“They shan’t wait any longer, father,” said the girl; and she passed slowly through the door, humming a cheery old country ditty, and was gone.
The barrel was taken from the water, and wiped out; and then Harris set to work oiling the lock.
“Hallo, what are you back for?” he exclaimed as a roughly-dressed, heavy-faced man came up to the hut-door at a trot, his forehead streaming with perspiration, which had marked its course in lighter lines through his dust-grimed face. Directly behind him came, at an easy, loping swing, a tall, thin, fleshless-looking native, whose black skin shone as he came into the hut after his companion.
“Blacks out,” panted the heavy-faced man, seizing the door as if to shut it, at the same time examining the cap upon the rifle he carried—“Blacks out, master.”
“Blacks out, Tom?” said Samson; “blacks out? ’Pon my word, I never saw such a coward in my life. Now what in the world were you lagged for that your conscience must make you see a nigger in his paint behind every tree, or peeping up above the scrub? Blacks! Poor, inoffensive beggars. Why, you had your rifle, hadn’t you, ready to scare off a hundred? This makes six times you’ve run home to cry wolf. And you’ve left those sheep to take care of themselves,” he continued, forcing the ramrod into its place as he rose as if to leave the hut.
“’Tain’t wolf this time, master; ’tain’t, indeed,” cried the man earnestly; and then, seeing Harris’s smile of incredulity, he relapsed into a look of sullen injury, and stood leaning upon his rifle-barrel.
“Here, come along,” said Samson.
“Load up first, master,” said Tom. “’Tis true, indeed,” he exclaimed, once more seeking to obtain credence for his story. “I saw scores. Ask Teddy here.”
Now Teddy—or, as he was known in his tribe, Bidgeebidgee—stood spear in hand, showing his white teeth, and apparently listening intently, from the way in which his nostrils expanded and twitched. That something was amiss was evident, for, leaning his spear against the wall, he now took off the ragged blue shirt he wore, unfastened his girdle, and set free a formidable-looking waddy, or club, before throwing himself flat upon the ground to listen.
Samson paused, startled, and though uncharged, he involuntarily cocked his piece as Teddy, the black shepherd, leaped up and exclaimed—