Tekana, as we have said, was no fool, also his conscience was not clear; moreover, he was quite unarmed except for a stick. With this he knocked the weapon from the first man’s grasp, and then, without a word, he started to run.
Now his chances were even. The assegais of his assailants were useless for throwing purposes, and could he but gain his goal first his prospective father-in-law would certainly afford him protection, if only to save all that lobola from slipping through his own fingers.
But his would-be murderers were as good at running as he, and he had no start. They, too, wasted no words as they sprinted in his wake, and there was scarcely a dozen yards between them. Yet the distance was evenly kept.
For about a hundred yards this went on. Then the hindermost of the pursuers stopped, and with lightning-like rapidity picked up a large stone. This he hurled with power and precision. It smote the hunted man hard and full on the base of the skull, bringing him to earth more than half stunned. In a moment four assegai blades were buried again and again in his body.
“The last of the three!” exclaimed one of the slayers, all of whom were panting after their run. “Here is a thick bush. We will hide him.”
This was done. Swinging it up by the wrists and heels they threw the body into the thickest part of a thick clump that grew just beside the track, not even troubling to see whether he had anything worth taking. Plunder was not their object. Thus disappeared Tekana, who had set forth so blithely in the early morning. When the next return should be made for purposes of poll-tax collecting it would be represented that Sebela and Tekana had gone away to work at the mines, as the latter had frequently expressed his intention of doing. Pandulu did not matter. He came from Natal, and had come secretly at that. He would not be missed.
Whereby two things are manifest—that Sapazani was a very dangerous man to betray, and that in a sparsely settled and savage country things are done that never come to the knowledge of the ruling race at all.