“That remains to be seen,” I said. “Old Dumela may have found a mare’s nest.”
“No. He would not have come here at this time of night like this without good reason. And all the time we were thanking him shabby and ungrateful he was serving us—watching over our interests, our safety.”
The short cut to Trask’s lay along the bottom of a network of intersecting kloofs, but the path would only allow of riding single file. Beryl and I had a sharp skirmish as to who should take the lead, but I claimed my right, and firmly stuck to it. If there was danger, mine was the right to discover it and meet it first, and that she recognised.
Heavens! the sickening, creeping mystery of that night ride—the weird, boding awe of it, as we took our way through the dark gloom of overhanging scrub, the sharp contrast of its blackness with the vivid glare of the full moon accentuated tenfold—the ghostly cliffs frowning down upon us, as from a scene in Dante.
Our way took us by the lower end of the Zwaart Kloof, the site of that other tragedy—the scene, too, of my fell and fatal discovery when all my castles in the air had melted away, when I had learned that I was ruined, and as we entered its bushy recesses a thrill of superstitious dread ran through me. It was an ill-omened spot—cursed and haunted with an overshadowing of woe. Surely—surely—not again were its shades destined to cover another tragedy—another outpouring of the cup of horror and of evil.
I had but lately avowed my disbelief in instincts, yet here I know not what instinct of dread and repulsion came upon me as we drew near the place, moving me to glance over my shoulder to catch a glimpse of the face of my companion, possibly with the intent to ascertain whether the same idea was moving her. But as I did so a sudden and violent start on the part of my horse came near unseating me. Shying, snorting, the brute swerved and backed; and coming thus into collision with Beryl’s steed it took both of us some moments to soothe and quiet the animals. But in that brief flash of time I had caught a glimpse of a Something lying on the ground, and my heart stood still within me and every drop of blood in my system seemed to turn to water.
There was no mistaking the nature of that Something. The inanimate human form is possessed of an eloquence all its own. Dark upon the shimmer of the moonlit earth this one lay, the white face staring upward to the sky, the face of poor little George Matterson. And the same instinctive conviction flashed through us both as we slid from our saddles, that it was a dead face.
Never, if I were to live a thousand years, could I forget the whirl of rage and horror and grief that convulsed me at that moment, turning me half-dazed. Beryl was beside the prostrate form, bending over it. No cry had escaped her, only a quick, half-stifled gasp. In a moment I was beside her, having taken the precaution to secure both our horses.
“Dead!” she uttered, having raised the head, with infinite tenderness of touch. “Dead. Murdered!”
I don’t know which feeling was uppermost within my mind at that moment—horror at the discovery, or awe of the strange, unnatural calmness wherewith she accepted the frightful and heartrending situation. I bent down over the poor remains. A noosed reim had been twisted round the neck, compressing it tightly. Not this, however, had been the cause of death. The grass around and beneath the body glistened with a dark wet stain. On the dead boy’s clothing above the heart was a clean cut from which blood was still welling. He had been stabbed—stabbed with an assegai.