If McCann thought he was going to frighten his employer he was destined to be disappointed. Oscar took a step forward, and there was a look in his eye that McCann had never seen there before.
"Don't try my patience too severely," said he. "If you do you will be a different-looking man when I get through with you. There's no surgeon in this country, and I don't know whether the Boers could patch you up or not."
The threat implied in these words took all desire for a fight out of McCann. He sank back on the dissel-boom, rested his elbows on his knees, and fastened his eyes on the ground.
"Now," continued Oscar, throwing all the emphasis he could into his words, "I tell you once for all, and I want you to bear in mind that I mean just what I say, neither more nor less, that I have put up with your cowardice and treachery long enough, and just as surely as I detect you in the attempt to throw so much as a straw in my path, just so surely will I turn you adrift on the plain, to find your way back to Zurnst as best you can. If you had one of your own countrymen to deal with he would wear a rawhide out over your back, and he would serve you right, too."
So saying, Oscar climbed into the wagon, and proceeded to secure everything in it that could be put under lock and key. But first he took out of one of his chests a large envelope, like the one McCann had destroyed, and drew from it a map which was an exact counterpart of the one Mr. Lawrence had given him.
"That was rather a bright idea of mine," said he after he had made sure that the contents of the chest had not been tampered with. "It is well, in this country, to have duplicates of everything. McCann didn't do me as much injury as he thought he did, but it was a contemptible trick, all the same."
"What is the meaning of that move, I wonder?" thought McCann, who was making his employer's tea at his own fire. "Two weeks ago I should have been sorry to see him do that, but now I don't care. The Boers will take me, for they told me so."
Having put all his books and papers where he thought they would be safe from McCann's prying eyes, Oscar got out of the wagon, walked up to his own fire, and took possession of his camp-chair.
"Now, McCann," said he, "I want a plain understanding with you, and after I have had it I shall never again refer to this matter. Not being blind, I have seen for a long time that you are not contented here, and if you want to leave me and go with those Boers I am quite willing that you should do so. All I ask is that you will leave openly and aboveboard, like a man."
"Oh, I don't want to go!" answered McCann with more haste and emphasis than the occasion seemed to require. "I don't deny that I should like to see Leichtberg again; but those transport-riders are not going that way. They are bound for the desert, and if I should go with them I should not see home again for eighteen months at least. You'll be going back yourself in less time than that."