“If I take my horses again through the dunes this weather, they will be quite knocked up. You had better bring your own trap and mules, and we will go round the other way.”
Nathan stood still, and his companion faced him. Then he repeated the pantomime in which his tongue, the whites of his eyes, and the butt of his ear were so suggestively in evidence. The face of Koos turned to the colour of ashes, and he trembled as though he had a fit of ague. Nathan again dug him playfully in the ribs.
“It’s all right, old man, you need not get yourself into a state. I’m fond of you, Koos; I really am—in fact I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. Besides, I’m very fond of your wife. Ain’t she a pretty woman, eh? I say, Koos, did you ever see a man hanged?”
The Boer shook like an aspen through every fibre of his immense frame. His breath came in husky gasps.
“It’s all right, old man,” continued Nathan, “it’s only my fun. We’ll start to-morrow morning before it gets too hot, eh? Your horses will do it right enough. If the weather is very hot I’ll get you to drive me back the other way. I’m not going to ask you to take me to Clanwilliam this time. I’m always willing to oblige a friend—ain’t I, now?”
Just as night was falling Oom Schulpad went for a walk to the other side of the group of kopjes. It was dark when he returned, carrying a large armful of candle-bushes, which he had collected during the day and hidden in a safe place. He took these—not to the scherm belonging to the camp at which he was a guest, but to the deserted scherm formerly occupied by Gert Gemsbok. The scattered bushes of the scherm fence he rearranged, not against the wind but on the side facing the shop. He piled the candle-bushes upon the cold hearth and then stole quietly away.
Later, when the lights began to go out in the camps, he stepped quietly out of the mat-house, in which he was in the habit of sleeping, with his fiddle under his arm, and went softly up the hillside. When he reached the deserted scherm he laid himself down behind the rearranged fence, lit his pipe, and waited.
Koos Bester had no supper. After he had parted from Nathan he went and sat upon a rock a short distance from where his cart was standing. His horses were hobbled close by on the side of the kopje. He wanted their companionship during the interminable hours of the coming darkness.
His terrors of the supernatural had, for the moment, burnt themselves out. It was the sense of being subject to the ruthless bondage of Nathan which, just now, maddened him. He did not expect to sleep, but he thought he might be able to rest, wrapped in the regal quiet of the night.
When all was still, when the very last glimmer of light had disappeared from the camps, Koos arose and returned to his cart. He wrapped himself in his blanket and lay down between the wheels. His brain seemed to become a little cooler; the dulness of utter fatigue benumbed his faculties and mitigated his tribulation. He felt the gracious touch of the wing of Sleep across his eyelids. Surely God was taking pity on him—