A Vendetta of the Desert

by W. C. Scully

Stephanus, being slightly the stronger of the two, managed to get Gideon under; then he twisted the gun from his adversary’s grasp, sprang away to one side and looked back with a mocking smile.

Stephanus cocked the gun and again looked at Gideon who, having risen to his feet, was trembling and livid with rage. Stephanus knew that he had the law on his side; it had been laid down in the judgment of the court that although Gideon had the right to drive his stock to drink at the spring, he had no right to approach it for any other purpose. Up to this not a word had been spoken; Gideon was foaming with impotent fury; Stephanus, feeling that he was master of the situation, had managed to keep his anger within bounds.

“See the Jackal caught in his own trap,” he tauntingly shouted. “My Hottentot wants an old gun to shoot baboons with; this one will just do.”

“You are nothing but a bastard jackal, yourself,” yelled Gideon in reply. “You are very brave because you have my gun in your hand; put it down and I will take that dirty beard of yours to stuff my saddle with—if it would not give the horse a sore back.”

Stephanus, now in a transport of ungovernable fury, flung the gun away from him,—into the scrub,—and sprang towards his brother. But the gun, after crashing through the branches, went off, and Gideon fell to the ground with his shoulder torn open by the bullet.

Stephanus, his anger now completely gone, and feeling as if the events of the past few minutes had completely wiped out the black rancour which had darkened so many years, knelt at the side of his unconscious brother and cut away the coat and shirt from the neighbourhood of the wound. Then he tried to staunch the flowing blood with strips of cloth which he tore from his own garments.

The wound was a terrible one; the bone had been splintered, and portions of it were visible at the spot where the bullet had emerged. Stephanus made balls of moss which he tied up in linen rags and bound over the gaping mouths of the hurt. Then he fetched water in his hat from the spring and flung it into the pallid face of the sufferer, who thereupon slowly began to revive.

When Gideon opened his eyes they rested upon his brother’s face for a few seconds without recognition, and then an expression of the most bitter hatred dawned upon his countenance and gradually distorted his features until they became almost unrecognisable. The sound of approaching footsteps was heard, and immediately afterwards Gert Dragoonder appeared. The Hottentot had seen Stephanus approach the spring and then, after a short interval, heard the shot, so he returned to see what had happened. When Gideon saw Gert, he raised himself painfully on the elbow of his uninjured arm and gasped out in a voice horrible to hear:—

“Gert—come here—you are my witness—the man, there—my brother—he shot me.—There lies my gun in the bush—he threw it there to hide it—I shall die of this.—Go to the Field Cornet—He tried to murder me—I am already a dead man.—He must hang—”

Here he fell back once more in a faint Stephanus turned to the Hottentot who, thinking that his master was dead, was stealing away with the keenest terror depicted on his countenance.