“Nothing wonderful in that. Most likely they only wanted to get to the other side,” said Lamont slily.
“Eh? Oh, I see. Well they did, of course. They dived into the mopani. But, you know, they gave me the idea of being up to some devilment. They didn’t see me neither, and they had axes and assegais, but of course it was none of my business if they were going to stick or hack some other nigger, so I just rode on. A mile or so farther, just the other side of a dry sluit, I saw a brand-new bush-buck spoor leading into the mopani. I could do with some fresh meat just then—dead sick of ‘bully’—so started to see if I could get near enough to him with the .303. Well I didn’t. I saw something else that drove the other clean out of my head. On the opposite side of the sluit from me a man staggered out from the trees—a white man—and fell. ‘That’s what those two devils were up to, was it,’ I thought. They’d assegaied him from behind, and would be here in a minute to collect the plunder. You know, Lamont, more than one white man has disappeared in that mopani belt, but it’s always been put down to thirst.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“Well, I just dropped down in the tambuti grass, and wormed forward to where I could see over a bit o’ rock. Then I drew a careful bead on the exact spot where the nigger would stand to finish off the chap, and—by the Lord!—there the nigger was, with an axe all ready in his fist. In about a second he had skipped his own length in the air, and was prancing about on the ground. He’d got it through the head, you see.”
“Good! Did the other show up?”
“Didn’t he? They showed up together. He cleared. But he was too late. I got him too.”
“Good old right and left! Well done, Peters! And the white man—who was he, and was he badly damaged?”
“He wasn’t damaged at all. But he’d have been dead of thirst before night, even if the niggers had never sighted him. He’s a Johnny Raw, and he’d been drawing sort of figures of eight all about that mopani patch for the last forty-eight hours. I didn’t tell him there’d been any shootin’, or any niggers at all, and ain’t going to. That sounds like the carts,” as the noise of wheels and whip cracking drew nearer and nearer. “Yes; it is.”
As the carts drew up, Lamont went back into the room for a moment to get something he had left. When he turned, a tall figure stood in the doorway framed against the darkness beyond.
“Lamont—isn’t it?”