“Seleti,” she said, “I heard some one calling in the trees there not very far away. Go and look. Straight beyond that biggest tree there!”
The lad went off, walked two hundred yards into the woodland, becoming lost amid the timber, and then his voice sounded back towards the house.
“Missie May! Missie May! Here is Engelsman. Come quick.” Snatching up a broad-brimmed straw hat from within doors, the girl went quickly in Seleti’s direction. In less than three minutes she was by his side, among the trees and tall grass, leaning over the body of a young sunburnt Englishman, which the Bechuana supported in his arms. The man had no coat on, and May Felton saw at once, from the blood-stained flannel shirt, that he was badly wounded, he looked just now so lifeless that he might well be dead; yet the girl remembered that only a few minutes before she had heard him call. She had plenty of courage, and, young as she was, in that rough farming life amid the wilderness she was accustomed, as a matter of course, to many things that a girl at home would shrink from.
As she looked intently at the inert figure before her, she noted that the man still breathed; once he groaned very softly. There was nothing for it but to pick him up and carry him to the house. It was a heavy task, but with May carrying him by the legs and Seleti supporting him under the arms, they managed, with great exertion, to get him to the stoep.
There they laid him down for a moment, while May ran indoors and fetched out her mother.
As they came out to the stoep, bearing brandy and water, it was apparent that the young man’s wound had broken out afresh. Blood was slowly soaking through the already blood-soddened shirt, and silently forming a pool on the stone flooring. There was no time to be lost. They got him to bed and washed and bound up his wound. A bullet had gone right through the shoulder, making clear ingress and egress, but cutting some vein in its passage, and he had lost evidently quite as much blood as he could afford. Then they gave him brandy and water, and presently he came round from his long faint. When he had had some soup and a little bread later on, he was able to tell them something of his tale.
His name was James Harlow. He was a Volunteer under Lieutenant Nesbitt, in an expedition in an armoured train, which had been turned over and shelled at Kraaipan, on the border, some twenty miles away. After keeping the attacking Boers at bay for several hours, things began to look queer for the small British party. Nesbitt and a number of his men were wounded, the Dutch were creeping up.
Nesbitt had a letter which he wanted delivered somehow at Vryburg. It was urgent, and he gave it to Harlow to get away with and carry somehow to its destination. Harlow crept away through the grass, but, just as he thought he was getting out of range, and raised himself for a moment to reconnoitre, a bullet pierced his left shoulder and laid him in the dust. He rose presently and crawled on. Out of sight of the Boer fighting men, he had got to his feet, and, notwithstanding his wound, walked westward. A friendly native had given him a lift for twelve or fourteen miles on a led horse, but, towards sundown, having sighted three or four mounted men, had become alarmed and abandoned him. After a miserable night, he had crept about—sometimes walking feebly, sometimes moving on hands and knees—all that blazing day, trying to find some house or farmstead. No water or food had touched his lips. Towards evening, just as he had given up all hope, and sunk down despairingly, he had set eyes on the Feltons’ homestead through the trees. His last remaining strength was ebbing from him—his consciousness failing; but he raised two feeble shouts and then fell senseless. The rest May and her mother knew.
“And now,” said the poor fellow, with a painful grin at his own weakness, “how am I to get my dispatch down to Vryburg? Somehow Mr Tillard, the resident magistrate there, must have that letter by to-morrow evening. I know it’s important I doubt if I can ride to-morrow. What’s to be done?”
“Certainly you can’t ride to-morrow; you couldn’t sit a horse if you tried; so don’t think about it,” said May, decidedly. “I scarcely know what’s to be done. Our two native boys are poor, trembling creatures, scared at the mention of a Boer. I’ll go myself. It’s barely fifty miles from here, and I know the road well.”