On the occasion of this attack Dora Winfield developed unexpected qualities. She calmly came forward, insisted on having Leigh’s rifle, and used it with a coolness and precision that astonished no one more than the Zulu Amaxosa. “Ow,” he said, “the lovely Lily of the Valley has slain two of the witch-finders. See! my brother, there they lie kicking like wounded oxen—ow! my sister, it is good.” Her face was set like a flint; and when the Mormons fell back, she returned the weapon to Leigh, expressing the hope that she might yet have a chance of avenging her father’s death by shooting at least one of the Holy Three.
All this time the Rose of Sharon was comporting herself very quietly, and though he knew it not, a passionate love was growing up in her heart towards Grenville. To Dora only was this revealed. “I would die for a kind word from him,” she said.
“Rose, you mustn’t say that,” remonstrated Miss Winfield; “poor Dick is very kind to everybody, but he has such a weight of responsibility on his shoulders you can’t expect him to think of love-making; only let us get clear of this horrible country, and I’m sure he will soon see what a lovely little woman my dear sister Rose can be. I think, too, he has some great scheme on hand, for of late he has asked me very many questions I have been unable to answer with regard to the Mormon city; and it was only yesterday that I referred him to you, dear, for information; so I daresay he will soon want you for a private conference;” and Dora slily pinched the cheek of the blushing girl.
It fell out exactly as Miss Winfield had said, for that very evening Grenville led Rose apart, and sitting down beside her, began to question her very closely with regard to the position, defences, public offices, and so forth, of East Utah—particularly asking in what portion of the city the Holy Three resided.
As Grenville catechised her he wondered at the eager comprehensive answers, and the blushing face of the young girl, particularly when he thanked her warmly for the information, and noted the tears which started to her eyes. Still, it never occurred to the stupid fellow that this lovely flower of the wilderness had lost her heart to him. Grenville was, as a matter of fact, one of those unimpressionable men who rarely fall in love, unless moved by some mighty and overmastering passion. All his life he had made honour and fame his mistress. The path of glory looked none the less inviting to his intrepid soul, because he well know that sooner or later it would, in all probability, lead to a premature and bloody grave. He was fond of saying that he knew no grander record in English history than that of the famous warrior of the Elizabethan period whose name he bore, and though he was unrelated to him he should consider it sacrilege to mar in any way a name which would be written in the annals of England in golden letters as long as the nation existed.
Miss Winfield, moreover, was right. Grenville had a deep-laid scheme which was just now hatching in his fertile brain, and what this superbly audacious project was, will presently appear. Do not, however, gentle reader, go away with the idea that Dick Grenville, for the sake of a little cheap glory, bought perhaps with his life-blood, was willing to sacrifice all his friends. Far from it; his scheme meant salvation to them, and to his Mormon foes destruction and death in their most awful forms.
Grenville’s next move was to turn Amaxosa inside out by a simple method of cross-questioning, which was yet complete enough in its results to satisfy even an astute detective.
One of the points he was particularly anxious about was the presence of Game in this curious country. Grenville had now recognised almost every known species of deer, yet had seen no destructive beasts, such as lions; nor was there, Amaxosa assured him, a single one in the place, nor yet an elephant, though he had once trapped and killed a rhinoceros. Eager questions with regard to this latter animal resulted in the Zulu going off next day and returning late in the evening with the rhinoceros hide, which was the very thing Grenville wanted. Putting this up at twenty yards, he fired two or three of the Mormon muskets at it, the balls all failing to penetrate its horny thickness, and in a short time he had contrived a regular suit of clumsy armour out of the hide—armour which, he felt sure, would prove absolutely bullet-proof, unless hit in the seams where he had had to shave it to a mere skin in order to unite the edges with cord.
However, to return to the subject of the deer. Amaxosa declared that the animals were not in any way preserved. On the contrary, the Mormons killed them off freely; but he had always noticed that in the driest season the herds seemed to increase; it was also at the latter end of the dry season he had settled the rhinoceros, and this season was now rapidly drawing to a close—in fact in six weeks, at the outside, the rains would begin.
Over this information Grenville puzzled his brains for days without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. His own opinion coincided with Amaxosa’s, and from the vantage ground of the plateau he carefully watched the animals feeding, and on several days noted entirely new classes arriving. Did these beasts migrate from some other feeding-ground in East Utah, or had they some means of entrance into the country as yet unknown to man and undiscovered even by such keen instinct as that of the Zulu chief?