Soon the plain was left behind, giving way to a steep, rugged mountain-road winding between the spurs. Higher and higher it led, overhung by craggy cliffs, resonant with the shrill scream of the dasje and the loud hoarse bark of the sentinel baboon.
“Look there, Baas,” said Gert Bondelzwart, pointing to a cleft which ran up into a krantz where the slope ended not very high overhead. “That is where Gideon Roux shot a Kafir. He is a schelm Boer is Gideon Roux.”
“Was it during the war?”
“Nee, nee, sir. The Kafir had come to take away a girl Gideon Roux had on his place. Gideon did not want her to go, but the Kafir insisted—said he had been sent by her people to fetch her. So Gideon had him tied to the waggon-wheel and thrashed him with an agter os sjambok, till he should promise not to ask for the girl any more. He would not; so Gideon left him tied up all night, promising him some more sjambok in the morning. But by then the Kafir had managed to get loose. He hadn’t much start, though, and they hunted him with dogs. He tried to hide in that hole there, but Gideon and Hermanus Delport they called to him to come out. He wouldn’t. He had climbed on a rock inside to escape the dogs and was afraid to move. So they shot him dead.”
“When was this, Gert, and what did they do with the body?”
“About three years ago, Baas, or it might have been four. Do with the body? Maagtig, sir! There are holes and pits in these mountains where you or I might conveniently disappear and never be heard of again.”
“Are you cooking up a yam, Gert, just to pass the time; for don’t you know that in this country you can’t shoot even a Kafir and stow him comfortably away without being tried for murder and hanged?”
The man shook his head, with a very humorous look upon his yellow face. It bordered almost upon amused contempt.
“It can be done, sir, and it was done. All the country knows it. Gideon Roux and Hermanus Delport only laugh. Not a man in the Wildschutsberg or the Rooi-Ruggensberg would dare accuse them, or dare come forward to give evidence. Nee, sir, not a man, white, brown, or black. There are very schelm Boers in these mountains, and whoever tried to stir up that affair his life would not be worth a tickey. They would shoot him as they did the Kafir.”
Colvin reined in his horse to the slowest of foot-paces, and stared at the cleft as though struck with an idea.