The Gold Kloof

by H. A. Bryden

But Karl Engelbrecht, cleverly as he and his Hottentot had laid their plans, and made their approach to the ladder, had overlooked or never suspected one elemental fact in the situation. They were in complete ignorance that on the previous night Poeskop, their arch-enemy Poeskop, whom they now supposed to be far away up the kloof, digging for gold with his masters, had ascended the ladder. And Poeskop for the last five minutes had been attentively regarding Karl Engelbrecht. Something--he never afterwards could explain satisfactorily why or how it was--but something that morning had impelled him to remain in camp, mending his old, ragged pair of trousers, and to send Jan Kokerboom, who loved stalking and was not difficult to persuade, to shoot a head of game down the hill. While Poeskop sat silent and reflective, under the shade of the wagon, patching his old breeches, some faint sound, or vibration rather, from the direction of the edge of the cliff, caught his preternaturally sharp ears. He listened. Yes, he was certain now: there was a sound from the direction of the ladder. He knew that sound, but it puzzled him why he should hear it just then. None of his masters could be climbing upward!

Poeskop was instantly on the alert. Creeping, with the silence and adroitness of a serpent, in the direction of the cliff edge, he presently peeped through the bushes, and beheld his arch-enemy Karl Engelbrecht, lying prone on the lip of the precipice, evidently watching very intently some one on the ladder. For a moment the Bushman was uncertain what to do. Then it dawned upon him, from the movements of Engelbrecht, that the person beneath was descending and not climbing the ladder. He decided to wait for the Boer's next move, which, indeed, was not long in coming.

Engelbrecht softly rose, gripped the ladder fairly, and began to descend. His great frame disappeared over the cliff edge. Then a wonderful smile, a smile of triumphant hatred, swept over Poeskop's face. He knew now that at last his hated enemy was delivered into his hands. He waited till the big Boer was a third of the way down the precipice, and then, swiftly creeping to the edge, looked over. Karl Engelbrecht was going steadily down, hand under hand. He was not accustomed to a task like this; but he had nerves of steel and a good head, and he was getting used to the dizzy height and the sway of the ladder. Suddenly an exclamation from the cliff above him made him look up. What he saw struck, for the first time in his life, a freezing terror at his heart. He saw above him, leering at him with fiendish glee and malevolence, the face of Poeskop, the Bushman.

"So," cried Poeskop in Dutch, "I have you at last! At last, Karl Engelbrecht! I have waited a long time, but now I am even with you, edele heer [noble sir]," he added, with jeering sarcasm. "You won't like the fall, but you've got to face it, and you'll strike plaguy hard at the bottom. At last, Karl, the devil has thee! The devil has thee!"

Death, indeed, stared the Boer in the face. He knew he was doomed; he knew that nothing in this world would turn the fell purpose of the man above him. But, brute as he was, Engelbrecht was no coward, and, setting his teeth, he made one despairing attempt to snatch salvation. His rifle hung at his back. Clinging to the rope-ladder with one hand, he disengaged the weapon with marvellous dexterity, swinging as he was over that frightful abyss, and, pointing it upward, tried to align it on the Bushman. Next instant he pulled trigger, the bullet whizzed far upward into space, and the report of the rifle rattled with deafening reverberation around the cliffs.

Poeskop delayed no longer. The madness of revenge ran seething through his veins. Whipping out his long hunting knife from its sheath, he hacked with desperate energy at the tough hide of the ladder. One side went, the ladder drooped and collapsed, and the Boer hung helpless and awry by the frail support of the other side only.

"Die! die! die! you schelm!" gasped Poeskop, his voice shrill with passion, as he shore and hacked for the last three times at the raw hide. With the final frantic stroke the remaining strand went, and with it the whole ladder and its burden. From a height of three hundred feet Karl Engelbrecht fell to the bottom of the cliff. Thrice he turned over in mid-air; then, with a sickening thud, his huge frame struck the hard earth, within a few feet of his startled Hottentot. That terrific fall reduced the giant upon the instant to little more than a hideous pulp of broken bones, blood, and pounded flesh; and from the moment of the impact, the Boer neither breathed nor stirred again.

Chapter XIX.

HOMEWARD BOUND.

The report of Engelbrecht's rifle shot had at once roused the attention of the gold-diggers at the head of the kloof; and although the final catastrophe had overtaken the Boer before they had extricated themselves from some bush behind which they were working, they were all three instantly aware that something was happening in the neighbourhood of the upper camp.