The long, hard, running fight—valiantly fought—was over, and there in front lay rest and safety—for a time.
Chapter Twenty Three.
The Kezane Store.
The Kezane Store—shop, inn, farm, posting-stables rolled into one—was almost a small fort, in that its buildings were enclosed within a stout stockade of mopani poles. This is exactly as its owner intended it should be; and now the said owner—an elderly German who had served in the Franco-Prussian war—came forth, together with three other white men, to welcome the party.
“Ach! dot was very exciting,” he said. “We was hearing the fight—for the last hour—coming nearer and nearer. We was not able to help outside, only four of us, but we was ready to shoot from here if the Matabele had come near enough.”
The excitement of the men was now fairly let loose, and everybody seemed to be talking at once; fighting the battle over again in bulk, or recounting individual experiences. The surviving half of the handful of police were more subdued—the recollection of five dead comrades left behind on the road having something to do with it.
“Good old Grunberger,” sang out Jim Steele. “You ought to have been with us, a jolly old soldier like you. You’d have been a tiger.”
“Ach! I do not know,” replied the old German quite flattered. “Now, chentlemen, you will all come and haf some drinks wit me. Wit me, you understand.”