Down the valley their way ran. At length they came to a neck, overlooking a downward sweep of dense bush, intersected by a dry watercourse. The dogs, all of a quiver with suppressed excitement, squirmed and whined, yet ever in wholesome dread of their master’s whip. Thornhill proceeded to dispose the guns.
“Elvesdon, you go to the very bottom of the kloof—see, where those two tree ferns stand,” pointing out a spot about three quarters of a mile away. “Prior, you take the other side, and both of you stand about seventy yards from the sluit, and keep well up on the rise till you get to your places. Edala, you take Evelyn with you. The usual place, you know—by the red slab. There ought to be enough to keep all hands lively to-day, we haven’t hunted this kloof for half a year. I’ll drive down, with Manamandhla and Mlamvu. Give you all twenty minutes before we start,” getting out his watch.
“Right,” cried Elvesdon. “Come along, Prior.”
Their way lay together up to a certain point. Then Edala and Evelyn plunged down through a straggling, gappy opening between the thicker recesses of the bush.
“This looks as if it was going to be exciting,” said the latter, none too much at her ease among this kind of rather rough riding.
“By Jove, and it is,” returned Edala, who in moments of animation was apt to be unconventional in her speech. “We’ll leave the horses here,” she went on, sliding from her saddle, and giving her companion—who although a good ‘seat’ in the Row, was not quite so ready at getting on and off as one who scarcely remembered when she could not ride—a helping hand to doing likewise.
“Now, come along,” she said, starting downwards among the loose stones, yet hardly disturbing one of them, “and don’t make any more row than you can help.”
A very few minutes of this descent brought them to a place where the bush forked away into a comparatively open space. Below, the dry watercourse ran, some sixty yards distant. About half that distance a low, broad, flat rock of a reddish tint lay like a huge table.
“You always get a shot here,” whispered Edala. “The bucks always scoot along the same track, just the other side of the red slab. I pull off on them at five yards this side of it, then, if I miss, I get them with the second barrel when they show up beyond it.”
“Shall we—shall you—get a chance to-day?” whispered the other, who had caught her companion’s excitement.