“By Jove! She can ride and shoot with any of us,” went on Meyrick, rather enthusiastically, which caused his comrade to guffaw.
“I don’t freeze on to ‘male’ women,” he said.
“You just wait until you see her,” was the rejoinder. “Not much ‘male’ about her.”
“What a chap you are on the other sex, Meyrick. What’s the good of a fellow in the force, with no chance of promotion, bothering about all that. Much better make ourselves jolly as we are.”
“Good old cynic, Frank,” said the other. “Wait till you see Verna Halse, and I’ll bet you get smashed. Nice name ‘Verna,’ isn’t it?”
“Don’t know it’s anything out of the ordinary. But cynic or not, here we are, a brace of superfluous and utterly impecunious sons of two worthy country parsons, bunked out here to fish for ourselves. You’ll be made a Sub-Inspector soon, you’ve got it in you. I shan’t, and I haven’t. So I’m not going to bother about ‘skirt.’”
They had reached the spot where the tongue of forest points off onto the road edge and there ends. The ground was more open here.
“Hot as blazes!” commented Francis, swabbing his forehead. “What’s this? Au! Gahle—gahle!”
The latter as three native women, squatted in the grass by the roadside, stood up to give the salute, the suddenness whereof caused the horses to shy. In the grass beside them lay several bundles such as native women often carry when passing from place to place, only these were unusually large.
The two police troopers fired off a humorous expostulation—they had both qualified in their knowledge of the Zulu for extra linguistic pay—and passed on their way. The track grew steeper and steeper, and the sun hotter and yet more hot. They would soon be at Ben Halse’s store, with the prospect of an excellent dinner and a welcome rest before them. And behind them, in a contrary direction, laughing to themselves, travelled the three women they had just passed, bending under the burden of the loads poised upon their heads—the said loads containing each a goodly quarter of koodoo meat, of the meat of the lordly koodoo bull, the possession of which would have entailed upon them, and upon all concerned, if detected, the direst of pains and penalties. Yet there was nothing suspicious-looking about those bundles, nothing to make any reasonable being under the sun think it worthwhile investigating their contents.