If the path was damnable, the ascent was easy, luckily, though rugged. I gave no thought as to whether any of my comrades were following, or if I did it was only a jealous misgiving lest I should not be, the first to come up with the quarry. The thieves might escape, for all I cared; the other horse might not be recovered, but recapture Beryl’s I would. Then I awoke to the unpleasing realisation that dusk was giving way to darkness, the downright sheer darkness of night.
All the more reason for bringing the undertaking to a swift conclusion: wherefore I pommelled and spurred my hapless steed along with a ruthlessness of which at any other time I should be heartily ashamed. But here the end justified the means, and soon I was rewarded, for I heard the click of hoofs much nearer ahead now, and with it the smothered tone of a voice or two.
Of course it should have occurred to me, had I not been transformed into a born idiot for the time being, that I was acting the part of one. For here I was, a man who had been little more than a month in the country, about to rush into the midst of unknown odds, to attack single-handed how many I knew not of fierce and savage desperadoes, right in their own especial haunt, in the thick of their own wild fastnesses; for it was highly probable that those whom I pursued had joined, or been joined by, others in front. Yet if I gave the matter a thought it was only a passing one.
Now my steed pricked up its ears and began to whinny, recognising the close propinquity of its friends, and there sure enough, as the bush thinned out somewhat, I could see the two runaways barely that number of hundred yards ahead. Putting on a spurt I had halved the distance, when they halted. He who bestrode Beryl’s steed was an evil-looking savage with a string of blue beads about his neck, and an expression of contemptuous ferocity on his countenance as he faced round and awaited me, trying to conceal a long tapering assegai which he held ready to cast. But I rode straight for him, and when within thirty yards he launched the spear. Heavens! I could feel the draught created by the thing as it whizzed by my ear with almost the velocity of a bullet, and then I was upon him. But the fellow, who was quite a good horseman for a Kafir, managed to get hold of my bridle rein and, jerking it partly from my hand, hung back with it in such wise as to prevent my steed from ranging alongside of his. A mad, murderous temptation flashed through my mind to empty my shot barrel into his abominable carcase, but Brian’s emphatic warning still in my memory availed to stay my hand.
I hardly know what happened then, or how. Whether it was that my horse, violently tugging backwards, succeeded in jerking the rein free, or my adversary, seeing his opportunity, had purposely let go, but the sudden recoil caused my fool of an animal to lose his balance and go clean over, taking me with him, and lo! I was rolling ignominiously upon the ground, though, fortunately, not under him. I saw the grin on the face of my late enemy, heard his jeering guffaw, and then—something swooped down over my head and shoulders shutting out sight and air in a most horrible and nauseous suffocation, pinning my arms to my sides, which several hands securely bound there. A babel of deep jeering voices filled my ears, muffled as they were, and I was seized and violently hustled forward at a great pace over a rough and stony way, the vicious dig of an assegai in my thigh emphasising a volley of injunctions which I could not understand. What I could understand, however, was that was expected to walk, and to walk smartly, too, guided by the very ungentle hands which urged me forward.
Chapter Fifteen.
The Den of the Cattle Stealers.
To give an adequate idea of my thoughts and feelings at that moment, or during those that followed, would amount to a sheer impossibility. Truly I had distinguished myself. I had undertaken to recover the stolen steed in bold and doughty fashion, and had allowed myself to be drawn into the most transparent booby-trap ever devised for the deception of mortal idiot. Instead of returning in triumph, having fulfilled Beryl’s parting injunction, here was I, strapped up helplessly, my head and face swathed in a filthy greasy Kafir blanket, only able to breathe—and that with difficulty—through its unspeakably nauseous folds. Heavens! I wonder I was not sick. Kicked and punched too, and a butt for every kind of jeer and insult from these black ruffians, although of course I could not understand the burden of the latter. But where was it going to end?