it was simply for the pleasure of his own company. He supposed she wanted to talk about Dick Selmes, to “draw” him perhaps, as to his charge’s general character. Well, if that were so, Dick should have a good one. And, as though to fit in with the idea, at that moment, from the further side of the great crater-like hollow that constituted the bulk of Hesketh’s farm, there rolled forth a distant and double report. Both stopped to gaze in the direction of the sound.
“Wonder if Dick’s getting any luck,” said Greenoak. “It’s astonishing how his keenness in that direction has thawed off of late,” he added slily.
“Yes, it has,” came the ready answer. “He’s getting quite lazy. In fact, I sent him out to hunt this morning, told him if he didn’t bring back a bush-buck ram I shouldn’t speak to him until he did. He’s much too young to be hanging about the house all day.”
With this sentiment Greenoak agreed, but—was that the speaker’s only object? Well, it would come out in time.
“For all that he’s a thorough sportsman, and as nice a young fellow as ever lived,” he said.
But Hazel did not take this opening. She plunged into other topics as they resumed their way; in none of which did the absent and venatorial Dick by any chance come in.
They passed the vee-kraal, where a wheezy and decrepit cur came forth and huskily vociferated at them—Hesketh would not allow any of his “hands” to keep an able-bodied canine on the place—and the two wives of the absent herd, profusely anointed with red clay, came out to greet them and requisition tobacco. Greenoak gave them some, as they knew he would.
“I suppose you can manage Kafirs thoroughly?” said Hazel as they walked on.
“Well, I’ve had to do it all my life.”
“Of course. What an idiotic question! Fancy my asking it you. But I don’t know whether I like them or not. I don’t see much of them.”
“No, I suppose there aren’t many round your father’s place. Mostly Hottentots?”
“Yes. But I don’t like them at all. By the way, Mr Greenoak, do you think we are going to have a Kafir war? The newspapers all seem to say we are. What is your opinion?”
“Newspapers must say something. I can’t form any opinion—as yet. I may be going up to the Transkei soon, and then I’ll be in a better position to do so.”
“Soon? Then you won’t be here much longer?”
Greenoak’s quick ear caught a shade of disappointment in the tone, almost of consternation. Then Dick’s departure would cause a blank; for of course she knew that the two were moving about together.
“You must remember we’ve been here a good while already,” he answered, “and there’s such a thing as wearing out one’s welcome. Besides, I want to show the young one some further sides of the life of the country.”
“No fear of your wearing out anything of the kind here,” rejoined Hazel, quickly. “As for the other consideration, well, that counts for something, I suppose. Here we are.”
Their uphill progress was at an end. They had reached a high, stony neck, or saddle, between two great crags. In front the slope fell abruptly away for over a thousand feet to a spread of rolling plains, sparsely bushed, and extending for miles and miles. Here and there, at long intervals, a thread of smoke, rising from homestead or native kraal, ascended, but for an immensity of distance the expanse lay, monotonous in its green-brown roll, intersected, in darker line, by the willow-fringed banks of a nearly dry river-bed. Beyond, in the clear atmosphere, seeming about twenty miles distant, though fully fifty, rose mountain piles, flat-topped, in massive walls, or breaking off into turreted cones. Northward others, more distant still, floating apparently in mid-air, owing to the mirage-like effect of distance and clearness, but everywhere a sense of grand, open, unbounded space. The far-away bark of a dog, or the disturbed crowing of cock koorhaans, came up out of the stillness. On the side from which they had ascended was the vast, crater-like hollow, the tangle of rugged and bush-grown kloofs, and slopes covered with forest trees rising to lap in wave-bound verdure the grim iron faces of red rock walls and castellated crags. It was a scene that in the balmy yet exhilarating air of the cloudless day one could sit there and revel in for ever.
“You can almost see our place from here,” said Hazel. “That kopje just shuts it off, and you wouldn’t think it was forty miles as the crow flies. This is a favourite perch of mine. I often used to climb up here.”
“Did you drag your uncle up, too?”
“Oh yes. He’d ride though. But he doesn’t care a rap for scenery. He’d light his pipe, and in about ten minutes be fast asleep.”
“I’ll light mine, but I promise you I won’t go to sleep.”
“No, don’t. You must talk to me instead. Tell me some of your experiences. You must have had so many, and such wonderful ones.”
Harley Greenoak laughed deprecatorily. This formula was so frequent wherever he went that it had become stereotyped. As a rule it annoyed him; now, however, it was hard to connect such a word with the owner of that sparkling face, of the wide, lustrous, almost admiring eyes turned upon his own.
“One can’t spin yarns to order,” he said. “If something suggests one, out it comes—or doesn’t.”