"How are you, Le Sage?" said Wyvern, as his father-in-law elect met him
in the doorway. "You look worried. Anything wrong?"
"Don't know. No--er, well no," as they shook hands. They had been very
friendly before Lalante had appeared upon the scene, and even
afterwards, Le Sage had a sneaking weakness for the other, but what he
could not pardon was what he termed the other's incapacity. A man might
have ill-luck and pick himself up again, but this one, he told himself,
was incapable of that. Nor did it carry any soothing effect that
Lalante went straight to him and kissed him openly and affectionately.
"How glad I am to see you, darling," she said, a sunny light in her eyes
as she looked at him. Le Sage grunted to himself, but it did not escape
Wyvern. Something of warning too in Lalante's eyes did not escape him
either.
"Father is only just back from the sale at Krumi Post," she went on,
"and although he did a good stroke of business there he's come back
grumpy. Well now it's just dinner-time and you'll all be better after
that."
Wyvern was quick to take in that something was wrong, but it never
occurred to him to connect it with the doings of the day before. He set
it down rather to the general disapproval of himself which had become
more and more manifest of late in the demeanour of his quondam friend.
There might have been an awkwardness but that Lalante took care never to
leave them alone together.
"Did anyone take your horse, dear?" she said. "Because, if not, I can
send someone to shout for Piet."
"That's all right, Piet took him from me at the gate. Well, Le Sage--
what did you do at the sale?"
The other told him, thawing a bit. Then, when they sat down to table,
Wyvern opened the story of the slaughtering incident, and the tragic end
of one of the actors therein. But of the attack of both upon himself he
said nothing.
"A most infernal nuisance," grumbled Le Sage. "I don't know why I was
fool enough to allow myself to be nominated Field-cornet. Well, if one
of the _schepsels_ has cheated the `cat' the other's all there for it,
that's one consolation."
"Oh, I don't know. I'm going to let the poor devil off."
"Going to--what?" snapped Le Sage. "Oh, look here, Wyvern, really
you're getting past a joke. A fellow like you is a nuisance to the
whole community. Why it's putting a premium on `slaag-tag.' You catch
this swine red-handed--a clear case for the `cat'--and then say you're
going to let him off. It isn't fair to the rest of us. Don't you see
that?"
As a matter of fact Wyvern did see it; and felt a little uncomfortable.
"Perhaps you're right, Le Sage," he said. "But I'm too soft-hearted I
suppose, and the sight of that other wretched devil, with that beastly
snake tied round his leg, squirting blue death into him with every bite,
is a sight I shan't get rid of all in a hurry. And one human life, even
that of a Kafir, is about expiation enough for a miserable sheep, worth
eighteen bob or a pound at the outside. Eh?"
"I never heard such rot in my life," was the answer. "All the more
reason why the other chap's hide should be made to smart for the whole
mischief. Eh? Aren't I right, Lalante?"
A spirit of cussedness made him thus appeal to his daughter, a sort of
longing to make her espouse his side against this other. But, even as
he did so, he realised that he might as well have spared himself the
trouble.
"No. I don't think you are, since you put it to me," she answered
unhesitatingly. "On the contrary, I think you'd do much better to go
and hold your enquiry and leave the other part of the business alone
altogether."
"The devil you do!"
"That's it. You've put it exactly, father," laughed Lalante; "You'll be
riding over there after dinner, I suppose. Well, I'll go with you."
He expostulated. It was no place for a girl. The sight of a dead Kafir
was no sight for her, he pointed out with some show of reason.
"But I've no intention of seeing any such sight," she objected serenely.
"I'll wait for you a little way off while you make your investigations.
That'll be all right."
Wyvern caught one swift look which rejoiced his heart. She had resolved
not to let the whole afternoon go by without him if she could be with
him. But there was more beneath her plan than he suspected. She did
not mean to afford her father any opportunity of quarrelling with him,
as he almost certainly would, in his then mood, if they were alone
together for any space of time just then. In most things Lalante
contrived to get her own way.
Now with a rush and a racket, two small boys came tumbling in, hot and
ruddy with their scramblings about the veldt. Each exhibited, in
triumph, a bunch of long feathers from the tail of the mouse-bird, or
rather of many mouse-birds; the spoil of their bow and spear--or rather,
catapults.
"Here you are, dad. You're set up in pipe-cleaners now for some time to
come. Hullo, Mr Wyvern. There'll be enough for you too."
They chucked the feathers down unceremoniously upon the table, and began
to draw up chairs. But Lalante interposed.
"No. No you don't, Charlie--Frank--away you go, and do the soap and
basin trick. I'm not going to have you sitting down to table straight
out of the veldt," she said decisively. "Come--scoot--do you hear?"
"Oh, all right. Man--Mr Wyvern, but there's a big troop of guinea-fowl
down by the second _draai_. I hope you brought your gun."
"Did I say `Scoot'?" repeated Lalante, the disciplinarian.
They lingered no further after that. They were good-looking boys, with
their sister's large grey eyes. In a trice they were back again,
keeping things lively with their chatter, and the girl encouraged them.
There was thunder in the air, she recognised, and her main anxiety was
to avert the impending storm. And afterwards, before she retired to put
on her riding-gear, she managed to impress upon the two youngsters that
they were to help entertain their guest for all they knew how until her
return, which duty--Wyvern being a prime favourite with them--was not an
onerous one; moreover with them Lalante's word was law.
Their ride forth was not exactly a success. Lalante, bright, beautiful,
sparkling, kept up a flow of laughing quips, but the more she did so,
the more gloomy--grumpy she called it--did her father become. Wyvern,
riding by her side, felt all aglow with the pride of possession as he
noted every fascinating little trick of speech, or manner, or pose, all
absolutely natural and unaffected, and all going to make up the very
complete charm of her personality. Not for the first time either did he
find himself marvelling how this pride of possession should be his at
all. Though only in the early twenties Lalante had had time and
opportunity for "experiences," but such experiences, however disquieting
to the other parties to them, had left her unscathed. She had come to
him heart-whole. None before him had ever had power to awaken her.
That had been reserved for him, and the awakening had been mutual from
the very first.
"We'd better leave the horses here, Le Sage," suggested Wyvern as they
drew near the _donga_ wherein the unfortunate Kafir would be lying.
"It'll be cool for Lalante under these trees, and the place is only a
hundred yards further. Moreover we shall have to scramble a bit to get
to it."
Le Sage glumly assented, cursing the bother of the whole business. He
had just got home off a journey and here he was, lugged out over miles
of veldt because an infernal fool of a nigger had got bitten by a snake.
The Field-cornet job wasn't good enough at that price, and he'd chuck
it.
Thus grumbling, he followed Wyvern in what was literally a scramble, not
always free from danger either; for the river bank along the face of
which they had to make their way here was steep enough to be almost
precipitous, and high enough to render a fall on to the stones below a
contingency not to be contemplated with equanimity. But fortune
favoured them, and they gained their objective without accident.
"_Magtig_! what a beastly hole," grunted Le Sage, as they stood within
the mouth of the donga. "Well, the brute must be pretty far gone by
this time. Sss! I can smell him already. We'd better start our pipes,
Wyvern."
They were standing at the bottom of a narrow rift some thirty feet in
depth, its sides narrowing walls of a sandy-clayey soil and looking
uncomfortably suggestive of the possibility of falling in upon them. A
close network of boughs and prickly pear plants overhead well-nigh shut
off the light of day, turning the place into a regular cavern. A little
further and the walls narrowed, necessitating single file progress.
"A devilish unpleasant place to find oneself confronted in by a _kwai
geel slang_," [Note 1] said Wyvern--who was leading--over his shoulder,
grimly. "We couldn't dodge him at any price here."
"Yes, yes. But what about the nigger?" said the other testily. "Where
the devil is he?"
The same idea had struck Wyvern, who had stopped, and after looking in
front was now gazing upwards in most unfeigned amazement.
"Where the devil indeed," he echoed. "Look, Le Sage. There's the hole
he made in the green stuff tumbling through. Prickly pear leaves too,
broken off by the fall. But--where the devil is the chump himself? He
ought to be here, but isn't."
This was indisputable. The precipitous banks of the place were marked
and scored, and leaves and twigs, obviously freshly torn, still clung to
the said banks here and there. Some heavy body had manifestly fallen
down there at that spot, but of any such thing there was now no other
sign.
"Oh, look here, Wyvern. Haven't you been filling us up with some sick
old yarn?" said Le Sage disgustedly. "Why, man, there's no sign of any
dead nigger here. Sure your imagination didn't play you tricks?"
"Oh, very. No mistake about that--by the way weren't you saying just
now you could smell him?" good-humouredly. "What if some of his pals
came and carted him away?"
"Then there'd be spoor, and plenty of it. As it is there's none. And I
do know a little about spoor," added Le Sage significantly.
"Well it bangs me, I own," declared Wyvern. "But now we're here we'd
better follow the ditch right up. I don't feel like taking on that
nasty scramble again, do you?"
"No. Drive ahead then."
Proceeding with some caution, for it was just the place in which to come
upon a snake, they made their way gradually upward and soon stood within
the open light of day.
"Well, my imagination didn't play me tricks this shot," said Wyvern, as
they stood looking at the bones of the slaughtered sheep, picked clean
by aasvogels and jackals.
"No. There were two of them at this job. I can see that plainly
enough," said Le Sage, scrutinising the ground. "Well, we've had our
ride for nothing. The first essential towards holding an inquiry on a
dead nigger is for there to be a dead nigger to hold it on, and there
isn't one here."
"Well, I own it bangs me," said Wyvern, puzzled.
"So it does me," said Le Sage, significantly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. The _geel slang_, anglice "yellow-snake," is a variety of
cobra, and takes first rank among the deadliest reptiles of South
Africa.