Kamis came to a halt.
"Next time I see you, I 'll murder you," he promised. "Murder you." He paused at Mr. Bailey's endeavor to save his dignity with a sneer. "Don't you believe that?" he asked. "Say—don't you believe I 'll do it?"
Mr. Bailey's sneer failed as he looked into the black face that confronted him. By degrees the sheer sinister power that inhabited it, lighting it up and making it imminently terrible with its patent willingness to kill, burned its way to his slow intelligence. His pendulous underlip quivered.
"Don't you?" repeated the Kafir, with a motion of his shoulders like a shrug. "Don't you believe I 'll slaughter you like a pig next time I see you? Answer—don't you believe it?"
"Ye-es," stammered Boy Bailey.
The Kafir's deliberate nod was indescribably menacing.
"That's right," he said. "It's very true indeed. And you remember what I paid you fifty pounds for, too. A word about that, Bailey, and I 'll have you. Now go."
A hundred paces off, Boy Bailey halted, to get breath and ideas, and stood looking back.
He waited, watching the Kafir bring Mrs. du Preez to a condition in which she could stand again and bear the view of the backward road coiling forth to the featureless skyline, and thence to further and still featureless skylines, traversing intolerably far vistas that gave no sign of a destination. With his returning wits, he found himself wondering what arguments the man had to induce her to brave her husband.
As it happened, there was need of none. The woman was broken and beyond thought. She was reduced to instincts. The homing sense that sets a wounded rock-rabbit of the kranzes crawling in agony to die in its burrow moved in her dimly; she could not even summon force to wonder at the apparition of the English-speaking, helpful Kafir. Under the practised deftness of his suggestion and persuasion she rose and put her limp arm in his, and they moved away together, following their long shadows that went before them, gliding upon the dust.