Forest and compound were wrapped in obscurity, and the night was almost insufferably hot, when Nares, who had arrived there during the afternoon, sat in a room of the Mission of Our Lady of Pity. The little, heavily thatched dwelling stood with the mud-built church and rows of adherents' huts on the shadowy frontier of the debatable land whose dusky inhabitants were then plotting a grim retribution for their wrongs, and on the night in question black, impenetrable darkness shut it in. Though the smell of wood smoke was still in the steamy air, the cooking-fires had died out an hour ago, and there was no sound from any of the clustering huts. Nares, who sat, gaunt and worn in face, by an open window, could not see one of them. Still, he was looking out into the compound, and his attitude suggested expectancy. One could have fancied that he was listening for something.
"My boys heard in the last village we stopped at that there was another party coming up behind us, and it's quite likely that there is," he said. "The bushmen are generally right in these things. I've seen a whole village clear out half a day before a section or two of troops arrived, though it's hard to understand how they could possibly have known."
Father Tiebout, who lay in a canvas chair with the perspiration trickling down his forehead, smiled. "There are many other things beyond our comprehension in this country," he said, with a trace of dryness. "We have our senses and our reason. The negro has them, too, but he has something more—shall we call it the blind instinct of self-preservation? It is, at least, certain that it is now and then necessary to him. So you did not come by San Roque or the new outpost?"
"I did not. Still, how did you deduce it?"
The priest spread out his hands. "It is simple. One does not find an inhabited village within easy reach of a fort, my friend. The cause for that is obvious. You are listening for the other party?"
"Anyway, I was wondering whose it could be."
Father Tiebout smiled. "If there is a white man with the boys it is Thomas Ormsgill. I have been expecting him the last week. He will be here within the next two—if he is alive."
He spoke with a quiet certainty, as though the matter admitted of no doubt, and Nares added,
"Yes," he said, "that is a man who keeps his promise, but you could give him another week. One knows when the mail-boats arrive, but there might be difficulties when he got ashore. Anybody who wishes to go inland is apt to meet with a good many, especially if he isn't looked upon with favor by the Administration."
Father Tiebout said nothing further. It was almost too hot to talk, though the silence that brooded over the little gap in the forest was unpleasantly impressive. It would not be broken until the moon rose and the beasts awoke. There were also times when Nares, who was not a nervous man, felt a curious instinctive shrinking from the blackness of the bush. It was too suggestive. One wondered what it hid, for that is a land where the Powers of Darkness are apparently omnipotent. It is filled with rapine and murder, and pestilence stalks through it unchecked.