Chapter Twenty Six.
Of a Home-Coming.
The kraal of the chief, Ndabakosi, was in a state of somewhat unusual excitement. Men were passing from hut to hut, but there were few women to be seen. The blue smoke reeks rose to bluer sky, and the odour of kine was in the air. Around, the veldt, dotted with feathery mimosa, lay shimmering in the afternoon heat.
The kraal was a fairly large one, but somewhat of a strain must have been put upon its capacity for accommodation, for a considerable number of people seemed to be gathered here—not all together, for they kept continually passing and re-passing from hut to hut, and hardly ever in the same groups. Quite a number of them too, carried assegais, and, not a few, shields. Clearly something was in the wind.
The horseman, pacing along the dusty track of road, was not in a good humour. We regret to have to record that more than once he swore—swore right heartily too. Nothing is more conducive to such behaviour than the discovery, in the course of a hot and tedious journey, that one’s mount has gone lame. This one had just made such a discovery—wherefore—he swore.
Dismounting, he looked again at the defaulting hoof, felt the pastern. Seen thus, he was a tall, broad shouldered young fellow, light-haired, blue-eyed, straight as a dart. He was puzzled. There was nothing to account for this sudden lameness. The steed was not of the best, but it was the best he could hire when he got off the train at Telani, at an early hour that morning, in his impatience to get home. And now it was out of the question that he should reach home that night. The horse was not very lame, certainly; but it was likely to go lamer still with every mile or so.
“It’s just possible I might borrow a horse at old Ndabakosi’s place,” he said to himself, “and that can’t be more than a mile further on. Yes there it is,” as, topping a rise, he could discern a ring of domed huts crowning a kopje a little way off the road in front. “These nigger gees are beastly screws as a rule, but ‘needs must, etc.,’ and it may get me as far as Kwabulazi to-night at any rate. He’s a decent old chap is Ndabakosi, and a long cool pull of tywala won’t come in badly just now. Gee up, you brute!”