Chapter Four.
Peters—Prospector.
It was lunch time at Peters’ prospecting camp, and Peters, seated on a pile of old sacks, was busy opening a bully-beef tin. Having extracted its indifferently appetising contents, by dint of shaking out the same on to an enamelled metal plate, he chucked the empty tin away over his shoulder, thus mechanically adding another ‘brick’ to a sort of crescent-shaped miniature wall, some ten feet behind, which had been formed gradually out of exactly similar tins, and by a similar mechanical process. Three native ‘boys,’ squatted at a respectful distance, were puffing at their pipes and conversing in a drowsy hum, the burden of their debate being as to whose turn it might be to consume such remnants of the repast as their master might leave: such being, of course, a thing apart from, and outside of, their regular rations.
In the forefront was a windlass and a vast pile of earth and stones, for Peters was sinking a shaft. Two hastily run-up huts served to house the said boys, between which stood a Scotch cart, covered with tarpaulin. Peters himself slept at Lamont’s, on whose farm these mining operations were being conducted. In the ultimate success of these Peters had immense faith. “We’ll make another Sheba Reef out of this yet, Lamont,” he was wont to declare. “This place has gold on it, and plenty, if we only sink deep enough. You’ll see it has.” To which Lamont would reply that he only hoped it might, but that he didn’t for a moment believe it would.
Who Peters was, or where he had come from, nobody knew. He was a prospector, and had never been known as anything else. Some opined that he had at one time been a sailor, and there were certain grounds for believing this, in that he would, when off his guard, betray an acquaintance both extensive and accurate with the technique of the sea. Those who tried to draw him got no further. He never gave the idea of being particularly anxious to conceal anything: simply he never talked about himself. It was puzzling, but—there it remained.
Then certain inquisitive souls conceived the inspiration of getting him to talk in his cups. But the drawback to the carrying of it out lay in the fact that Peters never was in his cups. He could drink the whole lot of them under the table, if put to it; and indeed did so, on more than one occasion, sitting there smiling all the time, as they reproachfully put it. Oh, he was a hard nail!
He was good-nature itself, as long as no one tried to take advantage of it. When they did, then let them look out. His prime detestation was ‘side,’ as more than one young new arrival from England in the early days discovered to his own amazement and discomfiture. His prime predilection was Lamont, of whom, their mutual acquaintances were wont to pronounce, he made a little tin god on wheels. Yet no two men could, in character, be more utterly dissimilar.
Their friendship dated from the war of occupation, in which they had both served. During the historic retreat on the Shangani, Lamont had saved his life, and that under circumstances demanding an intrepidity bordering on foolhardiness. Wounded and incapacitated, he had dropped behind unnoticed what time the Matabele were pressing the sorely harassed column, and Lamont had dashed back to his rescue when his falling into the hands of the savages was but a question of moments—already indeed had he placed his pistol to his head rather than be thus captured. This was the incident he had been trying to relate to Ancram, when Lamont had twice cut him short with what the guest had deemed brusque and unnecessary rudeness.
Having finished his meal Peters lighted a digestive pipe, and sent his plate skimming away in the direction of the boys, who immediately pounced upon the scraps; for there is never a moment in life when a native is not ready to feed, and nothing eatable that he will refuse to feed on—except fish.
“Hey, Malvani?” he called.
“Nkose!” And one of the boys came trotting up.
“What of Inyovu? Will he come back, do you think?”
“Ou nkose!” said the fellow with a half grin. “Who may say? He is Matabele. We are not.”
“Well, get to work again.”
“Nkose.”
Peters sat a little longer thinking—and the subject of his thoughts was the man whose life he had saved—to wit Ancram.
“I don’t like the cuss,” he said to himself. “Wish I’d left him where he was—no—I don’t exactly that—still, I wish he’d move on. He’s an ungrateful dog, anyhow.”
The noonday air was sensuous and drowsy. Even the screech of the crickets was so unintermittent as to form part of the prevailing stillness. Peters began to nod.
“Nkose!”
The salutation was sulky rather than hearty. Peters started wide awake again, to behold his missing boy, Inyovu.
The latter was a young Matabele, tall and slight, and clad in nothing but an old shirt and a skin mútya. But his face was the face of a truculent savage—the face of one who would have been far more in his element as a unit in some marauding expedition sent forth by Lobengula in the good old times, than serving in the peaceful avocation of mine boy to a white prospector.
“I see you, Inyovu,” returned Peters, speaking fluently in the Sindabele. “But I have not seen you for half a day when I should have seen you working.” The point of which satire was that the fellow had taken French leave since the night before.
“Au!” he replied, half defiantly. “I have been to see my chief.”
“Been to see your chief—impela! Who is your chief, Inyovu? The man who pays you or the man who does not?”
Natives are susceptible to ridicule, and Peters had a satirical way with him which lay rather in the tone than in the words used. The three Makalaka boys in the background sniggered, and this acted as a whip to the Matabele.
“My chief?” he blared. “My chief? Whau, Mlungu! Zwabeka is my chief.”
The tone apart, to address his master as Umlungu—meaning simply ‘white man’—was to invite—well, a breach of the peace. But Peters kept his temper.
“Then—O great chief Inyovu,” he said, still more cuttingly, “in that case it might be as well to return to thy chief, Zwabeka. I have no use at all for servants who own two chiefs. No. No use.”
“Xi!”
At the utterance of this contemptuous ‘click’ Peters did not keep his temper. His right fist shot forth with lightning-like suddenness and celerity, catching its imprudent utterer bang on the nose. He, staggering back, seized a pick-handle—an uncommonly awkward weapon, by the way—and, uttering a savage snarl, came for his smiter. The while the three Makalaka boys, in huge if secret delight, stood by to watch the fun.
And they got it—plenty of it. Peters was far too old a campaigner to be taken at any such disadvantage. He was upon the young savage in a flash, had him by the throat with one hand, and the pick-handle with the other, just as swiftly. Inyovu seeing the game was up wrenched himself free, and turned to run, leaving the pick-handle with the enemy. Alack and alas! The mouth of the shaft was immediately behind him, and, losing his footing on some loose stones, he plunged in and disappeared from view. Then Peters threw back his head and roared with laughter. So too did the Makalakas. In fact their paroxysms seemed to threaten ultimate dissolution, as they twisted and squirmed and hugged themselves in their mirth.
“Woza! We must get him out!” he cried at last. The shaft was no great depth as yet, luckily for Inyovu. Moreover, the bucket for hauling up the dirt was down there, and a spasmodic quiver of the rope showed that the ill-advised one was already climbing up, even if he had not arrested his fall by seizing the rope and holding on. Then, by their master’s orders, the boys manned the windlass, though so weakened by their recurring laughter they could hardly turn the handle, indeed were in danger of letting go every minute. At last the unfortunate one’s head rose above the mouth of the hole, and in a moment more he was standing glaring at his master with sulky apprehension.
But Peters had enjoyed a good laugh, and all his anger had vanished.
“Now, Inyovu,” he said cheerily, “get to work again.”
And Inyovu did.
Peace having been restored, the usual labour proceeded. Suddenly Peters’ horse, which was knee-haltered among the bushes hard by, began to whinny, then to neigh. That meant the proximity of another horse, and a minute or two later Lamont rode up alone.
“Hallo, Peters! Nothing to make us millionaires to-day? What?” he sung out. “No sign of the stuff?”
“Oh, that’ll come. You’ve got the grin now, but we’ll both have it—in the right direction too—when this bit of bush-veldt’s humming with battery stamps and you and I are boss directors of the new fraud,” answered Peters equably. They were to be joint partners in the results—if any—of Peters’ prospecting, at any rate while such was carried on upon Lamont’s farm.
“‘Hope springs eternal...’ or there’d be no prospectors,” laughed the latter as he dismounted from his horse. “See here, Peters. I wish you’d left our desirable guest where he was, or taken him away somewhere else—anything rather than bring him here.”
“What could I do, Lamont?” was the deprecating reply. “He said he was a pal of yours, and had come up-country on purpose to find you.”
“As for the first, he lied. I hardly knew the fellow, and what little I saw of him I disliked. For the second, I’ve no doubt he did. No. You brought him, and you’ll have to take him away.”
“Well, I’ll try and think out a plan.”
“If you don’t, one of two things will happen. Either he’ll take over the whole show or I shall be indicted for murder.”
“Couldn’t we set up a sort of Matabele rising scare, and rush him off to Gandela?” said Peters, brightening up. “I’ve a notion he isn’t brimming over with eagerness for a fight.”
“The worst of setting up scares is that they’re apt to travel farther than you mean them to, especially just now when that sort of scare may any moment become grim reality. No, I’m afraid that plan won’t do.”
“Isn’t there anyone you could pass him on to? Why not give him an introduction to Christian Sybrandt, and fire him off to Buluwayo?”
“Because I wouldn’t give him an introduction to anybody—not on any account. See here, Peters. I don’t like the fellow—never did, and he knows it too. But he’s going to exploit me all he knows how, and—that won’t be far. You remember that—er—that rotten affair I told you about—you know, the thing that had to do with my coming out here again when I did? Well, this fellow Ancram was there at the time. Helped to hoot me down, you understand.”
“Did he? The rotten, infernal swine! If I had known half that perhaps I would have left him for jackal’s meat in the mopani before I moved finger, let alone touched trigger, to get him out,” said Peters savagely. “By the Lord! I wonder you let him set foot inside the door after that.”
“What could one do? You can’t turn a fellow away from your door, in this country, in a state of practical destitution,—for that’s what being without a horse amounts to. I wish you could have saved his horse, Peters. And now he’s been here ten days, and seems to think he owns the whole show. What do you think he’s been up to this morning?”
“What?”
“Why I sent him out to shoot birds, or anything he darn chose, along the river bank—anything to get rid of him. I sent Zingela with him to take care of him, and carry the birds. Blest if he didn’t start pounding Zingela.”
Peters whistled.
“That’s pretty thick,” he said.
“Thick! I should think so. Swore the boy had cheeked him, and he hated niggers, and so forth. Coming on to another man’s place—without an invite, mind you—and then sailing in to bash his boys. Eh?”
“Yes. But had Zingela cheeked him?”
“Small wonder if he had. But all I could get out of the boy was that Ancram abused him because he couldn’t find a guinea-fowl that had run. He owned to having answered he wasn’t a dog. Then Ancram let into him. I’m not a good-tempered chap, Peters, and there’ll be a most unholy row soon. What’s to be done?”
“I have it,” cried Peters, his whimsical face puckering all over with glee. “I have it. You know how skeery he looked when we were telling him about the possibility of a rising. Well then, let’s cram him up that the Matabele are awful vindictive devils, and Zingela will never rest till he has his blood. How’s that?”
“Well, that’s an idea.”
“Rather. He’ll wilt at the notion of a bloodthirsty savage, always looking out for his chance, day and night—especially the night, mind—of getting an assegai into him. I believe that’ll do the trick. What?”
“I shouldn’t wonder. By Jove, Peters, you’re a genius. Well, you work it. If we both do, it’ll look suspicious.”
“Right! I will. Still the fellow can be amusing at times. I’ll never forget that first time we introduced ourselves. ‘I’m Peters, prospector,’ says I. ‘And I’m Ancram, prospectless,’ says he, without a moment’s thought.”
And Peters went off into a roar over the recollection.
Chapter Five.
Ancram—Prospectless.
In crediting his unwelcome guest with a desire to ‘take over the whole show,’ Lamont was stating no more than was warranted by fact. For Ancram had made himself rather more than very much at home, to such an extent indeed that he might have been the owner of the place. Further, he had adopted a kind of elder-brotherly tone towards Lamont, and a patronising one towards Peters: and of this, and of him altogether, small wonder that both men were already thoroughly sick. Moreover, he showed not the slightest symptom of moving on.
As a sacrifice on the sacred altar of hospitality Lamont had conscientiously striven to conceal his dislike for the man, had even gone out of the way in order to make time pass pleasantly for him, in pursuance of which idea he had stood from him what he would have stood from nobody else. All of which Ancram put down to a wrong motive, and made himself more objectionable still.
“What are your plans, Ancram?” said Lamont, the day after the foregoing conversation.
“Oh, my dear fellow, it’s so jolly here with you I hadn’t begun to think of any.”
Lamont’s face was stony grim in its effort to repress a frown.
“It brings back dear old Courtland,” went on Ancram, watching his host narrowly. “Now you don’t knock up against anyone who knows Courtland too, every day out here, Lamont?”
“No. I don’t know that that’s any loss, by the way.”
“Not? Now I should have thought—er—that for old acquaintance’ sake you’d—er—but then—er—I was forgetting. What a fool I am.”
He little suspected how cordially his listener was agreeing.
“You see, it’s this way, Lamont. I came out here to see what I could do in the gold digging or farming line, or something of that sort. What could I?”
“Do you want a candid opinion, Ancram?”
“Yes. What could I?”
“Nothing.”
The other stared, then laughed unpleasantly.
“You left your things at Pagadi,” went on Lamont. “My advice is get back to Fagadi, pick up your traps—thence, to England.”
The other laughed again, still more unpleasantly.
“Meaning that you want me out of the country,” he said.
It was Lamont’s turn to stare.
“I’m very dense,” he said, “but for the life of me I can’t see what the devil interest your being in the country or out of it can have for me.”
“We were at Courtland together,” rejoined Ancram meaningly.
“A remarkable coincidence no doubt. Still—it doesn’t explain anything.”
“I thought perhaps you might find it awkward—er—anyone being here who was—er—there at that time.”
“Then like many another you have proved ‘thought’ a desperately unreliable prompter. Candidly, my dear fellow, since you put it that way, I don’t care a twopenny damn whether you are in this country or in any other. Now?”
Lamont spoke quickly and was fast losing his temper. He pulled himself up with a sort of gulping effort. Ancram, noting this, could hardly suppress the sneer which rose to his face, for he read it entirely wrong.
“That fetched him,” he was thinking to himself. “He’s funking now. He’s probably got another girl out here, and he’s afraid I’ll blab about the white feather business. All right, my good friend Lamont. I’ve got you under my thumb, as I intended, and you’ll have to put me in the way of something good—or—that little story will come in handy. It’ll bear some touching up, too.”
“I was speaking in your own interest, Ancram,” went on Lamont. “Anyone can see with half an eye that you’re not in the least cut out for life in this country, and you’d only be throwing away your time and money.”
“Wish I’d got some to throw. I thought perhaps I might stop and do a little farming with you.”
“But farming needs some capital. You can’t do it on nothing. It’s a losing game even then, especially now that rinderpest is clearing us all out. Don’t you know any people in Buluwayo who could put you into the way of getting some job under Government, or in the mining department or something?”
“Not a soul. Wish I did. But, I say, Lamont, why are you so jolly certain I’m no good for this country? I haven’t had a show yet.”
“Oh, I can see. For one thing, if you start pounding the niggers about, like you did Zingela yesterday, you’ll get an assegai through you.”
It came to him as an inspiration, in pursuance of their plan of the previous day. And Ancram was green.
“No! Are they such revengeful devils as all that?”
“Well, they don’t like being bashed, any more than other people. And—a savage is always a savage.”
“By Jove! What d’you think, Lamont? Supposing I gave this chap something? Would that make it all right? Eh?”
“Then he’d think you were afraid of him.”
And to Lamont, who knew that the gift of a piece of tobacco and a sixpence would cause honest Zingela positively to beam upon his assailant of yesterday, the situation was too funny. But he wanted to get rid of the other, and the opportunity seemed too good to be lost. The scare had begun.
“You have got a jolly place here, Lamont, and you don’t seem overworked either, by Jove!” went on Ancram, with more than a dash of envy in his tone, as he gazed forth over the sunlit landscape, dotted with patches of bush, stretching away to the dark line of forest beyond, for the two men were seated in front of the house, beneath the extension of the roof which formed a rough verandah.
“Yes. You were talking of Courtland—well, I’m nearly as big a landowner here as the old Squire. Funny, isn’t it? As for being overworked, that comes by fits and starts. Just now there’s nothing much to do but shoot and bury your infected cattle, and watch the remainder die of drought.”
“Phew! I can’t think how you fellows can smoke such stuff as that,” said Ancram disgustedly, as the other started a fresh pipe of Magaliesburg. “The very whiff of it is enough to make one sick.”
“Sorry; you must get used to it though, if you’re going to stop in the country,” rejoined Lamont, unconcernedly blowing out great clouds. “Have another drink? The whiff of that doesn’t make you sick, eh?”
“You’re right there, old chap,” laughed Ancram. “This is a deuced thirsty country of yours, Lamont, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Oh dear, no! Never mind me. It’s all that, even when there isn’t a drought on.”
“Now I could understand a fellow like Peters smoking that stuff,” said Ancram, going back to the question of the tobacco. “But you, who’ve had an opportunity of knowing better—that’s a thing I can hardly take in. By the way, Lamont, while on the subject of Peters, I think he’s too beastly familiar and patronising altogether.”
“Patronising—’m—yes.”
If Ancram perceived the crispness of the tone, the snap in his host’s eyes, he, thinking the latter was afraid of him, enjoyed being provocative all the more.
“Yes. For instance, I think it infernal cheek a fellow of that sort calling us by our names—without any mister or anything. And the chummy way in which he’s always talking to me. It’s a little too thick. A common chap like that—who murders the Queen’s English. No; I’m getting damn tired of Peters.”
“Quite sure Peters isn’t getting damn tired of you?”
“Eh? Oh come, I say, Lamont! You’re always getting at a fellow, you know.”
Lamont was inwardly raging. He had exaggerated ideas of the obligations of hospitality, and this fellow was his guest—an uninvited one certainly, but still his guest. And he—could he control himself much longer?
“I told you you weren’t in the least cut out for life in this country, Ancram,” he said at last, striving to speak evenly. “For instance, according to its customs even the blasphemy of Peters daring to call you by your name doesn’t justify you in abusing a man who has saved your life; for if it hadn’t been for him you’d be a well-gnawed skeleton in the mopani belt down the Pagadi road this very moment. Wait a bit,”—as the other was about to interrupt. “It may surprise you to hear it—they call this a land of surprises—but there’s no man alive for whom I have a greater regard than I have for Peters. He’s my friend—my friend, you understand—and if you’re so tired of him I can only think of one remedy. I can lend you a horse and a boy to show you the way. There’s a hotel at Gandela. The accommodation there is indifferent, but at any rate you won’t be tired by Peters.”
It was out at last. Ancram had gone too far. Would he take him at his word? thought Lamont, hoping in the affirmative. But before the other could reply one way or the other there was a trampling of hoofs, and a man on horseback came round the corner of the house.
“Hallo, Driffield! Where have you dropped from?” cried Lamont, greeting the new-comer cordially.
“Home. I’m off on a small patrol. Thought, as it was near dinner-time, I’d sponge on you, Lamont. Where’s Peters?”
“Up at his camp. He never comes down till evening. Er—Ancram. This is Driffield, our Native Commissioner. What he don’t know about the guileless savage isn’t worth knowing.”
“Glad to meet you,” said that official as they shook hands. “You needn’t take in everything Lamont says, all the same,” he laughed. “I say, Lamont, it’s a pity Peters isn’t here. I’m always missing the old chap.”
“I’ll send up for him, and he’ll be here in half an hour or so. I’ll see to your horse and start Zingela off at once. But—first of all have a drink. We won’t get dinner for half an hour yet.”
“Thanks, I will,” laughed the new arrival. “Thirsty country this, eh, Mr —?”
“Ancram,” supplied that worthy. “Thirsty? I believe you. We were talking of that very thing just before you came.”
Two things had struck Ancram—the frank cordiality that seemed to be the predominant note among these dwellers in the wilderness, and that his own opinion of Peters was by no means shared by others. There he had made a faux pas. But he did not intend to take Lamont at his word, all the same; wherefore it was just as well that this new arrival had appeared on the scene when he had.
“What’ll you have, Driffield?” said Lamont, as the four sat down to table a little later—Peters having arrived. “’Tisn’t Hobson’s choice this time—it’s guinea-fowl or goat ribs.”
“The last. They look young. I’ll get enough game on patrol.”
“Going to look in at Zwabeka’s kraal, Driffield?” said Peters presently.
“If I do it’ll be on the way back. I’ve got to meet Ames to-morrow evening at the Umgwane Drift, and settle which the devil of us Tolozi is under. Half his people are in Sikumbutana. Ames is quite welcome to him for me.”
“Nice fellow, Ames,” said Peters.
“Rather. One of the best we’ve got, and one of the smartest. He’s got a ticklish district, too, with the whole of Madula’s and half Zazwe’s people in it. Hard luck to saddle him with Tolozi into the bargain. Yes, Ames is a ripping good chap. Been long in this country, Mr Ancram?”
“Er—no. I’ve only just come.”
“Peters picked him up in the mopani veldt, down Pagadi way, and brought him on,” said Lamont. “He was nearly dead of thirst.”
“And something else” is how the whimsical look which puckered the quaint countenance of Peters might have been interpreted. Driffield whistled.
“You were in luck’s way, Mr Ancram,” he said. “That’s an awful bit of country. More than one man has gone missing there and never been heard of again.” And the whimsicality of Peters’ look was enhanced.
“I suppose you haven’t seen much of the country then?” went on Driffield. “I wonder if you’d care to come along with me now. I could show you a pretty wild slice of it, and any number of Matabele at home, into the bargain.”
“There’s your chance, Ancram,” cried Peters. “By Jove! there’s your chance.”
“I should like it. But—er—is it safe?” replied Ancram, bearing in mind Lamont’s remarks the night of his arrival. Driffield stared, then choked down his efforts not to splutter.
“Safe?” he said. “Well, I’ve got a life to lose, and so has Ames. And we neither of us expect to lose it just yet.”
“Yes; I’d like to come, but—I’ve no horse.”
“Daresay I can lend you one,” said Lamont. “You’ll want a couple of blankets too. How are your donkeys loaded, Driffield?”
“Lightly loaded, so that won’t be in the way. Very well, then. Can you be ready in an hour’s time?”
“Oh, there’s no such hurry, Driffield,” urged Peters. “Now you’ve lugged me away from my millionaire factory, you must make it worth while, and let’s have time for a smoke and a yarn.”
The Native Commissioner agreed to start an hour later; and then there was much chaff at Peters’ expense in his prospecting operations. Then Driffield said—
“You’ll be coming over to the race meeting at Gandela, I suppose, Lamont?”
“Don’t know. When is it?”
“End of week after next.”
“I don’t care much for race meetings.”
“Oh, but there’ll be a regular gymkhana—tent-pegging and all sorts of fun. Oh, and Miss Vidal says you are to be sure and turn up.”
“Oh, get out with you, Driffield, and take that yarn somewhere else.”
“It’s a solemn fact, Lamont. She was booming you no end the other day—saying what a devil of a chap you were, and all that sort of thing. I asked her if I should tell you to roll up at the race meeting, and she answered in that candid, innocent way of hers ‘Of course.’ You can’t stay away after that. Can he, Peters?”
“Not much.”
“Oh well, I’ll go then.”
“You’re in luck’s way, Lamont. Miss Vidal’s far and away the nicest girl anywhere round here.”
“She’s all that, I allow.” But a subtle note in the tone was not lost upon one—and that one Ancram.
“So there is a girl in the case!” pronounced that worthy to himself. “I thought there would be. And he would have cleared me out? Not yet, friend Lamont. Not yet! Not until I’ve turned you to real good, material use.” And he now congratulated himself upon the Native Commissioner’s invitation to join his expedition, for in the course of the same he would contrive to pump that official on the subject of Lamont and his circumstances and standing in the locality, in such wise that it would be hard if he could not turn the knowledge to the account of his own especial advantage.
Chapter Six.
The Desire of Gandela.
“What on earth have you been doing to Jim Steele, Clare?” said Mrs Fullerton, as she came into her drawing-room, and sank into a cane chair. “He passed me in the gate looking as black as thunder. He made a lug at his hat, growled like a dog, and was off like a shot. Look! there he goes,” pointing to a fast-receding figure pounding down the strip of dusty road that fronted the straggling line of unpretentious bungalows.
“I only refused him,” was the half-laughing, half-sad reply. “What else was I to do when I don’t care two brass buttons about the man? Really, Lucy, there are drawbacks attendant on life in a country where there are not enough women to go round. He is only the fifth since I’ve been up here.” Even had there been enough women to go round, as the speaker put it, assuredly she herself would not have come in last among them, if there are any powers of attraction in an oval face and straight features, a profusion of golden-brown hair, deep blue Irish eyes thickly fringed with dark lashes, and a mouth of the Cupid-bow order. Add to this a beautifully proportioned figure, rather tall than short, and it is hardly to be wondered that most of the men in the township of Gandela and all the region round about went mad over Clare Vidal. Her married sister, Lucy Fullerton, formed a complete contrast, in that she was short and matronly of build, but she was a bright, pretty, winsome little thing, and correspondingly popular.
“Well, you shouldn’t be so dangerous, you queenly Clare,” she retorted, unpinning her hat and flinging it across the room. “Really it was an act of deadly hostility towards all our good friends to have brought you up here to play football with their hearts and their peace of mind. Not that Jim Steele is any great catch, poor fellow.”
“Oh, he’ll get over it,” said Clare. “They all do.”
From this it must not be imputed to her that she was vain and heartless. For the first, she was wonderfully free from vanity considering her powers of attraction. For the last, her own heart had never been touched, wherefore she was simply unable to understand the feeling in the case of other people, apart from the fact that her words were borne out by the results of her own observation.
“There was Captain Isard,” went on Mrs Fullerton, “and Mr Slark, who they say has good prospects, and will be a baronet at his father’s death. You sent them to the right-about too.”
“For the first—life in the Matabeleland Mounted Police doesn’t strike me as ideal,” laughed Clare. “For the second—fancy going through life labelled Slark. Even, eventually, Lady Slark wouldn’t palliate it. Besides, I don’t care twopence for either.”
“Who do you care twopence for, among all this throwing of handkerchiefs? There’s Mr Lamont—”
“He never made a fool of himself in that way. He hasn’t got it in him,” struck in Clare, speaking rather more quickly.
Her sister smiled to herself at this kindling of animation.
“Hasn’t got it in him?” she repeated, innocently mischievous. “You mean he’s too great a fool?”
“I mean just the reverse. He’s got too much in him.”
“But—you know, dear, what they say about him—that he’s—er—a bit of a funkstick.”
“Bit of a funkstick! Pooh! Look at his face, Lucy. How can a man with a face like that have an atom of cowardice in his composition? Why, it’s too ridiculous.” And the whole-souled contempt which Clare infused into this vindication would have inspired wild exultation in the breast of any one of her multifold adorers near and far, had it been uttered in his own behalf. Yet her acquaintance with the object thereof was of the slightest. “Well, you know they say that one evening there was a bit of a row on over at the hotel—horrid, quarrelsome, fighting creatures men are—and someone insulted Lamont, or trod on his toes, or something, and, when he objected, the other wanted him to fight; and he quite climbed down.”
“I don’t believe it—or, at any rate, the motive they put upon it,” said Clare decidedly. “People have a way of piling on to their stories in the most recklessly top-heavy manner. In all probability he was more than the other’s match, and kept out of it on that account.”
“You make an effective champion, Clare,” laughed the other, mischievously. “Well I don’t know the ins and outs of it. Dick knows more about it than I do.”
“Oho! What does Dick know more about than you do?” hailed a voice outside the window, and its owner immediately entered, accompanied by another man. “Anyhow, that’s a big bit of news to start with—that Dick should know more about anything under the sun than you do. Here’s Driffield, and he’s going to stay lunch.”
“Dick, don’t be silly. How do you do, Mr Driffield,” greeting the Native Commissioner. “We were talking about Mr Lamont, and what they say about him. Clare says she doesn’t believe a word of it, and I was saying you knew more about it than I do, Dick.”
“Do you mean the breeze at Foster’s?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he did climb down. There’s no doubt about it. And the funny part of it is, that with the gloves on there’s hardly a man anywhere in these parts who can touch him.”
“There you are, Lucy,” cried Clare triumphantly. “Didn’t I tell you it was because he was more than the other’s match?”
“Well, it hadn’t got a look that way at the time, and that was what struck everybody who saw it. Certainly it struck me,” replied Fullerton. “But the next time you girls start taking away your neighbours’ characters, don’t do it at the top of your voices with window and door wide open. We could hear you all down the road. Couldn’t we, Driffield?”
“Mr Driffield sets a higher value on his immortal soul than you do on yours, Dick,” retorted Mrs Fullerton loftily. “Consequently he isn’t going to back you in your—ahem!—unveracity.”
“No. But he’s dying of thirst, Lucy. So am I.”
She laughed, and took the hint. Then as the two men put down their glasses, Fullerton went on—
“Talking of the gloves—that reminds me of another time when Lamont climbed down. That time he put on the gloves with Voss. It was a beautiful spar, and really worth seeing. Then, just as the fun was at its height, Lamont suddenly turned quite white—as white as such a swarthy beggar can turn, that is—and chucked up the sponge then and there.”
“Yes. I remember that. It looked rum certainly—but all the same I’ll maintain that Lamont’s no coward. He showed no sign of it in the war of ’93 anyway. If anything rather the reverse.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Clare significantly.
“May have lost his nerve since,” said her brother-in-law, also significantly.
“Well, I like Lamont,” said Driffield decidedly.
“I don’t,” said Fullerton, equally so.
“Mind you, he’s a chap who wants knowing a bit,” went on the Native Commissioner. “Then he’s all right.”
“Is he coming to the race meeting, Mr Driffield?” said Clare.
“Yes. He didn’t intend to, though, until I gave him your message, Miss Vidal. We pointed out to him that he couldn’t stop away after that.”
“Message! But I sent him no message.”
“Oh, Miss Vidal! Come now—think again.”
“Really, Mr Driffield, I ought to be very angry with you for twisting my words like that,” laughed Clare. “But—you mean well, so let it pass. You are forgiven.”
“Talking of Lamont,” struck in Fullerton, who had a wearisome way of harking back to a subject long after everybody else had done with it, “there’s a yarn going about that he had to leave his own neighbourhood in England for showing the white feather. And it looks like it, remembering what a close Johnny he is about himself.”
Driffield looked up quickly.
“I believe I know who put that yarn about,” he said. “Wasn’t it Ancram—that new man who’s putting up at Foster’s?”
“Most likely,” said Fullerton. “I never heard it myself till a day or two ago.”
“Why, what a sweep the fellow must be,” declared Driffield. “Lamont has been putting him up since Peters picked him up in the mopani veldt, nearly dead with thirst. Saved his life, in fact. I know it’s Ancram, because he pitched me the same yarn—of course ‘in strict confidence.’ Confidence indeed!”
“What a cur!” pronounced Clare. “Oh, what a completely loathsome cur!”
“Hear—hear!” ejaculated Driffield.
“Cur or not,” said Fullerton, who over and above his dislike of Lamont was naturally of a contradictious temperament,—“cur or not, the story has a good deal of bearing on what we know out here—”
“If it’s true,” interjected Clare, with curling lips.
”—He left a kid to drown. Said he wasn’t going to risk his life for a gutter kid—and wouldn’t go in after it even when the girl he was engaged to implored him to. She called him a coward then and there, and gave him the chuck. This chap Ancram saw it all. He was there.”
“Then why didn’t he go in after it himself?” suggested Clare, with provoking pertinence.
“Says he couldn’t get there, or something. Anyway Lamont’s girl chucked him then and there. She was the daughter of some county big-wig too.”
“Of course I wasn’t there,” said Clare, “and the man who enjoyed Mr Lamont’s hospitality, as a stranger in a strange land, was. Still, I should like to hear the other side of the story.”
“What if it hasn’t got another side?” said her brother-in-law shortly.
“What if it has? Most stories have,” answered Clare sweetly.
“Anyway,” struck in Driffield, “Ancram’s no sort of chap to go around talking of other people funking. I took him on patrol with me the other day from Lamont’s. Thought he’d like to see something of the country perhaps, and the Matabele. Incidentally, Lamont lent him a horse and all he wanted for the trip. Well, the whole time the fellow was in the bluest of funks. When a lot of the people came to indaba us, he kept asking whether they might not mean treachery, or had arms concealed under their blankets. As to that I told him yes, and legs too.”
Clare went off into a ringing, merry peal.
“Capital!” she cried.
“Oh well—” said Driffield, looking rather pleased.
“But he was in a terrific funk all through. The acme of it was reached the night we slept at the Umgwane drift. Ames voted him a devil of—er, I mean a superlative nuisance. He kept waking us up at all hours of the night, wanting to know if we didn’t hear anything. We had had a big indaba that day with Tolozi and his people, and this chump kept swearing he heard footsteps, and they must be stealing up to murder us in our sleep. I wonder if Peters had been filling him up with any yarns. But, anyhow, Ancram’s a nice sort of chap to talk about other people funking, isn’t he?”
“Why, yes,” said Clare. “But his behaviour with regard to Mr Lamont is too contemptible, spreading stories about him behind his back. Why should he do it, Mr Driffield? What on earth motive can he have?”
“Cussedness, I suppose—sheer cussedness. A good deal more mischief is made under that head than is due to mere motive, I imagine.”
“I believe so. By the way, did you persuade Mr Ames to come over for the race meeting?”
“Persuade! I tried to, Miss Vidal. But there’s no getting Ames that far out of his district unless on leave or on duty. Ames spells conscientiousness exaggerated.”
“That’s a pity,” said Clare. “He’s one of the nicest men I know.”
“Except Mr Lamont, Clare,” appended her sister mischievously.
“They’re so different. You can’t compare them,” pronounced the girl, her serenity unruffled. And then they talked of other things, and had lunch; and after a digestive smoke the two men went back to their offices—Fullerton being by profession a mining engineer.
The township of Gandela consisted of a number of zinc-roofed houses, all staringly new, straggling down what would be the main street when the town was properly laid out, but at present was only the coach road. There was a market square, with—at present—only three sides to it; an ugly red-brick building representing the magistrate’s court; ditto another, representing the Church of South Africa; a farther block somewhat more substantially built, which was the gaol, and from which not more than a dozen or so of prisoners had escaped since the place was first laid out two years previously. At a corner of the market square aforesaid stood the only hotel the place boasted, run by one Foster, to whom reference has been made; while away across the veldt, about half a mile distant, were the barracks of the Matabeleland Mounted Police, a troop of which useful force watched over the town and patrolled the neighbourhood. Scenically Gandela was prettily situated, strategically badly. It stood on a pleasant undulating plain, dotted with mimosa, but on one side dominated by a long, thickly-wooded hill called Ehlatini, the first of a range, likewise thickly-wooded, extending farther back. Well, what mattered that? The natives were thoroughly under control, men said. They had been so knocked out by the pioneer force and the Chartered Company’s Maxims during the war of occupation, that they would not be anxious to kick against the white man’s rule again in a hurry.
Would they not? We shall see.
Chapter Seven.
Fellow Travellers.
“Well, good-bye, Lyall. Next time you want to do another cattle deal send me word. Only do it before the rinderpest has swept me clean. So long.”
And Lamont, swinging himself into his saddle, rode away from Lyall’s store, quite content with the price he had obtained from that worthy for a dozen young oxen, which he had delivered the day before. Moreover, he could not sufficiently congratulate himself that when he arrived home that evening he would not find Ancram.
He chuckled to himself as he thought how they had got rid of that extremely unwelcome guest. When Ancram had returned from his trip with Driffield, more jaunty than ever, Peters began to play his part, launching forth into awful and blood-curdling instances of the vindictiveness of the Matabele, and what a mistake it was that Ancram should have done anything to incur a feud that might extend through any amount of relationships. Thoroughly yet deftly did he rub it in, and soon Ancram’s nervousness reached such a pitch that he had come to regard poor Zingela—who had no more idea of cutting the strange Makiwa’s throat than he had of cutting his own—as a perfectly ferocious monster, ever on the watch for an opportunity of having his blood.
“You’ll be able to amuse yourself alone for a few days, Ancram,” Lamont had said one morning when the requisite stage of scare had been reached. “Peters and I have got to be away, but we’ll be back in a week at the outside.”
Ancram’s look of blank dismay was something to behold. Couldn’t he come, too? he asked. No, he couldn’t, because there was no spare horse that was in condition for the journey.
“But,” added Lamont consolingly, “you’ll be all right here. Zingela will look after you and show you where to find game, and so on.”
Would he indeed? thought Ancram to himself. Not if he knew it. He supposed it was with a purpose that Lamont proposed to leave him alone with this ferocious savage, to be butchered by him and his relatives—Peters had spread it on thick—but that purpose he intended to defeat. Yes, that was it. He, Ancram, was the only man in the country who knew about the Courtland affair, and of course Lamont wanted to get rid of him at all costs, now that there was another girl in the case.
“Well, old chap,” he had answered, “I think I won’t stop on. The fact is I get beastly bored all by myself, and I think you said there was a hotel in Gandela.”
“Yes. It’s not first-rate, but Foster’s a very decent fellow. If you tell him you’ve been stopping with me he’ll do his best for you,” Lamont had replied.
“But I don’t know anyone there.”
“You’ll very soon get to. There are some very good fellows in Gandela—only don’t go on the wait-to-be-introduced tack.”
Mightily did Lamont chuckle to himself over this reminiscence as he rode along, and his mirth was quite undashed by the consciousness that Ancram bore him no goodwill—and the certainty that he would injure him if he could. For this, however, he cared nothing. The Courtland story might leak out and welcome. There was no one whose opinion he valued sufficiently for it to matter. Wait. Was there not? No. There was no one.
His way lay over undulating mimosa-studded ground, beautiful but for a parched and burnt-up look, due to the prolonged drought; passing now and again a native kraal, heavily stockaded with mopani poles and thorn boughs, for lions were not altogether unknown in that part, as we have seen. A brief off-saddle for lunch, and to cool his horse’s back, and he took the track again.
Lamont was well mounted, and his steed stepped forth at a long, swift, easy walk. In the afternoon heat he became drowsy, and was soon nodding. The art of sleeping on horseback is one that can be acquired by pressure of circumstances, and if the animal is steady in its paces, and knows its way, why, then, there is no further difficulty—and of this one both these conditions held good. Suddenly a loud whinny on its part started the rider bolt awake again.
They were now travelling down a path skirting a range of stony hills. Below, and in front at no great distance, was another horseman proceeding in the same direction. It took but one moment to determine him a white man, and not many more to overhaul him and range up alongside. The stranger was dressed in serviceable khaki and a sun-helmet, all of which was in keeping with the bronzed face and short black beard, but not altogether with the round clerical collar. Catching the sound of hoofs behind, he reined in and turned, and Lamont recognised him as Father Mathias, one of the priests attached to the Buluwayo Mission.
“Good evening, Father,” he called out, as he came up. “Rather far afield, aren’t you? This is an unexpected pleasure. I hope we are travelling the same way, because I’m already a good bit sick of my own company.”
“Mr Lamont, is it not?” said the priest, speaking with a foreign accent. “Ah yes. We met in Gandela, did we not? I too—I shall be very glad of company.”
They rode along, chatting. The while, Lamont was eyeing the other’s horse, a sorry-looking beast at best, and, besides its rider, was loaded up with a fair amount of luggage, in the shape of a large rolled valise across the horn of the saddle and a couple of well filled-out saddle-bags on each side.
“You’d better let me help you with some of that load,” he said at last. “In fact we’ll transfer the lot. My horse is as fresh as paint, and won’t feel it.”
“Oh, I could not think of letting you do that, Mr Lamont. A few pounds more or less make no great difference.”
“Don’t they? I don’t know if you have ever walked with a knapsack, Father, but I have—and it’s just that very pound or so extra that makes all the difference in the world. Are you going to ride that horse all the way to Buluwayo?”
“Yes. But I shall have a day’s rest at Skrine’s Store, where I have to look after some of our people.”
“Thirty-five miles. You will hardly get him there—certainly not to-night. You had better come home with me.”
The other feared that this was impossible, as, after they had journeyed together up to a certain point, it would be right in the contrary direction. But he ceased to combat Lamont’s offer to relieve him of some of the load.
“You don’t travel light, Father,” laughed Lamont, as he finished strapping the valise across his own saddle.
“But this is not my own luggage. I have been on a round of visitation, and wherever I find some of our people they are glad of the opportunity to hear Mass. It is the ornaments required for the Mass that are in these saddle-bags.”
“Oh, I understand now,” said Lamont. “I thought it was camping outfit. Well, that is shepherding the flock and no mistake—and that over a pretty wide run.”
“That is what we are here for, Mr Lamont. It is possible we may miss some, but we try not to.”
“I’m sure you do,” assented Lamont heartily. “Why, you are proverbial in this country as models of energy.”
“That is pleasant to know. But, speaking personally, I like the life. I am strong, and it does me no harm.”
They chatted of other things and everything. The priest was a cultured man, and as they covered mile after mile of hot, steamy Matabeleland, both he and his companion hardly noticed it, for they were back in the various centres of artistic Europe, discussing its treasures with eagerness and appreciation. They off-saddled for half an hour, then on again.
“I think we are getting near where my road turns off,” said Father Mathias at last. “But, Mr Lamont, I am so glad we have been able to travel together. I have not noticed the distance at all.”
Lamont cordially replied that the same held good of himself. Then, looking quickly up—
“We are going to have a change, and if it means rain—why then, hooray! Otherwise I don’t like the look of it ahead—no, not at all.”
In their conversation as they rode along they had, as we have said, lost sight of outside features. Now a deep, low growl of thunder recalled such. Over the range of hills they were skirting peered a ridge of black cloud, mounting higher and higher to the zenith in a huge solid pillar, spreading in black masses, lighted fitfully with the gleam of quickly successive flashes. The sun had already gone down.
“We are in for it,” said Lamont, looking up. “We shall get an exemplary ducking, unless—but then you might not care about that—we were to take shelter in Zwabeka’s kraal. It’s only just the other side of that bend in front.”
“Let us do that,” said the priest. “Zwabeka is a considerable chief, is he not? I would like to see him.”
“This is going to be no fool of a storm,” went on Lamont, again looking upward. “The sooner we get under cover the better.”
The booming growl had changed into a well-nigh unintermittent roar, as the huge cloud, towering pillar-like, now spread its black wings in a dark canopy in every direction. The horses pricked up their ears and snorted with alarm at each blinding flash. So far no rain had fallen, and there was a smell of burning in the very air.
Now a barking of dogs sounded between the rolls of thunder, and rounding a spur they came in sight of a large kraal, lying at the mouth of a lateral kloof, densely bushed and extending far up into the range of hills. The conical huts stood within the strong encircling stockade, and among them dark forms stood about in groups, gazing skyward, and indulging in deep-toned speculation as to the probability of a copious and welcome rain to relieve the parched-up and drooping crops in the lands. But the two white men, as they rode in through the still open gateway, thought to detect an unwonted sullenness instead of the cheerful greeting of welcome which should have been theirs. A ringed man came forward.
“Greeting, Gudhlusa,” called out Lamont, to whom the man was known. “We would shelter, and have a talk at the same time with Zwabeka the chief. Is he in his house?”
“I see you, Lamonti. Au! Zwabeka? He is asleep.”
“No matter. It will do when he wakes. Meanwhile we will go into a hut, for the rain will be great.”
“’M—’m!” assented the bystanders in a guttural hum. “The rain will be great. Ah! ah! The rain will be great!”
There was a significance in the repetition hardly observed at the time by the new arrivals. One of them, at any rate, was to appreciate it later. To one of them, also, the utter absence of geniality on the part of the people supplied food for thought, combined too as it was with the use of his native name—in this instance a corruption of his own—instead of the more respectful ‘Nkose.’ But then Zwabeka’s people were mostly Abezantsi—or those of the old, pure-blooded Zulu stock, and therefore proud.
“Come this way, Amakosi,” said the man he had addressed as Gudhlusa, pointing to a small enclosure. “We will put your horses there, and give them grain. Yonder is a new hut with the thatch but just on. There will ye rest.”
“That is good, Gudhlusa,” said Lamont, giving him some tobacco. “Later, when the chief is awake we will talk with him.”
The new hut proved to be a very new one, which was a huge advantage in that it ensured immunity from the swarming cockroaches inseparable from old ones, and even worse. On the other hand, the thatch ‘just put on,’ was not as complete as it might be, for a glint of sky visible through a hole or two in the roof did not give encouraging promise of a water-tight protection from the average thunder-shower. The saddlery and luggage was accordingly disposed in what looked likely to prove the driest side of the hut.
“Well, Father, I’m inclined to think we can see our quarters for to-night,” said Lamont cheerfully, as he filled his pipe and passed on his pouch to his companion.
“Thanks. I think so too. Well, we might do worse.”
“Oh yes. A dry camp is better than a wet one. Do you talk the Sindabele?”
“A little. Enough to make myself understood for the ordinary purposes. But I am learning it. You seem to have got it well, though.”
“I wish I had it better. You see I am a bit interested in these people. They—and their history—appeal to me. Poor devils! I can’t help sympathising with them to a certain extent. It must be rotten hard luck for a lot of these older ones, like Zwabeka for instance, who have been big-wigs in their time, having to knuckle down to a new and strange form of government in which they come out very under-dog indeed. Still, it’s the universal law and there’s no help for it. But—I’m sorry for them for all that.”
Could he have seen what was in Zwabeka’s mind,—Zwabeka, nominally asleep in one of the huts a few yards away,—could he have heard what was on Zwabeka’s tongue, yea, at that very moment, where would his sympathy have been? The course of but a few days was destined to change it, like that of many another who desired to treat the conquered race with fairness and consideration, and who like himself were sitting on the brink of the hitherto quiescent vent of a raging volcano.