Read Ebook: Concerning Genealogies Being Suggestions of Value for All Interested in Family History by Allaben Frank

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Ebook has 294 lines and 18956 words, and 6 pages

He glanced upward. The sun was throwing long rays now along the tree-tops. Another night would soon be here, bringing with it, however, no abatement of heat and thirst and torment--Ah! h!

The deep-drawn, raucous sigh that escaped the man can hardly be conveyed. In front the trees were thinning. There was light beyond. The road, of course! He had reached the road again, which he should never have left. There it would be hard but that some traveller or transport rider should find him, even if he had not the strength to drag himself on to the nearest human habitation.

He lay motionless. The sun was off the opening, fortunately for him, or its terrible focussed rays, falling on the back of his neck, would have ended his allotted time then and there. But--what was this? On the line of his track, moving towards him, shadows were stealing--two of them.

Now they looked at each other, and there was a complete inventory in each devilish glance. Summed up, it read: A suit of clothes; item a shirt, boots; item a revolver and a knife--which he was too exhausted and which they would not give him time to use; item a watch and chain-- tradeable at some distant time and place; certainly some money-- available immediately. The horse, too. They need not trouble about it now. They would find it easily enough afterwards, and then what a feast! Of a truth their Snake was favourable to them again!

There lay the victim--there lay the prey. Gliding like evil wood-demons from the edge of the trees they were over him now. One more glance exchanged. Each had got his role. The doomed man lay still, with eyes closed, and a churn of froth at the corners of the swollen lips. One slowly raised his axe to bring it down on the skull. The other gripped aloft his assegai. Both could not miss, and it was as well to provide against contingencies--when--

Then there was silence again in the mopani forest, where lay three motionless human bodies; dead silence, for--hours, it seemed. No; it was only minutes.

This curiously effective specimen of a guardian angel lounged across to the fellow-countryman whose life he had saved, and gazed down at the latter.

"Near go!" he ruminated. "Near a one as this Johnny Raw 'll ever have again. Why? 'Cause it couldn't be nearer. Good-looking feller whoever he is, but--he needn't know too much. Heave up--ho!" And laying hold of the heels of the savage he had first shot, he proceeded to haul the corpse of that assassin, to the accompaniment of very nautical-sounding cries, to a sufficient distance as to be invisible to the intended victim when the latter should wake to consciousness.

"No; he needn't know too much," he repeated, returning to the sufferer. "Now then, mister, wake up and have a pull at this."

"This" being a substantial water-bottle. Presumably there was something magnetic in its inviting gurgle--for the hitherto unconscious man opened his eyes, stared, then half leaping up made a wild snatch at the bottle.

"That won't do, sonny. This stuffs too valuable till we get clear of the mopani belt. Here--give it to me." And he held it to the other's lips.

"More--more."

"No; that's enough to go on with. Well--a little more, then. Now, pull yourself together and come along with me. What? Starving? Oh ay. Well, chew at this chunk o' biscuit. It ain't soft tack but it's better than nothing, and I'm too old a sailor--prospector, I mean--to be navigating these seas without a shot in the locker."

The other munched fiercely at the brown, uninviting bit of biscuit. His succourer looked approvingly on.

"The road? Are we near the road?" stammered the other.

"Mile or so. But keep your tongue down, sonny, until we get there. You don't want to talk a lot till you've had some proper skoff."

A PIONEER FARM.

The walls of the room were hung with dark blue "limbo," which gave an impression of refreshing coolness and restful, subdued light, in grateful contrast to the hot, white glare outside. The furniture of the room was pre-eminently of the useful order, consisting of a plain `stinkwood' table, three or four ditto chairs much the worse for wear, a sideboard consisting of two packing-cases knocked into one, a bookshelf, and a camp bedstead whereon now reclined the, at present, sole occupant and--in general--proprietor of the place.

He had been indulging in a siesta, which had run into hours. The naturally dark face was tanned a rich brown by the up-country sun and winds, and it was just the face that the up-country life would go to strengthen--with its firm eyes and square, determined chin. As now seen it was clear that the thoughts of its owner were not of a pleasant nature. Briefly, they might be summed up somewhat in this wise--

"Is that foolery destined to haunt me for the remainder of my natural life? I shut it down and turned my back on it more than a year ago--and yet, and yet, I can't even take an afternoon snooze without dreaming all that idiocy over again."

The jaded lassitude usually attendant on immediately awakening out of a day sleep to those who seldom indulge in one was upon this man. Moreover, the last vision of his dreams had been one of a lovely, reproachful face--a recollection of a bitter parting and love turned to hate; a rehearsal of the whole heart-breaking experience, reproduced with that vivid reality which a dream can infuse. All of which hardly conduced to a cheerful frame of mind.

With a yawn he rose from the couch and stood upright. His erect, firmly-knit form was well set off by the prevailing costume of the country, namely, a light shirt, breeches and gaiters, and leather belt. He flung on the usual broad-brimmed cowboy hat, and, taking a gun and a handful of cartridges, stood in the doorway for a moment, looking forth.

Such was Piers Lamont's pioneer farm in Matabeleland. It had been granted him by reason of his services during the war of occupation in '93, and he had sold it--for a song--when he wanted a run home. He had bought it back--very much on the same terms--a few months previously, on his return to the old up-country life.

"Ho, Zingela!" he called.

"Come with me," said Lamont, speaking the Sindabele very fairly; "I am going down to the river bank to collect a few birds for the pot. You shall carry them."

The South African native is a born sportsman, and if there is a service congenial to him it is the participation, even vicariously, in any form of sport.

They strolled leisurely down among the tree-stems by the river bank. The francolin, or bush pheasant, whirred up out of the tall tambuti grass one or two at a time. Crack! crack! went the gun, and in less than half an hour Lamont's cartridges, of which he had taken ten, were exhausted, and Zingela was carrying nine birds as they retraced their steps homeward.

The sun sank lower and lower, and the evening light became more golden and entrancing. It was an hour and a scene to promote meditation, retrospection, and he did not want retrospection. Still it was there. Like most things we don't want, it would intrude. The influence of his recent dream was still upon him, and from it there was no getting away.

Rather more than a year ago, and Violet Courtland had indignantly, and in public, branded him as a coward. He had striven to put the incident from his mind and her and her recollection from his life--and had mostly succeeded. There were times when her recollection would be forced back upon him, though such occasions were becoming rarer and their effect fainter. Every occasion of the kind had been succeeded by a fierce reaction of vindictive rancour against one who could so have misjudged him, and so would this. Yet it was more vivid, more saturating, than any of them.

"Not if she went on her knees to me would I ever forgive her that one thing," he would say fiercely to himself on the occasion of such reactions, thus unconsciously paraphrasing the very words that had been said about him, more than a year ago, and upwards of seven thousand miles away. And there would occur to him the idea that life here was too easy, too stagnant. Yet he had not had things all his own way. The dread scourge which had swept steadily down from the north had not spared him; that rinderpest which had decimated his neighbours' cattle, as well as that of the natives, had decimated--was still decimating--his own. Even this, however, could not avail to afford him the anxiety which might constitute the one nail destined to drive out the other; for its ravages, however much they might spell loss, and serious loss, could never to him spell utter ruin, as was the case with some others.

Now a sound of distant lowing, and the occasional clear shout of the driver, told that his own herd was being driven in for the night; and then the calves which had already been brought in woke up, in responsive bellow, to greet the approaching herd. Lamont rose and went round to the kraal. Here was a possible source of anxiety, and narrowly and eagerly did he scan the animals as they passed him, lest haply he might discern symptoms of the dread pestilence. But none appeared, nor did a closer investigation as he moved about within the kraal show further cause for anxiety. So preoccupied was he with this that he entirely failed to notice the approach of a horseman in the growing dusk, until the circumstance was brought to his notice by the sharp crack of a whip and a cheery hail.

"Evenin', Lamont."

"Peters, by George! Well, I said you'd be back to-night. You're as punctual as a jolly clock, old man."

The speaker was outside the gate now, and the two men exchanged a cordial hand-grip.

"Jolly glad you are back too," he went on. "I've got on a fit of holy blues to-night."

"Oh well, then, it's a good job I've brought along a chum. He'll help liven you."

"A chum? Where is he?"

Down went two long tumblers of whisky-and-selzogene.

"We'll have another when the other chap turns up," said Peters, with a jolly laugh. "Well, as I was saying, just before I got to that bend I saw two ugly Makalakas cross the road."

"Nothing wonderful in that. Most likely they only wanted to get to the other side," said Lamont slily.

"Yes. Go on."

"Well, I just dropped down in the tambuti grass, and wormed forward to where I could see over a bit o' rock. Then I drew a careful bead on the exact spot where the nigger would stand to finish off the chap, and--by the Lord!--there the nigger was, with an axe all ready in his fist. In about a second he had skipped his own length in the air, and was prancing about on the ground. He'd got it through the head, you see."

"Good! Did the other show up?"

"Didn't he? They showed up together. He cleared. But he was too late. I got him too."

"Good old right and left! Well done, Peters! And the white man--who was he, and was he badly damaged?"

"He wasn't damaged at all. But he'd have been dead of thirst before night, even if the niggers had never sighted him. He's a Johnny Raw, and he'd been drawing sort of figures of eight all about that mopani patch for the last forty-eight hours. I didn't tell him there'd been any shootin', or any niggers at all, and ain't going to. That sounds like the carts," as the noise of wheels and whip cracking drew nearer and nearer. "Yes; it is."

As the carts drew up, Lamont went back into the room for a moment to get something he had left. When he turned, a tall figure stood in the doorway framed against the darkness beyond.

"Lamont--isn't it?"

This was a fairly familiar method of address from a perfect stranger, even in a land of generally prevailing free-and-easiness, and Lamont stiffened.

"Let me see, I know the voice," he said, staring at the new arrival. "But--"

The other laughed.

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