From Veldt Camp Fires

by H. A. Bryden

“Baas,” he said, “did Baas know that a man from the other waggon came over here in the night with a lantern and looked in Baas’s waggon and into the other waggon too.” No, I knew nothing of this, and I told the boy so. I looked into Strangeways’ waggon. Halton was just getting up. He, too, had slept heavily, and had neither seen nor heard of any one’s approach during the night.

We swallowed our coffee and ate some breakfast, debating with serious faces what step we were to take next. While we sat by the embers of the overnight fire thus employed, the engineer from the other camp came across. He had fresh food for bewilderment. His Italian prospector was missing. His native driver averred that Rinaldi had risen before dawn, taken some food and a water bottle, saddled a horse, and just as daylight came left the camp. He came, the man said, in our direction, and then disappeared behind the waggons and into the veldt.

The mystery was clearly thickening. Halton and I now took the engineer into our confidence, and told him of the strange occurrence of the evening before. We finished breakfast, and then decided to proceed at once with the adventure. First we called up a first-rate Bakalahari hunter, who had been for some time attached to my camp, and was an extraordinarily skilful spoorer. After a cup of coffee and a pinch or two of snuff, both inestimable luxuries to a poor, despised desert man, he quickly got to work. His narrative lay there in the sand before him, as clear to his bleared, half-shut eyes as God’s daylight itself.

First he traced the progress of Strangeways. After some little trouble about the camp, where the trail was much mingled with others, he presently got the spoor away into the bush, to the west of the outspan. Shortly, with a cluck of the tongue, the native drew our attention to other marks. Here, he said, Strangeways’ trail had been joined by that of another, a man walking with his horse. The man, said the Bakalahari, was following the spoor of Strangeways, and had got off his horse for the purpose. As the ground became clearer and the country more open, this man had mounted and followed more quickly upon the trail. At times, the tale was plain enough even to the eyes of us Europeans.

Well, to make a long story short, we followed the two spoors all through that long hot day. We had water and food with us, and we meant to see the thing out. At first, in the darkness, Strangeways had evidently wandered a good deal from the straight line, but as light had come, he had travelled due west, and then after mid-day struck in a southerly direction. I guessed his purpose, to seek the road and water south of Boatlanama. Towards sundown, when we had ridden between thirty and forty miles, we saw by the trail that Strangeways’ horse was failing. The wonder was that after two days of such work it had stood up so long. Night fell before we could arrive at any solution of the mystery. We made a good fire, drank some water, ate some supper, and then lay down upon the dry earth and slept. At earliest daylight we were moving again. We followed the two spoors for something more than an hour, and then, rather suddenly, in some thickish bush, came upon a sight that smote us all with horror. A cloud of vultures fluttered heavily from the dead body of Strangeways’ horse, which lay stretched upon the sand, now nearly devoid of what flesh it had once carried upon its bones. Under a pile of thorns, close by, was the body of Strangeways himself.

The body, for some extraordinary reason, which I was then not able to fathom, had been carefully protected by these thorn branches, and the vultures had not been able to accomplish their foul work upon it. We pulled away the thorns, and examined the poor dead body; it was marked by two bullet wounds, one in the right shoulder, the other, fired at close quarters, through the head. The flannel shirt, in which Strangeways had ridden, had been torn roughly off the upper part of the body, and upon the broad chest had been slashed, with the point of a sharp knife, these letters, MARIA. The blood, now dark and coagulate, had run a little, but there was not the least difficulty in making out the name. There were traces of the Italian and his horse about the spot, and then the murderer’s spoor led away northward.

Even with this sad and infernal discovery before us we were no nearer the elucidation of this strange mystery. Revenge seemed to be at the bottom of it, but the reason of that revenge was absolutely hidden from us. We held a long council on the body, took what few trifles there were upon it, Strangeways’ watch, his hunting belt and knife, spurs, and a silver bangle upon the wrist. Then we buried him in that desolate spot. Our horses were already suffering from lack of water. It was madness to think of following the Italian, who would probably himself perish of thirst. We turned for our waggons, therefore, and with great difficulty reached them late that night. The next thing to do was to report the murder and set the Border Police upon the affair. This was done as speedily as possible. I remained with Halton for the space of a month in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, hoping to hear of the Italian’s capture. Nothing whatever was heard of him, however, and I resumed my journey south, and returned to Europe.

For three years I heard—although I made repeated inquiries, and read each week the few newspapers of Bechuanaland and Rhodesia—not a whisper that would elucidate this incomprehensible tragedy. Then, as I travelled once more through Bechuanaland, the cloud suddenly lifted and the mystery stood revealed.

Upon reaching Vryburg, the capital of British Bechuanaland, I found the little town in a state of intense excitement. The Italian, Rinaldi, had been captured, after three years of a wandering life, far up-country; in a trader’s store, near the Zambesi. He had been arrested and brought down for trial. Halton and other witnesses had been procured from Matabeleland to give evidence against him. But Rinaldi had not attempted to escape the consequences of his crime; on the contrary, he gloried in it, and had given in his broken English, in open court, his version of the whole miserable business and its origin. Briefly condensed, this was his tale.

His name, he said, was Guiseppe Rinaldi, and he was a native of Sardinia. Nine years before, he had met Strangeways, who was then an artist wandering through Sardinia. Rinaldi himself was deeply attached to Maria Poroni, a beautiful girl of his village, whom he hoped to marry. But he had to be away at his work at the lead mines, thirty miles off, and only saw her occasionally. Strangeways came on the scene, became acquainted with Maria, had grown quickly infatuated with her, and had persuaded her to leave the island with him. After living some months with her in various parts of Italy, he left her with a certain sum of money in Rome, and finally abandoned her. The poor girl crept back home with a child, and died, a broken woman, two years later. Rinaldi had known Strangeways and swore to take a terrible revenge if occasion ever offered. But he had no money. Tired of poverty in Sardinia, he went out to Argentina and from there drifted to South Africa. It was by the merest accident in the world that he had obtained employment as a miner with the outfit going up from Cape Town to Mashonaland. And it was still more of an accident that he had seen Strangeways’ face at the camp fire that night at Boatlanama. The rest is briefly told. He had crept across in the darkness and found that Strangeways was not in his waggon. At earliest dawn he had taken a horse, provisions, water, and a rifle, and followed his spoor into the desert. Thanks to his life in the mountains of Sardinia, and his experience of cattle ranching in the Argentine, he was an expert tracker, and had no difficulty in following the trail. He had come up with Strangeways, whose horse had foundered, just at sundown. Strangeways fired a shot, which grazed Rinaldi’s ear. Rinaldi’s first bullet brought his victim down and he had then finished him. He had scored the name MARIA upon the dead man’s chest, covered him with thorns that the mark of his vengeance might not be obliterated by the wild beasts, and left him. He had then escaped north and wandered to the Zambesi.