Between Sun and Sand Part 12

"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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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, hoa.r.s.e 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 G.o.d, 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 c.o.c.ks in the dawning.

A gush of grat.i.tude 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 a.s.sert 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. G.o.d! 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 pa.s.sed slowly across the intervening s.p.a.ce 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 d.a.m.ned 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 rea.s.surance, 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 pa.s.sed 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 ident.i.ty of the visitor. When she came from the scherm with the cup she coloured angrily and her eye flashed. She pa.s.sed 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 ascribing _all_ of 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 circ.u.mstance, but to Koos it was an item full of horrible significance.

The barter was soon over. Max leaped across the counter and pa.s.sed 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 was _I_ that had booted a blooming n.i.g.g.e.r 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 b.u.t.t 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 hoa.r.s.ely--

"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.