Chapter Twenty.
Too Late.
“Not even a bucket, to give the poor devils of mules a drink, Fullerton,” said Wyndham, who had been investigating around. “Really, Skrine’s beastly inconsiderate.”
“Oh, mules are like donkeys,” was the impatient answer. “They can get along on a thistle and a half. The only thing to do is to make ’em.”
“Oh, can they! Well, in this case I’m afraid they’ve got to. Come up!”
He shook up the reins and cracked his whip. The long-suffering beasts tautened to their collars, and pulled out again. They were rather fine animals, with a strong Spanish cross in them, and attaining somewhat to the Spanish dimensions. Still, by the time another three miles had been covered, it was evident that they had lost heart. Their spirits and their pace alike began to flag. It was a hot day, and Matabeleland is a thirsty country, to beast no less than to man.
Somehow, too, the spirits of the party seemed to suffer in proportion. Nothing is more depressing than driving a flagging team, and Wyndham accordingly was less given to mirth and anecdote, even with the stimulus of Clare Vidal at his side, than he had been up till now. Fullerton, characteristically, became snappish and ironical, and roundly cursed Skrine—poor Skrine—for leaving his place shut up and useless. What business had a man to keep a roadside store—and, of course, canteen—unless it were for the benefit of travellers? They ought to object to the renewal of such a fellow’s licence, by Jove they ought! Thus Fullerton.
“I don’t believe we’ll get to the Kezane before dark at this rate,” he growled, “even if we get there at all. We shall probably have to outspan in the veldt. What do you think, Wyndham?”
“Oh, we’ll get there all right.”
“Er? And what if it’s shut up too?”
“Then we’ll have to make a camp, that’s all. See now, Fullerton, the point of my loading up emergency supplies. You were inclined rather to poke fun at the idea this morning.”
“By Jove, you’re right after all,” conceded Fullerton.
“I’ve been that way before, and experience, if a hard teacher, is a jolly effective one,” said Wyndham. “We shall have to spare the mules a bit though. They’re not going at all well.”
Then Lucy Fullerton announced she had a headache. She had been looking forward to a cup of tea at Skrine’s, and missing this, combined with the heat of the day, had given her a headache. But Clare was as fresh as when they started.
The road had become very rough here, and they were going at a walking pace. Fullerton had dropped off to sleep again, and, as Wyndham put it, had taken on his timber sawing job once more. Suddenly a shot—and then another, rang out some little way behind.
“The police seem to have started a buck,” said Wyndham, looking backward round the tilt of the trap. Then, as he withdrew his head, and gathering the reins whipped up the mules to a smart trot, there was a something in the expression of his face that Clare noticed, and instinctively guessed at the reason—and the expression was one of eager anxiety. She, too, put out her head and looked back.
Half the police were dismounted, and, even as she looked, were in the act of delivering a volley among the bushes on the left side of the road. And creeping, and running, and dodging among the said bushes, she made out dark forms, the forms of armed savages; and the line these were taking would bring them straight upon the mule-waggon.
Somehow her predominating instinct was not fear but interest. She had never seen natives in their war-trappings before, and now she looked upon the shields and assegais and cow-hair adornments with vivid interest as something novel and picturesque. The fire of the police had checked them, or rather caused them to swerve, but they continued to run through the bush parallel with the waggon, though giving it a wide berth. But, as the police cantered forward so as to protect the waggon, they closed in nearer.
“What’s the row?” testily cried Fullerton, whom the sound of the volley had started wide awake.
“We can keep them back for the present, sir,” said the sergeant, riding alongside. “Luckily they don’t seem to have any guns. But there’s no harm in pushing on to the Kezane as quick as possible.”
This Wyndham had already begun to do. But the ground was rough and bad, and the mules were anything but fresh. The fleet-footed natives could easily keep pace with them, if not outstrip them. These could be seen from time to time, flitting through the bushes, their obvious intent being to get ahead if possible and rush the whole outfit at some point in the road where the conditions would be more favourable to themselves.
Lucy Fullerton had uttered a little cry of alarm and then went deadly pale. Her sister, on the other hand, was absolutely cool, and watched every movement of the foe with a deepening interest. Wyndham, his face now stern and set, was giving all his attention to his driving. Fullerton was cursing his own idiocy at having left his revolver behind.
“It was foolish of you, Dick,” said Clare tranquilly. “But—I brought it for you.”
“You? You brought it?”
“Yes,” and diving down among some bundles under the seat, as calmly as though she were looking for a mere pocket-handkerchief, she pulled up a small travelling-bag, producing thence two revolvers and two boxes of cartridges.
“Clare, you’re a jewel of a girl,” pronounced the astonished Fullerton, as he took the weapon she handed him. “But what’s the other? Wyndham’s?”
“No. It’s mine,” calmly loading it.
“Yours? That’s no lady’s toy anyhow. Why where on earth did you get it?”
“Mr Lamont gave it me—when he came to see us to say good-bye.”
“Lamont gave it you! Good Lord! But—why?”
“He knew there was going to be a rising, and said it might come in useful.”
“He knew— Well, I think he might have given some of us the benefit of his knowledge.”
“He did. He gave it to some, who hardly believed him, and to me—who did. I passed on the benefit of it to you, but you wouldn’t profit by it until too late. So here we are.”
“Do you mean to tell me, Clare, that the real reason you wanted me to take you into Buluwayo was because Lamont told you there was going to be a rising?”
Clare nodded.
“That’s right, Dick. If I had told you the real reason you’d only have pronounced it one of ‘Lamont’s scares’—just as the others did—and refused to move. As it is you’ve put off the said move too long.”
“Good Lord! You take my breath away!”
“I’ll take it away still more directly,” she said tranquilly. “What do you think of Mr Lamont having saved the whole of Gandela from being massacred on the day of the race meeting?”
“Oh come, now, that’s a little too fat!” answered Fullerton, yet not so incredulously as he would have answered, say that morning.
“Well, he did.” And then she told the whole story.
“I’m hanged if it doesn’t sound probable,” said Wyndham. “Heavens! if only they’d rushed us that day. Oh, it won’t bear thinking about.”
“Sounds probable,” repeated Clare. “It’s more than probable—it’s true. I fell in with Mr Lamont up on Ehlatini the next morning, and he showed me all the tracks made by the impi. I picked up a couple of cow-tail armlets—or leglets—which they’d dropped, just like the ones these are wearing.”
“By Jove!”
There was silence after that Wyndham was anxious to get his team through a narrowing sort of point ahead, where the ground rose abruptly to an overhanging portal on either side, and where rocks and stones, shadowed by wild fig-trees, would afford dangerous cover to the enemy were he to arrive there first, even though apparently without firearms. Under the double incentive of whip and voice the mules seemed to have forgotten their fatigue and were pulling out manfully. But to her brother-in-law’s suggestion, that she should give up the front seat to him and come in at the back, Clare returned a flat refusal.
“I want to see this,” she said, “and see it well. You can put up the side sail and see it from there.”
“But that’ll expose Lucy,” he fumed.
“No, it won’t. You’ll be in front of her. And they haven’t got guns.”
There was no help for it. Wyndham pleaded, but to him too she returned a deaf ear. She sat there—calm, cool, collected, fingering her weapon, and a determined and dangerous look of battle in her eyes.
But pull the mules never so heartily the fleet-footed savages kept the pace, and kept it well. Half the police would gallop forward to check their advance with a volley, but as soon as ever they reined in their horses—lo, there was nobody in sight to fire a volley at. And then it became evident that the foe had divided, and that these human wolves were hunting their prey on both sides of the road.
“I—ji—jji! Ijji—jji! Ha! Ha!”
The vibrating, humming hiss—it must be remembered that the vowel is sounded as in every other language under the sun but the English—the deep-chested, ferocious gasp, split the air as the panting mules galloped furiously between the overhanging rocks and trees—which were now alive with swarming savages. Wyndham, cool and brave, kept all his attention centred on his team, for did that fail him—why then, good-night! Clare, with set lips, covered a huge savage who had sprung up hardly ten yards distant to launch an assegai, and pressed the trigger. The brown, bedizened body sprang heavily forward, throwing shield and weapons different ways, and sank, but the pallor of her face at the sight only served to heighten the brightness of her eyes. Fullerton, leaning out, pumped a couple of shots in a lucky moment into where three or four assailants rose together, likewise with fortunate result. Then an assegai whizzed through the upper part of the waggon tilt, while another struck one of the mules in the hinder quarters, and started the poor brute kicking and squealing in such wise as nearly to stampede the whole team and get it completely out of hand. Added to which some of the police horses were prancing and shying, and rendering it all that their riders could do to stick on, let alone use their weapons. Quick to perceive their advantage, the Matabele warriors swarmed down the rocks, or leapt upward from among the bushes, redoubling the volume of their vibrating, ferocious war-hiss—dancing, leaping, clashing their axes and shields together; in short, raising a most demoniacal and indescribable din.
Fullerton, watching his side of the vehicle, was cool enough and had his full share of pluck, but he was a lamentable revolver shot, and, after three bad misses, the assailants became alive to the fact, and began to run in closer with more confidence.
“Damn this thing!” he yelled, in his excitement and mortification. “It has a pull off you’d require a steam crane to move. Clare, give me yours.”
“No,” she answered shortly. And at the same moment two warriors sprang up behind a rock and quick as lightning hurled their casting assegais—not at their human enemies, but at the mule team. Struck in the shoulder, one poor mule stumbled and plunged wildly, and only the fact that Wyndham was a first-rate whip performed the miracle that prevented it from falling entirely. Then taking advantage of the confusion, several warriors, their shields covering them, the broad stabbing spear uplifted, charged forward to stab the leaders, and thus have the whole outfit at their mercy. But they reckoned without Clare Vidal.
Small wonder that they did. Small wonder that these unsparing savage warriors, trained all their lives in battle and bloodshed and deeds of pitiless ferocity, should have overlooked the fact that in this beautiful and winsome girl there lurked a reserve of splendid Irish courage and readiness and heroism. Cool, steady-handed as a rock, she poured in succession three of her remaining four shots into the leaders of the rush, and as those behind their falling bodies halted—checked, dismayed—no less coolly and steady-handed did she reload the chambers of her pistol. And she had saved the situation—so for.
Wyndham glanced up, and dismay was in his heart. He had hoped to find easier country beyond this point, but the road continued rough, and, moreover, for some distance on, the broken, rocky, bush-grown slopes continued, so that their pitiless foes were able to keep above them and under cover. Poor Lucy Fullerton, made of far softer stuff than her younger sister, was cowering in her corner, white as death and almost fainting, and now the savages began to laugh and shout exultantly to each other. The ground seemed to grow them. From every bush and rock they sprang forth by the score. It was for them a mere waiting game. Already the police had been cut off from the waggon, and were fighting like lions in the thick of their swarming foes; none braver than their sergeant, whose voice was everywhere, directing, encouraging—whose pistol had sent more than one of the ferocious assailants to their long home. Three of these brave fellows had already been overcome; knocked from their horses by hurled clubs, gasping out their lives, through a score of assegai stabs, on the reeking road. And now the mules, utterly blown, and only saved hitherto by Clare Vidal’s magnificent courage, dropped into a sullen and tired walk, out of which no effort, either of whip or voice, on the part of their driver could lift them. And at the sight, louder and more ferocious swelled the hideous Matabele death-hiss. The prey was theirs at last.
Chapter Twenty One.
The Relief Levy.
Not until noon of the day after their ghastly discovery did Lamont and his fellow refugees reach Gandela.
It was only at night they could travel with any degree of safety. The appearance of some armed Matabele had driven them into hiding almost within sight of poor Tewson’s homestead, and for long the fall bitterness of death was on those three. For it was difficult to believe that the savages had not seen them and had gone to collect reinforcements, that they might hunt down the fugitives at their leisure. To make matters worse, their place of concealment was a deep donga leading to the river-bed, and overhung by a thicket of haak-doorn, so that, in the event of discovery, the enemy being right above would be able to destroy them with a minimum of risk to himself. An ignominious end, like rats in a hole, not even the consolation of being able to fight to the last and sell their lives dearly. Yet it had been a case of ‘needs must,’ for there was no other hiding-place available.
The heat, too, was stifling, and their quarters horribly cramped. Their food supply had nearly run out, and, worse still, their drink. All day they had heard natives moving around them, and the barking of dogs. All day had kept continuously recurring the certainty that they were being hunted, that discovery was but a matter of minutes; and when at length night came—blessed night with its coolness and sheltering darkness—why then these three had gone through a day they were not likely to forget for the remainder of their lives.
But with morning light their peril returned, and they were reminded of this when shortly after daybreak they sighted an impi on the march. They had barely time to flatten themselves among the clefts and boulders of a stony kopje when this force appeared in sight, and as it passed right beneath their hiding-place they were able roughly to count its strength. The warriors were marching in open order, to the number of about two hundred, and the watchers could make out that though bristling with assegais and axes, none of them appeared to carry firearms.
Here again prudence had counselled that they should lie low, and starting after dark reach Gandela the middle of that night; but by this time a strange impatience had taken hold of them, engendering recklessness. Even Ancram—starving, footsore, and utterly out of training for this sort of thing—shared in the feeling, and accordingly they resolved to chance it. This time fortune favoured them, and, having encountered no further adventures, three weary, haggard, and hungry men entered Gandela and went straight to Foster’s hotel.
Though in actual point of fact the distance accomplished was nothing wonderful to a brace of hardened pioneers like Peters and Lamont, yet the constant and recurring strain, combined with the hideous and pitiful sight they had witnessed, had told even upon them. As for Ancram, he was in a state of utter collapse.
“Now, Foster, turn us on some skoff right away,” said Lamont; “and we don’t want to wait for it, either, at least not any longer than it takes to have a tub. Meanwhile, a bottle of your Perrier-Jouet. Here you are, Ancram,” when this had been opened. “Dip your beak into this. It’ll buck you up, and, by the Lord, you want it!”
“Any news of the scare—anything fresh, that is?” asked the hotel-keeper, eyeing them curiously. These men had been through no ordinary experience, he could see that, but as yet they had told nothing.
“Well, rather. I’ll tell you presently. Have you a boy handy, Foster? I want to send a note quick to Orwell.”
On a half-sheet of notepaper he wrote hurriedly—laconically—
“Farm attacked by Matabele, and blown up. Peters, Ancram, and self escaped—have just come in. Went to warn Tewson, found whole family massacred. Saw impi this morning, heading as though towards Kezane Store. Warn Isard, and take precautions.
“Lamont.”
This he folded and addressed to the Resident Magistrate, and the boy was started off at once.
“I’ve a bit of good news for you, Mr Lamont,” said Foster, as the latter returned—tubbed, and to that extent refreshed—to begin upon the much needed food. “That rooi-schimmel horse you left with Greene the day you were in for the race meeting—well, he’s all right again now. Greene brought him in couple of days back, and there isn’t an atom of lameness about him.”
“That’s good news indeed, for it strikes me there’s plenty of work sticking out for him.”
They had just finished breakfast, and were enjoying the luxury of an excellent cigar when Orwell arrived. He was in a great state of excitement, and glanced meaningly in the direction of Foster, but this the hotel-keeper pretended not to see. He was all on thorns to hear the news himself, for that news there was—great and grave—he felt sure.
“Is this a fact, Lamont?” began Orwell, producing the slip of paper. “Good Lord, man, but the whole country must be in a blaze!”
“So it must. By the way, Orwell, of course you’ve got that laager all fixed up by this time.”
“Er, well—no—the fact is we have been planning it out, and—er—”
“You haven’t got it up yet? Well, if you’ll take my advice you’ll set about it at once. It isn’t a case of ‘another of Lamont’s scares’ this time,” he added, with somewhat excusable bitterness. “By the way, Foster, you might bring us another bottle of the same. Oh, and you’ll join us again.”
“Thanks. But, Mr Lamont, for God’s sake, say what has happened. We are a trifle interested too, as well as our officials, and I, for one, have got a wife and family into the bargain.”
The hotel-keeper was a very good fellow, and he and Lamont liked each other. Said the latter—
“Quite right, Foster. Fetch the liquid first and then you shall hear all about it. It’s time everyone knew, but I don’t want to create a panic. One of ‘Lamont’s scares.’”
Orwell looked rather foolish.
“Oh, don’t keep harping on that, old chap,” he said. “We are all liable to make mistakes, and I, for one, am the first to own it. And now the first thing to do is to organise a defence committee, and set to work with a will.”
Then, as the hotel-keeper returned, Lamont started to narrate all that had befallen, the attack on Peters, then on the homestead, and how they had stood off the savages until night.
“They must have found dynamite while looting,” he said, “for soon after we’d left we heard the devil of an explosion.”
He continued his narrative shortly and succinctly. When he got to the massacre of the Tewsons, his listeners grew white with horror.
“Yes. We saw what we don’t want to see again, and would like to forget we ever had seen. And now we’d better get hold of the best men here, Orwell, and fix up a plan. Jennings and Fullerton, and some of the others.”
“Fullerton’s not here,” said Orwell. “He started for Buluwayo only this morning with his wife and sister. Wyndham’s driving them—”
“WHAT?”
It was Lamont who had spoken—shouted, rather. And in truth the interruption was startling. He who made it was leaning forward over the table, his dark face without a vestige of colour, his eyes staring as though already they beheld a reproduction of the grim horror upon which they had so recently gazed, only, in this case—
“Yes. But they had an escort,” explained Orwell wonderingly. “Isard sent some police with them.”
“Some police! How many?” in a dry staccato tone.
“Oh, a dozen, he told me. Some of his best men—”
“Come on, Peters,” shouted Lamont, springing to his feet and not waiting to hear any more. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, and we’ll get at it at once. An escort—a dozen police—and the whole country up in a blaze! Foster, let me have the best horse you’ve got in your stables for Peters—you shall name your own price. Now then, who’ll volunteer?” going out into the bar, where several men had already collected. It had got about somehow that something was in the wind, and more and more were rolling up at Foster’s to see what they could find out. “Who’ll volunteer? Fullerton’s been idiot enough to start his womenkind off for Buluwayo this morning. They’ll be at the Kezane Store by the time we catch them up, and we saw with our own eyes an impi, a couple of hundred strong, heading straight for that very point this morning. The whole country’s in a blaze. My farm’s been blown up, and Tewson and his family are all murdered.”
“That’s quite true,” said Peters.
“Well, Peters and I, and as many of you as will volunteer, are going to start off down the road now at once to the rescue of Fullerton’s outfit—if no one’ll join, the two of us will go alone. You see we’ve just seen white women and children who’d been cut up into pieces. Fullerton has women with him. Who’ll volunteer?”
Several men stepped forward without hesitation. Others would have, but one had no horse, another no rifle, and so forth. All these objections were met by Lamont without a moment’s hesitation.
“Get them then,” he said, “and that at once. I’ll be responsible for those who are too out of luck to get them for themselves. Get them, and roll up here as soon as ever you can. Not a minute to lose.”
To describe the state of excitement that prevailed is rather beyond our strength. Most of the men were wiry, hard-bitten prospectors, some of them, as the speaker had put it, ‘out of luck,’ a euphemism for out of funds, others were doing a spell of taking it easy, but all were enthusiastic to join. But all stared at Lamont with wonder. He whom they had never known other than the soul of coolness, and reticence, and caution, was now on fire. His eyes seemed to blaze from his colourless face, his voice trembled with its earnestness as he drove home his appeal to them by drawing a picture of these two helpless women, refined and daintily raised, at the mercy of—in the power of—these black fiends; of whose ‘mercy’ in such cases, he and those with him had, with their own eyes, just beheld a sample.
“I say, Lamont,” began Orwell, most of the men having gone away to effect their preparations, “don’t you think you’re rather over-estimating the risk. You know you’re tired and excited, and all that.”
“No, I don’t. I know what I’m about, and I know what I’ve seen. I tell you, Orwell, if you’d listened to me a fortnight ago instead of loftily pooh-poohing everything I told you, it might have made a lot of difference.”
“What’s all this scare-mongering about,” began another man who had just entered. “Here they are telling me, Lamont, that you’re organising an expedition to go to the relief of the Fullertons. Why, man, they’ve got a dozen of our police with them.”
The speaker was Isard’s subaltern. Isard himself was out on a patrol just then.
“All serene, Blackmore. If they had a hundred of your police they might not have one too many. At any rate I’ve served against the wily Matabele. I don’t know whether you have.”
“Er—perhaps not. Still you can’t want so many men. We’ve none too many left for the defence of the town.”
“Oh, damn the defence of the town! These two helpless women are in the heart of the country. They ought never to have been allowed to move from here. Fullerton’s a bigger fool than even I took him for.”
“How about Ancram?” struck in Peters, anxious to avert a breeze. “Shall we take him?”
Ancram the while had dropped on a couch the moment he had done breakfast, and had gone fast asleep, thoroughly worn out with exhaustion. He was there still.
“No. He’s no use. Leave him to help in ‘the defence of the town,’” sneered Lamont. “Hallo, Jim Steele. We haven’t had that scrap yet, but it’ll keep a little longer. I want you now to come and help fight someone else. The whole country’s in a blaze! Fullerton’s outfit’s along the Buluwayo road, and Peters and I saw a big impi making straight in that direction this morning.”
“I’ll go, Lamont,” said the big fellow, who had just come in to see what all the row was about. “Oh, this is nuts! We’ll make those black swine spit. How many cartridges shall I take?”
“Just as many as ever you can carry. The same applies to all hands.”
There was a trampling of horses outside. Already the men were beginning to roll up, and soon Lamont found himself at the head of some two dozen, well-armed and fairly well mounted, all alert and willing, and chock-full of eagerness for a fight.
Chapter Twenty Two.
A Grim Running Fight.
Once clear of Gandela, Lamont had subsided into moody silence. Only the eager glow in his eyes, as he sent his horse along at a brisk pace at the head of his troop, told how his thoughts were working. At present they held but two considerations—a vivid picture of the horror he had witnessed and the torturing fear lest he should be too late to prevent a repetition of it. No, that contingency would not bear contemplation, and all unconsciously he urged his horse on to greater speed, till at last something of a murmur arose from one or two of his followers.
“We shall bust our horses if we stretch them out like this at the start.”
He looked round.
“Oh no, we shan’t. And every moment may make all the difference.”
What was it that rendered his every thought a keen torture? Had it been a case of rescuing from horrible danger any other two women in the township, would he have been so eager? Yes, he would. He could safely say that. But he would not have suffered from this overweighting, distracting apprehension begotten of the knowledge that one of these two was Clare Vidal.
But if his chief for the time being was silent, the same could not be said of Peters. For Peters was giving a graphic account of all that had befallen, and especially was he graphic on the barbarous massacre of the Tewson family. His object was to inflame the minds of these men, to work them up to a very fever-heat of desire for revenge; thus would each man feel endowed with the strength and bravery of six, and they would need it too, for after all their force was a puny one—yes, a very puny one, considering the overwhelming odds they would almost certainly have to encounter.
They made Langrishe’s Store in fine time, but—where was Langrishe? No answer was returned to their loud, impatient hail. He could not be away, for the door was half open. Some opined that he was probably drunk, but to two there, at any rate, that silence bore an ominous similarity to that which had signalled their approach to another homestead only yesterday morning. The solution was somewhat startling. From the partly open door half a dozen armed savages shot forth, and darted for the nearest bush with inconceivable swiftness.
But not one of them was destined to reach it. A perfect howl of rage went up from the spectators, and waiting for no word of command a dozen horsemen were on the heels of the fugitives, who were shot down to a man. It was all over in a moment.
“Loosen girths everyone and water the horses while we investigate,” ordered Lamont. “No time to off-saddle.”
It was even as they had dreaded. Lying behind the counter of his store was the body of poor Langrishe, the skull battered in, the clothing riddled with assegai cuts, but the body was still quite warm. Bales and cases, and goods of every description, were piled and heaped about in the last degree of confusion. The murderers had obviously been too busy looting to hear the approach of the party and so secure their own safety in time. The wrath of the latter found vent in bitter curses, and blood-curdling promises of vengeance upon the whole Matabele race.
But the ride had been a forced and a hot one, eke a dusty one and a dry. One of the men came forward.
“Captain,” he said, with a glance at the bar shelves, “some of us are thinking that while the horses are resting a tot all round wouldn’t hurt us any. Might buck us up a bit, and it’s mortal dry.”
“Yes; that’s right,” said Lamont. “But—only one, mind. We mustn’t overdo it, for we shall have all our work cut out for us.”
The said tot having been served out to all hands, and the party having requisitioned some of poor Langrishe’s biscuit in case of accidents—for they had set forth none too well provisioned—the body of the unfortunate storekeeper was left locked up within his own house. Girths were tightened, and the road was resumed.
The fresh spoor of the mule-waggon and the police horses was plain enough in the dry, powdery road, but the rapidity of their pace underwent no diminution. But, like those they followed, they were disgusted to find Skrine’s Store shut up and deserted. Equally, with those they followed, they did not discover the remains of the luckless Skrine and his unknown companions, lying murdered in the bush.
Again girths were loosened for a bare five minutes, and again they cantered forward. And now hopes began to rise. They had covered about half the stage to the Kezane Store. It was late in the afternoon, and Fullerton’s party would be sure to sleep there. They might have to stand a siege there, but that was safety itself compared with being attacked in the open. Then, just as this hope had become almost a certainty, there occurred that which brought a quick exclamation to every mouth. Right ahead on the smooth still air, distant and muffled came the dull rattle of a volley.
“Great Jupiter! they’re attacked,” cried Lamont, putting his horse to a gallop. “Come on, Peters. Come on everybody. For God’s sake, put your best foot forward!”
No need was there for this exhortation. Tingling with excitement every man was sending his steed along for all he knew how—those who were the most indifferently mounted slashing and spurring and cursing. And if any additional stimulant were needed the sound of further firing in front went far to supply it.
“It won’t be far beyond here,” yelled Peters, as they tore through the entrance to the bushy valley, where the fight at close quarters had first commenced. And, even as he spoke, more shots rang out, this time very near indeed, and with them mingled the roars and hisses of the attacking Matabele. Only a bend in the road hid from them the scene of action.
“Come on, boys!” shouted Lamont, half turning in his saddle. “You’ll know what to do when you see what’s going on.”
A minute later, and they did see, and what they saw was this. The waggon was at a standstill. The two leading mules were down—one motionless, the other struggling and kicking frantically. Of the police escort half had been killed, and the remnant, now dismounted, were standing, back to the waggon on either side, with revolver pointed, facing a swarm of dark leaping figures, closing in more and more, uttering their vibrating war-hiss, yet still not quite liking to face those deadly revolvers.
“Charge!” shouted Lamont. “Divide. Half of us each side.”
With a wild, roaring cheer the men spurred forward. The assailants did not wait. Uttering loud cries of warning and dismay they fled helter-skelter for more secure cover, and not all reached it, for the irresistible impetus of their charge had carried the rescuers right in among the discomfited Matabele, whom they shot down right and left, well-nigh at point-blank.
“Quick, some of you cut loose those mules,” ordered Lamont. “Steele, you’re a good man at that sort of thing. Three, all told, will be enough.”
In a trice the two wounded leaders were cut loose, the one still kicking being given its quietus. Wyndham, the while, kept to his business as driver with an unswerving attention that no temptation to bear a hand in the fight caused him to lose sight of for a moment, and in an incredibly short space of time the reduced team was on the move again.
Lamont’s glance took in Clare Vidal’s pale, set face with a glow of indescribable relief. She was uninjured, and he noted further that she gripped the revolver he had given her as though she had been using it. She, for her part, was fully appraising this man, whom last she had seen cool, indifferent, rather cynical. Now—grimy, unshaven, fierce-eyed—he was all fire and energy, and she noted further that he seemed in every way as one born to command. The alacrity with which the others sprang to execute his orders did not escape her either—even Jim Steele, whose ambition the other day had been to punch his head.
“Get your mules along as quick as you can, Wyndham,” he said. “We must be a good hour from the Kezane, and when these devils discover we are not the advance guard of a bigger force they’ll make it lively for us again.”
One more quick look, and that was all, then his attention was turned solely and entirely to the matter in hand. Clare Vidal read that look, and was perchance satisfied; anyhow she regarded him—grimy, unshaven, fierce-eyed—with an admiration she had never felt for any living man. The ‘coward’! she said to herself—the man whom her brother-in-law and others had described as a funkstick.
“See here, Lamont,” now sung out Fullerton. “I’m going to get on one of those police horses and help in this racket. I’m dead sick of sitting here.”
For two of the horses of the fallen troopers had been brought on and were being led by the survivors.
“All right. There’ll be no harm in that. Miss Vidal, you’d better get into the back of the waggon and let down the sail. We haven’t done with the enemy yet—and you won’t be such a conspicuous mark when he comes on again.”
For a moment Clare was about to object. But she said—
“Do you really wish me to?”
“Certainly I do.”
Then she complied without another word.
“Cheer up, Lucy, we are safe now,” she said to her sister. “Mr Lamont has come up just in the nick of time.”
“The nick of time indeed,” was the shuddering answer. “If he hadn’t we should have been dead by now.” And she shivered again.
“A miss is as good as a mile, Mrs Fullerton,” said Wyndham cheerily. “That was a near thing, but our time hasn’t come yet. Gee-yup!”
He had managed to knock a sort of jaded amble out of the dispirited mules. The relieving force, divided into two, was advancing through the bush and long grass on either side of the waggon—in open skirmishing order: Peters, by tacit consent, being in virtual command of one. Every man was keenly on the alert, and the faintest movement in the grass or bush would bring rifle or pistol to the ready.
“Lamont,” said Fullerton gravely, as they thus moved forward, “I don’t want to go through such another experience. That’s the very closest thing I’ve ever been in or ever expect to be. It’d have been bad enough, but the consciousness that the wife and Clare were in for it too—eugh! it was awful! And you got us out.”
Lamont frowned.
“You’ll excuse my saying so, Fullerton, but how you could be such a bedevilled idiot as to start across country at this time of day, with two helpless women and a handful of police, bangs me I own.”
“Helpless women!” echoed Fullerton. “Not much of the ‘helpless’ woman about Clare, I can tell you. Why, she accounted for more niggers than I did, with that pistol you gave her. But why didn’t you warn us if you were in the know?”
“I did, and nobody more than half believed me—some not even that.”
“I know now what you did on the day of the race meeting, Lamont,” said Fullerton gravely. “I consider we all owe our lives to you, and I, for one, want to apologise sincerely for having misunderstood you—”
But his words were cut short. Lamont had risen in his stirrups and, swift as thought, discharged his revolver. Fullerton had a quick glancing vision of the head and shoulders of a savage twenty yards distant above the tall grass, and of the flinging aloft of black hands, and the upturned roll of white eyeballs, as, struck full and fair in the chest, the warrior fell backward with a crash. At the same time the hum of missiles overhead, and the report of firearms—but—not those of the force.
“This is a fresh crowd,” he cried. “Those who tackled us first hadn’t a gun among them.”
Then, from among the grass and bushes, dark forms arose, and the spurt of smoke and the ‘whigge’ of great clumsy missiles accompanied the appearance of each. But there were cool heads and fine shots among those white men, and the dusky barbarian found in a surprisingly short space of time that even momentary exposure meant almost certain death. Moreover, from the hurry and flurry of it, all untrained to quick shooting as he was, he could take no aim, and sent his bullet humming away harmlessly to high heaven. Fortunately, too, the outfit had got beyond the valley, and here in the open ground there was no elevated point of vantage whence it could be raked.
Yet the situation was becoming serious. Heartened by their reinforcement, and the moral effect of knowing that they, too, were returning the fire of the Amakiwa, though as yet harmlessly, the original attacking force was pressing forward under cover of the firing and confusion, swarming up stealthily in the bush and long grass, preparing for a final and decisive rush. But somehow that rush never quite came off. The fire of those cool, experienced whites was too determined, too hot, too deadly. Moving with judgment and rapidity, the mounted men would dart right up to any massing of the dark crowd, and pouring their fire literally into their faces would break up any attempt at an organised charge. But they did not come off unscathed. Three were wounded at close quarters, two had their horses stabbed right under them, but with unfailing cool-headedness and magnificent valour these were kept from falling into the hands of the savages.
For half an hour this continued, and indeed it seemed as though some supernatural power was aiding that mere handful of men against swarming odds, as with brain dizzy and the whole world seeming to grow glistening leaping bodies and gleaming blades and great waving shields, the air to buzz with the vibrating war-hiss—that handful fought its way step by step.
The red sun had just touched the far skyline when the assailants slackened, then drew off, and there—not half a mile distant—rose the substantial stockade of the Kezane Store. A ringing cheer went up, and even the played-out mules snuffed the air and pricked up their ears, and pulled forward with a will.
The long, hard, running fight—valiantly fought—was over, and there in front lay rest and safety—for a time.
Chapter Twenty Three.
The Kezane Store.
The Kezane Store—shop, inn, farm, posting-stables rolled into one—was almost a small fort, in that its buildings were enclosed within a stout stockade of mopani poles. This is exactly as its owner intended it should be; and now the said owner—an elderly German who had served in the Franco-Prussian war—came forth, together with three other white men, to welcome the party.
“Ach! dot was very exciting,” he said. “We was hearing the fight—for the last hour—coming nearer and nearer. We was not able to help outside, only four of us, but we was ready to shoot from here if the Matabele had come near enough.”
The excitement of the men was now fairly let loose, and everybody seemed to be talking at once; fighting the battle over again in bulk, or recounting individual experiences. The surviving half of the handful of police were more subdued—the recollection of five dead comrades left behind on the road having something to do with it.
“Good old Grunberger,” sang out Jim Steele. “You ought to have been with us, a jolly old soldier like you. You’d have been a tiger.”
“Ach! I do not know,” replied the old German quite flattered. “Now, chentlemen, you will all come and haf some drinks wit me. Wit me, you understand.”
“Good for you, Grunberger,” said Peters. “But we can’t leave everything entirely without a guard. Why, they might come on again at any moment. Who’ll volunteer for first guard?”
There was perforce no actual discipline among this scratch corps, and the speaker, or even Lamont himself, had no power to enforce obedience to any single order they might issue. But these men had gone through a splendid experience together. Quite half of them had never before seen a life taken, or a shot fired in anger, in their lives; yet when put to it they had made a gallant running fight, against tremendous odds, with judgment and pluck such as no similar number of trained soldiers could have excelled them in. They had succeeded in their object, and had succeeded brilliantly, and the glow of satisfaction which this inspired was heightened by the absolute certainty that had they overtaken the mule-waggon ten minutes later their arrival would have been too late. All this had implanted in them an instinctive soldierly spirit, and not a man there would have dreamed of questioning an order issued by Lamont, or even Peters. Yet the latter now invited some of them to ‘volunteer.’ The whole corps responded.
“Half a dozen ’ll do,” was the answer, and those who seemed the most willing were duly told off. The while the ladies were being looked after by the storekeeper’s wife.
Lamont was helping to look after the wounded. Fortunately, among the three men who found themselves at Kezane when they arrived was a young doctor from Buluwayo; and his services being readily and skilfully given, there was no cause whatever for anxiety on the part of these less lucky ones.
“Where’s the captain?” sang out Jim Steele, as the residue of the corps were doing full and jovial justice to the hospitable German’s invitation. “We must have the captain. We want to drink his jolly good health. Here it is. Here’s to Captain Lamont, and ripping good luck to him.”
The toast was drunk with a roar of cheering.
“He’s helping look after the wounded,” said Peters. “There’s a doctor here luckily, and he’s having them seen to all right.”
A sort of compunctious silence fell upon the others at this announcement. Here they were, refreshing and making merry and enjoying themselves, while the man who had led them, and taken a tiger’s share in the fight, had gone straight away to care for their wounded comrades.
“Chaps,” said Jim Steele shortly, “we are sweeps. D’you hear? Sweeps.”
“It’s all right, Jim,” said Peters. “Lamont told me to look after you all, even apart from Grunberger’s jolly hospitable invitation. Don’t you bother about him.”
“Bother about him?” echoed Jim Steele. “But that’s just what we’re going to do. We must have him here and drink his jolly good health. This time it’ll be my round, boys, and we’re going to do it with musical honours. So, Peters, cut away and rout him out, like the good chap you are.”
Peters, nothing loth, went out. He found Lamont just coming out of the house, having seen the wounded men made as snug and comfortable as they could be under the circumstances. Indeed, he had been giving the doctor actual aid with his own hands, in one case where an amputation had been necessary.
“Certainly I’ll come, Peters,” he said. “I want to thank these fellows for coming with me when I asked them. Heavens! to think what would have happened if they’d hung back, for you and I would have been nowhere against such odds. But—it won’t bear thinking about.”
A huge cheer greeted his entrance. All hands were awaiting him, glasses ready. A gigantic tumbler of whisky-and-soda was thrust into his hand by Jim Steele.
“Toss that down first, captain,” said that worthy. “You’ve had nothing yet.”
Lamont, entering into the fun of the thing, complied. Then Jim Steele went on—
“Boys, I’m going to give you the health of our captain, the biggest tiger in a fight any fellow could wish to find himself alongside of—”
The vociferous chorus of ‘Hear—hear!’ having subsided, he went on—
“But before doing that, I want to apologise to him—yes, to apologise, and I don’t know how to do it quite low enough. The day of the race meeting I insulted you, captain. I called you a coward. A coward I think of that, boys, after what we’ve seen to-day. Well, now I want to say you may kick me—now, in front of everyone here, and I won’t move. So, go ahead.”
“Oh, stow that, Jim Steele,” interrupted Lamont, “and don’t make a silly ass of yourself. You were a little bit screwed, you know, and didn’t know what the devil you were saying.” Here the listeners roared. “Don’t you imagine I’ve given that another thought, because I haven’t. And calling a man anything doesn’t make him so. We’ll rub out that little disagreement right here.”
He put out his hand, and the next moment almost wished he hadn’t, when Jim Steele was doing his best to wring it off. The cheering was wildly renewed.
“Boys,” went on the latter, raising his glass. “Here’s Captain Lamont, and his jolly good health. And if he’ll raise a corps to take the veldt and help straighten out this racket, I’m going to be the first man to join. I don’t suppose there’s a man jack in this room that won’t join. Is there?”
“No—no.”
The answer was an enthusiastic roar. And as they drank his health they struck up the usual chorus under the circumstances—‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’—until the room rang again. And if the watchful savage was crawling about the dark veldt outside, in a scouting capacity—and who shall say he was not—he must have decided that Makiwa was singing war-songs with extraordinary go and zest—not to say indulging in a Tyay’igama dance (see note), by way of celebrating his victory.
Then Lamont made a little speech. He thanked them for responding so readily to his call for volunteers, but he knew that they would thank themselves for the rest of their lives that it had been given to them to be the means of averting the horrible tragedy they had been the means of averting. The whole country now was up in arms. These savages spared neither age nor sex, he had already seen enough—and Peters would bear him out there—to prove that. Probably they would hear of more and similar massacres elsewhere before long, but at any rate he, for one, was going to help the country in which he had lived since its opening up—to help it to the best of his ability; and whether they served with him or not he hoped and believed every man jack in that room was going to do the same.
As for himself, Jim Steele had been good enough to emphasise anything he might have done, but exactly the same and more might be said of every man who had fought that day in defence of their two fellow-countrywomen, and of none more than of Wyndham, who although he had had no opportunity of firing a shot at the would-be woman-slayers, had none the less by his coolness and skill contributed to the safety of the party as thoroughly as though he had shot a score of Matabele with his own hand.
Wyndham had just come in, and a shout of cheering greeted his appearance at these words. When this had abated Lamont went on.
They were not out of the wood yet, he said. They had either got to wait here until relieved or take the ladies back to Gandela themselves, and he himself favoured the first plan. Were they alone they would reckon it part of the day’s work to fight their way, if necessary, to whatever point at which their services were most required. But the events of the afternoon had shown they were an inadequate force for escort purposes, though providentially they had been brought through that time. Again, he repeated, he could not claim to have done more than any other man who was with him, where all did so well; and to the end of his days, be they many or few, one of the proudest recollections of his life would be that of the couple of dozen or so of men who fought side by side with him, against tremendous odds, to save their fellow-countrywomen from falling into the barbarous hands of murderous and treacherous savages.
Roars of cheers greeted the closing of this speech; and then they fell to the discussion of Jim Steele’s notion. For the idea had caught on. It was determined that those who had fought that day should form the nucleus of a corps to take the field under Lamont and Peters, and that the said corps should be known as Lamont’s Tigers.
“Dat is a goot name,” said Grunberger, nodding his head approvingly. “We will now drink de health of Lamont’s Tigers. Chentlemen, name your drinks.”
This announcement was received with great applause. Then, paper and pen having been requisitioned, every man there put down his name, pledging himself to serve in the corps and also to do all he could to induce desirable men to join it too.
Lamont had left them after his address, and was now examining the defences of the place. As he stood in the gathering darkness it was with a strange tingle of the pulses that he reflected upon the scene he had just left. This popularity to which he had thus suddenly sprung was not a little strange, in fact it was a little aweing. In what light would Clare Vidal view it? And then, at the thought of Clare, he felt more than devoutly grateful that he had been the means of saving her from a horrible death—and with it there intruded for the first time another thought. Had he thus saved her for himself?
Yes. The frozen horror with which he had received the announcement that morning, that she was advancing deeper and deeper into certain peril, and causing him to lose sight of his own fatigue and recent hardships, to start off then and there to her aid, had opened his eyes; but—was it for good or for ill?
“There you are at last, Mr Lamont,” said Clare, as he entered the living-room of the place. “We have been wondering what had become of you.”
She was alone. There was a something in her tone, even in her look, which he had not noticed before—a sort of gravity, as though the old fun and brightness had taken to itself wings.
“I’ve been going around seeing to things. Where’s Mrs Fullerton?”
“Gone to bed. She’s got a splitting headache, and seems to have got a kind of frightened shock. Dick is with her now, but I’m going directly.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. It has been a trying enough day for any woman, Heaven knows. But you, Miss Vidal. There isn’t a man in the whole outfit that isn’t talking of your splendid pluck.”
She smiled, rather wanly he thought, and shook her head.
“I wish they’d forget it then. I wish I could. Oh, Mr Lamont—I have killed—men.”
She uttered the words slowly, and in a tone of mingled horror and sadness. This, then, accounted for the changed expression of her face.
“Strictly and in absolute self-defence. Not only in self-defence but in defence of your helpless sister too. There is no room for one atom of self-reproach in that,” he went on, speaking rapidly, vehemently. “Not only that, but your courage and readiness were important factors in saving the situation until we arrived. Wyndham has been telling me all about it.”
She smiled, but it was a hollow sort of smile, and shook her head.
“It is good of you to try and comfort me. But do you mean it really?”
“Every word, really and entirely. ‘Men’ you said just now. Beasts in the shape of men you ought to have said, and would have if you had seen what Peters and I saw only yesterday morning, only I don’t want to shock you any further. Yes, on second thoughts I will though, if only to set those qualms of a too-sensitive conscience at rest. Well, we found the mutilated remains of poor Tewson, and his womenkind and children—little children, mind—whom these devils had murdered in their own home. I could tell you even more that would bring it home to you, but I won’t. Now, have you any further scruples of conscience?”
“No, I haven’t,” she answered, both face and tone hardening as she realised the atrocity in its full horror. “Thank you for telling me. It has made a difference already. And now, Mr Lamont, I must go to my sister. You have saved us from a horrible death, and I don’t know how to find words to thank you.”
“Oh, as to that, you can incidentally count in about three dozen other men. Not a man jack of them but did just as much as I did—some even more.”
She looked at him with such a sweet light glowing in her eyes, as well-nigh to unsteady him.
“I’ll believe that,” she said, “when you’ve answered one question.”
“And it—?”
“Who got together these men the moment he knew we were in danger? Who, forgetting his own fatigue, started at a moment’s notice, and, inspiring the others with the same energy and bravery, rescued us from a ghastly death? Who was it?”
“It was only what any man would have done. Oh, Clare, you can never realise what that moment meant to me when I heard that that blighting idiot Fullerton had started this morning—literally to hurl you on to the assegais of these devils. You!”
In his vehemence he hardly noticed that he had used her Christian name. She did, however, and smiled, and the smile was very soft and sweet.
“Me!” she echoed. “Didn’t you think of poor Lucy too? Why only me?”
“Because I love you.”
It was out now. His secret had been surprised from him. What would she say? They stood facing each other, in that rough room with its cheap oleographs of the Queen, the Kaiser, and Cecil Rhodes staring down upon them from the walls in the dingy light of an unfragrant oil-lamp, any moment liable to interruption. The smile upon her face became a shade sweeter.
“Say that again,” she said.
“I love you.”
She was now in his embrace, but she sought not to release herself from it. Bending down his head she put her lips to his ear and whispered, “Consider the compliment returned.”
They said more than that, these two, who had thus so unpremeditatedly come together, but we do not feel under the necessity of divulging what they said. Perchance also they—did.
“I must really go now,” she said at last, as footsteps were heard approaching. “Good-night—my darling.”
And she disappeared with a happy laugh, leaving the other standing there in a condition little short of dazed, and sticking a pin into himself to make sure that he was actually awake and not merely dreaming.
Note. Literally ‘flogging the name.’ When a Zulu regiment returned from battle, those who had specially distinguished themselves were pointed at by the commanding induna and named to the King. Each thus named came forward separately and danced before the King, recapitulating his deeds. The while his comrades in arms signalled his distinction by striking their shields with their knob-sticks and roaring out his name.