“I tink not,” he answered, “Jonémi nkos’nkulu. Great master. He aflaid o’ nuffin. Matabele much like him.”
“Listen, Pukele,” said Nidia, impressively. “You must go and find him.”
“But what you do, missis? You be flighten, all alone. Suppose Uconde—bobyaan—he come again, you much flighten? I be away till sun, him so,” pointing to the western horizon.
“I’ll be frightened of nothing,” she answered emphatically. “Leave me one of your long assegais, and go. Even if you have to be away all night, don’t come back. I’ll get through it somehow. But—find Jonémi.”
With many injunctions to her not to wander far from this spot, where to hide in the event of any Matabele chancing to pass that way, and promising to be back by sundown, Pukele took his departure. Once more Nidia was alone. This time, however, loneliness in itself no longer oppressed her. Intense anxiety on behalf of another precluded all thought of self.
True to his promise Pukele returned at sundown, and he had learned something. Jonémi had fallen in with the Matabele, even as he had expected. He had talked with the indunas, and having bidden farewell had walked away. That was about the same time last evening. But Pukele said nothing of the subsequent and stealthy pursuit, and the plunge from the height, for the simple reason that these were among the things he had not learned. The agents concerned in that last tragedy had their own motives for not advertising it abroad.
“Who were the indunas he was talking with?” asked Nidia, suddenly.
“Dey izinduna from Sikumbutana,” replied the warrior, as she thought, evasively; and in truth this was so, for although he would do anything to assist his former master, or one in whom his former master took an interest, Pukele’s native instincts were against revealing too much. There was always in the background a possibility of the whites regaining the upper hand, in which case it was just as well that the prime movers in the rising should not be known to too many by name.
“But if they were his own people they would not harm him?”
“Not harm him, missie. He walk away.”