They offsaddled the horses, and having led them down to the river to drink, knee-haltered them more closely than usual, and turned them loose to graze. Then, taking a hatchet, Renshaw proceeded to cut a number of mimosa boughs—large, spreading, and thorny. These, in an incredibly short space of time, he had beaten up into a most effective kraal.
“What’s all that about, old man?” said Sellon, who, characteristically, was taking it easy, and lay on the ground at full length, blowing out clouds of tobacco. “There are no lions here, surely!”
“There used to be one or two. I’ve heard them on former occasions. But they’re mighty scarce—almost extinct. Still, it’s as well to be on the safe side.”
As the last faint kiss of after-glow faded from the iron-bound peaks, merging into the pearly grey of night, the horses were driven in and securely picketed within the impromptu enclosure. Then blazed forth the ruddy flames of a cheery camp-fire, over which some of the birds were promptly hissing and sputtering. The small keg of Cango brandy which they had brought with them was broached, and under the influence of a good supper, washed down with good liquor, Sellon’s mercurial spirits revived.
“By Jove, but this is what I call real jolly!” he cried, throwing himself back on a rug, and proceeding to fill and light his pipe. “Hallo! What the deuce was that?”
“Not a lion this time,” said the other, tranquilly, as a long-drawn howl arose upon the night. It echoed weirdly among the great cliffs, dying away in a wild wail. “Only a wolf (Hyaena). Plenty of them around here.”
“They make a most infernal row, at all events. How the deuce is a fellow going to sleep?” said Sellon, as the sound was taken up in a sudden chorus of dismal howls, whose gruesome echoes, floating among the krantzes, seemed to deepen the surrounding darkness, to enhance the utter wildness of this desolate valley.
The camp was pitched in the entrance of a narrow gorge which wound right up into the heart of the great ridge overhanging the river. It lay in a grassy hollow, snugly sheltered on all sides. In the background some hundred yards distant, and about eighty feet in height, rose a perpendicular wall of rock, being one of the spurs of the main ridge.
“Oh, you’ll sleep soundly enough once you’re off, never fear,” laughed Renshaw. “And now, as we are fairly embarked upon our undertaking, we may as well go over old Greenway’s yarn together. Two heads are better than one, they say, and a fresh mind brought to bear upon the story may bring into it a fresh idea or two.”
Putting his hand inside his shirt, he produced the buckskin pouch. At last had come the moment Sellon had long dreaded. How he wished he had refrained from meddling with the thing. Certainly he believed that his friend could get along almost, if not quite as well without the paper, as with it. Its contents must be stamped indelibly in his memory. Yet how would he take the discovery of its loss?