Oh! the terror and the agony of that hour, never may I forget them! Never may I forget the look that sprang into Ralph’s eyes when at last he awoke and, turning them to seek Suzanne, remembered all.
“Why am I here and not dead?” he asked hoarsely.
“Sihamba saved you and you have been brought back in the waggon,” I answered.
“Where then is Suzanne?” he asked again.
“Sihamba has ridden to save her also, and Jan starts presently to follow her, and with him others.”
“Sihamba!” he groaned. “What can one woman do against Piet Van Vooren and his murderers, and for the rest they will be too late. Oh! my God, my God, what have we done that such a thing should fall upon us? Think of it, think of her in the hands of Piet Van Vooren. Oh! my God, my God, I shall go mad!”
Indeed I, who watched him, believe that this would have been so, or else his brain must have burst beneath its shock of sorrow, had not nature been kind to him and plunged him back into stupor. In this he lay long, until well on into the morrow indeed, or rather the day, for by now it was three o’clock, when the doctor came to take out the pistol ball and set his shattered bone. For, as it chanced, a doctor, and a clever one, had been sent for from the dorp to visit the wife of a neighbour who lay sick not more than twenty miles away, and we were able to summon him. Indeed but for this man’s skill, the sleeping medicines he gave him to quiet his mind, and, above all, a certain special mercy which shall be told of in its place, I think that Ralph would have died. As it was, seven long weeks went by before he could sit upon a horse.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE HIDDEN KRANTZ
Before the waggon left her, Sihamba took from it Ralph’s gun, a very good roer, together with powder and bullets. Also she took tinder, a bottle of peach-brandy, a blanket, mealies in a small bag, wherewith to bait the horses in case of need, and some other things which she thought might be necessary. These she laded among her own goods upon the mule that with her horse had been fetched by Zinti and hastily fed with corn. Now, at her bidding, Zinti set Suzanne’s saddle upon the back of the schimmel, and Ralph’s on that of Suzanne’s grey mare, which he mounted that the mule might travel lighter. Then Sihamba got upon her own horse, a good and quiet beast which she rode with a sheepskin for a saddle, and they started, Sihamba leading the schimmel and Zinti the mule that, as it chanced, although bad tempered, would follow well on a riem.
Riding up the kloof they soon reached the spot where Van Vooren’s band had tethered their horses and tracked the spoor of them with ease for so long as the ground was soft. Afterwards when they reached the open country, where the grass had been burnt off and had only just begun to spring again, this became more difficult, and at length, in that light, impossible. Here they wasted a long time, searching for the hoof-marks by the rays of the waning moon, only to lose them again so soon as they were found.