"_"Ndaag, Baas_--_"ndaag, missis_!" [Abbreviation of "Good day"] began one of the two, a tall, unprepossessing looking fellow, with one eye and pock-marked countenance; and speaking in Boer Dutch, he asked leave to rest his stock for a few hours.
Selwood ran his eye down the greasy, red-clay-smeared doc.u.ment (Kafirs travelling within the Cape Colony are compelled by law to provide themselves with pa.s.ses), which set forth that Muntiwa and Booi--Hlambi Kafirs--were authorised to remove so many head of cattle and so many sheep and goats to Siwani"s location in Kaffraria, travelling by such and such a road. It went on to enumerate particulars of the stock, the various earmarks, and sundry other details, and seemed perfectly in order. A glance or two having sufficed to effect a comparison between the said particulars and the animals themselves, Selwood replied--
"I can"t let you stop here, Muntiwa. Your sheep are the most infernally scabby lot I ever saw in my life, and I don"t half like the look of your cattle. See there," he went on, pointing to a particularly dejected-looking cow, whose miserable aspect and filmy eye denoted anything but rude health; "that looks uncommonly like a case of red-water. So you must trek on. I can"t have my stock infected."
"_Whau! Siya qoka_!" ["Ah, you lie!"] cried the Kafir, savagely, advancing within a couple of yards of Selwood, his kerries shaking in his grasp with his suppressed rage. "There is nothing the matter with the cattle, and you know it. We shall rest here whether you like it or not."
Things began to look pretty serious. Christopher Selwood was as good a man as most men of his age and training. But the Kafir, too, was of powerful build, and was evidently a turbulent, quarrelsome fellow; and an ugly customer all round. Moreover, he had a mate, rendering the odds two to one. Then Selwood was handicapped by the two girls, but for whose presence he would instantly have knocked the insolent native down.
Yet for all these disadvantages he was not the sort of man to stand any nonsense; least of all from a native.
"Go indoors. I"ll be with you in a minute," he said to the girls, by way of clearing the decks for action.
Violet, looking alarmed, made a step to obey. But Marian did not stir, and there was a dangerous gleam in her blue eyes. It was possible that in the event of a collision the Kafirs might not have found the odds so overwhelmingly in their favour as they expected.
"Look here," he went on: "if there"s any more _indaba_ you"ll find yourself in the _tronk_ to-night at Fort Lamport. Do you imagine for a moment I"m going to be bossed by a couple of Kafirs, and on my own place, too? You must be mad! Now, trek at once!"
The spokesman of the two, stung by the other"s calmness, came closer, shaking his kerries unpleasantly near Selwood"s nose. But the latter never moved.
The other native said something in a low, quick, warning tone. It was effective. Both Kafirs turned, and, walking away, began collecting their stock, aided by their women and children, who, laden with mats and cooking-pots, and other household gear, had, up till now, been squatting in the background.
"Hey, _umlungu_!" [White man] cried the one-eyed savage, turning to fire a parting shot, "we shall meet one of these days. Take care of yourself!" he added, with significant irony.
"Ha! ha! So we shall, my friend. But it will be in the magistrate"s court. Bad hats both of them," he added, turning to the girls. "Queer that they should own all that stock. But the pa.s.s was all right. Yet there are such things as forged pa.s.ses. By Jove! I"ve a good mind to send over and warn the Mounted Police. Not worth the trouble, though.
I"ll just ride down after dinner and make sure that they are clear off the place. Impudent dog, that wall-eyed chap. If you two hadn"t been there I"d have given him the best hammering he ever had in his life, or he"d have given me one."
With which remark the speaker characteristically dismissed the affair from his mind altogether.
"I"ve had a letter from Renshaw," said Mrs Selwood, as they sat down to dinner.
"A letter!" cried Violet, suddenly interested. "Why, it isn"t post-day!
How did you get it?"
"Theunis Bezuidenhout brought it out from Fort Lamport. He says the drought up there is something fearful--"
"Who? Theunis Bezuidenhout?" struck in Christopher.
"--Something fearful," went on his wife, clean ignoring this flippant remark. "There isn"t a blade of gra.s.s left on the place, and hardly a drop of water. All the sheep and goats have died except about five hundred."
"Poor chap!" said Selwood. "What an unlucky dog he is! He"d better have cleared out of that dried-up Bushmanland place long ago, even if he had to give it away for a song. Well, he"ll have to now, anyhow. Write and ask him to come down here when he does, Hilda. He might hit on something about here to suit him."
"Oh yes, mamma--do!" exclaimed Effie, aged twelve, with whom Renshaw was a prime favourite.
"But that isn"t all," continued Mrs Selwood. "The poor fellow has been ill--fearfully ill--believes he would have died, but for a stranger who turned up quite unexpectedly, but just in the nick of time, and nursed him through it. It was a return of his old fever."
"By Jove!" said Christopher, "that up-country fever is the very mischief once you get it on you. But, Hilda, write and tell him to come down here sharp--whether he leaves his few goats or not. They"re bound to die anyhow. This air will set him up on his legs again in no time--and meanwhile he can be looking around. Tell him to bring his friend too.
By the way, what"s the other man"s name?"
"He doesn"t say--only that he"s a man from England. I"ll write this very evening," she answered.
Violet Avory"s prettily expressed concern was but the foreground to an instinctive inward conjecture as to what the stranger would be like.
Poor Renshaw"s illness was not an event to move her much, and poor Renshaw himself faded into background beside the possibilities opening out before her in the advent of a stranger--a stranger from England too.
Truth to tell, she was becoming a trifle bored. The incense of male adoration, as essential to her as the very breath of life, had not floated much in her direction of late; for the Umtirara range, though scenically and climatically a comparative Eden, was yet to all purposes, as far as she was concerned, an Adamless one. A stranger--lately from England! There was something delightfully exciting in the potentialities here opening out.
"Tell him he must come, Hilda!" said Marian, with, for her, a strange eagerness. "Poor--poor Renshaw! He"ll never shake off that horrible fever up there in such an awful drought-stricken desert. Tell him he must come, and come at once!"
And yet of these two it was for her who was moved to excitement over the possible arrival of a stranger, that the absent man would have given his very life--blindly, as with regard to the treasure for which he had been so blindly and so often seeking--hitherto in vain.
CHAPTER SIX.
RELAPSE.
The sun was at least four hours high when the stranger awoke.
His night of watching coming upon the exhaustion and fatigue of his long and arduous journey of the previous day had gradually overpowered him, and towards dawn he had sunk into a series of dozes, troubled and uneasy; for the events of the night kept chasing each other in wild medley through his slumbers, a.s.suming every form of weird and exaggerated monstrosity, till at last he had subsided into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
Now, however, he awoke with a start. The sick man"s eyes were wide open, and were fixed upon him with an inquiring and puzzled expression.
He felt horribly guilty beneath their searching gaze--horribly mean--in fact, he felt himself to be something next door to a thief.
Facts can a.s.sume a very cold and impartial aspect when they confront us at our waking hour. Maurice Sellon felt strongly akin to a thief.
He had stolen his host"s secret--nay, more--he had robbed him of actual property. And it was beyond his power to make rest.i.tution, for he himself had been arbitrarily deprived of such power; and at the recollection of that ghostly, mysterious claw s.n.a.t.c.hing the doc.u.ment from him in the dead midnight, he shuddered inwardly. The whole business smacked of witchcraft, and something abominably uncanny. He could not account for it, any more than he could account for the fact that he, Maurice Sellon, had crept on tiptoe to the bedside of the man who lay at his mercy--ill and helpless--and had there and then robbed him like a common thief.
All this time the two had been staring at each other, one from his sick-bed, the other from his armchair. Sellon was the first to break the silence.
"Well, old chap, how do you feel now?" he said, striving to throw into his tone a bluff heartiness he was far from feeling. "Had a bad night of it, I"m afraid?"
"Yes, I have rather," said Renshaw, slowly. "But--when did you come?
Have they looked after your horse?" And with the instinctive hospitality characteristic of his cla.s.s, he made a move as though to rise and personally look to the supplying of the stranger"s wants.
"Don"t move. Don"t think of moving, I beg!" cried the latter, putting out his hand as if to arrest the attempt. "The fact is, I arrived last evening, and found you--er--well, not quite the thing; so I just thought I"d sit here in case you might want anything during the night."
"How very good of you! I must have had a touch of my old enemy-- up-country fever. I picked it up years ago in the Lembombo Mountains, through staying on there too late at the end of a winter hunting trip, and the worse of that sort of infernal business is that you are always liable to a return of it. Yes, I remember now. I did feel most uncommonly queer yesterday. And then you arrived and took care of me?
It is more than probable you have saved my life, for I need hardly tell you that to be taken ill in a place like this is apt to turn out no joke."
"Well, you were in a baddish way, certainly," interrupted the other, rather hurriedly. "And now, look here. I"m not much of a doctor, but I seem to have a pretty strong notion that when a fellow"s feverish the best thing he can do is to keep as quiet as possible. Which, done into plain English, means that you"ve talked quite enough, and you"d better turn over and try to go to sleep again."
"I believe you"re right," said Renshaw, for he was beginning to feel bad again. "But first of all oblige me by going to the door and shouting "Dirk!""
Sellon complied, and, in obedience to the call, the old goatherd came trotting up. A grin of satisfaction puckered up his parchment visage as he saw his master so much better and able to talk rationally again.
"Dirk," said the latter, when the Koranna"s cheery congratulations were exhausted, "you keep the goats near, round the house to-day, so as to be within call--it wouldn"t make much difference if they stayed in the kraal for all the poor brutes find to eat in the veldt--however, I suppose they find something. What have you done with the stranger Baas"
horse?"
"He"s in the stable, Baas."