“’M—’m! Izikwa-kwa?” hummed the other, wholly unable to suppress a considerable start of surprise. Then, recovering himself, he grinned, in bland incredulity.
“Inkosi is joking,” he said. “There is no war.”
“Nevertheless those are izikwa-kwa, loaded and ready to pour forth a storm of bullets for the rest of the day;” and the speaker devoutly prayed that the bar-keeper might not send his boy to get out another supply of soda-water bottles from beneath the sail and thus expose the fraud.
“Come. We will go and see them receive the rewards, those who have won them. But first I would have something to remember the chief of izanusi by. So sell me that red cap which is on thy head, Qubani,” producing some silver.
“Now nay, my father, now nay, for the nights are cold and this red cap is warm—ah! ah! warm. See, here is a fine horn snuff-box, be content with that instead, as a gift.”
“Here I hold the lives of twelve men—six on each side,” answered Lamont, showing him the butt of a revolver, in one of his side pockets. “If I receive not that red cap this instant, the first life it shall spill will be that of the chief of all izanusi.”
Qubani grunted, then his hand went slowly to his head. It was a tense, a nerve-racking moment. Would this savage, defying death, hurl the blood-red symbol high in the air, or—
The two were alone together now, the whole assembly having gathered round the prize tent. Lamont had drawn a revolver.
“Move not, save to hand me that cap,” he said.
For a moment the savage hesitated. But the ring of steel pointing straight at his chest, perhaps the awful and fell look on this man’s face, from which every drop of blood had vanished, and whose eyes were glittering like those of a wild beast, decided him. His hand came slowly down from his head, and the red cap was in Lamont’s left hand.