The valley became narrower, and a hint of coolness stole down the
sudden shadows. All on a moment a swift hand plucked the sunlight from
us, and the jaws of the hills closed suddenly about our path--closed,
closed, until the ribbon of steel that we knew to be the railway line
looked like a tongue lolling from the cleft grin before us. There was a
silence in that place, and our horses pricked quick, apprehensive ears
to it. "What a place for an ambush!" said some one of my section, and
the angry "Don't be a fool!" of the man to whom he had spoken showed
that three of us, at least, were thinking of the same thing. The click
of a steel-shod hoof striking against stone, and--"click!" back would
come the answer of the rocks; just the sort of noise that the bolt of
a Mauser rifle makes when it is drawn back to ----. Well, speaking
personally, I do not suppose that I should have noticed it if my horse
hadn't jumped so.
It was here, or hereabouts, that our patrol had been fired on only a
few hours before, and we had received no particular assurance that
ours was not likely to be a similar experience. On the contrary, every
breathing instant was pregnant with possibility, and, be it said, a
sort of half-shrinking hope.
A barrier of great boulders, through which the line won a bare
clearance, stood suddenly up against us. Just the place for an
ambush; but nothing happened save, perhaps, that one was conscious
more of one's own breathing after it was passed. A hundred yards or
so farther on the hills to our right fell away in a great curve, and
sheeted sunlight lay on all the place; orange, streaked with silver
of drift-sand on the shining plain, while beyond, and high above
all, white-faced crags swam on an opal-hearted mist. To our right a
mad sunset flared above the purple-footed hills, and pointed long,
scornful, shadow-fingers at us. Sunset? or drunken magic? Saffron
there was, and duck's-egg green lying on amber; amber that dripped
molten gold, and tipped with splendid color the peaks which stood up
blackly against it; amber, shot with blush-rose and slashed with fierce
scarlet: a breathless wonder that changed while we watched it--changed
and deepened until all the painted sky was a blood-clotted glory.
Night had stepped into the valley in which we rode, and I was not
sorry when my section was picked out for "flanking work," and we were
sent at a sharp trot to the foot-hills and the sunlight. We were told
to keep slightly in advance of the troop, and, as the broken nature of
the ground allowed, about three hundred yards distant from the railway
line, the idea being, of course, that should an enemy patrol be waiting
for us among the rocks, we--"the advance screen"--would draw their
fire, and so secure some measure of safety for our main body. A leading
section was sent off to the shadow-land on the right of the line, and,
looking back when we had ridden some hundred yards or so, I saw two
other sections detach themselves from the main body, and drop back, to
the right and left respectively, as a sort of extended rearguard.
"As the nature of the ground allowed!" The words were the letter of
our instructions; the exclamation mark, as _Punch_ might say, was
ours when the first gentle slope that we negotiated jumped suddenly
up into a hog-backed "krantz," that looked as if it might strain even
a klipspringer. It had to be done, however, and we laid ourselves on
our horses' necks and let them go at it. What a breathless scramble
it was! Loose shale avalanched about us, and steel-shod hoofs slipped
and struck, and struck and slipped again on the crisp granite, and
just when it seemed to me that nothing was left but to dismount and
pull my horse up after me, there was a last, furious straining of
willing muscles, a plunge that shook my hat over my eyes, and the
four of us were landed in a hard-breathing bunch on a sort of shelf
of rock. A girth had slipped, and we paused while it was tightened,
and looked back. The troop was halted--while we attained our position,
I supposed--and as we watched, a figure rode clear of the others and
signaled agitatedly to us to advance.
It was comparatively easy, from our elevation, to select a route that
conformed measurably to our instructions and to the opposing factor
of our own instinct of self-preservation. Only comparatively easy,
however, because distances that looked flat, or, at the most, but
gently tilted, proved on closer inspection to be almost worth the
serious consideration of an Alpine Club. But we managed to scramble
along somehow. When possible, we even went farther into the spirit of
our instructions, and rode in extended formation, but, although our
horses displayed an amazing aptitude for rock-work, we usually found
ourselves progressing in single file. Once, I remember, when a flat
surface of rock tempted us to something approaching a trot, we pulled
up only a few yards short of where the hill ended abruptly, and lay,
piled about its own foot, hundreds of feet below. It was from there,
too, that we first caught sight of the white buildings of Kolmanskuppe,
some two or three miles away, but although it was a cheering sight,
we went on from that place with much sedateness and circumspection.
All serious thought of meeting the enemy patrol had vanished, of
course, with that first glimpse of "civilization." Only one ordeal now
remained: to get ourselves down, out of that region of sunlight and
breathlessness, to where, with the lesser hills, began the last phase
of our journey.
One attempt landed us in a cul-de-sac of tumbled granite, another on
a tongue of rock that would have proved perfectly negotiable if the
tongue had not been bitten short, or if there had been a bridge across
the forty-foot chasm that grinned up at us; but, eventually, by winding
in single file round a spur of rock where a false step meant--as one
of us said and giggled so much at, that he all but put his assertion
to the proof--"more than a bad cold" for the man who slipped, we found
a steep slope wheredown we tobogganed with safety and some amusement
to ourselves, but not a little detriment, I think, to the tails of our
horses.