Chapter Twenty Three.
Of the Hostile Usutus.
Wyvern had no difficulty in making his way up to the spot whence the shot had been fired, and arriving there an unexpected sight met his eyes. There, sure enough, was Mtezani, and in his hand he held a big, wicked-looking assegai, upraised and in striking attitude, while beneath him, face to the earth, he seated astride upon it, lay the body of a man, another native. Beside them both lay a rifle.
“Lie still, dog,” warned the young Zulu. “Lie still, and move not, else my broad blade shall pin thee to the earth. Nkose! Here is he who would have shot you. Look at him.”
Wyvern did so, and could not but feel some astonishment, for he recognised in his would-be murderer the boy whom Bully Rawson had so mercilessly thrashed on the first occasion of his visiting that worthy’s kraal, Pakisa.
“Here he is,” went on the chief’s son. “I was behind him when he fired the shot, but just too late to prevent him. But he got no chance of another. Whau!” and his glance rested meaningly on a heavy, short-handled knob-stick which lay on the ground beside them, and at the head of his prisoner, from which blood was trickling. “I am going to kill him now, Nkose, but first he will tell us why he shot at you. Now dog, why was it?” emphasising the question by a sharp dig in the back with the assegai he held.
The wretched Pakisa, beside himself with fear, stammered forth that it was an accident; that he had taken the Inkosi for a buck, and had fired at him.
“That for the first lie,” said Mtezani, emphasising the remark with another dig, which made the prostrate one squirm and moan. “Answer, or I cut thee to pieces, strip by strip. Now—why was it?”
“He said I must.”
“Ha! Inxele?”
“Eh-hé, Inxele. He promised to shoot me if I failed, and now he will.”
“He will not. Go on,” said Wyvern. “Why were you to shoot me?”
“I cannot tell, Nkose. Except—yes, I heard him say, when he had taken too much tywala, that you must go—that you must be taken care of—yes that was how he put it, but I knew what he meant. He gave me this gun—I often go out and shoot game for him, Nkose—and told me to go and watch for you. If I did not take care of you, and that soon, he would come after me, and shoot me, wherever I might be. And he would have done it. I know Inxele, Nkose, if you do not.”
“And the other Inkosi, U’ Joe—were you to have ‘taken care’ of him too?” said Wyvern.
“Nothing did he say about that, Nkose,” was the answer. “It was you—only you.”
Wyvern pondered. What sort of vindictive fiend could this be, he thought, who could deliberately and in cold blood order his assassination merely because he had disapproved of his brutal and barbarous ways? Then the incidents of the falling tree and the spring-gun recurred to him. That these were no accidents he had long since determined, and now here was a fresh attempt; but that Rawson had some powerful motive for removing him out of existence over and above that of sheer vindictiveness, of course never came into his mind.
“How long have you been watching for an opportunity to ‘take care of me’?” he asked, but his Zulu was defective, and it was not at once that he could compass the answer.
“Since you have been at your present outspan, Nkose. He said he would shoot me, and he meant it.”
“And you, Mtezani,” said Wyvern, turning to the latter. “Said I not that you must not leave U’ Joe, or the camp until my return? Why then are you here?”
“Nkose! I have smelt this dog prowling about for two days following you. That is why I am here.”
Wyvern could hardly find further fault, so he only said:
“Let him up.”
“Nkose! I will let him up—I—Ijjí!”
The last came out in a strident ferocious gasp, as its utterer drove the broad blade of his assegai down between the shoulders of his helpless captive. The limbs contracted convulsively, and the slayer, maddened by a sudden access of ferocity, drove in his spear-head again and again.
“That dog will yelp no more,” he growled, rising erect.
Wyvern felt absolutely sick.
“What have you done, Mtezani?” he said, sternly. “You have killed an utterly defenceless man. That is not the act of a warrior but of a coward.”
The young Zulu looked more than sulky.
“That was not a man but a dog,” he said. “And he would have taken your life, Nkose.”
This was undeniable. Wyvern felt he could hardly quarrel with a man who had just saved his life; further he recognised that one of those irresistible impulses to shed blood common to most savages had come upon Mtezani. Moreover the thing was done, and no amount of objection on his part could undo it. So he rejoined:
“And you have saved it, Mtezani. Good. I will not forget.”
“Nkose is my father and saved mine,” was the reply. “Now we are a life for a life.”
The speaker had quite regained his good-humour. The paroxysm of savagery had passed, and his pleasant, intelligent face was as usual.
“Whau ’Nkose! What is one dog more or less?” he went on, with a careless laugh. “And—that one knew too much.”
“Knew too much?”
“Eh-hé! He was sent by Inxele to find out what you were here for, and to-day he knew. Now he knows no more.”
Wyvern stopped short and fixed his eyes on the other’s face.
“And you, Mtezani? Do you know?”
“Ou!” bringing a hand to his mouth. “Even that might be, Nkose. But others will not.”
Wyvern eyed him curiously, then led the way back to the camp.
“We shall have to reckon with Inxele about this, Mtezani,” he said. “You have killed his ‘dog.’”
“Hau! and I would kill the dog’s master,” and the savagery blazed up again. “I am a son of Majendwa, Nkose, and a son of Majendwa fears nobody, let alone a white ishinga (a worthless person) such as Inxele Whau, ’Nxele! Xi!”
The contempt expressed was so complete that Wyvern burst out laughing.
“White people like you and U’ Joe, Nkose,” went on the Zulu, “that is one thing, but such as Inxele, that is another! They say you have no king, you Amangisi (English), only a woman for king. If you had a king surely Inxele would have been long since dead.”
Wyvern laughed again at this way of putting things. It was naïve, to say the least of it.
Joe Fleetwood lay restless under several blankets when they reached the camp. The day was blazing hot, but the chills of the dread up-country fever held him in their grip.
“Buck up, old man,” said Wyvern gaily. “I’ve struck it at last.”
“So? Quite cert?” asked the other listlessly.
“Rather. Look at this,” showing the opal. And then he told him all about the finding of it. Fleetwood’s listlessness vanished.
“By Jove, we’re on the spot at last,” he said. “It’s awkward though, Wyvern, that sweep Bully being on our spoor like this. Looks as if he’d got some wind of our plan.”
“Yet that wretched devil that shot at me gave me to understand that it was only me he wanted out of the way. I own I’m stumped. Surely even such a brute as that wouldn’t persistently have a fellow murdered simply because he didn’t like him.”
“Not, eh? It’s plain you don’t know Bully Rawson.”
“Well, at any rate, it’s a relief to know he hasn’t scented our job,” said Wyvern. “Send the other boys out of reach on some sham errand, Joe, and let’s get Hlabulana here and talk things over.”
This was done. With perfect imperturbability the Zulu pronounced that Wyvern had hit upon the spot. When asked why he had allowed them to spend days and weeks in useless search when he could have cut it short by a word he answered:
“You white people cannot hide your minds, Amakosi, and the eyes and ears of Inxele have been ever present I was waiting until there was no more Inxele.”
“Until?” repeated Fleetwood.
“Until there is no more Inxele. Soon there will be no more Inxele.”
“By Jove, there’s no mistaking that for a hint,” said Wyvern in English. “There must be mischief brewing against our exemplary friend. Oughtn’t we to warn him?”
“Not much. Bully Rawson’s big enough and quite ugly enough to take care of himself. Nor does he deserve anything of the kind after his little tricks,” answered Fleetwood decisively. “Besides, it’s him or us, and you know what we’ve come up here for, Wyvern. I’m afraid you’ll never be practical, and it’s time you learnt to be by now. I’ve never shirked helping a friend in a row, but I’m not going out of my way to stick my head into a hornet’s nest for such an unhung blackguard as this.”
“Hallo! What the deuce is up!” exclaimed Wyvern as the furious gallop of a horse drew near. Nor was the mystery long in solving, for there dashed right into the camp, and at headlong pace, no less a personage than he whom they had just been discussing. Moreover he was bleeding from a wound in the hand, and another in the head.
“Chaps,” he roared, flinging himself unsteadily from the saddle. “Get out the shooters mighty quick. The Usutus have looted my kraal, and are coming on, hot foot, behind me. They’ll be here in a sec.”
Fleetwood and Wyvern looked at each other, and both thought the same. Instead of putting their heads into a hornets’ nest for this ruffian, he had brought the hornets’ nest about them.
“Oh, ah, but it can’t be helped,” he jeered, reading their thoughts. “We’re all in this together. You’re white men and you can’t refuse to stand by another white man. So get out the shooters, and we’ll give ’em hell directly.”
Our friends’ camp consisted of a strong scherm, made of thorn boughs tightly interlaced. Within this stood the two waggons, and at nightfall the horses and oxen were brought inside, a necessary precaution, for the bushy and broken fastnesses of the Lebombo range still contained a few lions. Now, even as they were getting out arms and ammunition, the boys who were outside came running in in alarm. Hlabulana, seated on the ground, was taking snuff with his usual imperturbability. Mtezani stood, equally imperturbable except that he gripped his shield and broad assegais in such wise as to suggest that he was ready for as much fight as anybody chose to put up for him.
There was not long to wait. The scherm was erected in an open space, and now from the lines of cover, swarms of Zulus were issuing. The full-sized war-shields and certain personal adornments left no doubt as to their errand being the reverse of a peaceful one, as they poured forward ringing in the scherm on every side. And, swift with thought there flashed through Wyvern’s brain the knowledge that they two had attained the object of their search just too late. What could three men do against this swarming number, with no cover but a bush fence, and as for aid from without why there was no such thing possible!
Fleetwood, standing on a waggon box, raised his voice to try and obtain a parley, but even while he was doing so, a shot rang out, then another and another, and with them he realised that the time for parleying had gone by. For Bully Rawson, judging it best to take the bull by the horns, had jumped to the side of the scherm and was pumping the contents of a Winchester repeating rifle into the thickest of the on-rushing mass. Several were seen to fall, and now with an awful roar of rage, the whole body hurled itself upon the barricade like a wave upon a rock.
“Don’t fire a shot, Wyvern,” whispered Fleetwood hurriedly. “We can’t possibly stop them, and it may be our only chance.”
What happened next Wyvern for one could hardly have told. The whole inside of the scherm was alive with waving shields and savage forms, and glinting blades. Rawson had gone down under a knob-kerrie deftly hurled, but he and Fleetwood still kept their position upon the waggon box, their undischarged weapons in their hands. They saw their native servants ruthlessly speared, all save a couple who had managed to hide beneath the waggon sail, and death was but a question of moments. Should they die fighting or elect to stake all on their only chance?
The while, Hlabulana sat calmly taking snuff.