A Vendetta of the Desert

by W. C. Scully

After he had spent a month or two at the farm Gideon again became violently restless. Elsie’s presence seemed to cause him keen discomfort. When he spoke, as he seldom did whenever he could maintain silence, the sightless eyes of the child would train themselves upon his face, until the guilty man found himself overcome by a sense of inquietude which drove him away from the range of the accusing look.

A party of restless spirits visited Elandsfontein on their way northward in search of adventure and large game. Gideon at once made up his mind to join them. He had been wishing for another opportunity of getting away, but had dreaded going again alone. The shadow of the feud had caused an estrangement between himself and the neighbouring farmers such as made it impossible for him to join any of the hunting parties got up from time to time among his acquaintances. But these people were strangers; the occasion offered the very opportunity he had sought. The hunters were poor, their cattle and horses were of inferior quality and their stores were meagre. Gideon was rich, and his joining the expedition suited the strangers as well as it suited him. So Gideon van der Walt once more set his course towards the wilderness, in the vain hope of finding the footsteps of Peace.

Nearly a year elapsed before he returned; he looked then at least five years older than when he had started. He had penetrated farther into the wilderness than any European had previously done, and his course could almost have been followed from the whitening bones of the game he had slaughtered. But the boundless desert had proved to be as close a prison to his guilty soul as the valley where stood his home. He had quarrelled with his companions and came home alone. But almost immediately the old restlessness fell upon him, and he longed anew for the wastes. This time, however, he would go alone. He blamed his companions for most of the dissatisfactions of his last excursion. It was springtime when he returned; he would go forth once more when the first thunderstorms trailed over the desert. Perhaps Peace dwelt farther away than he had yet reached. He would find her dwelling even if to do so he had to traverse the length of the continent, and reach that Egypt of which he had read in the Bible, where the Lord loosed the Children of Israel from their bitter bondage.

A few days before Gideon’s projected departure Elsie and Kanu were resting in the shade close to the spring in the kloof, after a long ramble on the mountain side. It was afternoon and the sun smote hard upon the drowsy earth.

“I see the Baas coming this way again,” said the Bushman. “I wonder why he comes here so often.”

Elsie, although no doubt of her father’s guilt had ever formulated itself in her mind, had developed an instinctive distrust of her uncle. Perhaps it was because he had done what she had never experienced from another—persistently avoided all communication with her.

“It is a strange thing,” continued Kanu, in a whisper, “but I saw him coming from here yesterday with the tears running from his eyes.”

It was Elsie’s habit to sit, silent, motionless and absorbed in her thoughts, for long periods. In her present situation she was completely concealed by the fringe of thick scrub which grew around the margin of the spring. The Bushman instinctively crept into concealment close behind her and lay with every keen sense alert and a glint of curiosity in his bright, restless, suspicious eyes.

The heavy, tired foot-fall of Gideon thudded nearer and nearer until he stood,—motionless, with folded arms and downcast head, at the side of the still, clear pool. His intent look seemed to pierce the dark and limpid depths as though searching for a sign. He stood thus for several minutes; then he dropped heavily upon his knees and covered his face with his hands.

Then issued from the lips of Gideon van der Walt a prayer such as one might imagine being uttered from the heart of a lost soul upon whom the brazen gates of the Pit have closed for ever. His petition was that God might give him forgetfulness and sleep,—just a little slumber when he laid himself down and folded his hands upon his breast in the night time.—Just a little forgetfulness of the past when the sun sank and all the world except himself lost itself in happy dreams or happier unconsciousness.