Chapter Twenty One.
“Take Care of him.”
Wyvern found some difficulty in concealing the growing disgust that was upon him as he entered Rawson’s kraal. He had by this time been in several native kraals and felt quite at home there: but this—well, somehow it was out of keeping. That unqualified ruffian, his present entertainer, was repulsive enough in all conscience, but he seemed to become ten times more so, when viewed in the light of his domestic arrangements: under which circumstances the fact that he was a white man seemed to have sunk him immeasurably below the level of the savage.
The two women, who were seated together on the ground, looked up quickly as the new arrivals entered. The better favoured of the two, Nkombazana, the Zulu girl, smiled approvingly as her glance rested on Wyvern, and then said something to her companion in a low tone. He, of the two, was clearly the one that aroused their interest Bully Rawson emitted a loud guffaw, true to his programme of keeping up a certain boisterous geniality.
“There you are, Wyvern. Women are the same all the world over, you see. Now these are agreeing that they don’t see a thundering fine chap like you every day of the week.”
“Which is the one related to the boy you just kicked so unmercifully?” said Wyvern.
“That one, Nompai. She ain’t much to look at, but I’ll swear she ain’t the worst of the two. That other one, Nkombazana, she’s a regular vixen—a spitfire I can tell you. I often wish I could clear her out I’d let her go cheap. Oh, see here Wyvern—” as a bright idea struck him, and then he stopped short. Bully Rawson, with all his faults, had the saving grace of perceptiveness, wherefore the bright idea remained unpropounded.
“Well what?”
“Oh nothing. I forget now what I was going to say,” with a furtive wink at Fleetwood.
“But why can’t you clear her out?” asked Wyvern. “I thought among savages they did what they liked with their womenkind.”
There was a dry irony about the tone, that the other may have remarked, but for his own purposes preferred not to notice or resent. He guffawed good-humouredly instead.
“Did you? Well then Wyvern, you’ve got a lot to learn about the manners and customs of this country yet. Nkombazana’s father’s a pretty strong chief, and Joe there’ll tell you what a hornet’s nest I should bring about my ears if I bunked her back to her people.” Fleetwood nodded. “Oh well, damn the women,” went on Bully. “I think we’ve yarned enough about them. So we’ll get into the store hut where it’s cool and have a drink.”
The hut wherein Rawson kept his trade goods was a larger one than the rest, and differed from them in that it had a door through which you need only stoop slightly in entering, instead of crawling on all fours. It also boasted a small glazed window. Unlocking the huge padlock that secured it, their host led the way inside.
“You haven’t got much stuff on hand, Bully,” said Fleetwood, looking round upon the blankets and beads and brass buttons and other “notions” stowed about.
“Oh well no, I do next to no blanket trade these days, and what I do is a darn sight more paying than this truck. Oh, I’ve got an iron or two in the fire, m’yes, but a lot of trade stuff comes in handy as a firescreen, as we know. Eh Joe?” with a knowing wink which made that worthy just a little uneasy. The other had exactly stated their own case: was it accidental, and was he merely referring to the pretty widespread practice of gun-running, or had he, by any means whatever, obtained some inkling as to the real object of the expedition? He nodded carelessly.
“Ja. That’s so,” he replied.
There are three European products which you shall invariably find—even if you find no other—on the confines of civilisation and beyond the same: “square face” gin, a pack of cards, and a bottle of Worcester sauce. The first of these Bully now produced, together with some enamelled metal mugs.
“Here’s luck all round,” he said. “Eh? What’s that? Water? Man—Wyvern, but you’re a bit of a Johnny Raw in these parts. Why we don’t water our stuff here. Eh, Joe?”
“Matter of taste. For my part I don’t care either way,” was the answer—while the host put his head out and bellowed to the women to fetch some.
Now Joe Fleetwood, though one of the shrewdest and most practical of men, had “instincts”—and these were somehow unaccountably aroused. There was a something which warned him that their uproariously effusive host meant mischief, and that at no distant time. Therefore he resolved to keep more than one eye upon him.
Soon they strolled down to the wood-cutting place, and the sombre, surrounding forest was ringing with the sound of axe and saw. The wretched slaves—for practically they were little or nothing else—looked up with dull interest at the new arrivals, but their master, out of deference to Wyvern, omitted to kick or hammer any of them, and laid himself out to be extremely pleasant in his boisterous way, as he explained the arrangements while they strolled around.
“Hold hard, Wyvern. A snake’s bitten me.”
The words—quick, sharp, replete with alarm—were Fleetwood’s. Wyvern, who was just in front of him, stopped dead in his tracks and turned, as with a mighty crash a nearly-cut through tree-trunk came to earth hardly more than a yard in front of him. His next step would have been his last.
“Blazes!” cried Bully Rawson, “but I never thought that log would have come down at all. I was just shoving against it to see how much more cutting through it wanted. What’s that about a snake, Joe?”
“No. It isn’t one,” said that worthy, in a tranquil tone of voice as he looked down. “It’s only a thorn dug into my ankle. I was bitten once, and I suppose it’s made me nervous ever since. Which is lucky, or you’d have been squashed to pulp, Wyvern.”
“By the Lord he would,” cried Rawson. “Man alive, but you’ve had a narrow squeak! Well I’m blasted sorry if I’ve given you a shaking up—and I can’t say more.”
“Oh, that’ll be all right,” said Wyvern, forgetting his own narrow escape in his intense relief. “But look here, Joe. Are you dead sure it wasn’t one?”
“Dead cert. Look. Here’s the thorn,” picking one up.
“Haw-haw-haw!” bellowed Rawson. “Well, Wyvern, I suppose you and I are the only two cusses in the world who can say they’ve ever seen Joe Fleetwood in a funk. You were in one, weren’t you, Joe?”
“Rather,” was the answer, drily given.
“Well, I am a clumsy fellow,” said Rawson, in his breezy way. “Come along now, and I’ll show you my amabele and mealie lands.”
He led the way by a narrow game path in the bush and soon they came to a high hedge made of mimosa thorn boughs tightly interlaced. Beyond this some three acres of green crops were visible.
“That’s to keep out the bucks,” said Rawson over his shoulder, for he was leading. “They’d scoff the lot in a night or two if there wasn’t something of the kind. Fond of hunting, Wyvern?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you come up here on a moonlight night you’ll get plenty of chances. There’s an odd koodoo or so comes sniffing around after that stuff, but the thorn fence humbugs them.”
Wyvern was just thinking how even that inducement would not persuade him to see a moment more of his host than necessity obliged, so intense was the aversion the latter had inspired in him, when a sudden and violent push from behind, almost of the nature of a blow, sent him staggering and then sprawling, cannoning against and nearly upsetting his said host, who was some three or four yards ahead. Simultaneously the detonating roar of an explosion, seeming to come out of the ground itself, rent the air, and a perfect hail of missiles cut leaves and twigs from the bush, or ploughed up the ground a few yards to the right of the path they were pursuing.
“Hold up, man, hold up! Not hit, are you?” sung out Bully Rawson, with great concern. “No? That’s all right. Blast me if that wasn’t one of them spring-guns I’ve been settin’ around this land for the bucks we’ve just been talking about Man, there was half a pound of loepers in it if there was one. You must have kicked the string. The wonder is I didn’t.”
“Bit risky, isn’t it?” struck in Fleetwood, drily.
“Course. But I haven’t been seeing to them for some time. I swear I’d forgotten there were any left set at all.”
“Well, I saw the string,” rejoined Fleetwood, and his tone was decidedly short. “Wyvern was about to kick it, and so I sent him flying just in time. Legs blown off at the shins—no doctor—shock and loss of blood—stone dead in three minutes. Seems to me your place is a bit dangerous, Bully.”
“So it is. The wonder is I didn’t kick it myself. Well let’s chuck mouching about and get back to the store and have another drink. We deserve it after that. Well, I’ll hammer someone sweetly for leaving that thing there, that’s one consolation.”
“It’s none,” said Wyvern, also shortly. “Hammer yourself.”
“Eh? What do you mean?” said the other, trying to suppress his rising fury. “Ah well. Let’s have a look at the gun.”
There it was—a clumsy-looking, half-rusty iron tube like unto a young cannon, secreted in the bushes. To the peg which held up the hammer was attached a long string, its other end being made fast so that it came across the path. Any unwary animal which should collide with that string, would find all its worldly interests at an end there and then. Again Rawson was profuse in his apologies.
But thereafter, the tone of conversation between the two and the third became somewhat strained, and their farewell was none too cordial. As they rode back to their outspan Fleetwood said:
“He’s beginning early.”
“Do you think he meant to shove that tree down on me?”
“Of course he did. When that failed he remembered the spring-gun.”
“Do you think that was a put up thing too?”
“I should rather say so. Look here, Wyvern. I saw him step over the string. He knew it was there.”
“The deuce you did.”
“Well I did. I’ve got a rum sort of instinct, Wyvern, and it has saved more than one man’s life before to-day.”
“And it has saved one man’s life twice to-day, old chap,” answered Wyvern gravely.
“That’s nothing as between you and me,” rejoined the other. “When I remember that day on the Hlobane—”
“Oh damn the Hlobane,” cut in Wyvern. “Now do you think this unhung scoundrel has any inkling of our errand?”
“No, but for some reason or other he’d rather have our room than our company, and the best road towards that is to get rid of us. I had my eye on him from the very beginning, luckily. I saw him start shoving at that tree, and the only way to stop you dead short was to invent that snake-bite lie, just as the only way to make you clear the spring-gun string was to give you the shove I did. You let it off, but the sudden pitch forward just cleared the charge.”
“Well, if he gets up to anything of that sort openly I shall shoot,” said Wyvern decisively.
“So shall I,” said Fleetwood, with equal decision.
The while the subject of these remarks, having solaced his feelings by thrashing one of his dependents, and getting considerably drunk, was arriving at the conclusion that the process of “taking care of” Wyvern was not going to prove as easy as it looked, and that he himself had begun upon it very badly indeed.