Chapter Eleven.The Broken Ramkee.About half an hour after the departure of Nathan and Koos Bester from Namies Max was surprised to see Gert Gemsbok’s dog running back from the veld with every appearance of terror. It rushed straight to the scherm, and there stood panting and with air erect along its back. Its ears were cocked and its tail tucked under, as it gazed back in the direction whence it came, sniffing the time with wide, dilated nostrils. This struck Max as extremely strange and eerie. He knew the habits of this dog; never since Gemsbok had rescued it had the animal left the side of its master.Oom Schulpad happened to come to the shop shortly afterwards, and Max mentioned the circumstance to him. Together they walked up the side of the kopje to the scherm. The dog was so preoccupied by whatever was the cause of its agitation that it appeared unaware of their approach until they got quite close to it. Then the animal crept in under the fence of bushes and lay there whining.“That dog has had a fright,” said Oom Schulpad. “I have sometimes seen dogs like that, and it was always after they had seen something bad happen. See, now, if something has not happened to the old Bushman.”Max returned to the shop. After dinner, as no customers were about, he started out to search for Gert Gemsbok. He went up to the scherm and caught the dog. At first the animal snapped and snarled when he approached it. Max had, however, taken some pieces of meat with him, and these he held out in propitiation. Thus mollified, the dog allowed itself to be caught and a reim tied around its neck.The Desert was a whirling hell of blinding and scorching sand-clouds. Max staggered on along the course which he had seen Gemsbok take that morning with his flock. The dog at first showed the most violent disinclination to follow, and had to be dragged along struggling and biting at the reim.During a lull in the wind Max saw that the sheep were scattered about in groups far distant from each other; some were sheltering themselves among the stones on the side of the kopje and others were far out on the plain. He took his course towards the farthest group of sheep that he could distinguish. The dog now became very much excited; every now and then it would tug at the reim and try to bound forward in a certain direction. Then it would recoil in terror and endeavour to bolt back.Max worked his way onward across the gullies in the direction indicated by the dog’s alarmed gaze. At length he reached the edge of a gully, on the opposite side of which was an overhanging bank. Huddled under this, as though to get shelter from the wind, he recognised the motionless form of Gert Gemsbok.Lying about in the sand, and partly covered by its drift, was the ramkee, shattered into fragments. Gemsbok was lying half on his face, with his head leaning forward on his arm. Max bent over, and as soon as he ascertained that his old friend was faintly breathing, spoke his name. Gemsbok tried to lift his head, but failed in the attempt. Then Max gently passed his arm around the bruised body, and drew it back until the head rested on his shoulder.The poor old man opened his eyes. They were dull and glazed. Then he moaned heavily and went off into a faint. Max noticed that the head was swollen on one side, and that a small trickle of blood came from the mouth. The wind had almost ceased, so Max drew Gert’s limp body tenderly down the loose sandbank and laid him on his back. After a few seconds he returned to consciousness, and the eyelids again lifted—very slowly this time.In a broken gasp he uttered the word “Water!”Max sprang up, meaning to run back to Namies and fetch a drink, but Gemsbok motioned to him to come close. Max bent over him again.“Baas Max... leave... the water... it is... too late... I die for... the old sin... In my bag... sewn up... there is something... They are yours... I came honestly... by them...”Then the head fell back, and with a low moan of pain Gert Gemsbok drew his last breath—an obscure martyr in the cause of Truth, at whose deserted shrine in the Desert he had worshipped to his own despite.Max tried to revive him, but soon found that his attempts were useless. The dog sat on the bank at the edge of the gully, giving vent to long-drawn howls.Max stood and looked at the body through a mist of blinding tears. Then he gathered up the fragments of the instrument which had been the only solace of the man lying dead before him through years of misery, and laid them reverently at the side of the corpse. He closed the lids of the dim and tired eyes and tied up the fallen jaw with his pocket-handkerchief. In doing this his hand came in contact with the reim by which the skin bag was slung over the dead man’s shoulder. This reminded him of the words with which Gemsbok had gasped out his life. He drew the bag softly away and began to examine its contents.He found a pipe, a tinder box, tobacco, some dried roots, and a few strings for the ramkee in course of preparation out of sinew; nothing else. Then he discovered that the bottom of the bag had been sewn up from corner to corner, and that some hard bodies were secured under the sewn portion. He ripped open the stitches and the five diamonds rolled into his hand.Max gazed in astonishment at the stones for a few seconds and then slipped them into his pocket. He felt dazed by all he had experienced. He sat down to collect his scattered thoughts. He looked once more upon the dead face. The diamonds were at once forgotten, and he burst into passionate sobs. The weight of all the wickedness of the world seemed to press upon him, and a sense of the futility of good darkened his soul.He climbed out of the gully and hastened back to Namies. In a few moments all the men there were on their way to the spot where Gert Gemsbok lay as if enjoying a peace in death such as he had never known when living.It was Old Schalk’s duty as Assistant Field Cornet to hold an inquest, and, if there were discovered the slightest sign of foul play, to send immediately a report on the subject to the magistrate.The body was stripped, and was found to be horribly bruised and swollen. The Assistant Field Cornet at once gave it as his opinion that the deceased had come to his death through being thrown from a horse.“It is well known,” said he, “that these Bushmen are in the habit of catching the Boers’ horses in the veld and riding their tails off.”“But,” broke in Max, “this man never interfered with anybody’s—”“Young man,” said Old Schalk with severity, “when you have lived as long in Bushmanland, and seen as many dead Bushmen as I have seen, you’ll perhaps be entitled to give an opinion.”“But,” said Max excitedly, “the man told me just before he died that—”“Young man,” interrupted Old Schalk, who had made a shrewd guess as to the perpetrator of the deed, and felt that his duty to the Trek-Boers of Bushmanland forbade him to permit indiscreet revelations, “are you the Field Cornet or am I? What does it matter what he told you—who ever knew a Bushman tell the truth? It is well known that Oom Dantje van Rooyen has a very vicious horse, which only last year threw a man to the ground and then kicked and bit him. That very horse is running in this veld at present—I saw it myself only yesterday. I am quite sure that nothing but the horse did this. The case is quite clear.”A buzz of approval on the part of the Boers followed this verdict. Here was a dead Bushman whose body showed lesions and appearances such as might be caused by equestrian misadventure. Grazing somewhere in the neighbourhood was a horse which had been known to kick and bite a man after it had thrown him. Of course the case was perfectly clear.Max looked around the ring of faces and saw nothing but amusement at his warmth of expression, mingled with slyness, depicted upon them. There was no pity for the sufferings which the man must have endured before he died—no horror that such a deed had been perpetrated by one with whom they were on terms of intimacy upon a sentient human being, was suggested. He felt an arm slipped within his. Looking round he saw the inscrutable visage of Oom Schulpad close beside him.“Come, children, let us go and drink some coffee,” said Old Schalk as he led the way, assisted by a stalwart Boer, to the cart which had conveyed him from his camp to the nearest available point.As the others followed in small groups Oom Schulpad heard one young Boer say to another—“Got, kerel, maar Koos hat die ou’ Boschmann lekker geskop.”(God, old fellow, but Koos kicked the old Bushman nicely.)Oom Schulpad gave a sardonic grin which might have been expressive of anything, from rapture to nausea, and turned back to where Max was sitting fuming with indignation and grief. He laid a sympathetic hand upon the boy’s shoulder and bent his rough face, which now bore a kindly expression, over him.“Never mind, child,” he said, “the poor old schepsel is not going to suffer any more pain. Who knows but he may be with the old woman now, and she, perhaps, may have got a new pair of legs.”“But the man has been murdered,” replied Max hotly, “and he wants to screen the murderer—”“Shush, shush. Young tongues gallop into dangerous places. What good can you do by making a disturbance? You won’t bring the old Bushman to life again, and it would be a bad thing for him if you could. Besides, a man must never try to set the world right all by himself.”“But he wouldn’t hear what I had to say. I shall let the Government know what sort of a Field Cornet he is.”“And get nothing for your pains except the hatred of every one about here. What does the Government care? It only wants not to be troubled about things. When you are as old as I am you will not be put out by anything done by people like Old Schalk.”“I shall send a letter off at once to the magistrate and ask him to come here and see for himself.”“No, I think you had better do nothing of the kind. If you did, the magistrate and the doctor would perhaps arrive in three weeks from now and when they came what would they be able to find out from the body? Besides, in that case it would probably turn out that some one had seen him riding Oom Dantje’s horse, or had even seen him thrown and trampled on. No, you had better do nothing at all but just bury the old Bushman. I liked him because he knew more music than I did. Come, I will help you to bury him. We’ll dig his grave next to where the old woman lies—among the kopjes. I’ll inspan my donkeys and we’ll draw him up in the cart.”Max and Oom Schulpad wended back to Namies, and, with a couple of spades which they took out of the shop, soon dug a grave in the sluit at the back of the little kopje. It was easy ground to work, and, in spite of his deformity, Oom Schulpad was a first-rate hand at digging. In a little more than half an hour the grave was ready, and then Oom Schulpad harnessed his donkeys to the little cart and drove down to fetch the body.Max had brought some clean, white linen from the shop, and in this they wrapped the earthly remains of Gert Gemsbok, the lonely, martyred votary at Truth’s neglected shrine. The fragments of the ramkee were reverently tied together by the old fiddler, who was honest artist enough to acknowledge a superior when he met him. He laid the shattered instrument where the stiffened hand might press upon the slackened strings until both turned to dust.The full moon lifted her sweet face over the rim of the world, and, under the spell of her smile, the Desert took on beauty of a weird and unearthly kind. The plumy heads of the grass became pendant with dew-diamonds; every tussock was transformed into a fairy-forest lit by sparkling lamps. The ice-plants glinted so brightly that they seemed to merge together a few yards from the observer’s feet, and from there to form a shining pathway to the moon.The strange funeralcortègewended up between the camps of Namies. Oom Schulpad walked at the side, holding the reins; Max, with bent head, followed close behind the body.So they laid Gert Gemsbok in the sand, next to his “Old Woman” and with his broken ramkee at his side. If what some tell us about a future life be true, that ramkee will surely be recreated in the celestial equivalents of the rarest earthly instruments of music—if not something as valuable and more sonorous.Old Schalk was sitting in the moonlight at the door of his mat-house talking to a few cronies when the funeral passed. A silence fell upon all when they saw what it was that the patient donkeys were hauling up the hill through the heavy sand. Just after the vehicle had passed out of sight around the flank of one of the kopjes Old Schalk broke the silence. He turned to one of his companions and said—“I never yet knew a man who could play the fiddle well who was not a little mad.”“Ja,” replied the other, “I have often heard that such is the case.”
About half an hour after the departure of Nathan and Koos Bester from Namies Max was surprised to see Gert Gemsbok’s dog running back from the veld with every appearance of terror. It rushed straight to the scherm, and there stood panting and with air erect along its back. Its ears were cocked and its tail tucked under, as it gazed back in the direction whence it came, sniffing the time with wide, dilated nostrils. This struck Max as extremely strange and eerie. He knew the habits of this dog; never since Gemsbok had rescued it had the animal left the side of its master.
Oom Schulpad happened to come to the shop shortly afterwards, and Max mentioned the circumstance to him. Together they walked up the side of the kopje to the scherm. The dog was so preoccupied by whatever was the cause of its agitation that it appeared unaware of their approach until they got quite close to it. Then the animal crept in under the fence of bushes and lay there whining.
“That dog has had a fright,” said Oom Schulpad. “I have sometimes seen dogs like that, and it was always after they had seen something bad happen. See, now, if something has not happened to the old Bushman.”
Max returned to the shop. After dinner, as no customers were about, he started out to search for Gert Gemsbok. He went up to the scherm and caught the dog. At first the animal snapped and snarled when he approached it. Max had, however, taken some pieces of meat with him, and these he held out in propitiation. Thus mollified, the dog allowed itself to be caught and a reim tied around its neck.
The Desert was a whirling hell of blinding and scorching sand-clouds. Max staggered on along the course which he had seen Gemsbok take that morning with his flock. The dog at first showed the most violent disinclination to follow, and had to be dragged along struggling and biting at the reim.
During a lull in the wind Max saw that the sheep were scattered about in groups far distant from each other; some were sheltering themselves among the stones on the side of the kopje and others were far out on the plain. He took his course towards the farthest group of sheep that he could distinguish. The dog now became very much excited; every now and then it would tug at the reim and try to bound forward in a certain direction. Then it would recoil in terror and endeavour to bolt back.
Max worked his way onward across the gullies in the direction indicated by the dog’s alarmed gaze. At length he reached the edge of a gully, on the opposite side of which was an overhanging bank. Huddled under this, as though to get shelter from the wind, he recognised the motionless form of Gert Gemsbok.
Lying about in the sand, and partly covered by its drift, was the ramkee, shattered into fragments. Gemsbok was lying half on his face, with his head leaning forward on his arm. Max bent over, and as soon as he ascertained that his old friend was faintly breathing, spoke his name. Gemsbok tried to lift his head, but failed in the attempt. Then Max gently passed his arm around the bruised body, and drew it back until the head rested on his shoulder.
The poor old man opened his eyes. They were dull and glazed. Then he moaned heavily and went off into a faint. Max noticed that the head was swollen on one side, and that a small trickle of blood came from the mouth. The wind had almost ceased, so Max drew Gert’s limp body tenderly down the loose sandbank and laid him on his back. After a few seconds he returned to consciousness, and the eyelids again lifted—very slowly this time.
In a broken gasp he uttered the word “Water!”
Max sprang up, meaning to run back to Namies and fetch a drink, but Gemsbok motioned to him to come close. Max bent over him again.
“Baas Max... leave... the water... it is... too late... I die for... the old sin... In my bag... sewn up... there is something... They are yours... I came honestly... by them...”
Then the head fell back, and with a low moan of pain Gert Gemsbok drew his last breath—an obscure martyr in the cause of Truth, at whose deserted shrine in the Desert he had worshipped to his own despite.
Max tried to revive him, but soon found that his attempts were useless. The dog sat on the bank at the edge of the gully, giving vent to long-drawn howls.
Max stood and looked at the body through a mist of blinding tears. Then he gathered up the fragments of the instrument which had been the only solace of the man lying dead before him through years of misery, and laid them reverently at the side of the corpse. He closed the lids of the dim and tired eyes and tied up the fallen jaw with his pocket-handkerchief. In doing this his hand came in contact with the reim by which the skin bag was slung over the dead man’s shoulder. This reminded him of the words with which Gemsbok had gasped out his life. He drew the bag softly away and began to examine its contents.
He found a pipe, a tinder box, tobacco, some dried roots, and a few strings for the ramkee in course of preparation out of sinew; nothing else. Then he discovered that the bottom of the bag had been sewn up from corner to corner, and that some hard bodies were secured under the sewn portion. He ripped open the stitches and the five diamonds rolled into his hand.
Max gazed in astonishment at the stones for a few seconds and then slipped them into his pocket. He felt dazed by all he had experienced. He sat down to collect his scattered thoughts. He looked once more upon the dead face. The diamonds were at once forgotten, and he burst into passionate sobs. The weight of all the wickedness of the world seemed to press upon him, and a sense of the futility of good darkened his soul.
He climbed out of the gully and hastened back to Namies. In a few moments all the men there were on their way to the spot where Gert Gemsbok lay as if enjoying a peace in death such as he had never known when living.
It was Old Schalk’s duty as Assistant Field Cornet to hold an inquest, and, if there were discovered the slightest sign of foul play, to send immediately a report on the subject to the magistrate.
The body was stripped, and was found to be horribly bruised and swollen. The Assistant Field Cornet at once gave it as his opinion that the deceased had come to his death through being thrown from a horse.
“It is well known,” said he, “that these Bushmen are in the habit of catching the Boers’ horses in the veld and riding their tails off.”
“But,” broke in Max, “this man never interfered with anybody’s—”
“Young man,” said Old Schalk with severity, “when you have lived as long in Bushmanland, and seen as many dead Bushmen as I have seen, you’ll perhaps be entitled to give an opinion.”
“But,” said Max excitedly, “the man told me just before he died that—”
“Young man,” interrupted Old Schalk, who had made a shrewd guess as to the perpetrator of the deed, and felt that his duty to the Trek-Boers of Bushmanland forbade him to permit indiscreet revelations, “are you the Field Cornet or am I? What does it matter what he told you—who ever knew a Bushman tell the truth? It is well known that Oom Dantje van Rooyen has a very vicious horse, which only last year threw a man to the ground and then kicked and bit him. That very horse is running in this veld at present—I saw it myself only yesterday. I am quite sure that nothing but the horse did this. The case is quite clear.”
A buzz of approval on the part of the Boers followed this verdict. Here was a dead Bushman whose body showed lesions and appearances such as might be caused by equestrian misadventure. Grazing somewhere in the neighbourhood was a horse which had been known to kick and bite a man after it had thrown him. Of course the case was perfectly clear.
Max looked around the ring of faces and saw nothing but amusement at his warmth of expression, mingled with slyness, depicted upon them. There was no pity for the sufferings which the man must have endured before he died—no horror that such a deed had been perpetrated by one with whom they were on terms of intimacy upon a sentient human being, was suggested. He felt an arm slipped within his. Looking round he saw the inscrutable visage of Oom Schulpad close beside him.
“Come, children, let us go and drink some coffee,” said Old Schalk as he led the way, assisted by a stalwart Boer, to the cart which had conveyed him from his camp to the nearest available point.
As the others followed in small groups Oom Schulpad heard one young Boer say to another—
“Got, kerel, maar Koos hat die ou’ Boschmann lekker geskop.”
(God, old fellow, but Koos kicked the old Bushman nicely.)
Oom Schulpad gave a sardonic grin which might have been expressive of anything, from rapture to nausea, and turned back to where Max was sitting fuming with indignation and grief. He laid a sympathetic hand upon the boy’s shoulder and bent his rough face, which now bore a kindly expression, over him.
“Never mind, child,” he said, “the poor old schepsel is not going to suffer any more pain. Who knows but he may be with the old woman now, and she, perhaps, may have got a new pair of legs.”
“But the man has been murdered,” replied Max hotly, “and he wants to screen the murderer—”
“Shush, shush. Young tongues gallop into dangerous places. What good can you do by making a disturbance? You won’t bring the old Bushman to life again, and it would be a bad thing for him if you could. Besides, a man must never try to set the world right all by himself.”
“But he wouldn’t hear what I had to say. I shall let the Government know what sort of a Field Cornet he is.”
“And get nothing for your pains except the hatred of every one about here. What does the Government care? It only wants not to be troubled about things. When you are as old as I am you will not be put out by anything done by people like Old Schalk.”
“I shall send a letter off at once to the magistrate and ask him to come here and see for himself.”
“No, I think you had better do nothing of the kind. If you did, the magistrate and the doctor would perhaps arrive in three weeks from now and when they came what would they be able to find out from the body? Besides, in that case it would probably turn out that some one had seen him riding Oom Dantje’s horse, or had even seen him thrown and trampled on. No, you had better do nothing at all but just bury the old Bushman. I liked him because he knew more music than I did. Come, I will help you to bury him. We’ll dig his grave next to where the old woman lies—among the kopjes. I’ll inspan my donkeys and we’ll draw him up in the cart.”
Max and Oom Schulpad wended back to Namies, and, with a couple of spades which they took out of the shop, soon dug a grave in the sluit at the back of the little kopje. It was easy ground to work, and, in spite of his deformity, Oom Schulpad was a first-rate hand at digging. In a little more than half an hour the grave was ready, and then Oom Schulpad harnessed his donkeys to the little cart and drove down to fetch the body.
Max had brought some clean, white linen from the shop, and in this they wrapped the earthly remains of Gert Gemsbok, the lonely, martyred votary at Truth’s neglected shrine. The fragments of the ramkee were reverently tied together by the old fiddler, who was honest artist enough to acknowledge a superior when he met him. He laid the shattered instrument where the stiffened hand might press upon the slackened strings until both turned to dust.
The full moon lifted her sweet face over the rim of the world, and, under the spell of her smile, the Desert took on beauty of a weird and unearthly kind. The plumy heads of the grass became pendant with dew-diamonds; every tussock was transformed into a fairy-forest lit by sparkling lamps. The ice-plants glinted so brightly that they seemed to merge together a few yards from the observer’s feet, and from there to form a shining pathway to the moon.
The strange funeralcortègewended up between the camps of Namies. Oom Schulpad walked at the side, holding the reins; Max, with bent head, followed close behind the body.
So they laid Gert Gemsbok in the sand, next to his “Old Woman” and with his broken ramkee at his side. If what some tell us about a future life be true, that ramkee will surely be recreated in the celestial equivalents of the rarest earthly instruments of music—if not something as valuable and more sonorous.
Old Schalk was sitting in the moonlight at the door of his mat-house talking to a few cronies when the funeral passed. A silence fell upon all when they saw what it was that the patient donkeys were hauling up the hill through the heavy sand. Just after the vehicle had passed out of sight around the flank of one of the kopjes Old Schalk broke the silence. He turned to one of his companions and said—“I never yet knew a man who could play the fiddle well who was not a little mad.”
“Ja,” replied the other, “I have often heard that such is the case.”
Chapter Twelve.The Bondage of Koos Bester.Max’s mourning for his old friend was deep and sincere. The heart of the young man, from its first awakening, recoiled from the sordidness of most of those with whom he had come in daily contact, and clave to the best within its reach—this by virtue of its natural intuitions. For a time it seemed as though a blank had been created which could never be filled. The evenings spent in the shop when Oom Schulpad and Gemsbok had contended like a couple of troubadours—the weird tales of his experiences during the six years of his banishment from the tents of men, which the old waif had related with such tragic and truthful pathos—his devotion to his miserable old wife, that decayed relic of womanhood, which was as tender as ever his love could have been for the companion of his early years—all these dwelt in the mind of Max and tinged it with what he deemed would be an abiding sadness.On the other hand the acquisition of the five diamonds had materially improved his prospects. He hid them in a safe place and determined not to mention the fact of their existence to any one but Susannah. They were stones of very pure water, averaging about ten carats each in weight. Max knew that they must be very valuable, but he was unable to guess their worth. He made up his mind that he would have to take them to Europe and realise them there.Even Oom Schulpad seemed to be depressed by the old Hottentot’s fate. When he now came to see Max of an evening he did not bring his violin. The two would just sit and smoke in silence, each well aware of what was filling the thoughts of the other. To Max it seemed as if the ghost of the slain man haunted the room on these occasions, asking why his only friends had not taken vengeance upon his slayer.Oom Schulpad did not believe very much in anything outside the circle of his experiences—certainly not in ghosts. He had attained to a philosophy which might be summed up in a phrase—“Never interfere in anything that does not directly concern you.” His stock formula into which the foregoing principle had crystallised was—“No man should ever rub resin on any but his own bow.”“But,” he continued one night after reiterating this phrase several times, “I mean to scratch Koos Bester’s nose with a certain piece of resin which I have in my pocket. He had no business to put his big hands upon any man who could make music like that, Bushman or no Bushman.”Max pricked up his ears and looked at the old fiddler with a question in his eyes.“I know Koos,” continued Oom Schulpad, “and if he does not bark his shins as well as his nose against the lump of resin which I will put in his path—well, I’m no fiddler and the Bushman knew no music. He said my back was like a springbuck’s when it ‘pronks,’ did he, and that my mouth was as poisonous as a sand-adder’s? Also he broke the ramkee—to say nothing of killing the old Bushman.”“What do you intend to do to him?” queried Max.“I’ll tell you that when he comes back, my child. It will be all right, don’t fear. You shall, perhaps, help me. I know Koos well. When he was quite a big boy he used to be afraid of being alone in the dark. I’ll make him dance a new step to the old Bushman’s music. Ja, he knew more music than I, that old Bushman.”Three days elapsed after the tragedy before Max visited the Hattingh camp. He found Old Schalk looking extremely sulky. Max, however, had ceased to take much heed of people or their moods. He no longer dreaded Old Schalk. As in the case of Mrs Hattingh, he now felt he had him at a moral disadvantage. His recent experiences had tended to give Max considerable self-confidence.He found Susannah alone in the mat-house, and asked her to go with him for a walk. As they passed out it seemed as though the old man sitting in the chair meant to stop them. He bent forward with an angry expression, removed the pipe from his mouth, and opened his lips as if to speak. Max, however, looked him steadily in the face, so he remembered his account at the shop—it seemed as though Nathan meant to stay away indefinitely—and Old Schalk’s sack of coffee was running very low indeed. At the same instant he thought of the inquest—the menace which he seemed to read in Max’s face might perhaps have reference to that judicial triumph. Whilst these considerations were working through his mind the lovers passed him and he made no protest. They climbed the big kopje and again sat at the foot of the large koekerboom.Max poured out his sorrow and indignation in a flood. Susannah had been told simply that Gert Gemsbok had met his death through an accident in connection with a horse. She had seen the strange funeral and wondered thereat. Now Max’s account of the old Hottentot’s life, which she had never heard before, and of his cruel and mysterious death, moved the girl to deep sympathy.A horrible suspicion had haunted Max from the first—he could not avoid connecting his brother with the murder, for such he was convinced had occurred. Nathan had taken his departure with Koos Bester just before the deed was done; it was inconceivable that he could be ignorant of the crime. Max believed him to be fully capable of participating in the commission of any evil.When Susannah questioned him as to whom he suspected, Max tried hard to avoid replying. When he could no longer do this he told the girl all his thoughts and then bent his head on her knee and wept bitter tears. It was the shame of being related to a creature such as Nathan which struck him to the heart. A hatred of his surroundings, and more especially of his brother, had been born in him. He made up his mind to leave his brother’s service at once, come what might.“Susannah, I can stay here no longer; will you come away with me?”The girl did not reply. She sat thinking of what the consequences of such a step would be. Her utter inexperience of life was strongly qualified by natural caution, as well as by that instinct of self-preservation which clothes most women like an armour of proof.“I feel I can stay here no longer,” he continued. “Leaving out Oom Schulpad and yourself, I hate and despise every one here. Will you come away with me?”“I will go with you when you marry me, Max.”“How can I marry you when you are only nineteen and your uncle will not give his consent?”“I will wait for you. Go away, and you will find me here when you come back—if there is any water left in the well.”“I do not want to go away without you, and I feel I cannot endure to stay. Why are you afraid to trust me?”“I am not afraid to trust you, but—while you were talking at first I was thinking. I thought to myself that we could not get away and that there was no place for us to go to.”“You can leave all that to me—”“No, no, it cannot be. If you want to marry me, Max, you must make up your mind never to live in any place but Bushmanland—”“What! live all our lives at Namies?”“No, not at Namies. Bushmanland is large; there are many camps and many water-places in it. You know that I am only a poor Boer girl and that I could not live among those women whose pictures you showed me in the fashion books and who never speak anything but English; you would be ashamed of me and I should want to come back to live among the people I know.”Max, after the manner of lovers, assured her that he never could, under any possible circumstances, be ashamed of her. She continued in the same strain as formerly—“I once saw some girls who went past our camp in a wagon, when we dwelt on the other side of the Desert, far away to the eastward, and I felt like a Bushwoman beside them when I noticed their clothes and heard them talk. No, Max, I will never go to any place where you would be able to compare me with women such as those.”Max assured her that she could easily challenge comparison with any girl in South Africa for physical advantages. Her colour heightened with pleasure at his compliments, but she was not to be moved from her resolution.“Max, I shall never live in any place outside Bushmanland, so you had better make up your mind to that. Besides, you will have to wait for me until I am old enough to marry without my uncle’s consent. Bushmanland is long and wide, but when a girl is talked about for doing what you want me to do, the tongues of the women are heard, louder than thunder, from one side of it to the other. If I were to do this thing the people of the only land I can live in would look upon me as being no better than a Hottentot girl at the Copper Mines.”Max felt, instinctively, that the girl was right. He made no further attempt to move her, but he reconsidered his decision about leaving Namies at once. At all events he would wait for Nathan’s return. As the lovers walked back to the camp, they said few words to each other.Nathan returned late in the afternoon of the next day. The brothers met outside the shop. Nathan greeted Max with cheerfulness, as though he wished to ignore what had last passed between them. Max looked him straight in the eyes without acknowledging his salute.“Hello,” said Nathan, “got the hump, eh?”Max went into the shop; Nathan followed him after outspanning the horses. In the meantime the flock of sheep had been driven home by a strange herd. Nathan burned with curiosity to know what had transpired. He walked up to Max and addressed him again—“Where’s your old chum? I see you’ve got a new nigger.”Max gave him a contemptuous glance and then went on with what he had been doing, without replying to the question.“Are you deaf?”“I’m not deaf; neither am I blind.”“Then why the devil don’t you answer me? Where’s the old nigger?”“Mightn’t he be lying dead in a sluit where you and Koos Bester left him last week?”“Look here, none of your blasted conundrums. I didn’t pull you out of a Whitechapel gutter and bring you here to get lip from you.”Max went on with his occupation of tidying the goods upon the shelves, without making any reply. Nathan, furious, strode round the counter and gripped him by the arm. Max turned and gazed steadily into his eyes.“You bastard Christian dog, if you don’t answer my question I’ll make pork sausages of you!”Max seized Nathan by the throat and flung him backwards. The latter’s foot caught against the corner of a box and he fell sprawling under the counter. As he picked himself up Max strode towards him. Nathan recoiled in alarm; he had not expected such treatment from the shy, silent, diffident lad whom he had been in the habit of cuffing and cursing at whenever he felt in a bad temper and wanted to relieve his feelings.“Where is he?” shouted Max in a voice strident with rage. “He is where you will never be—in an honest man’s grave. He lived long enough to let me know that you and Koos Bester are murderers. I only regret that he did not let me know enough to hang you both.”Nathan quailed; he wondered how much Gemsbok had told. Then he cast up the column of possibilities in his mind. No, he was all right. There might be suspicion, but there could be no proof that he had been accessory to the crime. However, it would be just as well not to provoke Max any further at present. He walked out of the shop and Max closed the door behind him.The Desert twilight was quickly fading. Nathan wished to be alone, so he strolled past the camps without calling at any of them, and then back along the road he had just previously travelled.After he had passed the last camp by about a hundred yards he sat down on a stone. He was sunk in the deepest thought. An idea had struck him just after Max’s outburst and had taken root, branched and burgeoned until it seemed to be a tree full of flowers which promised rich fruit. The muffled thud of tired horses’ feet on the sandy road leading from the dunes broke in upon his reverie. He lifted his head from where it had been sunk upon his breast and chuckled with unclean mirth.“Well, I think I’m in jamthistime,” soliloquised he; “whole blooming coppers of it.”When he returned home Max was not on the premises. The shop was locked, but the little room at the back where Nathan slept was open. Of late Max had taken to sleeping on the counter in the shop.Nathan lit a candle and began to undress. The elation of his mind was evinced upon his face. He went to bed and softly whistled the tune of a music-hall song as he lay back on the pillow with his hands clasped at the back of his head. He felt extremely happy. His luck was in—this last development, over which he had been chuckling so, proved that conclusively.Again the sound which he had heard when sitting on the stone broke in on his waking dreams, the slow tramp, tramp, tramp of the feet of tired horses, muffled by the soft sand. This time the sound came from much nearer than before. Then he heard the creaking of the vehicle and the wisch-wisch of the ploughing wheels. Then the sound ceased. A few moments later he heard a stealthy step approaching the door; just afterwards came a light tap.“Who is there?” he called out.“Open the door quickly. It is I, Koos.”Nathan sprang out of bed and drew back the bolt. Koos at once stepped into the room and glanced furtively around. His face looked drawn and haggard and his eyes were bloodshot.“Are you alone?” he asked, in a husky voice.“Yes, I am alone. But be careful, I don’t know where Max is.”Koos bent forward until his dry lips almost touched Nathan’s ear, and whispered—“What has happened? Tell me quickly.”Nathan drew back slightly and let the ghost of a mocking smile flit over his features.“Oh, I got home all right, thanks. But what brings you here?”The Boer leant forward across the table and grasped the Jew’s wizened shoulder in his enormous hand. Nathan shuddered convulsively under the pressure; he thought his bones were being crushed. The eyes of Koos seemed to shoot forth dusky flames.“Tell me quickly,” he said.“All right,” said Nathan, trying hard to wrench himself free, and feeling, at the same time, that it might be dangerous to take liberties with the man before him, “I’ll tell you, unless you break my blooming back first of all. You kicked a little too hard, Koos; the old nigger is dead.”The visage of Koos became frightful. He gasped for breath and a low gurgle came from his throat. He sat silent for a few moments with his eyes fixed upon Nathan’s in a burning stare. Then he said in a strained, hoarse voice—“Tell me more. Tell me all about it.”“That’s all I know about it myself.”Koos arose slowly from his seat and stretched his hands out towards Nathan, who, seeing murder in his eye, retreated into the corner.“Stop, Koos!” he almost screamed. “So help me God, I know nothing more about it than what I’ve told you. I only came home just before you did.”Koos sank back into the chair and covered his face with his hands. After a few minutes he arose and staggered out of the room. He went to where his tired horses were still standing in the harness, outspanned them, and after tying the front legs of each together with a reim, turned them out to graze. Then he wrapped himself in his kaross, for the night air was chilly, and laid himself down under the cart.He could not sleep. It seemed to him as if he had never slept, as if the axis upon which the hollow globe of stars turned was laid through his brain, as if there were no such thing as sleep in the whole wide world. The sky was clear and limpid, as only the sky which leans over and seems to love the Desert can be. The sweet, piercing smell of the dew-wet sand came to him and brought memories of nights spent on the hunting-field, when the pungent scent, the very breath and essence of the quick earth, had seemed to renew his spent strength, after the fatigues of the chase. But then he had not stained his hands with blood.But the awful silence. Would nothing break it? It seemed to press upon and crush him like something ponderable and tangible. He lifted his fist and smote lightly the bottom of the cart just over his head. The sound seemed to split his brain like an axe. Then the returning wave of silence surged around him, and under its impact he seemed to sink as into a quicksand.At length, a sound. Far away on the waste he heard the long-drawn nasal, melancholy howl of a jackal. Before the weird cry came to an end it was taken up by others at a greater distance, and then repeated on and on like the challenges of crowing cocks in the dawning.A gush of gratitude came from his darkened heart; he felt that he almost loved the prowling brutes that had drawn his soul out of the quagmire of silence in which it had been sunk. He seemed to feel a kind of fellowship and sympathy with the jackals. He wondered why this was. Then he remembered—The waning moon had been making paler the western stars, but he had not noticed it. The straining of his sound-sense had left no room for that of sight to come into play. Now the spell of silence was broken, and the sense of sight began to assert itself.His eyes had been closed for some little time. When he opened them the Desert was flooded with a gentle haze of diaphanous pearl. This made the Namies kopjes look like a group of enchanted islands floating in an unearthly sea. The scene was almost too beautiful for mortal eyes.As the moon soared higher and higher the stones and bushes, which at a few paces’ distance could not be separated from their shortening shadows, took on strange and ever-changing shapes. God! What was that a few yards from him? Surely they cannot have brought the body up from the gully and left it exposed upon the kopje-side? Yes, there it lay, huddled and horrible.He must go and look at it—examine it—even if the doing of this killed him or drove him mad. He arose to a crouching position and passed slowly across the intervening space of a few yards with hesitating steps. He bent his horror-distorted face over a stone half hid in tufted pelargonium.Day came near. The glamour and mystery receded from the Desert, gathered into a wave and broke against the splendid gates of dawn. A short and troubled sleep fell upon the wretched man under the cart, and perhaps saved him for the time being from insanity. He awoke to find the flaming sun high in the brazen sky, and the camp at his feet astir with life.In the full light of day Koos Bester could hardly realise that he had been a prey to the horrors of the damned during the long hours of the previous night. His terrors had vanished with the distorting moonlight. What did it matter, after all? It was true that Nathan could put the rope around his neck with a word, but he easily persuaded himself the word would never be spoken. His conscience was still sore, but not agonisingly so, now in the daylight. A Bushman was, after all, only a Bushman, and the mind of the Boer always draws an important distinction between a “mens” and a “schepsel.”He felt hungry, so he strolled down through the camps on the look-out for a breakfast. He did not want to eat with Nathan again if he could possibly avoid doing so. He knew that he must expect to have to run the gauntlet of covert allusion and innuendo. He knew that suspicion of having done the deed—the memory of which hung around his neck like a millstone—had already marked him, in the estimation of some, at least, as a sort of minor Cain. This, however, he was prepared for, and he could meet the prospect with calmness. He was now high at the dizzy extreme of hopeful confidence, resting for the instant’s pause before the return swing of the pendulum to which he was bound, like Ixion to the wheel, should whirl him back towards the ledges of anguish where the vultures of remorse were perched, waiting to tear anew at his vitals.He was consumed by an apprehensive curiosity which burnt him like a fever. He longed to hear all about the finding of the body, or—horrible thought!—had the man been still alive when found? No, that was impossible; his reason told him from the heights of reassurance, had such been the case he would have been apprehended long before this.As he walked furtively along, still limping slightly from the effects of the dislocated toe, he glanced hurriedly from side to side from under his bent brows. He fancied he was being watched from every mat-house. Yes, he was. In the gloom of every doorway he could see the dim faces of women and children turned in his direction. Even thus, he imagined, must the Lord have set a mark upon Cain, that all mankind might know him. It seemed as though by some subtle means every one throughout the scattered camps had simultaneously become aware of his presence. Just before descending the hill from where his cart stood outspanned he had heard laughter and the shrill voices of children at play. Now all was mute in an awful, accusing hush. The sudden silence reminded him of what he had suffered during the night, before the jackals claimed fellowship with him, and passed the word of his initiation into their brotherhood across the listening Desert. He felt that the brand of Cain, which none may describe but which none may fail to recognise, was upon him.Old Schalk was sitting before his tent, smoking. Koos made an effort, and, turning abruptly in his course, walked up and greeted him. Old Schalk returned the salutation with more than ordinary friendliness, and then offered a chair and the inevitable cup of coffee. These were gratefully accepted. The old Boer called to Susannah to bring the coffee. She was in the wagon and was thus unaware of the identity of the visitor. When she came from the scherm with the cup she coloured angrily and her eye flashed. She passed the visitor the cup, but did not offer her hand in greeting. Koos winced. Among the Boers such an omission can only be construed as a deliberate insult.Old Schalk was in great form. From the first glance at the face of his visitor he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the slayer of Gert Gemsbok was before him. His previous suspicions were so strong that little room for any doubt had existed in his mind. Here, however, was proof, writ large for all to read. Old Schalk was extremely tolerant where the killing of Bushmen was concerned, and it distressed him genuinely to see Koos take a comparative trifle so much to heart. Old Schalk fell into the error of ascribingallof Koos’ distress to mere fright, so he determined to try and put him at his ease. Koos had been watched carefully since his arrival, and Old Schalk knew it was probable that he was seeking information as to what had transpired since the commission of the deed.“Did you hear of the accident the other day?” the old man asked, without looking at the man he addressed.“Ja—that is—I heard something—”“I have often said that an accident would come from letting that horse of Oom Dantje’s run where he can be caught and ridden by the Bushmen.”“What did Oom Dantje’s horse do?” said Koos, breathlessly.Old Schalk shot a glance at him out of the corner of one eye, and looked puzzled. It was evident that Koos had not even heard of the verdict.“Well, no one saw the horse do it, you know; but from the way that old Bushman was knocked about, I think—myself—that it must have been Oom Dantje’s horse. I reported so to the magistrate.”Koos set down the empty utensils upon the ground. The cup rattled like castanets upon the saucer. A sense of blissful peace seemed to descend upon him like a dove with healing wings. It was the revulsion of feeling which made him tremble.“Yes,” continued old Schalk, “that young Jew, Max, wanted to talk some nonsense about what the old Bushman had told him before he died, but I wouldn’t listen. It’s all right, Koos—you needn’t look like that.”The dove had changed, in the twinkling of an eye, into a vulture; its beak was imbedded in his heart-strings. This was the contingency he had dismissed as being impossible—the man’s having been found alive. He must find out what the dying Hottentot had said, or else go mad. He arose, shook hurriedly the moist hand of his host with his own burning one, and then limped painfully back towards the shop.Oom Schulpad had watched Koos carefully ever since he arose from his feverish sleep under the cart. The old fiddler was staying, just then, with some people who had camped on the site formerly occupied by Koos; he was sitting in the mat-house with his fiddle on his knee, when Koos came limping up the sandy slope. Then the tones of the air which Gemsbok so often had played upon the ramkee were slowly wailed out from the strings in a minor key. Koos stiffened as though he had received an electric shock, and stood stock still for an instant. Then he resumed his limping towards the shop.Both Nathan and Max were in the iron building; the former writing at the empty packing-case which served as a desk, and the latter engaged in bartering wild-cat skins from some strange Hottentots from Great Namaqualand. One of the strangers carried a ramkee slung upon his back. This was not a very unusual circumstance, but to Koos it was an item full of horrible significance.The barter was soon over. Max leaped across the counter and passed out through the door, cutting Koos dead. Nathan came forward, greeted him with hilarity, and then took his stand in the doorway.The look of hunted terror in the man’s face would have moved his bitterest foe to pity. He sat down helplessly on an empty packing-case which was lying where it had been flung, just outside the door, and looked at Nathan with haggard eyes. Nathan had ceased from his letter-writing and come to the doorway, because he did not care to be alone inside with Koos, after his last night’s experience of being gripped. He stood in the doorway, whistling, and with his hands in his pockets. Then, after a pause—“Well, Koos, old man, you look chippy to-day. What’s up, eh?”Koos stood up and again laid his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. Nathan, however, had been prepared for this, so he slipped like an eel from under the huge hand that threatened to crush him, darted away to a distance of a few yards, and then wheeled round facing Koos, who was limping heavily after him with murder in his eye. He determined to risk something. He had planned out moves for the game he had to play. Here, in the full light of day and within sight of the whole of Namies, was the place to begin the struggle.“Look here, Koos Bester,” he said in a low tone, “if you think you are going to paw me about as you would a blasted Bushman, you are very much mistaken. Understand me now, once and for all—if ever you lay that leg-o’-mutton hand of yours on me again, I’ll—I’ll—Well, I won’t say exactly what I’ll do, but you can just look out for yourself—mind that.”Koos at once collapsed into abjectness. Nathan pursued his advantage—“One would think it wasIthat had booted a blooming nigger to death. Where do you think you’d be if I were to split, eh?”Here he attempted a somewhat conventional representation of the legal tragedy which follows the donning of the black cap by a certain high judicial functionary. In it his tongue, the whites of his eyes, his left hand, and the butt of his ear played conspicuous parts. Koos gasped and murmured unintelligibly. Nathan resumed—“Now, look here, I’m not going to split—this is, if you are a good boy and do as you’re told, and keep your paws to yourself. See?” Koos made a dismal attempt to smile, as though he regarded this as a pleasantry. He was now completely cowed, and would have set his neck under the foot of the man before him had he been told to do so.He came close up to Nathan, cleared his throat, and whispered hoarsely—“What did he tell your brother?”“That’s just what I don’t know. My brother and I have had a blooming diplomatic difference; don’t speak, you know. He actually appears to think that I’ve had a hand in this business;—as if your feet were not big enough to do your own kicking.”Koos gave a gasp of relief. His mind had become almost unnaturally alert under the strain upon it. If Max thought as Nathan said, it was clear that he knew nothing definite.The unhappy man became conscious of the fact that he had not eaten since early on the previous day. A sudden hunger seized him; he felt like a wolf. He begged of Nathan to give him food. Nathan led the way into the shop, and there produced a loaf of bread, and some bultong which he took out of a sack under the counter. Koos seized greedily upon the food and ate with avidity. Nathan watched him narrowly. When he had finished eating Koos arose and left the shop. Max had just previously come in, so Nathan went out after Koos. He still felt a stiffness in his shoulder from the effects of last night’s gripping. He shrugged it purposely until he felt a severe twinge. The pain was like salt for the feast of his revenge against the strong man who had hurt and insulted him.“Well, old man, had a good feed?”“Yes, I ate well.”“Yes, you seemed to enjoy your grub. I say, Koos, I’ve been thinking things over a bit, and I find I’ll want a few more of those cattle of yours. What do you say to my taking another fifty head?”Koos looked up. His alert senses had detected something unusual in the tone of Nathan’s voice. Nathan had distinctly said that he did not require any more cattle.“I’m thinking of taking another trip to Cape Town, and I thought you might just drive another lot down as far as Clanwilliam for me. What do you say?”“Yes, you can have the cattle, but I cannot leave home just now; you will have to take them over at my camp.”“Well, old man—to oblige a friend, you know. I think you will be able, at all events, to send them on for me, eh?”Nathan looked at Koos with such an amount of sinister meaning that the miserable Boer was filled with a vague sense of fresh dismay. Nathan continued—“Look here, old man, I’ll tell you what we’ll do: we’ll just drive down to your place to-morrow—across the dunes, you know—then we’ll pick out the cattle and arrange about how you will send them down.”“But how can we cross the dunes? Your mules will never pull the cart through?”“Quite right, old man; and that’s why you are to drive me down in your own trap. You told me that you crossed the dunes as you came up, so you might as well go back the same way. See?”“But how are you to get back here if you do not take your own cart?”Nathan dug Koos playfully in the ribs, and then linked his skinny arm with the Boer’s large limb.“Well, how stupid of me not to have thought of that. Let’s see—how can I get back, eh? Oh, I’ve just thought of a splendid plan: you’ll drive me back too.”Koos gave a sidelong glance of such bitter hatred at the stunted figure at his side that, had Nathan seen it, he surely would have recognised the danger of the course he was pursuing. But Nathan supposed that the giant was quite cowed, that this Samson was completely shorn of his locks. In his preoccupation he forgot about the Pillars of Gaza.His thoughts were far away. He was evolving complicated schemes, planning vast undertakings, which he meant to effect by means of this rough instrument, whose strength might be guided by his puny hand. He had reasoned it out—his theory as to the proper management of this tamed monster, and had come to the conclusion that curb, whip, and spur should be used upon him unsparingly, until he was thoroughly broken to harness.Koos did not speak for a while. Then he said in a strained voice—“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—A strange flicker of light rose and fell. What could it possibly mean? It came from the hillside above the shop. He must get up and see what it meant. Horror! a bright blaze was rising and falling in the scherm of the man he had slain. Yet, he tried to reason to himself, what nonsense to think that there was anything ghostly about the circumstance. No doubt some wandering—His hair stood upon end and he shrieked aloud. From the scherm arose the notes of the air he knew so well. Struck from the strings, the pizzicato tones of the deadly tune seemed to run through his body until every nerve vibrated with the hateful sound. He rushed across the intervening space and beat with his fists against the iron door of Nathan’s bedroom, until the whole building thundered.Nathan sprang out of bed in deadly fear.“Who is that, and what is the matter?” he called.“Open, quick! It is I, Koos. Open, open!”Nathan drew back the bolt and Koos sprang into the room, panting.“I have seen his ghost—it is there in the scherm.”“Rot, Koos. Go to bed.”“It is there; go and see for yourself.”Nathan had no fear whatever of the supernatural. He slipped on a pair of shoes and came outside, followed by the trembling Boer. All was in darkness; not the faintest glimmer of light could be seen in the neighbourhood of the scherm, not a sound broke the stillness of the night.“Why, you must have the ‘rats,’ Koos. Go to bed.”Koos begged humbly to be allowed to lie down on the floor in Nathan’s room until morning. Nathan grumbled a bit, but at last consented to grant his request.
Max’s mourning for his old friend was deep and sincere. The heart of the young man, from its first awakening, recoiled from the sordidness of most of those with whom he had come in daily contact, and clave to the best within its reach—this by virtue of its natural intuitions. For a time it seemed as though a blank had been created which could never be filled. The evenings spent in the shop when Oom Schulpad and Gemsbok had contended like a couple of troubadours—the weird tales of his experiences during the six years of his banishment from the tents of men, which the old waif had related with such tragic and truthful pathos—his devotion to his miserable old wife, that decayed relic of womanhood, which was as tender as ever his love could have been for the companion of his early years—all these dwelt in the mind of Max and tinged it with what he deemed would be an abiding sadness.
On the other hand the acquisition of the five diamonds had materially improved his prospects. He hid them in a safe place and determined not to mention the fact of their existence to any one but Susannah. They were stones of very pure water, averaging about ten carats each in weight. Max knew that they must be very valuable, but he was unable to guess their worth. He made up his mind that he would have to take them to Europe and realise them there.
Even Oom Schulpad seemed to be depressed by the old Hottentot’s fate. When he now came to see Max of an evening he did not bring his violin. The two would just sit and smoke in silence, each well aware of what was filling the thoughts of the other. To Max it seemed as if the ghost of the slain man haunted the room on these occasions, asking why his only friends had not taken vengeance upon his slayer.
Oom Schulpad did not believe very much in anything outside the circle of his experiences—certainly not in ghosts. He had attained to a philosophy which might be summed up in a phrase—“Never interfere in anything that does not directly concern you.” His stock formula into which the foregoing principle had crystallised was—“No man should ever rub resin on any but his own bow.”
“But,” he continued one night after reiterating this phrase several times, “I mean to scratch Koos Bester’s nose with a certain piece of resin which I have in my pocket. He had no business to put his big hands upon any man who could make music like that, Bushman or no Bushman.”
Max pricked up his ears and looked at the old fiddler with a question in his eyes.
“I know Koos,” continued Oom Schulpad, “and if he does not bark his shins as well as his nose against the lump of resin which I will put in his path—well, I’m no fiddler and the Bushman knew no music. He said my back was like a springbuck’s when it ‘pronks,’ did he, and that my mouth was as poisonous as a sand-adder’s? Also he broke the ramkee—to say nothing of killing the old Bushman.”
“What do you intend to do to him?” queried Max.
“I’ll tell you that when he comes back, my child. It will be all right, don’t fear. You shall, perhaps, help me. I know Koos well. When he was quite a big boy he used to be afraid of being alone in the dark. I’ll make him dance a new step to the old Bushman’s music. Ja, he knew more music than I, that old Bushman.”
Three days elapsed after the tragedy before Max visited the Hattingh camp. He found Old Schalk looking extremely sulky. Max, however, had ceased to take much heed of people or their moods. He no longer dreaded Old Schalk. As in the case of Mrs Hattingh, he now felt he had him at a moral disadvantage. His recent experiences had tended to give Max considerable self-confidence.
He found Susannah alone in the mat-house, and asked her to go with him for a walk. As they passed out it seemed as though the old man sitting in the chair meant to stop them. He bent forward with an angry expression, removed the pipe from his mouth, and opened his lips as if to speak. Max, however, looked him steadily in the face, so he remembered his account at the shop—it seemed as though Nathan meant to stay away indefinitely—and Old Schalk’s sack of coffee was running very low indeed. At the same instant he thought of the inquest—the menace which he seemed to read in Max’s face might perhaps have reference to that judicial triumph. Whilst these considerations were working through his mind the lovers passed him and he made no protest. They climbed the big kopje and again sat at the foot of the large koekerboom.
Max poured out his sorrow and indignation in a flood. Susannah had been told simply that Gert Gemsbok had met his death through an accident in connection with a horse. She had seen the strange funeral and wondered thereat. Now Max’s account of the old Hottentot’s life, which she had never heard before, and of his cruel and mysterious death, moved the girl to deep sympathy.
A horrible suspicion had haunted Max from the first—he could not avoid connecting his brother with the murder, for such he was convinced had occurred. Nathan had taken his departure with Koos Bester just before the deed was done; it was inconceivable that he could be ignorant of the crime. Max believed him to be fully capable of participating in the commission of any evil.
When Susannah questioned him as to whom he suspected, Max tried hard to avoid replying. When he could no longer do this he told the girl all his thoughts and then bent his head on her knee and wept bitter tears. It was the shame of being related to a creature such as Nathan which struck him to the heart. A hatred of his surroundings, and more especially of his brother, had been born in him. He made up his mind to leave his brother’s service at once, come what might.
“Susannah, I can stay here no longer; will you come away with me?”
The girl did not reply. She sat thinking of what the consequences of such a step would be. Her utter inexperience of life was strongly qualified by natural caution, as well as by that instinct of self-preservation which clothes most women like an armour of proof.
“I feel I can stay here no longer,” he continued. “Leaving out Oom Schulpad and yourself, I hate and despise every one here. Will you come away with me?”
“I will go with you when you marry me, Max.”
“How can I marry you when you are only nineteen and your uncle will not give his consent?”
“I will wait for you. Go away, and you will find me here when you come back—if there is any water left in the well.”
“I do not want to go away without you, and I feel I cannot endure to stay. Why are you afraid to trust me?”
“I am not afraid to trust you, but—while you were talking at first I was thinking. I thought to myself that we could not get away and that there was no place for us to go to.”
“You can leave all that to me—”
“No, no, it cannot be. If you want to marry me, Max, you must make up your mind never to live in any place but Bushmanland—”
“What! live all our lives at Namies?”
“No, not at Namies. Bushmanland is large; there are many camps and many water-places in it. You know that I am only a poor Boer girl and that I could not live among those women whose pictures you showed me in the fashion books and who never speak anything but English; you would be ashamed of me and I should want to come back to live among the people I know.”
Max, after the manner of lovers, assured her that he never could, under any possible circumstances, be ashamed of her. She continued in the same strain as formerly—
“I once saw some girls who went past our camp in a wagon, when we dwelt on the other side of the Desert, far away to the eastward, and I felt like a Bushwoman beside them when I noticed their clothes and heard them talk. No, Max, I will never go to any place where you would be able to compare me with women such as those.”
Max assured her that she could easily challenge comparison with any girl in South Africa for physical advantages. Her colour heightened with pleasure at his compliments, but she was not to be moved from her resolution.
“Max, I shall never live in any place outside Bushmanland, so you had better make up your mind to that. Besides, you will have to wait for me until I am old enough to marry without my uncle’s consent. Bushmanland is long and wide, but when a girl is talked about for doing what you want me to do, the tongues of the women are heard, louder than thunder, from one side of it to the other. If I were to do this thing the people of the only land I can live in would look upon me as being no better than a Hottentot girl at the Copper Mines.”
Max felt, instinctively, that the girl was right. He made no further attempt to move her, but he reconsidered his decision about leaving Namies at once. At all events he would wait for Nathan’s return. As the lovers walked back to the camp, they said few words to each other.
Nathan returned late in the afternoon of the next day. The brothers met outside the shop. Nathan greeted Max with cheerfulness, as though he wished to ignore what had last passed between them. Max looked him straight in the eyes without acknowledging his salute.
“Hello,” said Nathan, “got the hump, eh?”
Max went into the shop; Nathan followed him after outspanning the horses. In the meantime the flock of sheep had been driven home by a strange herd. Nathan burned with curiosity to know what had transpired. He walked up to Max and addressed him again—
“Where’s your old chum? I see you’ve got a new nigger.”
Max gave him a contemptuous glance and then went on with what he had been doing, without replying to the question.
“Are you deaf?”
“I’m not deaf; neither am I blind.”
“Then why the devil don’t you answer me? Where’s the old nigger?”
“Mightn’t he be lying dead in a sluit where you and Koos Bester left him last week?”
“Look here, none of your blasted conundrums. I didn’t pull you out of a Whitechapel gutter and bring you here to get lip from you.”
Max went on with his occupation of tidying the goods upon the shelves, without making any reply. Nathan, furious, strode round the counter and gripped him by the arm. Max turned and gazed steadily into his eyes.
“You bastard Christian dog, if you don’t answer my question I’ll make pork sausages of you!”
Max seized Nathan by the throat and flung him backwards. The latter’s foot caught against the corner of a box and he fell sprawling under the counter. As he picked himself up Max strode towards him. Nathan recoiled in alarm; he had not expected such treatment from the shy, silent, diffident lad whom he had been in the habit of cuffing and cursing at whenever he felt in a bad temper and wanted to relieve his feelings.
“Where is he?” shouted Max in a voice strident with rage. “He is where you will never be—in an honest man’s grave. He lived long enough to let me know that you and Koos Bester are murderers. I only regret that he did not let me know enough to hang you both.”
Nathan quailed; he wondered how much Gemsbok had told. Then he cast up the column of possibilities in his mind. No, he was all right. There might be suspicion, but there could be no proof that he had been accessory to the crime. However, it would be just as well not to provoke Max any further at present. He walked out of the shop and Max closed the door behind him.
The Desert twilight was quickly fading. Nathan wished to be alone, so he strolled past the camps without calling at any of them, and then back along the road he had just previously travelled.
After he had passed the last camp by about a hundred yards he sat down on a stone. He was sunk in the deepest thought. An idea had struck him just after Max’s outburst and had taken root, branched and burgeoned until it seemed to be a tree full of flowers which promised rich fruit. The muffled thud of tired horses’ feet on the sandy road leading from the dunes broke in upon his reverie. He lifted his head from where it had been sunk upon his breast and chuckled with unclean mirth.
“Well, I think I’m in jamthistime,” soliloquised he; “whole blooming coppers of it.”
When he returned home Max was not on the premises. The shop was locked, but the little room at the back where Nathan slept was open. Of late Max had taken to sleeping on the counter in the shop.
Nathan lit a candle and began to undress. The elation of his mind was evinced upon his face. He went to bed and softly whistled the tune of a music-hall song as he lay back on the pillow with his hands clasped at the back of his head. He felt extremely happy. His luck was in—this last development, over which he had been chuckling so, proved that conclusively.
Again the sound which he had heard when sitting on the stone broke in on his waking dreams, the slow tramp, tramp, tramp of the feet of tired horses, muffled by the soft sand. This time the sound came from much nearer than before. Then he heard the creaking of the vehicle and the wisch-wisch of the ploughing wheels. Then the sound ceased. A few moments later he heard a stealthy step approaching the door; just afterwards came a light tap.
“Who is there?” he called out.
“Open the door quickly. It is I, Koos.”
Nathan sprang out of bed and drew back the bolt. Koos at once stepped into the room and glanced furtively around. His face looked drawn and haggard and his eyes were bloodshot.
“Are you alone?” he asked, in a husky voice.
“Yes, I am alone. But be careful, I don’t know where Max is.”
Koos bent forward until his dry lips almost touched Nathan’s ear, and whispered—
“What has happened? Tell me quickly.”
Nathan drew back slightly and let the ghost of a mocking smile flit over his features.
“Oh, I got home all right, thanks. But what brings you here?”
The Boer leant forward across the table and grasped the Jew’s wizened shoulder in his enormous hand. Nathan shuddered convulsively under the pressure; he thought his bones were being crushed. The eyes of Koos seemed to shoot forth dusky flames.
“Tell me quickly,” he said.
“All right,” said Nathan, trying hard to wrench himself free, and feeling, at the same time, that it might be dangerous to take liberties with the man before him, “I’ll tell you, unless you break my blooming back first of all. You kicked a little too hard, Koos; the old nigger is dead.”
The visage of Koos became frightful. He gasped for breath and a low gurgle came from his throat. He sat silent for a few moments with his eyes fixed upon Nathan’s in a burning stare. Then he said in a strained, hoarse voice—
“Tell me more. Tell me all about it.”
“That’s all I know about it myself.”
Koos arose slowly from his seat and stretched his hands out towards Nathan, who, seeing murder in his eye, retreated into the corner.
“Stop, Koos!” he almost screamed. “So help me God, I know nothing more about it than what I’ve told you. I only came home just before you did.”
Koos sank back into the chair and covered his face with his hands. After a few minutes he arose and staggered out of the room. He went to where his tired horses were still standing in the harness, outspanned them, and after tying the front legs of each together with a reim, turned them out to graze. Then he wrapped himself in his kaross, for the night air was chilly, and laid himself down under the cart.
He could not sleep. It seemed to him as if he had never slept, as if the axis upon which the hollow globe of stars turned was laid through his brain, as if there were no such thing as sleep in the whole wide world. The sky was clear and limpid, as only the sky which leans over and seems to love the Desert can be. The sweet, piercing smell of the dew-wet sand came to him and brought memories of nights spent on the hunting-field, when the pungent scent, the very breath and essence of the quick earth, had seemed to renew his spent strength, after the fatigues of the chase. But then he had not stained his hands with blood.
But the awful silence. Would nothing break it? It seemed to press upon and crush him like something ponderable and tangible. He lifted his fist and smote lightly the bottom of the cart just over his head. The sound seemed to split his brain like an axe. Then the returning wave of silence surged around him, and under its impact he seemed to sink as into a quicksand.
At length, a sound. Far away on the waste he heard the long-drawn nasal, melancholy howl of a jackal. Before the weird cry came to an end it was taken up by others at a greater distance, and then repeated on and on like the challenges of crowing cocks in the dawning.
A gush of gratitude came from his darkened heart; he felt that he almost loved the prowling brutes that had drawn his soul out of the quagmire of silence in which it had been sunk. He seemed to feel a kind of fellowship and sympathy with the jackals. He wondered why this was. Then he remembered—
The waning moon had been making paler the western stars, but he had not noticed it. The straining of his sound-sense had left no room for that of sight to come into play. Now the spell of silence was broken, and the sense of sight began to assert itself.
His eyes had been closed for some little time. When he opened them the Desert was flooded with a gentle haze of diaphanous pearl. This made the Namies kopjes look like a group of enchanted islands floating in an unearthly sea. The scene was almost too beautiful for mortal eyes.
As the moon soared higher and higher the stones and bushes, which at a few paces’ distance could not be separated from their shortening shadows, took on strange and ever-changing shapes. God! What was that a few yards from him? Surely they cannot have brought the body up from the gully and left it exposed upon the kopje-side? Yes, there it lay, huddled and horrible.
He must go and look at it—examine it—even if the doing of this killed him or drove him mad. He arose to a crouching position and passed slowly across the intervening space of a few yards with hesitating steps. He bent his horror-distorted face over a stone half hid in tufted pelargonium.
Day came near. The glamour and mystery receded from the Desert, gathered into a wave and broke against the splendid gates of dawn. A short and troubled sleep fell upon the wretched man under the cart, and perhaps saved him for the time being from insanity. He awoke to find the flaming sun high in the brazen sky, and the camp at his feet astir with life.
In the full light of day Koos Bester could hardly realise that he had been a prey to the horrors of the damned during the long hours of the previous night. His terrors had vanished with the distorting moonlight. What did it matter, after all? It was true that Nathan could put the rope around his neck with a word, but he easily persuaded himself the word would never be spoken. His conscience was still sore, but not agonisingly so, now in the daylight. A Bushman was, after all, only a Bushman, and the mind of the Boer always draws an important distinction between a “mens” and a “schepsel.”
He felt hungry, so he strolled down through the camps on the look-out for a breakfast. He did not want to eat with Nathan again if he could possibly avoid doing so. He knew that he must expect to have to run the gauntlet of covert allusion and innuendo. He knew that suspicion of having done the deed—the memory of which hung around his neck like a millstone—had already marked him, in the estimation of some, at least, as a sort of minor Cain. This, however, he was prepared for, and he could meet the prospect with calmness. He was now high at the dizzy extreme of hopeful confidence, resting for the instant’s pause before the return swing of the pendulum to which he was bound, like Ixion to the wheel, should whirl him back towards the ledges of anguish where the vultures of remorse were perched, waiting to tear anew at his vitals.
He was consumed by an apprehensive curiosity which burnt him like a fever. He longed to hear all about the finding of the body, or—horrible thought!—had the man been still alive when found? No, that was impossible; his reason told him from the heights of reassurance, had such been the case he would have been apprehended long before this.
As he walked furtively along, still limping slightly from the effects of the dislocated toe, he glanced hurriedly from side to side from under his bent brows. He fancied he was being watched from every mat-house. Yes, he was. In the gloom of every doorway he could see the dim faces of women and children turned in his direction. Even thus, he imagined, must the Lord have set a mark upon Cain, that all mankind might know him. It seemed as though by some subtle means every one throughout the scattered camps had simultaneously become aware of his presence. Just before descending the hill from where his cart stood outspanned he had heard laughter and the shrill voices of children at play. Now all was mute in an awful, accusing hush. The sudden silence reminded him of what he had suffered during the night, before the jackals claimed fellowship with him, and passed the word of his initiation into their brotherhood across the listening Desert. He felt that the brand of Cain, which none may describe but which none may fail to recognise, was upon him.
Old Schalk was sitting before his tent, smoking. Koos made an effort, and, turning abruptly in his course, walked up and greeted him. Old Schalk returned the salutation with more than ordinary friendliness, and then offered a chair and the inevitable cup of coffee. These were gratefully accepted. The old Boer called to Susannah to bring the coffee. She was in the wagon and was thus unaware of the identity of the visitor. When she came from the scherm with the cup she coloured angrily and her eye flashed. She passed the visitor the cup, but did not offer her hand in greeting. Koos winced. Among the Boers such an omission can only be construed as a deliberate insult.
Old Schalk was in great form. From the first glance at the face of his visitor he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the slayer of Gert Gemsbok was before him. His previous suspicions were so strong that little room for any doubt had existed in his mind. Here, however, was proof, writ large for all to read. Old Schalk was extremely tolerant where the killing of Bushmen was concerned, and it distressed him genuinely to see Koos take a comparative trifle so much to heart. Old Schalk fell into the error of ascribingallof Koos’ distress to mere fright, so he determined to try and put him at his ease. Koos had been watched carefully since his arrival, and Old Schalk knew it was probable that he was seeking information as to what had transpired since the commission of the deed.
“Did you hear of the accident the other day?” the old man asked, without looking at the man he addressed.
“Ja—that is—I heard something—”
“I have often said that an accident would come from letting that horse of Oom Dantje’s run where he can be caught and ridden by the Bushmen.”
“What did Oom Dantje’s horse do?” said Koos, breathlessly.
Old Schalk shot a glance at him out of the corner of one eye, and looked puzzled. It was evident that Koos had not even heard of the verdict.
“Well, no one saw the horse do it, you know; but from the way that old Bushman was knocked about, I think—myself—that it must have been Oom Dantje’s horse. I reported so to the magistrate.”
Koos set down the empty utensils upon the ground. The cup rattled like castanets upon the saucer. A sense of blissful peace seemed to descend upon him like a dove with healing wings. It was the revulsion of feeling which made him tremble.
“Yes,” continued old Schalk, “that young Jew, Max, wanted to talk some nonsense about what the old Bushman had told him before he died, but I wouldn’t listen. It’s all right, Koos—you needn’t look like that.”
The dove had changed, in the twinkling of an eye, into a vulture; its beak was imbedded in his heart-strings. This was the contingency he had dismissed as being impossible—the man’s having been found alive. He must find out what the dying Hottentot had said, or else go mad. He arose, shook hurriedly the moist hand of his host with his own burning one, and then limped painfully back towards the shop.
Oom Schulpad had watched Koos carefully ever since he arose from his feverish sleep under the cart. The old fiddler was staying, just then, with some people who had camped on the site formerly occupied by Koos; he was sitting in the mat-house with his fiddle on his knee, when Koos came limping up the sandy slope. Then the tones of the air which Gemsbok so often had played upon the ramkee were slowly wailed out from the strings in a minor key. Koos stiffened as though he had received an electric shock, and stood stock still for an instant. Then he resumed his limping towards the shop.
Both Nathan and Max were in the iron building; the former writing at the empty packing-case which served as a desk, and the latter engaged in bartering wild-cat skins from some strange Hottentots from Great Namaqualand. One of the strangers carried a ramkee slung upon his back. This was not a very unusual circumstance, but to Koos it was an item full of horrible significance.
The barter was soon over. Max leaped across the counter and passed out through the door, cutting Koos dead. Nathan came forward, greeted him with hilarity, and then took his stand in the doorway.
The look of hunted terror in the man’s face would have moved his bitterest foe to pity. He sat down helplessly on an empty packing-case which was lying where it had been flung, just outside the door, and looked at Nathan with haggard eyes. Nathan had ceased from his letter-writing and come to the doorway, because he did not care to be alone inside with Koos, after his last night’s experience of being gripped. He stood in the doorway, whistling, and with his hands in his pockets. Then, after a pause—
“Well, Koos, old man, you look chippy to-day. What’s up, eh?”
Koos stood up and again laid his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. Nathan, however, had been prepared for this, so he slipped like an eel from under the huge hand that threatened to crush him, darted away to a distance of a few yards, and then wheeled round facing Koos, who was limping heavily after him with murder in his eye. He determined to risk something. He had planned out moves for the game he had to play. Here, in the full light of day and within sight of the whole of Namies, was the place to begin the struggle.
“Look here, Koos Bester,” he said in a low tone, “if you think you are going to paw me about as you would a blasted Bushman, you are very much mistaken. Understand me now, once and for all—if ever you lay that leg-o’-mutton hand of yours on me again, I’ll—I’ll—Well, I won’t say exactly what I’ll do, but you can just look out for yourself—mind that.”
Koos at once collapsed into abjectness. Nathan pursued his advantage—
“One would think it wasIthat had booted a blooming nigger to death. Where do you think you’d be if I were to split, eh?”
Here he attempted a somewhat conventional representation of the legal tragedy which follows the donning of the black cap by a certain high judicial functionary. In it his tongue, the whites of his eyes, his left hand, and the butt of his ear played conspicuous parts. Koos gasped and murmured unintelligibly. Nathan resumed—
“Now, look here, I’m not going to split—this is, if you are a good boy and do as you’re told, and keep your paws to yourself. See?” Koos made a dismal attempt to smile, as though he regarded this as a pleasantry. He was now completely cowed, and would have set his neck under the foot of the man before him had he been told to do so.
He came close up to Nathan, cleared his throat, and whispered hoarsely—
“What did he tell your brother?”
“That’s just what I don’t know. My brother and I have had a blooming diplomatic difference; don’t speak, you know. He actually appears to think that I’ve had a hand in this business;—as if your feet were not big enough to do your own kicking.”
Koos gave a gasp of relief. His mind had become almost unnaturally alert under the strain upon it. If Max thought as Nathan said, it was clear that he knew nothing definite.
The unhappy man became conscious of the fact that he had not eaten since early on the previous day. A sudden hunger seized him; he felt like a wolf. He begged of Nathan to give him food. Nathan led the way into the shop, and there produced a loaf of bread, and some bultong which he took out of a sack under the counter. Koos seized greedily upon the food and ate with avidity. Nathan watched him narrowly. When he had finished eating Koos arose and left the shop. Max had just previously come in, so Nathan went out after Koos. He still felt a stiffness in his shoulder from the effects of last night’s gripping. He shrugged it purposely until he felt a severe twinge. The pain was like salt for the feast of his revenge against the strong man who had hurt and insulted him.
“Well, old man, had a good feed?”
“Yes, I ate well.”
“Yes, you seemed to enjoy your grub. I say, Koos, I’ve been thinking things over a bit, and I find I’ll want a few more of those cattle of yours. What do you say to my taking another fifty head?”
Koos looked up. His alert senses had detected something unusual in the tone of Nathan’s voice. Nathan had distinctly said that he did not require any more cattle.
“I’m thinking of taking another trip to Cape Town, and I thought you might just drive another lot down as far as Clanwilliam for me. What do you say?”
“Yes, you can have the cattle, but I cannot leave home just now; you will have to take them over at my camp.”
“Well, old man—to oblige a friend, you know. I think you will be able, at all events, to send them on for me, eh?”
Nathan looked at Koos with such an amount of sinister meaning that the miserable Boer was filled with a vague sense of fresh dismay. Nathan continued—
“Look here, old man, I’ll tell you what we’ll do: we’ll just drive down to your place to-morrow—across the dunes, you know—then we’ll pick out the cattle and arrange about how you will send them down.”
“But how can we cross the dunes? Your mules will never pull the cart through?”
“Quite right, old man; and that’s why you are to drive me down in your own trap. You told me that you crossed the dunes as you came up, so you might as well go back the same way. See?”
“But how are you to get back here if you do not take your own cart?”
Nathan dug Koos playfully in the ribs, and then linked his skinny arm with the Boer’s large limb.
“Well, how stupid of me not to have thought of that. Let’s see—how can I get back, eh? Oh, I’ve just thought of a splendid plan: you’ll drive me back too.”
Koos gave a sidelong glance of such bitter hatred at the stunted figure at his side that, had Nathan seen it, he surely would have recognised the danger of the course he was pursuing. But Nathan supposed that the giant was quite cowed, that this Samson was completely shorn of his locks. In his preoccupation he forgot about the Pillars of Gaza.
His thoughts were far away. He was evolving complicated schemes, planning vast undertakings, which he meant to effect by means of this rough instrument, whose strength might be guided by his puny hand. He had reasoned it out—his theory as to the proper management of this tamed monster, and had come to the conclusion that curb, whip, and spur should be used upon him unsparingly, until he was thoroughly broken to harness.
Koos did not speak for a while. Then he said in a strained voice—
“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—
A strange flicker of light rose and fell. What could it possibly mean? It came from the hillside above the shop. He must get up and see what it meant. Horror! a bright blaze was rising and falling in the scherm of the man he had slain. Yet, he tried to reason to himself, what nonsense to think that there was anything ghostly about the circumstance. No doubt some wandering—
His hair stood upon end and he shrieked aloud. From the scherm arose the notes of the air he knew so well. Struck from the strings, the pizzicato tones of the deadly tune seemed to run through his body until every nerve vibrated with the hateful sound. He rushed across the intervening space and beat with his fists against the iron door of Nathan’s bedroom, until the whole building thundered.
Nathan sprang out of bed in deadly fear.
“Who is that, and what is the matter?” he called.
“Open, quick! It is I, Koos. Open, open!”
Nathan drew back the bolt and Koos sprang into the room, panting.
“I have seen his ghost—it is there in the scherm.”
“Rot, Koos. Go to bed.”
“It is there; go and see for yourself.”
Nathan had no fear whatever of the supernatural. He slipped on a pair of shoes and came outside, followed by the trembling Boer. All was in darkness; not the faintest glimmer of light could be seen in the neighbourhood of the scherm, not a sound broke the stillness of the night.
“Why, you must have the ‘rats,’ Koos. Go to bed.”
Koos begged humbly to be allowed to lie down on the floor in Nathan’s room until morning. Nathan grumbled a bit, but at last consented to grant his request.