A Secret of the Lebombo Part 25

Wyvern was not an excitable man, but now he thought to hear the pulses of his heart thud violently within his chest. As he stooped and picked up the b.u.t.ton, he picked up something else at the same time. It was a knife.

A sheath-knife, red with rust, and with an iron handle--quaint and of an unfamiliar make and pattern. Quickly, but carefully he examined the ground further, and now his heart beat quicker still. On the ground were several fragments of what looked like moss-grown bits of pottery.

He bent down and examined them. The largest piece could be nothing else than the fragment of a skull--a human skull.

Further search revealed more remains, green and crumbly with age.

Wyvern looked up at the tossing heights. Yes, here was the amphitheatre or hollow known as Ukohlo. He remembered every detail of the story; he and Joe Fleetwood had talked it over too often for it to be otherwise.

Yes, and where the rocky side of the mountain rose abruptly were several holes and caves. The next thing would be to find the right one.

Now every detail of the story fitted in. Clearly this was the spot whereon the two wretched men had been suddenly and treacherously murdered. The knife, the human remains, all pointed that way. Hope, dispelling his former depression, bounded high once more. If necessary they would search every cranny and crevice, and thus could not fail to secure the prize.

But--it was buried. Well, they would dig if necessary. The object would be well worth the time and labour.

A shadow came between him and the light, then another. Wyvern looked up. Great white vultures were wheeling and soaring between him and the sun. What did it mean? Something must be dead or dying within this grim, untrodden wilderness tract; and that hard by, yet of such there was no perceptible sign. A strange, boding uneasiness settled upon him.

What could it mean? He was the only living thing moving at that time.

Again he looked up. The great white birds had multiplied to a very cloud, and they were right above him, floating round and round at some height.

Just there the holes and caves were formed by large boulders which had fallen together rather than by cracks in the solid cliff face. The opening of one of these formed a complete triangle, and towards this some mysterious instinct impelled Wyvern's footsteps.

He paused a moment before the entrance. A damp, earthy smell came from within, and again the detail as to the earth which Hlabulana had seen sticking to the knives of the adventurers came back to his mind. Yet, the connection of ideas proved nothing. The same earthy smell would probably have greeted his nostrils had he entered any other of the caves which here opened in all directions. Still, there was no harm in just looking into this one.

A man of medium height could have entered it erect, but Wyvern had to stoop. Once inside however, the fissure widened. At the further end c.h.i.n.ks of light penetrated where the boulders forming the hole had fallen together, and these formed dim shafts of sunlight upon the floor.

The latter was soft and earthy. Could it be here that the stuff was buried? Wyvern stamped upon the ground here and there, but it gave forth the same sound everywhere. Carefully, eagerly, he peered around-- again and again. There was nothing. He was about to leave the place when--

Something shone.

On the ground, right under one of the shafts of light, it lay. Wyvern picked it up, and hurried to the daylight. Yet his instincts of precaution moved him to examine it while still within the shadow of the cave.

A yellowish, cut stone lay within his hand. Looking at it he felt sure that it was an opal. And then he had to call up all his self-control to steady his nerves. Hlabulana's story was no myth. Clearly this was where the stuff was buried. He would go back and rouse up Fleetwoods-- the good news alone was bound to effect a cure--and they would return together to dig it up. This rich secret which the Lebombo had held for so long within its grim fastnesses had been unfathomed at last. Its treasures would make them wealthy for life, and, above all, would bring him Lalante.

Would they? He had not found them yet--and with the thought came another. Opals, according to popular superst.i.tion, were unlucky, and the first sign he had found of the existence and propinquity of the treasure was an opal. The next moment he laughed at himself for giving even a thought to such nonsense, and stepped forth once more into the open day.

Unlucky! Why the whole world seemed to open up in a paradise of delight. Unlucky! He would return and re-purchase Seven Kloofs, the place which he loved; and this time old Sanna would not have to complain that the place needed a "Missis." Le Sage's objection was not to himself but to his impecuniosity, and that obstacle removed, why then-- Unlucky!

With a hard ring and a splash of lead, the bullet flattened on the rock beside him, simultaneously with the roar of the report, which rolled, in a volley of echoes, among the surrounding krantzes.

"Bully Rawson, of course," exclaimed Wyvern to himself, as he quickly got behind a rock to consider best as to how he should return the fire.

But this was not quite so easy, for the simple reason that his a.s.sailant kept closely concealed. A wreath of smoke hanging in front of a thick row of foliage fringeing the lip of a low krantz some hundred yards distant, showed the point of concealment. He realised too, into what a tight place he had got. His cover was totally inadequate, and whoever was making a target of him could not go on missing him all day. Indeed it was marvellous that he should have missed so easy a mark at all.

Again the superst.i.tion concerning the opal recurred to him. No sooner had he found the stone than he found himself in grave danger. Every moment now he expected another bullet. He would almost certainly never live to realise the bright fair future he had just been mapping out.

Well, the brutal cowardly ruffian who had come out there to do him to death in the dark as it were, should not benefit by the clue he himself had discovered, and to this end, concealed by the rock, he sc.r.a.ped a hole in the soil and deposited the stone within it. Then he called out:--

"Rawson, you cowardly skulker. Haven't you the pluck to meet me man to man? Come out and show yourself, can't you?"

There was no reply.

"Oh, you're plucky enough at thrashing defenceless women, and boys not a third of your size," went on Wyvern. "Come out now and we'll fight fair with anything you like. Come out, funk-stick."

This time an answer came, or some sort of an answer, and it took the form of quick muttered voices in the Zulu tongue, together with the sound of a scuffle, and a clinking fall of small stones down the face of the krantz. Then a voice was raised--also in the Zulu tongue.

"Come up here, _Nkose_. Come up here. I have him fast."

And Wyvern knew the voice for that of Mtezani, the young Zulu whose life they had saved, and he went.

But before he went he sc.r.a.ped up the opal which he had buried beneath the loose soil.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

OF THE HOSTILE USUTUS.

Wyvern had no difficulty in making his way up to the spot whence the shot had been fired, and arriving there an unexpected sight met his eyes. There, sure enough, was Mtezani, and in his hand he held a big, wicked-looking a.s.segai, upraised and in striking att.i.tude, while beneath him, face to the earth, he seated astride upon it, lay the body of a man, another native. Beside them both lay a rifle.

"Lie still, dog," warned the young Zulu. "Lie still, and move not, else my broad blade shall pin thee to the earth. _Nkose_! Here is he who would have shot you. Look at him."

Wyvern did so, and could not but feel some astonishment, for he recognised in his would-be murderer the boy whom Bully Rawson had so mercilessly thrashed on the first occasion of his visiting that worthy's kraal, Pakisa.

"Here he is," went on the chief's son. "I was behind him when he fired the shot, but just too late to prevent him. But he got no chance of another. _Whau_!" and his glance rested meaningly on a heavy, short-handled k.n.o.b-stick which lay on the ground beside them, and at the head of his prisoner, from which blood was trickling. "I am going to kill him now, _Nkose_, but first he will tell us why he shot at you.

Now dog, why was it?" emphasising the question by a sharp dig in the back with the a.s.segai he held.

The wretched Pakisa, beside himself with fear, stammered forth that it was an accident; that he had taken the _Inkosi_ for a buck, and had fired at him.

"That for the first lie," said Mtezani, emphasising the remark with another dig, which made the prostrate one squirm and moan. "Answer, or I cut thee to pieces, strip by strip. Now--why was it?"

"_He_ said I must."

"Ha! Inxele?"

"_Eh-he_, Inxele. He promised to shoot me if I failed, and now he will."

"He will not. Go on," said Wyvern. "Why were you to shoot me?"

"I cannot tell, _Nkose_. Except--yes, I heard him say, when he had taken too much _tywala_, that you must go--that you must be taken care of--yes that was how he put it, but I knew what he meant. He gave me this gun--I often go out and shoot game for him, _Nkose_--and told me to go and watch for you. If I did not take care of you, and that soon, he would come after me, and shoot me, wherever I might be. And he would have done it. I know Inxele, _Nkose_, if you do not."

"And the other _Inkosi_, U' Joe--were you to have 'taken care' of him too?" said Wyvern.

"Nothing did he say about that, _Nkose_," was the answer. "It was you-- only you."

Wyvern pondered. What sort of vindictive fiend could this be, he thought, who could deliberately and in cold blood order his a.s.sa.s.sination merely because he had disapproved of his brutal and barbarous ways? Then the incidents of the falling tree and the spring-gun recurred to him. That these were no accidents he had long since determined, and now here was a fresh attempt; but that Rawson had some powerful motive for removing him out of existence over and above that of sheer vindictiveness, of course never came into his mind.

"How long have you been watching for an opportunity to 'take care of me'?" he asked, but his Zulu was defective, and it was not at once that he could compa.s.s the answer.

"Since you have been at your present outspan, _Nkose_. He said he would shoot me, and he meant it."

"And you, Mtezani," said Wyvern, turning to the latter. "Said I not that you must not leave U' Joe, or the camp until my return? Why then are you here?"