We took up the spoor at the place where the stolen animals were seen to cross the river. It was indeed as broad as a waggon road, as Brian had predicted, even to a tyro such as myself, for the ground was studded with fresh hoof marks; but the marauders were evidently old hands at the game, for avoiding steep hills which might blow the animals, they had made use of a narrow cattle track winding along through a deep rugged ravine, but ever ascending. We, however, had managed to travel much faster, and very soon halted to blow the horses on the heights overlooking the river valley, where, like a toy house in the distance, we could see the dwelling we had recently left. Here we came up with Dumela, who had started on ahead, and had made the distance in most excellent time.
Now we commanded a new view of country. Before us unfolded a panorama of wide rolling plain and bushy kloof, stretching away to further heights—dark, forest-clad and beautiful—but, on our then errand, forbidding. At these Dumela gazed fixedly, as he said, in his roundabout native way—
“Only if they are strong enough to keep it do those who steal an ox flaunt its skin in everybody’s face. It is there you will find the oxen.”
“How do you know that, Dumela?” said the irrepressible Trask, in Dutch, when this had been translated to us. The Kafir grinned with, I thought, a touch of contempt, and which wholly amused Brian, as he muttered to himself—
“Some white people are like women—always asking things they ought to know.” But out loud he said: “Why should I deceive you? I have nothing to gain by the oxen being stolen. They are my master’s—that is, mine; for they were under my care.”
Dumela was to leave us here, but before he started upon his homeward way, he said to Brian, “Inkose, you will find what you seek, but whether you will obtain possession of it, I know not, for the people over yonder are numerous and fierce and reckless, and they love not the whites—wherefore keep your eyes open.”
“That’s the dickey part of the whole situation,” said Brian, as we moved forward. “If we come to blows and had a free hand, why we’d probably be all right. As it is, it’s like fighting with one hand tied behind you. There’s no actual war on—not yet—though if things go on much longer like this there soon will be. If we start shooting to kill—or even shooting at all—ten to one it means a Circuit Court trial; but if they cut all our throats, not one of them’ll be any the worse for it—for even if the right men were ever dropped upon, it would be ruled that they acted in self-defence, and that armed parties of farmers had no right raiding into native locations.”
“Quite right, Matterson,” assented Revell. “They’d jaw about taking the law into our own hands, and what did the Colony keep up an expensive Police Force for, and so on. Fat lot you’d see of your oxen by the time you put that machinery to work. Why, the Kafirs’d have scoffed the whole span long before and started out to rake in more.”
Now, all this was no more than the bare truth. The unrest and bold and predatory propensities of our turbulent neighbours of late had been the cause of a growing uneasiness on the frontier, and more than one armed collision between settlers and the natives had occurred—arising out of just such provocation as had brought us hither. One indeed, quite recently, had been something of a cause célèbre in that to the frantic indignation of the presiding judge a frontier jury had unhesitatingly and obstinately refused to convict certain individuals of their own class and colour who had used fire-arms with fatal effect, but beyond all doubt in defence of their own lives.
“We may find ourselves in a rotten tight place, or we may not,” pronounced Brian, when we had discussed the whole position fore and aft. “If we do we must use judgment, and on no account loose off a shot unless we are absolutely and unequivocally obliged. Is that understood, you fellows?”