"Boer lawyers are slim rogues at best, and Engelsch lawyers are duyvels as well as rogues," said Smoots Beste, with a dull flash of originality.
Bough nodded, and pushed another glass of liquor across the bar.
"And that's true enough. I've a score to settle with one or two of 'em. By gum! I call myself lucky to be in this with a square man like you. There's the waggon, brand-new—you know what it cost at Cape Town—and the team, I trust you to take up to Gueldersdorp, and who's to hinder a man who hasn't the fear of the Lord in him from heading north-east instead of north-west, selling the waggon and the beasts at Kreilstad or Schoenbroon, and living on a snug farm of your own for the rest of your life under another man's name, where the English magistrates and the police will never find you, though their noses were keener than the wild dogs?"
"Alamachtig!" gasped Smoots Beste, rendered breathless by the alluring, tempting prospect. Surely the devil spoke with the voice of the tavern-keeper Bough, when, in human form, he tempted children of men. Sweat glistened on Smoots' flabby features, his thick hands trembled, and his bowels were as water. But his purpose was solidifying in his brain as he said innocently, looking over Bough's left shoulder at the wooden partition that divided off the bar from the landlord's dwelling-room:
"Aye, I am no dirty schelm that cannot be trusted. Therefore would it not be better if I took both teams and waggons, and all the rooinek's goods with me up to Gueldersdorp, and handed it over to the Engelsch landrost there?"
The fish was hooked. Bough said, steadily avoiding those twirling eyes:
"A good notion, but the lawyer chaps at Gueldersdorp will want to look at the Englishman's dead body to be able to satisfy his people that he did not die of a gunshot, or of a knife-thrust; we must bury him, of course, but not too deep for them to dig him up again. And they will want to ferret in all the corners of the room where he died, and make sure that his bags and boxes have not been tampered with—and then there is the child. In a way"—he spoke slowly and apologetically—"the kid and the goods are my security for getting my own back again—if ever I do. So you will inspan one of the waggons—the best if you like, with a team of six beasts, and you will trek up to Gueldersdorp—you will travel light enough with only the grub you will need, and the Cape boys, and you will hand over the letter to the Resident Magistrate, and bring back the man who will act as his deputy."
But at this point Smoots Beste set down his splay foot. He would undertake to deliver the letter, but he objected to the company of the coloured voor-loopers or the Kaffir driver. He was firm upon that and, finding his most honeyed persuasions of no avail, Bough said no more. He would pay off the niggers and dismiss them, or get rid of them without paying; there were ways and means. He sent up country, and the team came down, six thin, overworked creatures, with new scars upon their slack and baggy hides, and hollow flanks, and ribs that showed painfully. Smoots Beste was about to grumble, but he changed his mind, and took the letter, buttoning it up in the flapped pocket of his tan-cord jacket, and the long whip cracked like a revolver as the lash hissed out over the backs of the wincing oxen, and the white tilt rocked over the veld, heading to the nor'-west.
"When will the Dutchy be back, boss?" asked the woman, with a knowing look.
Bough played the game up to her. He answered quite seriously: "In three weeks' time."