“We hunted about, but found no more traces, except the other velschoen and the remains of a Dutchman’s broad-brimmed hat. We outspanned for the night, and sat down to think it over and have a pipe while supper was being got ready.
“‘Angus,’ I said, ‘I don’t half like things. There’s some dark riddle here. The figure I saw yesterday afternoon was Dirk Starreberg’s. I knew him well, and never could mistake him. And, strangely enough, he was heading, when I last saw him, for this very spot. If I believed in ghosts, which I don’t, I should say I had seen Dirk’s spook. What do you make of it all? I’m beginning to think I’m dreaming, or going dotty. It beats me altogether.’
“‘Well,’ returned Angus, in his quaint way, ‘it’s the most extraordinary rum go I ever heard of. We’d better trek on in the morning, first thing, and see what else we can discover. Those are Dirk’s bones undoubtedly; we must try and do something for the poor chap, though he is dead.’
“I don’t know what was wrong that night, but several times the oxen were startled, and sprang to their feet; and the nags—fastened up to the wagon-wheels—were desperately scared once or twice, and pulled at their riems as though they must break them; the dogs, too, barked and howled, and behaved very strangely. And yet no lions were near us. Once or twice we looked out, but saw nothing. All of us, masters and boys, were uncomfortable—we could hardly explain why, and the men undoubtedly knew nothing of what I had seen the day before.
“At dawn next morning we were not sorry to inspan and trek; and, following the old wagon-spoor, we pushed on, determined if possible to get to the bottom of the affair. All that day and all the next we toiled on, only outspanning once or twice during the daytime, and at night, by water, to rest and refresh the oxen for a few hours. At last, an hour before sunset of the second day, Angus and I, who were riding ahead of the wagon, spied suddenly among some camel-thorn trees the tent of a wagon, to which we cantered. Suddenly, as we reined up, the fore-clap was cast aside, and a wild figure of a woman appeared, and scrambled down from the wagon-box. It was Vrouw Starreberg, but terribly, sadly altered from the stout, if somewhat grim, good-wife I had last seen a couple of years before. Her dark stuff dress was torn and cut about by the thorn-bushes; her erst fat, smooth face, broad though it still was, was lined and haggard, and terribly fallen away; but, above all, there was a rolling vacancy, a wildness, in her eye, that made me fear at once for her reason. Under one arm she clasped tightly a big Bible, and never in the subsequent days that we were together did she once relinquish it. It seemed that some terrible calamity had overturned her reason.
“‘Whence come ye, George Kenstone?’ (she had known me well for years), she cried in a harsh, high-pitched scream, very painful to listen to. ‘Take me out of this desert, and back to my home. I have been cast away these six weeks able to move neither hand nor foot for freedom. The man I called husband is dead, and my servants have fled, and the oxen are gone—the Lord knows where.’
“I scarce knew how to begin with her.
“‘I’m sorry, Tant’ Starreberg,’ I said, ‘to find you in this plight. I’m afraid there has been sad mischief, and your husband has been shot. Is it not so? We will help you gladly, of course, and early in the morning, when the oxen will be rested, we will take you out of this place. I fear you have suffered much. But how came poor Dirk by his end? Was it the boys?’
“At the mention of Dirk her whole expression changed; her eyes filled with a terrible light. In her best days Vrouw Starreberg was a hard-featured, ugly woman. Now she looked almost fiendish.
“‘Poor Dirk?’ she shrieked with a horrible scorn. ‘Poor Dirk? No, I am not afraid to own it! The man you call Dirk Starreberg—he was no more husband of mine—died by my hand. I shot him; yes, dead I shot him, as he sat by his fire. And why? Because he lied and was unfaithful. Because he forsook me for that mop-headed, blue-eyed, pink-faced doll—Alletta Veeland. And when at last I had discovered all—he talked over-much in his sleep, the traitor!—and taxed him with it, here in this very veldt, he laughed me to scorn, and told me he was tired of my black face and my sour ways, and gloried in his evil love. Ja! he taunted me that I was old and barren—I that had made a man of him, and brought him gold, and flocks, and herds, and set him up. And so I shot him, as I say. I could endure it no longer; and the servants, having trekked to this place with me, fled, and the oxen wandered, and I am alone, the Lord help me!’ At the next instant the poor, overwrought creature fell in a swoon upon the sand.