"But that is Slaang Kloof, Baas."
"I never said it wasn't. But--what if it is Slaang Kloof?"
"We cannot go in, Baas." And the speaker's pleasing, good-humoured face
took on a dogged, not to say obstinate expression. A little more
acquaintance with the country and its natives, and Dick Selmes would
have known that when the countenance of one of these took on that
expression, why, he might as well whisper words of sweet reasonableness
into the long ears of an experienced and jibbing mule.
"Why can't we go in, Kleinbooi?" he said shortly.
"_Ou_! It is a place of _tagati_--of witchcraft," answered the Fingo.
"Witchcraft? Bosh!" exploded Dick. "Come now, Kleinbooi. Lay those
dogs on to the spoor sharp, or my chances of getting that buck will
become nothing at all, and I can't afford to lose such a fine ram as
that because of your humbugging superstitions."
But the Fingo only shook his head.
"I can't do it, Baas," he said. "_Oud Baas_ [the Old Master] would not
allow it. He allows nothing living to go into Slaang Kloof."
"But why? In Heaven's name, why?" rejoined Dick, impatiently.
"Because what goes in there living comes out dead," answered the other,
seriously.
Dick Selmes stamped his foot, and mildly--very mildly--swore. He looked
at his companion, who seemed most abominably in earnest, otherwise he
was inclined to suspect that the Fingo was amusing himself at the
expense of a new-comer. But, plainly, he could not go against the
wishes of his host, and if the latter chose to give way to the absurd
superstitions of mere savages, he supposed his weakness must be
respected, but it was precious annoying all the same.
The dogs, some half-dozen great rough-haired mongrels, lay panting on
the ground. One or two were restless, and showed a desire to start off
upon the yet warm spoor which led into the forbidden place, but a stern
mandate from the Fingo promptly checked this, and they lay down again.
These two, the white man and the black, were standing in a wide
amphitheatre of bush, walled by rocky heights, now split asunder in
gigantic, castellated crags, or frowning down in straight, smooth
krantzes, the nesting-places of innumerable aasvogels; as the long
vertical streaks down their red, ironstone faces could testify. In
front of them, opening out, as it were, through an immense natural
portal formed by two jutting spurs of rock, was a lateral valley,
covered with dense forest and sloping up to a loftier pile of mountain
beyond, the slope ending in a line of broken cliff abounding in holes
and caves. This much was visible from where they stood. But not a step
nearer would the Fingo advance. Dick Selmes looked wistful.
"It was just there he went in, Kleinbooi," pointing to the slope under
one of the jutting rock portals. "I glimpsed him for a minute, just
under the krantz on that bare patch. By Jove, it's a pity to lose a
fine bush-buck ram, and he was hit hard, too. If only you had been
nearer with the dogs!"
"It is time to go home now, Baas," said the Fingo, with a glance at the
sun, which was now dipping low to the skyline, causing the great rock
faces to glow red gold in the slanting beams. The scene was one of wild
rugged grandeur and beauty, softened by the cooing of hundreds of doves,
the cheery piping whistle of spreeuws echoing from among the krantzes,
and other mellow and varying bird-voices in the recesses of the brake.
"Has anybody ever met his death in there, Kleinbooi?" resumed Dick.
"Several, Baas."
"What kills them?"
"That is what nobody knows." And the speaker was so obviously unwilling
to pursue the subject that Dick said nothing further upon it, but he
made up his mind to question Harley Greenoak thereon without loss of
time.
When the two came to where they had left their horses, it was evident
that the hunt had not been altogether unsuccessful, for behind Dick's
saddle was strapped a fine duiker ram, while from that of the Fingo hung
several guinea-fowl and three or four dik-kop. Still, Selmes would not
altogether feel comforted over the quarry he had lost.
This Kleinbooi was his host's right-hand man. He was a capital hunter,
and was sent out with Dick what time no one else felt inclined to go,
and in this capacity it was an advantage that he was able to speak
excellent English. Harley Greenoak was not sorry, for his part; for
such was his young charge's "keenness" that he would have dragged him
out all day and every day in quest of some form of sport, and half the
night, too, very frequently.
That evening, after supper, as they were seated indoors, for the farm
was of considerable altitude and the nights were fresh, Dick Selmes was
wondering how he should broach the subject to their host. Old Ephraim
Hesketh was one of the early settlers of 1820. He was a widower, and
lived alone on his vast farm in the wildest recesses of the Rooi
Ruggensbergen. He was a tall, lank old man, of the simplest of habits,
who went to bed with the sun and got up with the same, chewed biltong
when he was hungry, and drank calabash milk when he was thirsty, and,
owing to his solitary life, was laconic and scanty of speech. This
being so, it may be credited that his domestic arrangements were
primitive in the extreme; and even adaptable Dick Selmes had looked a
trifle blank when he first saw his room, with its battered tin
wash-basin, empty-bottle candlestick, bare thatch, and gaping
wainscottings, into which latter a remarkably large centipede was at
that moment disappearing. In short, Simcox's place, though rough, was a
palace compared with Haakdoornfontein, as old Hesketh's place was
called.
"Well, young buffalo hunter," said the latter, as they sat down to an
exceedingly frugal repast, "and how many of my bush-bucks have you
accounted for to-day? We can't provide record buffaloes for you here,
you see. You must get back to the Addo or trek right up-country for
that."
Dick Selmes laughed; then, judging the moment opportune, he launched out
into an account of Kleinbooi's point-blank refusal to enter the
forbidden kloof.
"He was quite right," said the old man, decisively, and his face seemed
to grow serious. "Yes, quite right. In fact, I told him not even to
take you near it if possible, but I suppose he didn't know he was doing
so in the excitement of the hunt."
Dick Selmes' face lit up with eagerness. If this hardened old settler,
who believed in little else, believed in this weird mystery, why, it
would be worth hearing about. "Would you mind--er--spinning the yarn,
Mr Hesketh?" he blurted out eagerly.
"Well, it's a fact that for some years past not a man Jack who has gone
into that kloof from this end--and you can't get into it from anywhere
else--has come out alive," answered the old man. "When searched for and
spoored down, they were found quite near the entrance, stone dead."
"What killed them?"
"That's what many of us would like to know. There was a mark, just
where the neck joins the shoulder at the back, a tiny mark hardly bigger
than a pin-point, a mere discoloration, and the bodies wore every
appearance of death by snake-bite. That's how the place got its name--
Slaang--or Snake Kloof."
"By Jove! And what sort of a snake was it?" said Dick.
"There was no snake. The most careful search revealed no trace of the
spoor of anything of the kind. Besides, a snake-bite invariably
contains two punctures. This was only one. Another strange thing is
that the mark was always the same, and in the same place, where the neck
joins the shoulder; and yet another--that the people, when found, had,
in each case, fallen when facing the way out of the kloof, as if they'd
been running away from something. What? How many have come to grief?
Seven in all--one Hottentot and six Kafirs. They had gone in after
strayed stock, or to take out a bees' nest, or something of the kind.
The Hottentot was the only one who was still conscious, and he knew
absolutely nothing of what had happened to him or when it had. I nearly
pulled him through by treating him for snake-bite, but it was too long
after, and he kicked the bucket, like the rest. Have I been in since?
No. I'm too old."
"But what on earth is your theory of it, Mr Hesketh?" asked Dick
Selmes, who was very much impressed by the story, and the old man's way
of telling it. "Is there some kind of tree snake that drops down and
swings itself up again after biting them? That would account for lack
of spoor, you know."
"Quite right, young buffalo hunter," nodded old Hesketh. "But we've got
no snakes that do that. All the tree sorts are harmless. The thing
stumps me but--there it is."
"By Jingo, but I'd like to--" And Dick stopped short. Old Hesketh
turned on him a lack-lustre eye.
"To try and solve the mystery yourself?" he supplied. "M'yes. You'd
better let it alone, young fellow. Keep your energies for another
destroying buffalo, and you may come out of that with a whole skin. Eh,
Greenoak?"
The latter, who had been a silent listener, nodded assent. Old Hesketh
had--for him--taken an immense fancy to Dick since hearing of his
shooting the buffalo bull in the Addo Bush, and that alone and with a
single bullet. He was far too plucky a young fellow to be allowed to
commit suicide in such an unsatisfactory cause as this, he decided.
"Don't let him cut into any such foolishness, Greenoak," he went on.
"Keep your eye on him, Greenoak. Keep your eye on him."
And Greenoak promised he would. Then he went to bed, and, contrary to
his usual custom, did not go to sleep immediately, but lay awake
thinking. And at the same time precisely the same thing was holding
good of Dick Selmes.
Now, in the course of the next two or three days, while the latter
seldom missed an opportunity of plying his host with questions regarding
Slaang Kloof, Harley Greenoak never opened his mouth on the subject. He
seemed to treat it as a mere incident: a strange incident, it was true,
but still an incident, and he had come across too many such in the
course of a life adventurous beyond most lives to deem one incident,
more or less, worth making any fuss about. He seemed, in short, to have
dismissed it from his mind.
Consequently, it is strange that a day or two later, Harley Greenoak
might have been seen--were there say one to see him--standing before the
entrance of Slaang Kloof alone.
His strong, bearded, sun-tanned face was set and thoughtful; his gnarled
hands were closed round the barrels of a double gun, whose stock was
grounded; and, slung round him, was a sort of bundle that bulged. The
rifle barrel held a Martini cartridge, the smooth-bore a heavy charge of
Treble A buckshot.
He stood gazing into the place of fear, as though reading every tree and
bush in its sombre forest depths.
As a matter of fact, he was there to solve its secret. Old Hesketh, to
whom his reputation was known as a clearer-up of many a dark and
blood-fraught mystery of the veldt, and who was an old friend of his
into the bargain, had sent for him with that express object, and, as it
was an entirely out-of-the-way and new part of the country to show his
charge, he had heartily welcomed the idea. But he had no notion
whatever of counting his said charge into the adventure with him.
He looked at the two jutting rock spurs as though calculating the
distance of one from the other. Then he walked steadily forward until
well within the portals of the sinister and fatal valley.
Superficially it differed in no way from any round dozen of the wild
bushy kloofs on any other part of the farm. There was the same
vegetation, mimosa and other varieties of acacia, spongy spekboem, and
spidery Kafir bean--the geranium and plumbago throwing out a confusion
of scarlet and light mauve--here a row of euphorbia, there a patch of
yellow-woods, from whose limbs depended a tangle of long, straight
monkey-ropes. Here all was dim and cool and delightful, the sunshine
completely shut off or but faintly networked in patches on the ground
and tree trunks. But it was here that every instinctive faculty of
grasp and perception implanted in the up-country man became keenly alert
and awake. For, by a course of intuitive calculations, he had located
this spot as the one where the fell and fatal terror had overtaken its
victims.
The nerve and courage of Harley Greenoak were entirely beyond question,
but that did not dull his imagination or render him dead to the fact
that in this cool and peaceful forest retreat he walked in very great
peril indeed, that if he would escape this hidden death which had
overtaken others, awful in its mysterious suddenness, he would have to
muster every faculty of quick observation, lightning-like decision of
action, and untiring alertness which he possessed.
As he walked, apparently unconcerned, his ears were open to every sound,
and, although he knew that it was from above the peril should come, he
did not look up, at least not directly. Then, suddenly, and without
apparent reason, he leaped nimbly about a yard to his left; for his
trained ear had caught the faintest possible sound overhead, and, as he
did so, there was a soft hiss past his ear. Harley Greenoak had escaped
death that time.
Quick as thought he threw up his gun, but in the moment between that
action and the roar of the piece he glimpsed the most hideous and
revolting object imaginable. The simian face, staring in bestial
ferocity, the horn-like ears, the brown misshapen frame and limbs, were
more suggestive of some forest fiend than of anything human. When the
smoke had cleared away the thing had disappeared.
What did it mean? For the first time Harley Greenoak felt a thrill of
superstitious misgiving as unpleasant as it was strange. He to miss,
and to miss at that short distance, with a charge of buckshot too--for
he had fired the smooth-bore barrel--why, it was incredible! Nothing
human could have escaped. Yet this thing had done so. It had not
fallen, it had simply disappeared.
He stared upward at the spot. The tall, yellow-wood tree was strong and
sound, and showed no sign of hole or cleft that would have held a rat.
Ha!
Lying behind a large limb, motionless as the wood itself, blending so
completely with its colour as to escape detection, was the object of his
search, watching him. But for the glint of the eye, he would have
failed to discover it at all. Again his gun roared.
But--too late. With superhuman agility the thing had leapt away, and,
springing from branch to branch with the quickness and security of cat
and monkey combined, it seemed a hopeless chase to Greenoak, who, as he
ran, marking its course by the swaying of the branches, had already
reloaded both barrels. Just the fraction of a glimpse, and it was his
last chance. Again the reverberation of the report rolled bellowing
from cliff to cliff. With it was a shrill, beast-like scream, and
something thudded heavily to the earth. Harley Greenoak walked
leisurely up to it, and after a moment's examination came away with a
smile of grim satisfaction on his face, It was not to last, though. He
had not gone far when a stony glare of horror came into his eyes as they
rested on something lying on the ground, the form of a man, the form of
Dick Selmes, his charge.
It was lying on its face with arms extended. But as he stood over it
the eyes opened with a dull stupid stare, as that of a person awakened
out of a heavy sleep.
"Wake up, Dick. Wake up, man," said Greenoak, decidedly, lugging him
into a sitting posture. "Here, take a drink of this."
From the bundle that bulged he produced a bottle of brandy.
"Don't want to," said the other, sleepily.
"But you must, man. If you don't you're a dead 'un."
This told, and Dick obeyed. The effect of the spirit was marvellous,
for, having swallowed enough to have rendered him helpless twice over
under ordinary circumstances, it merely invigorated him now. Quick as
thought Greenoak had cut away his shirt collar, and, sure enough, there
on the neck was the fatal mark, the tiny, discoloured speck. This
Greenoak promptly lanced, applying a mixture which he had with him.
Then he made his charge get up and walk smartly up and down with him.
In which occupation they were found by old Hesketh, who, having heard
the shots, faint and far, had saddled up and hurried on in case the
investigator should be in need of assistance.
When sufficiently restored, Dick Selmes was able to explain how he came
to be there, and this he did somewhat shamefacedly. He had suspected
that Greenoak was going to make some such investigation, and resented
not being allowed to share in the adventure. Accordingly, he had
pretended to go and hunt in a contrary direction, but had soon slipped
round, so soon indeed as almost to reach Slaang Kloof first. He had
entered the kloof not far behind him, and had kept him in view.
"Well, it nearly cost you your life, young fellow," said Hesketh. "Tell
you what. You must have learnt something if you could keep Harley
Greenoak in sight without his knowing it. What were you shooting at,
Greenoak?"
"The mystery of Slaang Kloof is cleared up," answered the latter,
laconically.
"I knew you'd do it if any one could. Well, what was it?"
"I'll show you later on. Now then, Dick. Take some more stuff, and
walk quicker."
Harley Greenoak was not one to be hurried, but when they did return to
investigate, he took them straight to where he had fired his first shot
under the shade of the yellow-wood trees.
"Why, this is where I first felt queer," said Dick.
"No doubt," stooping down and picking up something that looked like a
bit of stick about six or eight inches long. "See that?" showing a tiny
needle-like point. "That's what made you feel queer, and all the others
too. It's tipped with a strong and subtle poison."
"By Jove! You don't say so."
"Rather. I've got a theory that your clothes helped to save you. You
were saying, Hesketh, that the only one of those who came to grief here
and recovered consciousness was a Hottentot. Well, he would have had
clothes on, and the Kaffirs wouldn't."
"Something in that, may be," answered the old man.
A little farther on he picked up another of the tiny arrows. This one
was sticking in the ground.
"The one I dodged," he said. "Come on further."
He led the way. Suddenly Dick Selmes gave a start.
"What's that?" he said. "Ugh!"
"The mystery," answered Greenoak.
The monkey-like shape lying there looked more hideous and horrible in
death, if possible than when it skipped along the tree-tops.
"But what is it?"
"A survivor of the original Bushmen who lived among the holes and caves
of these mountains. He adopted this method of setting up a scare in
order to have the run of this place unmolested. You see, if he went on
the ground he'd leave spoor, and he knew that--hence the tree dodge."
"How is it we never found any of these arrows?" said old Hesketh.
"Probably you never thought of looking for them."
"No more we did."
"You see," explained Greenoak, "when you were spinning that yarn about
the kloof it brought back to my mind one similar case I'd known of the
kind, and I began to put two and two together. Well, the murdering
little beast has only got what he deserved, but it'll save bother if we
keep our mouths shut, all the same."
"But how do you know there are no more of 'em, Greenoak?" said Dick
Selmes.
"I'm sure there aren't. This one is as old as Methuselah. He'd be the
only one. You can use Slaang Kloof again, Hesketh."