Between Sun and Sand Part 10

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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sistant 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 ent.i.tled 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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, a.s.sisted 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."

[G.o.d, 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 gra.s.s 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 funeral _cortege_ wended 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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 'p.r.o.nks,' 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 partic.i.p.ating 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.