“Um? Can’t hear any,” he replied.
“But about the drivers and forelopers? When they find where we’re going they’ll want to go back to the lines.”
“Um? No,” said Joeboy decidedly. “Black Kaffir chap. Not think at all. Very sleepy, Boss Val. Jus’ like big bullock. You an’ Joeboy tell um go along and they go along.”
“But suppose they turned suspicious and said they wouldn’t go with us?”
“Um?” said Joeboy, and I heard him grind his teeth. “They say that, Joeboy kill um all: ’tick assagai in back an’ front. All big ’tupid fool. Ha! ha! Joeboy almost eat um.” He laughed in a peculiar way that was not pleasant, and it moved me to say:
“Don’t attempt to touch them if they turn against us. I’ll threaten them with my pistol.”
“Um? Boss Val think better shoot one? No; Boss Val mustn’t make Doppie come. Joeboy say ‘Trek,’ and they no trek, he ’tick assagai in um back.”
“No, no; there must be no bloodshed.”
“Um? Blood? No; only ’tick in little way. Make um go like bullock. Make um go like what Boss Val call ‘’tampeed.’ Black Kaffir boy not say ‘Won’t go.’ Be ’fraid o’ Joeboy.”
I thought it very probable, and said no more. Leaving him with the foreloper of the first wagon, I stood fast and listened intently while the whole of the six great lumbering wagons, drawn by their teams averaging four-and-twenty oxen, crept past me. The forelopers walked slouching along, shouldering a bamboo sixteen or eighteen feet long, without so much as turning their heads in my direction; and the drivers on the wagon-boxes were sitting with heads down and shoulders raised, apparently asleep and troubled about nothing. They all trusted to the front wagon for guidance, as their teams, until the oxen were tired, needed no driving whatever, but followed stolidly in the track of those in front.