some twenty-five miles from the town, and Parton had now laid his plans
to ride out during the night and make their recapture early next
morning. There might be some resistance, and he settled therefore to
take with him the two troopers stationed here, as well as Gressex and a
couple of natives upon whom he could depend. Meanwhile, although busied
in his official work, Parton had had time in these two days to be much
exercised by the private anxieties that galled incessantly his mind.
For several days he had borne their harassing companionship. Two
letters, one read and re-read many times within the last five days, the
other unopened and unread, which lay within the breastpocket of his
tunic, contained the secret of all this mental harassment; these letters
burnt upon his conscience much as a blister burns the flesh against
which it is laid.
Since their arrival at the village Parton's demeanour towards Gressex,
which had suddenly altered after the episode of the hunt and the broken
arm, had changed again. During the excitement of the chase and under
the quick and kindly attentions of Gressex when his arm was broken, his
old friendliness had reasserted itself. Twice the name Mainwaring had
escaped his lips as he thanked his trooper gratefully for his ready and
tender help. And upon that long evening's ride his manner had softened
greatly; almost in the dim starlight he had gone back to the old days
again.
Yet something within him had just stayed his tongue and had hindered a
recognition which in itself would have been a mere act of grace,
lessening no whit the discipline and respect ordained by their present
difference in rank.
As for Gressex he had ceased to wonder at his old friend's curious
demeanour. The mental exclamation that rose within him--"He's a proud
devil, after all. I should hardly have thought it of Parton!"--very
well expressed his feelings, and he now made the best he could of the
companionship of the two troopers--very good fellows they were--with
whom he was quartered.
At twelve o'clock upon the third night of his arrival in the Kalahari
village, Parton, who had now made every preparation, rode very silently
and with every circumstance of caution, out into the night. With him
were his three troopers and the two native allies--one a Bushman, the
other a Griqua--who had acted as his spies and were now to show him the
road. His broken arm was by no means yet at ease; but Parton, whatever
else his demerits, had plenty of pluck, and just now, in his state of
mental tension, inactivity was a very curse to him.
The huts where they were quartered lay upon the outskirts, and the party
quitted the village so silently that not even a native dog raised its
alarm. Sometimes walking their horses rapidly, sometimes cantering--
though the action caused Parton to grind his teeth with pain--they
passed in less than five hours over the wilderness of grass and bush
that lay between them and the cattle post they sought. The Griqua, who
had a horse of his own, rode, the Bushman trotted always in front of the
party, finding his way in the starlight with an unerring and marvellous
precision. There were four huts at the cattle post. These were
speedily rushed in the dim early morning, just as the faintest hint of
dawn began to pale the night sky. The inmates were all asleep, but the
final rattle of horse hoofs and the furious barking of the kraal dogs
roused them. It was too late. Gressex and his fellow troopers each
carried and secured without a blow their respective huts, which
contained a few Bakalahari men, women and children.
Parton, by a stroke of ill luck, happened to walk into a hut in which
four Bechuanas--three of them the very cattle thieves he was in search
of--lay together. These men were all disaffected and turbulent border
ruffians, and they had arms ready at hand. In a few words of Sechuana
the lieutenant, as he stood within the hut, called upon them to
surrender. It was pretty dark, and the first reply Parton got to his
summons was an assegai through his shoulder, which brought him down.
His revolver went off uselessly, and in an instant he had three out of
the four men on top of him Gressex, in the next hut a few yards off,
heard the shot and Parton's stifled cry, and, leaving the Griqua to take
charge of his capture, dashed round to his lieutenant's relief. In five
seconds he was in the fray. The three men struggling with the wounded
officer were impeding one another, and beyond a gash or two with their
assegais had done little injury. Gressex ran in among them, loosed off
his carbine at the nearest man and settled him, struck another with his
empty weapon a blow on the arm which broke it and disabled its owner,
and threw himself upon the remaining native, who had Parton still by the
throat. But in that instant the fourth occupant of the hut who had been
standing back in the dark shade watching the struggle, came in. He
lunged with the assegai he had snatched up at Gressex's broad back. The
sharp blade shore through the trooper's tough cord tunic and flannel
shirt and drove deep into his right lung. At this moment another
trooper appeared with a blazing wisp of grass. By the light of it, as
he flung it upon the floor, he could take in the whole scene. His
carbine was undischarged; he levelled it instantly at the man attacking
Gressex and dropped him with a bullet through the heart.
Here then was the situation. The cattle post was captured, two of the
thieves were slain, another disabled; the rest of the dozen inhabitants
of the kraal were safe under guard, the Bushman--delighted to pay off
some old scores--standing sentinel over one hut with a long Martini in
his hand and a diabolical grin of exultation on his face. The stolen
cattle, as was presently ascertained, were safe in the ox-kraal, with
the rest of the stock running at this post. But against this, Gressex
was badly wounded and the lieutenant somewhat cut and battered.
Gressex stood stooping in the hut, the assegai sticking half a foot into
his back. Despite that horrible thrust he had still all his wits about
him.
"Warton," he said grimly through his teeth to the trooper, who still
stood with smoking carbine, "thanks for settling that chap. Now pull
this damned thing out of me. Pull before I fall down. I feel a bit
sick."
Warton laid hold of the spear and, exerting his strength, managed to
extract the spear-head. A little torrent of blood poured forth. While
Parton, who had now got to his feet, pressed his right hand upon the
wound, Warton managed to strip off Gressex's tunic Gressex was now very
faint. They laid him upon his side, pulled away his flannel shirt, and
then bound up the hurt as tightly as possible. Then from the
lieutenant's flask they managed to pour some brandy between the wounded
man's lips, from which blood was already oozing. There was only one
thing to be done with the sufferer. The bleeding must be stopped
somehow, and he must lie where he now lay. Only the extremest quiet
could save him.
In an hour Parton had recovered from his own hurts. He had luckily
received nothing worse than a nasty gash in his left shoulder and sundry
cuts and bruises. His broken left arm was unhurt, thanks to Gressex's
careful setting. The struggle seemed to have cleared the lieutenant's
head. His eye was bright, his mind made up. Gressex had for the second
time in a few days done him a great service. He had risked his very
life this time for a man to whom he owed little enough, if he but knew
all, and he now lay apparently at the point of death.
Parton's doubts and struggles had all vanished into thin air. The fight
and Gressex's ready bravery had braced him--as a fight braces always a
good Englishman--and brought to the surface all his better nature, and
he now sat down to write certain letters with a calm mind. He had his
pocket-book and an indelible pencil, and having seen that all his
captives were secure, and the cattle safe in the adjacent veldt, where
they were feeding under charge of the Bushman, he sat down in the red
sand, with his back against a hut, and began to write. Before his
writing is completed, it will be well to glance at those two letters in
his breast pocket, of which mention has been previously made. Here is
the opened letter, addressed to Lieutenant B.F. Parton, Bechuanaland
Border Police:--
"International Hotel, Cape Town, 12th December, 189--
"Dear Mr Parton,--
"The address of this letter will probably surprise you. I received
your letter in London on the morning I left for South Africa, whither
I have come with my uncle, Colonel Mellersh, and my cousin, Kate
Mellersh, on a trip we have long planned. We are staying at Cape Town
for a few days, and are then going on to Kimberley to see the diamond
mines, and perhaps make an expedition into the Transvaal or
Bechuanaland.
"I must first reply to your letter. I am sorry, more sorry than I can
express, that you should have reopened that old topic, which I quite
thought and hoped, for the sake of your own peace of mind, had been
finally dismissed, if not forgotten, nearly three years ago. My mind
is as fully made up as it was when I last saw you, nor is it ever
likely to change in the way you seem to suggest and hope for. I
grieve very much to have to again say this to one whom I respect and
like, but it is better to make clear at once that there is not the
slightest prospect of any change in my sentiments.
"I must tell you frankly that I have the very strongest of all reasons
for this--the reason that my affections have long since drifted in
another direction--the direction (I may as well at once say here) of
our mutual friend, Mr Mainwaring.
"You say in your letter that if ever you can be of service to me I may
command you at any time. I take that expression to be a sincere one,
and I am going to put it to a very severe test. Mr Mainwaring,
before he left England, purposely avoided seeing me--quite from a
mistaken motive--but wrote me a letter telling me of his affection for
me, and saying good-bye, as he supposed, for ever. If he had seen me
instead of sending that letter, a great deal of misery might have been
avoided. I have been unable to glean the slightest hint of his
whereabouts until a week before I left England. Mr Mainwaring has
within the last few weeks come into some considerable property from an
old uncle (from whom he expected absolutely nothing) who has quite
lately died, and has now no reason to remain in exile longer. For
more than two years I have been moving heaven and earth to get at his
whereabouts, and I only received a letter, three days before I sailed,
from his cousin and family lawyer, Mr Bladen, who had always refused
absolutely before this to disclose his whereabouts, telling me that
Mr Mainwaring (under the name of Gressex) is a private in the
Bechuanaland Border Police, stationed either at Mafeking or Vryburg.
Mr Bladen at the same time informed me of his cousin's piece of good
luck, and assured me that he was only waiting for certain legal
documents to write out to Mr Mainwaring informing him of his fortune.
As there seems a doubt about his actual address, I am now going to
ask you to deliver the inclosed letter, if possible, into Mr
Mainwaring's hands, or, if you cannot see him personally, to send it
by special messenger or post it. I am asking, I know, a great deal
from your friendship, but I trust to you to help me in this matter,
which is to me of very vital importance. You know me sufficiently, I
think, to be aware that I am not trying to find Mr Mainwaring because
`his ship has come in.' I have--I am almost ashamed to say it--ample
means of my own, and Tom's good luck has nothing to do with the
question. But I do want to find him at once, and I can only think of
you, as an officer of his regiment, as the likeliest person to help
me. Pray, pray, forgive me the double burden that I fear I may be
putting upon you by this letter.
"We shall be at Kimberley on the 15th inst. Please address any
letters or telegrams to me at the Central Hotel there.
"Believe me, yours always sincerely,--
"Ella Harling."
Ella's letter, addressed to "Mr John Gressex, Bechuanaland Border
Police. (To be forwarded)," still lay unopened in Parton's pocket. It
had remained there these five days past, although the man to whom it had
been addressed had ridden and rested for some days within six feet of
it. Fifty times a day had Parton cursed himself for a villain in
detaining it, and yet--and yet--he could not give Ella up and help Tom
Mainwaring, and so--even after the affair of the broken arm--it had
stayed there within his tunic.
Parton's first note was to Ella Harling, telling her of Gressex's
(Mainwaring we may now call him) serious condition, and begging her, if
possible, to come up by rail at once from Kimberley to Vryburg and
thence drive as rapidly as possible the hundred miles across the veldt
to Masura's-town, where she would find a trooper who would bring her out
to the cattle post where Mainwaring lay. That, as Parton said to
himself, was something off his mind. It was some little expiation for
the wrong he had done Ella and his old friend, and he felt pounds better
already.
His next letter was to the officer in command at Vryburg during his
absence, reporting affairs, and requesting that two more troopers should
be at once sent to Masura's-town, to aid in bringing in the prisoners
and cattle, and to keep in check any attempt by the disaffected Masura
to create trouble. He requested also that a light waggon might be
dispatched for the wounded man, with certain nursing comforts and drugs
that might be useful. He begged that, if possible, a doctor should also
be sent, as the case was an urgent and serious one. One of the
troopers, mounted on the best horse--the lieutenant's--was despatched
with these letters, with directions to put Miss Harling's note into an
envelope, carefully addressed, before posting it at Vryburg. The
trooper was partially told Mainwaring's story, and put upon his honour
not to read the contents of the letter, at present envelopeless. He was
a good fellow, and made a big ride, covering the 120 odd miles to
Vryburg in two days on the single horse.
For the next seven days Parton had his hands pretty full at the desert
cattle post. He had to guard carefully his prisoners, to see that the
cattle were not re-stolen or re-captured, and to overawe Masura, who
came out to know why his men were being killed and his cattle seized;
and above all he had the heavy charge of nursing Tom Mainwaring, who for
some days was spitting blood and in a state of high fever.
For three days and nights Parton nursed him most tenderly and carefully,
feeding him with milk and thin mealie-meal gruel and beef-tea made from
a slaughtered ox.
Thanks to a sound constitution, Mainwaring turned the corner, and on the
fifth day from the affray began slowly to mend. He was still so weak
that Parton, burning though he now was to complete his expiation and
ease himself of his remaining load of trouble, feared to risk the
telling of strange and exciting news. On the morning of the seventh
day, however, Mainwaring seemed so much stronger, and the arrival of
Ella Harling, if she came at all, must be so near at hand, that Parton
delayed no longer. He made a full confession of his delinquencies, told
Mainwaring all that had happened, of his recent stroke of good fortune,
and finally handed him Ella's letter.
"Tom," he said at the end, "I have behaved to you all through the piece
like a perfect beast. You, on the other hand, have played the game like
a man. You helped me over the broken arm and finally saved my life in
that scrimmage--very nearly at the expense of your own. I think I must
have been mad. I can only humbly beg your pardon and ask you to try to
forgive and forget, and to remember that if I fell I was sorely tried
and tempted."
Tom Mainwaring put up his hand--it had become a very thin hand in these
few days, though the tan had not gone from it--and said in a husky
voice, for he was very feeble:
"Don't say another word, old chap. You have made a mistake--ran out of
the course a bit--but you're all right at the finish. And you've nursed
me like a brick. I should have been a dead man by now if it hadn't been
for all your kindness and thought. Don't let's ever have another word
about the past. You've done the right thing, and few men would have
cared to be tried as high as you have been. I've had the luck this
journey; yours will come."
The two men shook hands silently, and the past, with its tortures, its
miseries and mistakes was almost wiped away.
It was now the 24th December. Parton anxiously expected and hoped that
Ella Harling and her friends would arrive during the day. He wanted
some comforts too for Mainwaring, now that he was within hail of
convalescence. All he had in the kraal was some mealie-meal, milk,
coffee, and sundry cattle--Tom's beef-tea as he called them.
All that day he watched and waited impatiently, sitting much with Tom
Mainwaring, and keeping him as quiet as possible. At last, towards
sunset, the little Bushman, who had been perched upon the hut roof as a
lookout, cried excitedly that he could see a cloud of dust from the
direction of Masura's-town. In less than an hour quite a considerable
cavalcade came in. Ella Harling, looking very handsome, and,
considering her journey, wonderfully spick and span, drove in with her
uncle and pretty cousin in a Cape cart. The doctor and two fresh
troopers rode alongside, and a light spring waggon, drawn by half a
dozen mules, laden with many luxuries and comforts, followed no great
way behind.
Parton led Miss Harling silently to Mainwaring's hut, and, with a
wistful look on his face, turned round and quitted her side as she
entered the open doorway. The meeting between Ella and Tom Mainwaring
was a very tender and yet a very serious one--few more touching have
ever taken place in the African wilderness. Presently the doctor came
in; Tom was put under his care, and the little party proceeded to make
themselves comfortable for Christmas. A tent was pitched for the
ladies, another for the colonel and the doctor, the stores were got out,
and the place made as cheery and as habitable as possible. The troopers
had shot a buck and some partridges and guinea-fowl, and an ox had been
slaughtered, so that there was no lack of fresh meat.
Few stranger and yet happier Christmas days have been spent in the
veldt. Even Tom Mainwaring, weak though he still was, with Ella beside
him and the prospect of long years of life before them both, was as
happy as a man with a big spear-wound in his back possibly could be. As
for the rest of the company, they had a great and glorious time. There
was rifle-shooting at targets in the morning, a big dinner under a shady
giraffe-acacia tree at two o'clock, and yarns and much smoking all the
afternoon and evening. Colonel Mellersh had thoughtfully loaded a case
of champagne, some tinned plum puddings, several boxes of cigars, and
some whisky on the spring waggon, and nothing was wanting to complete
the proper festivity of the season. Even Parton, having thrown aside
his cares, resigned himself, almost with cheerfulness, to the
inevitable, and did his best to contribute to the general happiness.
Tom Mainwaring and Ella Harling were married at Cape Town within the
next three months--so soon, in fact, as Mainwaring could get his
discharge from the Border Police. He and his wife often recall that
strange Christmas in the veldt, which, indeed, is not likely to be
forgotten by any member of the gathering.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
THEIR LAST TREK.
The sun was setting as usual in a glow of marvellous splendour as Alida
Van Zyl came out from her hartebeest house--a rough wattle and daub
structure, thatched with reeds--and, shading her eyes, looked across the
country. The little house stood on the lower slope of the Queebe Hills,
no great way from Lake Ngami. It was a wonderful sunset. In the
north-west a thousand flakes of cloud flushed with crimson lake, just as
they had flushed above the vast plains of that wild Ngami country a
million times before. Near the sky-line, in a blaze of red and gold,
the sun sank rapidly, a mass of fire so dazzling that Alida's eyes could
not bear to dwell upon it. Far upwards the cool and wondrous calm of
the clear and translucent pale green sky contrasted strangely with the
battle of colour beneath.
Alida shaded her eyes again, looked keenly down the rude waggon-track
that led up to the dwelling, and listened. As she had expected--for she
had news of her husband's coming from the Lake--she presently heard the
faint cries of a native; that would be Hans Hottentot, the waggon
driver, and then through the still air the full, thick, pistol-like
crack of the waggon-whip. At these sounds her somewhat impassive face
lightened and she turned into the hut again.
In twenty minutes' time the waggon had drawn up in front of the
dwelling, and Karel Van Zyl, a big, strong Dutchman of seven and twenty,
had dismounted from his good grey nag and embraced his wife, who now
stood with a face beaming with joy, clasping her two year old child in
her arms ready to receive him.
"Zo, Alie," said Karel, holding his young wife by the shoulders and
looking first tenderly at her broad kindly face and then at the
yellow-haired child lying in her arms, "here we are at last. It has
been a long hunt, but a pretty good one. I left a waggon-load of ivory,
rhenoster horns, and hides at Jan Stromboom's at the Lake and got a good
price for them I traded fifty good oxen as well and sold them at 3
pounds 10 shillings a head to Stromboom also, after no end of a haggle.
It was worth a day's bargaining though; the beasts cost me no more than
thirty shillings apiece all told."
Then laying the back of his huge sunburnt hand against the cheek of the
sleeping babe, which he had just kissed, he added, "And how is little
Jan? Surely the child has grown a foot since I left him?"
Alida smiled contentedly, patted her man's arm and answered, "Yes, the
child has done well since the cool weather came, and he grows every day.
He gets as _slim_ (cunning) as a monkey and crawls so that I have to
keep a boy to watch him, the little rascal. But _kom binnen_ and have
supper. You must be starving."
Van Zyl gave some orders to his Hottentot man, as to his horse, the trek
oxen and some loose cows and calves, and went indoors.
Half an hour later husband and wife came forth again, and, sitting
beneath the pleasant starlight, talked of the future. Their coffee
stood on a little table in front of them, and Van Zyl, stretching out
his long legs and displaying two or three inches of bare ankle above his
velschoons--the up-country Boer is seldom guilty of socks--puffed with
huge contentment at a big-bowled pipe.
"Karel," said his wife, after hearing of his last expedition, "I am
getting tired of this flat Ngami country, with never a soul to speak to
while you are away. When shall we give it up and go back to the
Transvaal? I long to see the blue hills again and to hear the voices of
friends. Surely you have done well enough these last few years. You
can buy and stock a good farm--6,000 morgen at least. [A morgen is
rather more than two acres.] And you told me when we married--now three
years agone, Karel,"--she laid her hand upon his as she spoke, "that you
did not mean to spend all your life, like your father, in the hunting
veldt."