“Don’t you trust to Joe,” laughingly interrupted Wheler; “he can’t hit a haystack, much less a ‘camel’ going full split. I’ll bring in the tail, and secure that inestimable treasure, Miss Manning’s undying gratitude.”
“I’m not sure that I shall not have to trust to my old friend Mr Lane, after all,” returned the handsome girl merrily. “I know he can kill ‘camel,’ at any rate. However, you have my best wishes in your first hunt. And, Mr Granton, please don’t forget the blue jay feathers (the ‘roller’ is usually called ‘blue jay’ by colonists). I want them badly.”
The conversation now took another turn.
“I forgot to tell you, Tom,” said Mr Manning, addressing Lane, “Puff-adder Brown’s about again. What’s he up to just now, think you? No good, I’ll bet. Kate was out for a ride in the veldt this morning before breakfast, and met him as she came home by the Mafeking Road. The infernal rascal had the impudence to speak to her too, and ask after me in a sneering way. He owes me one over that cattle-running job five years ago, when I wiped his eye, and saved old Van Zyl’s oxen for him.”
“Puff-adder Brown, eh!” answered Tom Lane, with a lift of the eyebrows. “Where can he have sprang from, and what’s he after? I wonder he has the cheek to show his face in Vryburg. I thought he was away in Waterberg somewhere.”
“I can enlighten you,” broke in Joe Granton. “I heard this afternoon. Puff-adder Brown has an extra light wagon outspanned with fourteen good oxen at Jackal’s Pan. He rode into the town late last night to see a pal, and there’s something or other in the wind. What that is, I don’t know. It can’t be cattle-lifting nowadays; those Stellaland luxuries are over. Perhaps it’s a new trading trip. Waterberg’s played out, I fancy, and the Dutchmen don’t much fancy Puff-adder.”
Puff-adder Brown, it may be remarked, was a notorious border character, who, as trader, cattle-stealer, horse-lifter, freebooter, and general ruffian, was well-known. In the Bechuana troubles some years before the man had served as volunteer alternately on either side, sometimes throwing in his lot with the Dutch, at others siding with the natives. In either case, cattle and land plunder had been his prime object. In the quieter times following the British occupation he seldom showed much in Vryburg or Mafeking, judging rightly that his presence was objectionable to most decent men. The man was strong and unscrupulous, a bully, and violent where he dared; and his nickname, “Puff-adder,” had been bestowed upon him from a curious swelling of the neck observable in him in moments of anger.
In half an hour more the last good-byes were said, the farewell stirrup-cups partaken of; the horses were at the door. The three adventurers rode forth into the broad moonlight, and were soon at the outspan, where their wagon stood ready. A little later the oxen were in their yokes, and the trek began.
For the next month the expedition moved steadily north-west into the Kalahari, trekking with infinite toil from one scant pit of water to another. During the first week, small temporary pans of water left by the rains had saved a good deal of hardship; but after that time it was only with the greatest difficulty that a sufficient supply for the oxen and horses could be hit upon in each three or four days of travel. The country, too, was not an easy one. Sometimes they laboured amid heavy calcareous sand, through thick forests of mopani, where the axe had to be constantly at work to make a passage. At others thorny bush obstinately barred the way. Anon they moved across great dazzling plains of long grass, now turning once more to a blinding yellow beneath the too ardent sun. The pleasant groves of dark-green giraffe-acacia, masking a reddish, sandy soil, offered welcome relief now and again; but even here a road had sometimes to be cut, and the toil was long and exhausting.
One evening, just at sundown, at the end of a month, the wagon reached the remains of a shallow pool of rain-water, much fouled by game, and rapidly vanishing by evaporation. The oxen had trekked almost incessantly for two days and nights, and were gaunt and wild with thirst. The noisome mixture of mud and water stank abominably, but the two barrels were empty, and had to be recruited against the journey ahead of them. These filled, the oxen and horses were allowed to drink moderately, leaving a bare supply for the morning before they should move forward again.