After a few minutes Nathan found that he could sustain his curiosity no longer—
“Come along, old man,” he said coaxingly; “tell us all about it.”
Koos did not reply. He was in great pain, and was wondering what the effect of the particular kick which hurt him so had been on the man whom he kicked. His toe began to press against the upper-leather, and he felt that it was dislocated.
The still, huddled figure lying in the sand at the bottom of the gully was as if photographed on the retina—it was literally so vividly before his mental vision that physical vision seemed to be suspended. And the pain in his toe! He longed to take off the veldschoen and ease the pressure, to examine the injury, regarding which he was consumed with a deadly curiosity, but he hated to attract Nathan’s attention.
He moved the foot slightly and the agony almost made him shriek aloud. A spasm of frantic terror gripped him by the heart-strings until he nearly swooned. Why, the man must be dead. He thought of his own bulk, of his strength, and of how passionately and recklessly he had leaped and stamped upon the nearly passive body. The details of what had happened had seemed lost to him for a time; in all but the merest and flimsiest general outline he had forgotten what had occurred between his gripping Gemsbok by the arm and his changing his walk into a hobble as he returned to the cart. Now, under some strange psychological sympathetic ink the smallest details appeared in pitiless distinctness, and stood out before his shuddering soul in lurid relief.
A wild rage against the man next to him, who had incited him to the deed—without whose fell, artful suggestion and encouragement his conscience would now have been clear—surged up in him. He felt, for a few minutes, as black an anger against Nathan as he had felt when he gripped the man he thought had wronged him, and dashed him down.
The day was hot and windless. He glanced up and saw the red-belted cone of Bantom Berg towering up amid the dunes. The cone was clear, and the waves of rarefied air quivered along the tops of the sand mounds like living flames, until they flashed into a lovely mirage away to the south, where the Desert line was unbroken.
He looked straight ahead and drew a deep sigh of relief, for red wisps of sand were tossing into the air, lashed by the fury of the first gusts of one of those fearful wind-storms from the north which were so common at that season. Soon the Desert would be tortured by moaning tempests, and then his footprints would be blotted out in the twinkling of an eye. A feeling of relief and subsequent elation swept through his mind. He was all right now; he had only been afraid of his spoor being found. He felt quite safe. They might, of course, suspect him; that did not matter, for Nathan, he knew, would never give information against him. Why, Nathan was almost an accomplice. The thought of his companion’s knowledge of what he had done seemed to bring vague suggestions of disquiet in its trail; nevertheless his mind was able to poise itself still for a while on the dizzy pinnacle of elation to which it had swung out of the depths, impelled by a strange momentum. The Hottentot was dead—that was certain to him now. He seemed to be able to weigh and measure the force of every individual one of the kicks he had given, and the result of this sum in mental arithmetic was—death.
Nathan stole another glance at his companion’s face and saw that it was now less terrible to look upon. His curiosity had become a positive pain. He felt he must venture to ask again for details.
“Come along, Koos,” he coaxed; “tell us all about it.”