Aletta Part 8

"See now, Mani," [Herma.n.u.s abbreviated], said Gideon Roux. "If we shoot as we always shoot, both will drop into the river bed. And to-night,"

looking upward at a black cloud which was thickly and gradually spreading, "the river will come down. I will take the Englishman, and you take the Hottentot."

"_Ja_, but I am not so sure with these d.a.m.ned Mausers," growled Herma.n.u.s Delport, looking up and down his weapon. "I might miss--then where would we be? We had better have kept to our old Martinis. We understand them."

"_Nee, nee_. It comes to the same thing, I tell you, and if you miss you can go on shooting until you _raak_. I know _I_ shan't miss.

_Maagtig, kerel_! What are you doing? Put away that pipe!"

But Herma.n.u.s protested he was not going to do without his smoke for all the adjectival English in Africa or in England either, and it took at least ten minutes of his confederate's time and talk to persuade him that not only the spark but the smoke of a pipe was visible for any distance in the clear, yet half-gloomy atmosphere then prevailing. For the leaden lour of the heavens pointed to the coming of a storm.

In effect the surroundings were very much in harmony with the dark deed of blood which these two miscreants were here to perpetrate. The wild and rugged recesses of the Wildschutsbergen, spa.r.s.ely inhabited and but seldom travelled, spread around in grim, forbidding desolation. Great krantzes towered skyward, rearing up from the apex of smooth boulder-strewn gra.s.s slopes, and here and there a lofty coffee-canister shaped cone, turret-headed, and belted round with the same smooth cliff-face, stood like a giant sentinel. Below, the valleys, deep and rugged, seamed with dongas, and that through which the track lay, skirting the now dry bed of the Sneeuw River. No sign of life was upon this abode of desolation; no grazing flock, or stray _klompje_ of horses, not even a bird, springing chirruping from the gra.s.s; and away yonder the further crags stood against a background of inky cloud, which, gradually working nearer, amid low mutterings of thunder, was bringing the storm which should act as accomplice in hiding the slain victims of the two ambushed murderers.

"That is right," chuckled Gideon Roux, rubbing his hands. "The river will come down to-night like the devil. By this time to-morrow the Englishman and his Hottentot will be nearly at the sea. It is hundreds of miles off, but a flooded river travels as quick as a train."

"What if they are stranded half-way?" said the other, with an evil sneer.

"Then the jackals will eat them. Either way it matters nothing."

Darker and darker it grew. The storm cloud began to throw out loose ma.s.ses of flying scud, through which the moon now and again shone out in fitful gleam. Still, to these two their prey came not in sight.

"I like not this," growled Herma.n.u.s. "This is no light to shoot by. We may miss one or both, and to miss one is as bad as to miss both.

Besides, the river may not take them down after all. We two may be hanged for to-night's work, Gideon."

"Hanged? Oh, yes! See now, Mani, why I would have it done with Mausers. Their bullet makes a small hole, our Martini bullet makes a large hole. And there is not a Mauser or a Lee-Metford in the Wildschutsberg. Afterwards our guns are examined, and they are the old Martinis. Our bullet does not fit the hole. Now, do you not see, you _eselkop_?"

"_Ja_, I see. But--_stil, man_. Here they come."

A clink of the hoof of a shod horse coming down the track was borne faintly upward. The two a.s.sa.s.sins crouched in their ambush, a tigerish glare in their eyes. Their pieces were levelled.

"Ready, Herma.n.u.s," whispered Gideon Roux. "When they come six paces the other side of yon white stone, then shoot."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

TRAGICAL--AND ALETTA.

Hans Vermaak had and had not carried out his instructions; which is to say that in so far as he had he had done so by halves.

By nature he was a genial soul was Hans Vermaak, by inclination a jovial one. He would not wantonly have hurt a fly or an Englishman, let alone so companionable a one as Colvin Kershaw; but then the terrible point to which racial hatred was worked up had engendered a feverish thirst for conspiring that was almost Celtic, in the stolid and pre-eminently practical Boer. The discovery of the concealed arms would be a serious thing, a very serious thing, but of its seriousness, great as that was, they took an exaggerated view. Inherently the Boer is a great respecter of the law and of the person of its representative or representatives, and most of these were sufficiently unsophisticated to look upon their undoubtedly treasonable proceeding as a hanging matter if brought to the notice of the authorities. Hence none felt any qualm as to the strong measures to be adopted towards the hostile sharer of the secret.

_In vino Veritas_! When we say that none felt a qualm we should have exempted Hans Vermaak--in his cups. The misgiving expressed by Gideon Roux as to the potential liberality of his spouse in the matter of the grog was not unfounded. There was enough in the bottle to make three Dutchmen--two would not partake--very lively, and the liveliest of all was Hans Vermaak. He became, moreover, enormously fraternal towards Colvin, who was deftly drawing him out, and finally did exactly as Gideon Roux had predicted, insisted upon his remaining the night, for he, Hans, was Gideon's brother-in-law, and therefore one of the family.

He forgot the patriot cause, and only remembered it to declare that this was too good an Englishman to be shot, and so forth, which declaration under ordinary circ.u.mstances might mean nothing, but read by the light of subsequent events and the speaker's manner, Colvin took to mean rather a great deal.

The latter made several futile attempts at getting away, and at length succeeded. He himself, although he had borne his share, was in no wise affected by the liquor he had been taking--for the matter of that he could have drunk the lot of them under the table over and over again-- and throughout the talk, which became more and more boisterous and unguarded, had kept an ear open and an eye keenly alive to every sign.

But by the time he did break loose, and Gert was standing before the door with the horses saddled up, he realised that the more prudential side of his resolution had failed and that an infinitesimal portion of his homeward journey would be accomplished by daylight.

He had bidden good-bye all-round--not failing to observe during the process the awful look of scare upon the face of his hostess as she just touched his hand with a limp, moist paw. He had paced his horse about a hundred yards from the door, not sorry to see the last of the frowsy, dirty place, when he heard his name called. Turning in the saddle, he beheld the genial Hans hurrying towards him.

"Which way do you go home by?" said the Dutchman, somewhat flurriedly.

"Oh, the usual way, Hans."

"_So_? You are going home, then."

"Oh yes."

"But you must not. Klip Poort is bad to go through at night _Ja_, it is bad, very bad. Go some other road. There is the road to Stepha.n.u.s De la Rey's, for instance. Go by it."

"But it is about twice the distance," objected Colvin, who began to read considerable meaning into the other's anxiety regarding his movements.

"That matters nothing. Look, you are a good sort of Englishman and I like you. Klip Poort is bad to go through at night, very bad."

"Very well, Hans, I'll take your advice. So long."

Klip Poort, the point referred to, was a narrow, rugged defile overhung with large rocks, about five miles on his homeward way. As well as the road pa.s.sing through, it likewise gave pa.s.sage to the Sneeuw River, which, when full to any great extent, flooded the roadway to some depth.

It might very well be to this form of danger that the Boer's hidden warning applied, and yet some unaccountable instinct warned Colvin that it was not.

"Gert."

"Baas?"

"Did you hear what Hans Vermaak was saying just now?"

"Part of it, sir."

"Why do you think he wanted us not to go back by way of Klip Poort?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Gert, you are an a.s.s."

"Perhaps he thought the river might be 'down,' sir. The clouds are very thick and black up in the _bergen_."

"Yes."

An indescribable feeling of helpless apprehensiveness came over Colvin, and indeed it is a creepy thing the consciousness that at any step during the next half-dozen miles or so you are a target for a concealed enemy whose marksmanship is unerring. For this was about what he had reduced the situation to in his own mind, and within the same heartily anathematised the foolish curiosity which had moved him to go up and explore the hiding-place of the concealed arms. That Gideon Roux and his confederate were aware that he shared their secret he now believed.

They must have waited to watch him, and have seen him come out of the cave; and with this idea the full force of Vermaak's warning came home to him.

But was that warning genuine? Was it not destined rather to induce him to take the other way? It was impossible to determine. Sorely perplexed, he rode on, thinking the matter over, and that deeply. The sky overhead grew darker and darker with the spread of a great cloud-- the earth with the fall of evening. There was a moon, but it was obscured. By the time the rocks which marked the entrance to the poort came into view it was already night.

Two ways branched here--one his ordinary way home, the other that which Hans Vermaak had urged him to take. Some twenty feet down, at the bottom of a precipitous slope, was the river bed, dry save for a shallow, stagnant reach here and there. Which way should he take? Now was the time to decide.

"Get on, Aasvogel, you fool! Ah, would you, then?"

This to his horse, accompanied by a sharp rowelling with each heel. For the animal had stopped short with a suddenness calculated to unseat and certainly irritate the rider, and was backing and shying like the panic-stricken idiot it was; the cause of all this fl.u.s.ter being a white stone standing almost vertically up from the roadside, in the gloom looking for all the world like the traditional ghost.

"Whigge--whirr!" Something hummed through the air, and that so near he could feel the draught. Two jets of flame had darted forth from the hillside above, simultaneously with a dry, double crack. Two more followed, but had it been a hundred Colvin was utterly powerless to investigate, for his horse, which had already sprung forward beneath the sharp dig of the spurs, now took to wild and frantic flight, and for some moments was completely out of hand. By the time he got it in hand again he had been carried a good mile from the scene of this startling though not wholly unexpected occurrence.

Two things came into Colvin's mind, as eventually he reined in his panting, snorting steed. One of the bullets, at any rate, had missed him very narrowly, but by just the distance the animal had backed when shying from the ghostly object which had scared it; and but for the fact of his being a first-rate rider the suddenness of the bolt would have unseated him, and he would now be lying in the road at the mercy of his would-be a.s.sa.s.sins. But--where was Gert?