Across the valley of the Kaap, over the rock-crested mountains of Maconchwa, out into the shattered hills and ranges of Swazieland, and over the hot bush-hidden flats the prospectors took their ways to find something somewhere which would be their own.
They went singly and in pairs, and they “humped swag and tucker” when they had no donkeys to pack. It was a rule with few exceptions that they only went in parties and without swag when there was a rush on.
This was one of the exceptions.
Seven men in irregular Indian file, and at irregular distances apart, were toiling up the green slopes of the Maconchwa.
They were following a path, and one after another would stop and turn panting to pay tribute to the steepness of the hill and the beauty of the view below.
Far below them, and farther still ahead, the smooth-worn path meandered over the hill’s face like a red-brown thread woven in the green. The sun was fiercely strong, but the breath of the mountain was cool, and they drank it in gratefully at each rest.
They were all marked with the “out-of-luck” brand. It was stamped on their faces. They were all tired, and most of them looked hungry as well. When the leader reached the top, he looked expectantly around on all sides, then, stepping briskly towards an outcrop near by, from which a better view was obtainable, he looked again long and carefully. Then he came back to the path where the others had already assembled, and cursed the country and all in it from the bottom of his bitter soul.
“There’s no house and there’s no kraal, and there’s no God-damn-nothing. It’s eight hours since we started on the ‘two-mile’ tramp, and I knew from the start we were fooled. If Choky Wilson had known anything he would have come himself, and not told you.”
He scowled at a younger member of the party who was standing by chewing a stem of grass and looking down across the Crocodile and Hlambanyati valleys.
“What did the Swazie boy say?” asked another, turning readily on the youngster as the convenient scapegoat.