“Your last indeed!” echoed Hendrika, in a deep, low voice. Her carbine went up. The Boer made one dash to disarm her, and in the same instant her forefinger pressed the trigger and a bullet crashed through Oosthuysen’s brain. He fell forward and lay there in the sand without another motion, stone-dead.
Scarcely noticing the body, Hendrika went straight to the water vatje for which she had done this terrible act. She lifted it from the hook, and, exerting all her strength, carried it across to her wagon. Then, procuring brandy, she mingled water with it, and with a teaspoon poured some of the mixture between the parched lips of her half-lifeless child. In ten minutes there were signs of returning consciousness, and presently Barend opened his eyes. Her child was saved, and the woman’s heart, spite of the deadly horror that was upon her, echoed faint thanks. She had saved her boy, but at what a price! In half an hour Barend was so much better that she was able to leave him dozing quietly, and once more she betook herself to Oosthuysen’s camp. The Boer’s Kaffirs had returned, and were standing over the dead body, talking and gesticulating in an excited way. Hendrika walked straight up to them, and, first picking up her carbine, said in a firm voice, “Yes, the Baas is dead. He refused me water, and I shot him. It was my child’s life or his. You had better go on to Inkouane and tell his friends to send back for the wagon.”
The natives, awed by her manner and the words she spoke, slunk away, and, picking up their blankets and assegais and a little store of water, struck into the bush, glad to be quit of this terrible woman.
As soon as they had departed, all Hendrika’s stock of firmness vanished. She had been overwrought these forty-eight hours past. Now the tension had become too great. She knelt beside the dead body of Oosthuysen and wept in an agony of remorse, pity, and tenderness.
Why had she slain this man, with whom for years she had been associated in childhood? She remembered, ah! so well, their pleasant homes in Marico, the fertile valleys, the fair uplands, and the pleasant treks four times a year to Nachtmaal (communion) at Zeerust. Her tears flowed afresh. Presently she became calmer, climbed into Oosthuysen’s wagon, and took down a blanket, which she placed reverently, almost tenderly, over the dead body.
At that instant the dulled crack of a rifle-shot came from the direction of the Inkouanë road! Another! Alas! Hendrika knew what they meant. Her husband was approaching, water was at hand, help near. Now the full horror of her position smote upon her and froze her blood. All this terrible crime might have been avoided if but those shots had been heard one short hour ago. Her heart stood still, and she fell forward in a deathlike swoon beside the body of the man she had slain.
When Piet Van Staden rode up five minutes later and found his wife lying in a dead faint beside the yet warm corpse of Schalk Oosthuysen, even his dull Dutch nature was stirred and harrowed. What in God’s name could it all mean?
Presently, with the aid of brandy and water, Hendrika came to herself, and was able to tell her terrible story. It was a great shock to her husband; but he had a strong faith in his wife’s character, and he understood well enough that only the direst straits and the prospect of the almost instant death of their child could have induced her to take the blood of a fellow-creature upon her hands.
They buried Oosthuysen’s body that evening, and covered the grave with thorns, and set a strong scherm of thorns about it to keep off the wild beasts. During the night their oxen came in, and they trekked next day, with doubt and trepidation in their hearts, for Inkouane, where dreadful scenes were enacting. The pits had been meanwhile choked up with dead oxen, which had been cut out piecemeal; and now, the scant mess of foul blood and fouler water being exhausted, men, women, and children were enduring agonies of thirst. Men in such case were not likely to be hard judges: their one thought was for their own safety. Piet and his wife, therefore, having reported the full circumstances of Oosthuysen’s tragic death to the Boer leaders, were bidden to betake themselves away and never trouble the expedition again. Glad enough they were to escape thus lightly: blood for blood is usually the cry of people in a state of semi-civilisation such as these Trek-Boers.
And so, like Hagar of old, the Van Stadens passed out into the wilderness, and won their way with much toil and suffering to the Okavango River, beyond Lake N’gami. But Hendrika never shook off her trouble, or the feeling that unwittingly she had wrecked her husband’s life and doomed themselves to a weary banishment. Day by day she grew paler and more listless; her old fire and spirits had left her and could not be recalled, and, by the time they reached the marshes of the Okavango, she was utterly unfit to cope with the deadly fever of that unhealthy land.