"THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE."
If McCann thought he was going to frighten his employer he was destined
to be disappointed. Oscar took a step forward, and there was a look in
his eye that McCann had never seen there before.
"Don't try my patience too severely," said he. "If you do you will be a
different-looking man when I get through with you. There's no surgeon in
this country, and I don't know whether the Boers could patch you up or
not."
The threat implied in these words took all desire for a fight out of
McCann. He sank back on the dissel-boom, rested his elbows on his knees,
and fastened his eyes on the ground.
"Now," continued Oscar, throwing all the emphasis he could into his
words, "I tell you once for all, and I want you to bear in mind that I
mean just what I say, neither more nor less, that I have put up with
your cowardice and treachery long enough, and just as surely as I detect
you in the attempt to throw so much as a straw in my path, just so
surely will I turn you adrift on the plain, to find your way back to
Zurnst as best you can. If you had one of your own countrymen to deal
with he would wear a rawhide out over your back, and he would serve you
right, too."
So saying, Oscar climbed into the wagon, and proceeded to secure
everything in it that could be put under lock and key. But first he took
out of one of his chests a large envelope, like the one McCann had
destroyed, and drew from it a map which was an exact counterpart of the
one Mr. Lawrence had given him.
"That was rather a bright idea of mine," said he after he had made sure
that the contents of the chest had not been tampered with. "It is well,
in this country, to have duplicates of everything. McCann didn't do me
as much injury as he thought he did, but it was a contemptible trick,
all the same."
"What is the meaning of that move, I wonder?" thought McCann, who was
making his employer's tea at his own fire. "Two weeks ago I should have
been sorry to see him do that, but now I don't care. The Boers will take
me, for they told me so."
Having put all his books and papers where he thought they would be safe
from McCann's prying eyes, Oscar got out of the wagon, walked up to his
own fire, and took possession of his camp-chair.
"Now, McCann," said he, "I want a plain understanding with you, and
after I have had it I shall never again refer to this matter. Not being
blind, I have seen for a long time that you are not contented here, and
if you want to leave me and go with those Boers I am quite willing that
you should do so. All I ask is that you will leave openly and
aboveboard, like a man."
"Oh, I don't want to go!" answered McCann with more haste and emphasis
than the occasion seemed to require. "I don't deny that I should like
to see Leichtberg again; but those transport-riders are not going that
way. They are bound for the desert, and if I should go with them I
should not see home again for eighteen months at least. You'll be going
back yourself in less time than that."
"I certainly hope so. Then you think you had better stay with me, do
you?"
"Of course I do. That was the bargain I made."
"We'll not say anything about that," replied Oscar with some impatience.
"You bargained to act as my after-rider, too, and you have never done
it. If you want to stay, all right. You can keep yourself employed about
the camp, since you are afraid to go out of it; but mind you, now, no
more treachery. Is my tea ready?"
Oscar worked late over the leopard that night, and when his task was
finished lay down in his cot and went to sleep, lulled by the roaring of
the lions and the laughing of the hyenas.
He smiled whenever he thought how terrified he was when he first heard
those sounds. Now he paid no more attention to the lions than he did to
the prairie wolves that howled about his camp when he was journeying to
and from the foot-hills.
When he awoke the next morning the Dutchmen were in motion. They did not
like such a neighbor as Oscar had shown himself to be, and were going
off to hunt up another fountain, at which they could rest their cattle
and fill their water-butts in peace.
"Good riddance," thought Oscar while he performed his ablutions in the
bucket which he always found waiting for him, filled with fresh water.
"I know now that I did just right last night. If they had found that I
was afraid of them they would have taken full control of that pool, and
I could have taken my choice between seeing my cattle perish of thirst
and inspanning and hunting up another water-hole. Now what shall I do
to-day?"
This question and the discussion of the breakfast that McCann had served
up for him occupied Oscar's attention during the next twenty minutes,
and the coffee was finished and a decision reached at about the same
moment.
To begin with, there was no earthly use in hunting in the direction in
which the Boers had gone, for they would scare all the game along their
route.
He would spend the day on the other side of the water-course and try to
shoot another of that herd of koodoos (he had already forgotten the firm
resolution he had made that he would never again try stalking under an
African sun), for he wanted to secure two of each variety of the _fauna_
whenever he could get them.
So he gave the necessary orders, and in a quarter of an hour more he and
Thompson were ready for the hunt. This time they each carried a canteen
filled with water, and all the dogs went with them.
This was another fatiguing day for Oscar, but, on the whole, it was an
exciting and glorious one. He succeeded in shooting another fine
specimen of the antelope tribe, and was the involuntary spectator of a
scene he would not have missed for a good deal, but which he would not
willingly have witnessed again at so close quarters under any
consideration.
Such a sight as Oscar saw that day is never seen anywhere out of Africa.
There was "game, game, nothing but game," all around him, but it was
very wild, and would not permit him to come within range.
As fast as he advanced immense herds of wilde-beests, elands, quaggas,
and zebras would scamper away to the right and left, and wheeling about
like bodies of trained cavalry that were about to harass an enemy's
flank, they would halt and begin feeding on the very ground the hunters
had just passed over.
Having looked in vain for the koodoos among the hills and rocks, Oscar
and his after-rider dismounted, under the friendly branches of a mimosa
tree, to rest and eat their lunch.
"It would never do for us to go back to the wagon empty-handed, would
it, Thompson?" said Oscar as he sipped the warm water from his canteen
and looked with longing eyes toward the large bodies of antelopes that
seemed to be gathering in the lower end of a little valley about a mile
away. "And since the game will not let me go within gunshot of it, don't
you suppose you could make it come to me? Couldn't you go around to
leeward of it and make the dogs drive it this way?"
The Kaffir said he could.
"Of course I shouldn't stay near this tree, for there is no place to
hide. I think that rock out there"--here Oscar pointed to a little
boulder that lay on the plain about a quarter of a mile away--"would be
a good place of concealment, don't you? Very well. Take the dogs out and
see what you can do for me."
Oscar added such suggestions and instructions as he thought necessary,
and when the Kaffir had finished his lunch he mounted his horse, called
to the dogs, and rode away, leaving the boy to his meditations.
When he had been gone an hour Oscar picked up his rifle, and began the
laborious task of creeping a quarter of a mile on his hands and knees to
reach the boulder of which he had spoken.
He had timed the Kaffir's movements with tolerable accuracy, and he had
not been in his place of concealment more than ten minutes before a
cloud of dust arose in the distance, telling him that the game was in
motion.
The cloud extended a long distance on each side of the boulder, and from
it there issued a rumbling noise that sounded like the roar of an
approaching express train. Then it occurred to Oscar, for the first
time, that he had been just a little foolhardy. He looked anxiously to
the right and left of him, but there was no place of refuge nearer than
the tree under which he and Thompson had eaten their lunch. There was no
time to run back to it, for that "heavy brigade" was charging down upon
him with the speed of the wind.
"Good gracious!" soliloquized Oscar. "What if they should run over me
and trample me to death?"
His heart beat rapidly at the thought, and it required the exercise of
all the nerve he possessed to enable him to stand his ground.