Chapter Eight.
The Prospectors.
“I’ve got some news for you, Stride.”
He addressed was just dismounting. Obviously he had returned from a journey. His steed was flecked with sweat and had rather a limp appearance, as though ridden through the heat of a long day, and, withal, a hot one. A tent and a makeshift native shelter, together with a roughly run-up stable constituted the prospectors’ camp on the Mihlungwana River.
“Well, spit it out, then, if it’s worth having,” returned the other, with a light laugh. He was a tall, well-built young fellow, bronzed with the healthy, open-air life.
“Man, but there’s no that hurry,” said the first speaker, with a twinkle in his eyes. “First of all, what’s the news Grey Town way?”
“There you are, with your North Country tricks, Robson, answering one question with another. Well, both our news’ll keep till scoff-time. I suppose it’s nearly ready, anyway I hope so, for I want it badly, I can tell you.”
The other smiled to himself. He thought his partner would not be quite so placid if he really knew what there was to impart. There was a pleasant odour of frying on the evening air. The sun had just gone down, and the fading beams still lingered on the green, rounded tops of the Mihlungwana hills. The native boys, a little distance off, were keeping up a low hum of conversation round their fire, one being occupied in frying steaks upon that of their masters’. The new arrival was splashing his head and face in a camp basin.
“Well, what is the news?” he said, coming forward, vigorously rubbing his head with a towel.
“Ay; you said yourself it’d keep till scoff-time, and I’m going to take you at your word, lad. But, buck up. It’s nearly ready.”
Soon the two were discussing supper with the appetite engendered by a healthy, open-air life. Then Robson remarked—
“What would you say to Ben Halse and his girl being at Ezulwini?”
“No, by Jove! Are they really, though?”
“Well, the night before last they slept at Malimati, so they’ll be at Ezulwini now, won’t they?” And the speaker laughed to himself, as he noticed the start and eagerness of tone on the part of his younger companion. The latter relapsed into unwonted silence.
“Ay, he’s a good chap, Ben. You’ll like to be seeing him again, I’m thinking.”
“Yes—yes, of course. A thundering good chap, as you say. I’d rather like to see him again.”
“Him?” drily.
“Of course. Didn’t he get me out of a jolly big mess, when I’d already captured a bang on the head from an infernal nigger’s kerrie, and herd me back to life?”
“Ay; but now I think of it, I believe the boy said it was only him who was going to Ezulwini. Ay, I’m sure I must have made a mistake when I said it was both of them.”
There was a moment of chapfallen silence on the part of Harry Stride. Then he said—
“Robson, you villainous old humbug. Is the whole thing a yarn, or any part of it, or what?”
“Well, Sipuleni told me. He had it from some other nigger. You know how these fellows gossip together, and how news spreads. Ho, Sipuleni!” he called.
“Nkose!”
The boy came. Him Harry Stride began volubly questioning, or rather trying to, for Harry Stride’s Zulu was defective. Sipuleni turned, puzzled and inquiring, to his other master.
“Oh, damn it! these silly devils don’t understand their own language. You go ahead, Robson.”
Robson did, and soon elicited that Ben Halse and his daughter had slept at Malimati en route for Ezulwini, just as he had told the other. He was enjoying the latter’s eagerness and uncertainty.
“Yes, I’d like to see old Halse again,” repeated Stride, when the boy had been dismissed. “He’s a thundering good old chap. I say, Robson, we don’t seem to be doing over-much here at present. Let’s take a ride over to Ezulwini for a day or two. What do you say?”
Robson was a big, burly north-countryman, and the very essence of good-nature. He shook his head and winked.
“Ye’d better go alone, lad, if your horse’ll carry you. And he won’t, I’m thinking, if you try to make him do it in a day and a half.”
“He’ll jolly well have to. I think I’ll start to-morrow. Sure you won’t come?”
Robson shook his head slowly.
“Dead cert.,” he answered. “I’d like to have a crack with Ben Halse; but Ezulwini’s rather too far to go to see—him. Fine girl that of his, ain’t she?”
“Rather. I can’t make out how she gets through life stuck up there in that out-of-the-way place.”
“Well, she does, and that’s all in her favour; women being for the most part discontented, contrarious things—especially discontented. You’d better sail in quick, lad, if you mean biz. There’s bound to be a run on her when she gets in among other folks.”
“Hang it, don’t I know that,” was the answer, given with some impatience. “The fact is, Robson, she was too awfully good to me when I was hung up at Ben’s place after that crack on the nut. I haven’t been able to get her out of my system ever since. Look here. Shall I tell you something I never let out before? She—refused me.”
The other nodded.
“Ay! She wouldn’t jump at anybody. But why not try your luck again? Go in and win, lad, go in and win.”
“By Jove! I’ve a devilish good mind to—to try my luck again, I mean.”
Robson nodded again, this time approvingly.
“That’s the way. Ye’ll be no worse off than before. But I’m thinking there was the news from down yonder getting cold.”
“Oh, of course. I was forgetting. Well, they seem in a bit of a stew over the river there. A sweep named Babatyana is beginning to give trouble. Some think the Ethiopian movement is behind it, and others don’t. But there’s certainly something simmering.”
“He has been troublesome before. They ought to get hold of him and make an example of him, same as they did with those fellows at Richmond.”
“Wonder if we shall have a war,” went on Stride.
“I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve been in these parts a good many years, and I was up in Matabeleland in ’96, when they started there, as you know. We were in a prospecting camp just like this, and I shan’t forget the nine days three of us had dodging the rebels. Others weren’t so lucky. Well, it’d be pretty much the same here, only we couldn’t dodge these because there’s no cover. It’d simply mean mincemeat.”
“Gaudy look out. In truth, Robson, a prospector’s life is not a happy one.”
“No fear, it isn’t. Here I’ve been at it on and off over sixteen years in all parts of this country pretty well. I struck something once, but it petered out, and still I’ve kept on. Once a prospector, always a prospector. Learn from me, Harry Stride, and chuck it. You’re not too old now, but you soon will be.”
“Oh, I don’t know. There’s a sort of glorious uncertainty about it—never knowing what may turn up.”
“Except when there’s the glorious certainty of knowing that nothing is going to turn up, as in the present case. Yet, I own, there’s something about it that gets into the blood, and stays there.”
“Well, what d’you think, Robson? We don’t seem to be doing much good here. How would it be to change quarters?”
“If there’s any stuff in the country at all it’s here. I’ve located it pretty accurately. The stuff is here, there’s no doubt about that, but—is there enough of it? We’ll try a little longer.”
“All right, old chap. I’m on. I say, I’ll tell you a rum find I made on the way up yesterday afternoon. I’d just got through the Bobi drift—beastly place, you know—swarming with crocs. I lashed a couple of shots into the river to scare any that might be about. Well, on this side, just above water level, and stuck in the brushwood, I found—what d’you think?”
“Haven’t an idea. A dead nigger, maybe.”
“No fear. It was a saddle. What d’you think of that?”
“A saddle?”
“Yes, or what remained of one. The offside flap had been torn off, so had both stirrup-irons, the stirrup leather remained. Now comes the curious part of it. While I was looking at the thing and wondering how the devil it got there, I suddenly spotted a round hole in the flap that remained. It looked devilish like a bullet hole, and I’m dead cert, it was.”
“That’s rum,” said Robson, now vividly interested.
“Isn’t it? It took me rather aback. What’s more, the saddle looked as if it hadn’t been so very long in the water. What do you make of it?”
“What did you do with it?”
“Do with it? I loaded it up and left it with Dickinson at Makanya. He’s the sergeant of police there, and has a name for being rather smart.”
“Well, and what was his notion?”
“We talked it over together and agreed the affair looked uncommonly fishy. It had evidently been a good saddle too, not one that a nigger would ride on. But how had it got there, that’s the point?”
“Ay, that’s the point.”
“You see there’s no drift for miles and miles above the Bobi drift. It’s all that beastly fever-stricken Makanya forest, and there’s nothing on earth to induce a white man to go in there. And, as I said, there’s no doubt but that the saddle had belonged to a white man. Both Dickinson and I agreed as to that.”
Robson sat puffing at his pipe for a few minutes in silence. He was thinking.
“I wonder if it spells foul play,” he said eventually. “Quite sure it was a bullet hole, Harry?”
“Well, I put it to Dickinson without mentioning my own suspicions, and he pronounced it one right away.”
“I wonder if some poor devil got lost travelling alone, and got in among a disaffected lot who made an end of him. They may have shot his horse to destroy all trace, or in trying to bring him up to a round stop. Anyway, why the deuce should they have chucked the saddle into the river? It isn’t like a nigger to destroy assetable property either. No. As you say, Harry, the thing looks devilish fishy.”
“What about the stirrup-irons being gone, Robson?”
“That makes more for my theory. Metal of any kind is valuable to them. They can forge it into assegais. Besides, anything hard and shining appeals to them.”
Stride started upright.
“By Jove!” he cried suddenly. “There’s one point I forgot. The girths were intact. That horse had never been off-saddled.”
Again the other thought a moment.
“Now we are getting onto fresh ground. The poor devil must have missed his way and got into the river. The crocs, did the rest. They took care of him and his gee, depend upon it.”
“But the bullet hole?”
“Dash it! I forgot that. Well, here’s a mystery, and no mistake. We’ll think it out further. But Dickinson has it in hand, and he knows niggers down to the ground—was raised here, you know. Harry, if you’re going to start for Ezulwini first thing to-morrow you’d better turn in.”