"_Au_! I thought not. I thought not," was the muttered answer. "And Jojo (George)?"
"He is with his father," said Beryl eagerly. "Why?"
The old man muttered something quickly to himself. Then aloud--
"They have not returned? That is well. _Inkosikazi_, take horse, and go and tell them the way home is dark to-night--dark, dark. Let them sleep where they are, and return beneath the sun."
"Dark?" I interrupted, like an idiot. "Dark? Why it"s nearly full moon."
Dumela glanced at me impatiently, eke somewhat contemptuously.
"_Au_!" he said. "I have not been away for nothing. Why did I leave here? Why did I fill up the ears of my father with a tale? Why did I take away my cattle and my wives? Because the ears of Kuliso are large"--meaning open--"but I wanted mine to be so, too. So I went no further than the further border of Kuliso"s location, giving out that I had a grievance against my father, whose milk and corn I had eaten for nearly the half of my lifetime; giving out, too, that I wanted it not to be known to those I had left, that I was dwelling beneath the shadow of Kuliso. Then the people of Kuliso feared not to talk within my hearing.
Say, _Inkosikazi_, why has not your father--and mine--sent the boy away?"
Beryl"s face went ghastly white.
"Why, Dumela," she said. "The compensation cattle have been paid, and Kuliso has a.s.sured us the unfortunate affair was settled. He is the chief. We have his word."
"You have his word. But the fathers of the children have not the compensation cattle--no, not any of them. Kuliso"s hands are large.
That which is poured into them does not overflow and fall out. The fathers of the children who were killed have no compensation, and--the boy was not punished. Justice--the white man"s justice--has not been done, they say. Why was he still kept here?"
Beryl"s face seemed cut out of stone. She made a step towards the old Kafir, and placed a hand on each shoulder. They were about the same height, and I saw her grasp tighten, on him, like a vice.
"Attend, Dumela. Are they in danger now, and where? Quick, do you hear? Quick."
"Take the shortest way to the house of the Chatterer (Trask)," he answered, thus directly cornered. "_Au_! were there not two lives taken, two lives! And these are two lives."
Almost flinging him from her, Beryl turned to me, and in her face, her tone, her gesture, was a very whirlwind of apprehension, of frenzied despair.
"Kenrick, what horses are in the stable?"
"Fortunately two--yours, Meerkat--and mine."
"Saddle them up, quick. Get your revolver, and come."
Not long did it take me to obey her behest, and indeed, no sooner had I done so than Beryl herself appeared at the stable door, equipped for our expedition.
Giving no further thought to old Dumela, we fared forth over the moonlit veldt.
"My presentiment was a true one after all, Kenrick," remarked Beryl, as we rode side by side.
"That remains to be seen," I said. "Old Dumela may have found a mare"s nest."
"No. He would not have come here at this time of night like this without good reason. And all the time we were thanking him shabby and ungrateful he was serving us--watching over our interests, our safety."
The short cut to Trask"s lay along the bottom of a network of intersecting kloofs, but the path would only allow of riding single file. Beryl and I had a sharp skirmish as to who should take the lead, but I claimed my right, and firmly stuck to it. If there was danger, mine was the right to discover it and meet it first, and that she recognised.
Heavens! the sickening, creeping mystery of that night ride--the weird, boding awe of it, as we took our way through the dark gloom of overhanging scrub, the sharp contrast of its blackness with the vivid glare of the full moon accentuated tenfold--the ghostly cliffs frowning down upon us, as from a scene in Dante.
Our way took us by the lower end of the Zwaart Kloof, the site of that other tragedy--the scene, too, of my fell and fatal discovery when all my castles in the air had melted away, when I had learned that I was ruined, and as we entered its bushy recesses a thrill of superst.i.tious dread ran through me. It was an ill-omened spot--cursed and haunted with an overshadowing of woe. Surely--surely--not again were its shades destined to cover another tragedy--another outpouring of the cup of horror and of evil.
I had but lately avowed my disbelief in instincts, yet here I know not what instinct of dread and repulsion came upon me as we drew near the place, moving me to glance over my shoulder to catch a glimpse of the face of my companion, possibly with the intent to ascertain whether the same idea was moving her. But as I did so a sudden and violent start on the part of my horse came near unseating me. Shying, snorting, the brute swerved and backed; and coming thus into collision with Beryl"s steed it took both of us some moments to soothe and quiet the animals.
But in that brief flash of time I had caught a glimpse of a Something lying on the ground, and my heart stood still within me and every drop of blood in my system seemed to turn to water.
There was no mistaking the nature of that Something. The inanimate human form is possessed of an eloquence all its own. Dark upon the shimmer of the moonlit earth this one lay, the white face staring upward to the sky, the face of poor little George Matterson. And the same instinctive conviction flashed through us both as we slid from our saddles, that it was a dead face.
Never, if I were to live a thousand years, could I forget the whirl of rage and horror and grief that convulsed me at that moment, turning me half-dazed. Beryl was beside the prostrate form, bending over it. No cry had escaped her, only a quick, half-stifled gasp. In a moment I was beside her, having taken the precaution to secure both our horses.
"Dead!" she uttered, having raised the head, with infinite tenderness of touch. "Dead. Murdered!"
I don"t know which feeling was uppermost within my mind at that moment-- horror at the discovery, or awe of the strange, unnatural calmness wherewith she accepted the frightful and heartrending situation. I bent down over the poor remains. A noosed _reim_ had been twisted round the neck, compressing it tightly. Not this, however, had been the cause of death. The gra.s.s around and beneath the body glistened with a dark wet stain. On the dead boy"s clothing above the heart was a clean cut from which blood was still welling. He had been stabbed--stabbed with an a.s.segai.
We stood staring into each other"s faces, ashy white in the moonlight.
It seemed as if our lips refused to frame the question that was in both our minds. Then, speaking in a harsh, gasping whisper, Beryl said--
"What of--father?"
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
"WALK, KULISO!"
"Two lives were taken, and these are two lives."
The words of old Dumela were humming through my brain, as I bent over the dead boy in quest of spoor. Such was plain and abundant, and showed that he had not been slain here, but had been deposited after death on the spot where we had found him. But that we should find Septimus Matterson alive neither of us ever for a moment dared to hope.
There was no difficulty in following the spoor by that clear light. The savage murderers had left quite a broad path where they had dragged their victim. No word did we exchange, Beryl and I. It was significant that no thought of personal danger was in our minds, only a sickening apprehension of what we were, at any moment, likely to come upon, mingled with a fierce longing for revenge by reason of what we had already found. These midnight a.s.sa.s.sins might even now be lying in wait for us. Every bush might shelter a lurking foe, yet for our own safety we had no thought. More than once in the course of my experiences I have found myself in peril of my own life, but my feelings on such occasions have been nothing to the awful boding suspense of that search, through the still, unearthly midnight silence.
Suddenly our horses, which we had been leading as we followed the spoor, snorted, and rucked back, nearly wrenching the bridles from our grasp.
Instinctively we both drew our revolvers; instinctively, too, we knew that it was not the living that had startled the animals, but the dead.
Our quest was at an end. Septimus Matterson lay in full view, there in the clear moonlight, but even before Beryl had rushed forward and thrown herself beside him, we knew that there was no more life here than in the poor little remains we had just left at no great distance away.
Yet, what had slain him? The att.i.tude was calm and peaceful, for he lay on his side as though asleep. No trace of wound or blow was upon him, whereas the body of poor little George showed every mark of brutal violence, from the deadly stab to the agonised contortion of his face.
But Septimus Matterson"s strong, fine features were placid and undisfigured. Then I remembered what Beryl had told me about her father"s life.
"He has not been killed," I whispered. "His heart has failed."
She nodded, but did not speak; and at that moment I could piece together the whole of this grisly tragedy which the silent midnight bush had witnessed: the fell carrying out of this grim vendetta which we ought all to have known about and guarded against before it was too late. The two had been waylaid and set upon suddenly when returning from Trask"s, and while George had been the main object of the vengeance of the murderers the sudden shock of the surprise had stricken his father dead through heart failure. That the body of the latter had suffered no violence after death might have been due to the respect in which he had been held while living, whereas the noosed ram which had been placed around the neck of the boy seemed to add a lurid significance to old Dumela"s words, ""_Justice--the white man"s justice--has not been done,"
they say_."
Beryl"s expression of countenance was unfathomable, as she knelt there supporting her dead father"s head, tenderly stroking back the hair from the forehead, wiping the cold, marble face with her white handkerchief.
And I, as I stood there gazing down upon the man who had been to me as a father and a friend, and knew that we should never again hear his voice, never again see those kindly eyes light up with mirth or recognition, that his presence was removed from our midst for ever, I believe I should have broken down and burst out blubbering like a schoolboy but for what next occurred.
Beryl, having gently lowered the inanimate head, now rose. But no tears glistened in her eyes. They were dry and hard with the terrible intensity of the strain. No cry, no burst of agony escaped her breast; but as she stood there, her tall form drawn to its full height, the look upon her face was so awful, so blasting in its fury of hate and despair and menace, that even in that moment of grief and horror I almost recoiled from her. Heavens! Had her grief in its reaction merged itself into this intensity, this overmastering impulse of hate and revenge? If so, it seemed that her brain must give way.
"Come," she said, moving to the side of her horse.