“I wish you had, sergeant, if it would hurry on your sub-inspectorship,” said Renshaw, heartily—“But I must take exception to your word ‘single-handed,’ I don’t know what I should have done without Miss Selwood.”
Whereat the sergeant, who, like many another man serving in the Mounted Police in those days, was a gentleman by birth, and who moreover had been casting many an admiring glance at Marian, turned to the latter with the most gracefully worded compliment he could muster. But, Marian herself was somewhat unresponsive. She could shoot people, if put to it, but her preferences were all the other way. As it was she was heartily thankful she had not killed the man, and that his wounds were not mortal.
“I’m afraid he’ll only recover for Jack Ketch, then, Miss Selwood,” rejoined the sergeant. “They’re all booked for the ‘drop,’ to a dead certainty, for that other affair. What? Hadn’t you heard of it?”
And then came out the story of the wholesale butchery in which these miscreants had been concerned. There was no difficulty whatever as to providing their identity. The Government rifles, stolen from the convict guards when these were overpowered, spoke for themselves. And with the horror of the recital vanished the reactionary glow of pity which had begun to agitate the feminine breast on behalf of the prisoners. Hanging was too good for such a set of fiends.
Breakfast over, the police troopers set out with their prisoners, handcuffed, and extra well secured with reims; for the bush bordering the road was thick, as we have seen, and the men in desperate case. The two wounded ruffians were left behind until such time as they should be in a condition to travel—to recover, as the police sergeant had truly put it, for Jack Ketch; and the dead body of Muntiwa was taken to a distance, and built up in a kind of impromptu morgue of stones to protect it against wild animals and carrion birds. For the district surgeon would have to make a post-mortem, and a report, as by law required; a duty which that functionary might, or might not, hurry himself to fulfil.
We may as well anticipate a few months, and finally dismiss the surviving scoundrels from our narrative. The wounded ones being sufficiently convalescent, the whole lot—for the man who escaped at Sunningdale was eventually taken—were put upon their trial for the murder of the Hottentot family. Two were accepted as Queen’s evidence, and their testimony, as confirmed by the murdered man’s dying deposition, established that Muntiwa and Klaas Baartman, the Bushman Hottentot, were the principal actors in the diabolical business—though there was not much difference in degree between the guilt of any of them, except that Booi, the other Kafir, had endeavoured strenuously to dissuade his fellow-scoundrels from the murder of the woman and children. Accordingly, the two men who had saved their lives by turning Queen’s evidence, were put back to take their trial for escaping from durance, and further acts of robbery committed or attempted, including their attack upon Sunningdale; while the remaining four were sentenced to death. Which sentence was carried out in the town of the district wherein the murder had taken place, and the cutthroats were duly hanged—all except the Kafir, Booi, that is, who being recommended to mercy on the consideration above given, his capital sentence was commuted to one of hard labour for life.