It was the first time Roper had ever come near the waggon tent while she was in it, and the coincidence was not lost upon Vivienne. He sat on the brake now, face level with the mattress, and looked in with a triumphant leer on his degenerate face. But his news was no news to her. She had climbed down softly as soon as it was light, according to her usual custom, and made for herself the discovery that the stranger was gone. It was no more than she expected. The gift of the revolver had meant nothing if it had not meant that he would not be there to use it himself in case of need. The knowledge that it reposed under the pillow close to her hand was of great service to her nerves at the present moment, enabling her to answer Roper with an air of nonchalance that surprised him.
“I daresay he will soon catch us up again.”
“Oh, do you? And what makes you daresay that, hey?”
She moved her shoulders in a slight disdainful movement, to express that he and his question bored her intolerably, but for all her assumed carelessness she was on the alert. It was as much for her own reassurance as for his annoyance that she remarked:
“His waggons can’t be far off, or he wouldn’t have reached us on foot last night.”
“Ah!” Roper sat gazing at her, his moustache lifted sideways, the shadow of a sneering smile under his half-closed lids. It was patent to her that he was meditating something malignant, though what it was she could not at present fathom. No word did he speak on the subject of their last night’s interrupted conversation: but his glance, travelling over her in slow gloating detail, was eloquent of much that his tongue left unsaid; and though her eyes met his with scornful contempt, she could feel the colour mounting in her cheeks and passing over her face from chin to hair in a hot wave. And the sight was not lost on Roper. Laughing in his throat in a way that chilled her blood, he jumped from the brake and walked away.
Immediately afterwards, he let loose a storm of abuse upon the umfans, who began to scuttle round the camp like frightened squirrels. It was unusual for him to be stirring in the camp at such an early hour, and this was their time to be cutting their own little capers while they collected fuel and stowed it on the other waggon for the night fires. Roper now diverted them from this to the task of clearing up camp. Then Vivienne heard him get down the ox-whip from the side of the waggon and begin to swirl the lash round and round in the air. A moment later the revolver-like crack of the huge whip went ringing and echoing across the veld and she understood. It was the sign for the return of the oxen! He meant to begin the afternoon trek about five hours earlier than usual!
Thus, when the stranger, secure in the knowledge that all transport riders give their oxen from ten to twelve hours for rest and grazing, caught up to the present outspan, it would be to find Roper gone with a five hours’ start. And once let anyone get five hours’ start of you on the veld it will take stiff running to catch up. A man with oxen in less robust condition than Roper’s might never catch up! This was the situation Vivienne had to face, and, thanks to the Colt, she was able to face it without panic. But her heart was somewhere in the vicinity of her boots as she watched the weary oxen come trampling back from their short respite. Seeming to know that they had been robbed of their legitimate rest, they kicked and butted each other, ran round the waggons, and gave as much trouble as they could. Many a bad and bitter word went to their yoking, but at last they were under weigh, raising clouds of dust as they took the road.
It was soon clear that Roper did not mean to let things go at the usual easy pace. He kept the lash over his beasts, running beside them like a man possessed, cracking and swirling the long whip thong in the air, letting out astonishing cries, and long streams of words which though incomprehensible to the uninitiated ear left, by the violent sound of them, no doubt as to their character, every injunction ending in a ferocious command to “Yak!”
The oxen at an incredible pace shuffled and clappered along, the waggon spite of its heavy load bounding and swaying at their heels. Sometimes Roper, a menacing figure covered with dust, appeared round the end of the waggon and dropped back a few paces on the road, thereby enabling himself to see well into the tent where Vivienne sat guarding her shaking soul behind a calm and unapprehensive manner. Nearly always he would laugh—a laugh that made the girl grip the revolver under the pillow. A moment later she would hear his voice adjuring the oxen with a savage “Yak!”