“Oh, MacFennel, I wish you’d give him a lot of beads and things out of your store,” went on Dick, “also on my own account, they’ll do fine for his wives. I expect he’s got about twenty.”
“All right, Mr Selmes. He may have more though.”
“Well, give him a good lot for each one. How many has he got, Greenoak?”
This was put, Greenoak explaining that it was the desire of the son of the great English chief to make a present to each, and in the result it transpired that the old Gaika had less than twenty, but certainly more than one.
So they chatted on, Harley Greenoak not omitting to tell the chief how Dick Selmes had interfered to protect the fallen man at the risk of his own life. The frontier was in a very disturbed state, and there was no telling what might happen. There was no telling, either, of what service the act might not prove to one or both of them in the fortunes of war, and none knew this better than the old campaigner and up-country man.
The ground was like a regular battlefield. Injured men lay around, unconscious some, and breathing heavily.
Others would never breathe again; others, too, recovering from their temporary stunning, were raising themselves labouringly, staring stupidly around, as though anything but sure as to what had happened. Broken kerries lay about, and, here and there, a great smear of blood. Tyala, having filled his pipe from the new and bountiful supply he had just received, lit it and stalked around the scene of the late disorder.
“Au! This is not good, Kulondeka,” he said. “Some will be punished for this. But the fewest lying here are Ndimba’s people. That would seem to tell that ours did not begin the fight.”
“That may or may not be, Councillor of the House of Gaika,” answered Harley Greenoak, drily. “It may only mean that the Amandhlambe are the better fighters.”
“Whau!” cried Tyala, bringing his hand to his mouth with a quizzical laugh. “Now, Kulondeka, I would ask where are better fighters than the men of the House of Gaika? Where?”