In the Whirl of the Rising Part 20

"Funked again!" echoed Clare. "I don't believe he ever did such a thing in his life--no, nor ever could. Because he was too much of a gentleman to be drawn into a disgusting tap-room brawl to please a drunken rowdy, you call that funking. Well, I don't, and I shouldn't have the good opinion I have of Mr Lamont if he had acted otherwise. You forget, too, that we were all there, and even in Gandela I suppose it's hardly the correct thing to indulge in prize fights in the presence of ladies."

"Phew!" whistled Fullerton. "So that's the way the cat jumps; Clare has struck her flag at last, Lucy. Lamont's captured her."

"Oh, go easy, d.i.c.k. I won't have Clare teased," was all the response he got in the conjugal quarter.

"She seems jolly well able to take care of herself anyhow," p.r.o.nounced her brother-in-law resentfully.

"I like fair play," rejoined the girl, "and a great many of you don't seem to know the meaning of the word. Because somebody says one thing, and somebody else another about a man who is really too much of a man to bother himself about it--you all go to work to make him out this and to make him out that. You're worse than a pack of spiteful women."

Oh, how she longed to tell them all she knew--how the man they were decrying had spent the day watching over the safety of all present, how his cool nerve and unflagging resource had averted from them the ghastly peril that threatened. But this she could not do. She was bound over to absolute and entire secrecy.

"By Jingo, I'll tell you another thing now," said Fullerton. "Blest if I didn't meet this very chap, Lamont, at the bend of the road, just beyond the house, at twelve o'clock last night--you know, just after those fellows left us. He was strolling this way, and he'd got a Lee-Metford magazine rifle. I asked him what the deuce he was playing at sentry-go like that for, and he grunted something about getting his hand in, whatever that might mean; and when I wanted him to come in and have a whisky--for you can't be inhospitable even though you don't care much for a fellow--he wouldn't, because he was afraid of scaring you all if you saw him with a rifle at that time of night, and of course he wouldn't leave it outside. What was he up to, that's the question. I own it stumps me."

"Ah!" said Clare, with a provoking smile. "What _was_ he up to?"

But a new light had swept in upon her mind. In view of what she had learned that morning there was nothing eccentric about this lonely watcher and his midnight vigil. And yet--and yet--why should he have singled out Richard Fullerton's house as the special object of his self-imposed guardianship?

Meanwhile a sort of council of war was going on elsewhere. It consisted of four persons, Orwell the Resident Magistrate, Isard the officer in command of the Mounted Police stationed at Gandela, Driffield the Native Commissioner, and Lamont. To the other three the latter had just unfolded his tale of the conspiracy, and the steps he had taken to avert its execution on the previous day.

It had been received in varying manner. Orwell, a recent importation from England, and who deemed himself lucky in drawing a fixed salary from the Government of the Chartered Company as against years of waiting as a briefless barrister, was inclined to treat it flippantly. Isard, on the other hand, thought there might be something in it, but was resentfully disposed towards Lamont for not consulting him from the very first. He was responsible for the safety of the place, in a way, even more than the R.M., he deemed, and should have been informed of what was going on in order to take the necessary steps. But Driffield was fully awake to the gravity of the situation. He moved constantly among the natives, and understood not only their language perfectly but their ways of thought, and customs, and now this development seemed to fit in with, and piece together, what he had only heard darkly rumoured and hinted at among them.

"One thing about it puzzles me," said Orwell. "You say that these fellows were actually posted up there on Ehlatini watching us all the time, Lamont. Now, how on earth could you find that out for certain?"

"Spoor. A considerable body like that could not have got up there and gone away again without leaving plenty of tracks, even when the ground is as dry as it is now. Now could it?"

"Oh, I suppose not," answered Orwell rather hastily, for to him the mysteries of spoor were simply a blank page.

Lamont went on, "I'll take you up there and point it all out to you.

What do you say, Isard?"

"Yes, I'd like to see it," was the answer, sceptically made, for Isard was a retired military man, with but little experience of veldt-craft.

"Here is another trifle or two which is corroborative evidence," went on Lamont, producing the cow-tail ornament which Clare had picked up, as also one he himself had found.

"Ah yes. Well, but two swallows don't make a summer," said Orwell, still flippant.

"No, and two cow-tails don't make an impi," rejoined Lamont equably.

"But these things are never worn as peaceable adornments. Driffield will bear me out in that."

"That's a fact," said the Native Commissioner decisively.

"We ought to have been told, Orwell and I," p.r.o.nounced Isard briskly.

"We'd have arrested this witch-doctor, and laid him by the heels as a hostage."

"You'd have spoilt the whole show," answered Lamont calmly. "The rest would have seen that something was wrong and would have rushed us at a disadvantage. What then? There wasn't a man Jack on that race ground yesterday with so much as a six-shooter in his hip pocket. Where would they all have come in--and the women and children? Think it out a moment. No, my plan was the best."

"Lamont's right," said Driffield. "By Jove, Lamont's right! I've always said we go about a deuced sight too careless in this country, with no more means of defence than a toothpick, a pipe, and a bunch of keys."

"Well, the point is," struck in Orwell, rather testily, "what are we going to do now? Yes. What the very devil are we going to do now?

Supposing I--or rather Isard and I--get laagering up the township, we incur the devil's own responsibility, and then, if nothing comes of it, maybe we shan't get into high hot water at Buluwayo for raising an all-searching scare."

"I still think we ought to have boned the witch-doctor," said Isard, "even if we waited until everybody had gone home. How's that, Lamont?"

"It isn't. In the first place, I had pledged myself to let him go away safe. In the next, you'd have brought matters to a head a lively sight sooner than was wanted. As it is, we have nearly a fortnight to get ready in."

"How do you get at that?"

"Well, I've got at it--never mind how. The point is to see that you profit by the knowledge. I shall. I'm going back to my farm to-night."

"Going back to your farm? The devil you are!" exclaimed Orwell.

"Of course. I'm not going to be the one to start the scare. I've warned every fellow I could, but they took it as a howling joke--like in the case of old Noah when he was knocking up the ark."

There was a laugh at this.

"Well, I've done all I could," he went on. "If you see an idiot sprinting straight for the edge of a precipice and when you warn him off he persists in swearing there's no precipice there--what can you do?

Nothing. Your responsibility ceases, unless you are physically strong enough to hold him back. Now, I am not physically strong enough to hold back the whole Matyantatu district. Give us another fill of your 'bacco, Orwell. Mine has all run to dust."

"The thing is, what's to be done?" went on Orwell, now rather testily.

"You and Isard must settle that," answered Lamont. "I'm not responsible for the safety of the township. Only remember," and here he became impressive, "you have women and children in the place, and lots of the houses are rather outlying. What I would suggest is to formulate some scheme by which you could run together some sort of laager at very short notice. Get all the waggons you can, and sand-bags and store-bags and so on, and warn quietly all the most level-headed of the community, and fix up that they shall get inside it if necessary. Only, do the thing quietly, so you will escape the obloquy of posing as scare-mongers and yet not give it away to the natives that you're funking them. Isard, with his knowledge of strategy, ought to be able to arrange all that to a hair."

This was rather a nasty one to Isard, whom the speaker happened to know had been one of those who was too ready to take in the insinuations of cowardice that had been made against himself, and had been a bit short and supercilious in consequence.

"That's all very fine and large," retorted the police captain. "But what we should like to know is, how the devil we're going to get that very short notice."

"You have native detectives attached to your force," answered Lamont, "who may or may not be reliable--probably not. But failing them, or in any case, if I'm above ground I'll contrive to give it you."

"You? Why, how?"

"I told you I was going to start out for my farm to-night. After that I'm going to pay another visit to Zwabeka's kraal."

"The devil you are!" And Orwell and the police captain looked at each other. The same thought was in both their minds. This Lamont had acquired a reputation for being careful of his skin. Why, even the new arrival, Ancram, who had known him at home, had added to such reputation by the tale he had put about as to the reason why Lamont had found his own county too hot to hold him. Yet here he was proposing to go and put his head into the lion's mouth. The subject of their thoughts, reading them, smiled to himself.

"Certainly I am," he said. "You see, now, I was right in keeping faith with old Qubani. I'll be able to find out something, and when I do I'll let you know by hook or by crook. Meanwhile get everything prepared-- quietly if you can, but--prepared. Now I don't think we've any more to talk about, so I shall get back to Foster's. Coming, Driffield?"

"Yes," answered the Native Commissioner.

The two officials left together looked at each other for a moment in silence.

"Can't make that fellow out," said Orwell, breaking it. "I like Lamont well enough, but there's no doubt about it that on at least two occasions, irrespective of Ancram's yarn about him, he--well, er--caved in. Yet now he's as cool and collected as a cuc.u.mber."

"'M--yes. A collected cuc.u.mber," said Isard.

"Oh, don't be an a.s.s, Isard. Now, I wonder if it's a case of the n.i.g.g.e.r lion-tamer who used to stick his head in the lion's mouth every evening, but when some fighting rough threatened to take it out of him he ran.

That cad wouldn't have gone into that lion's cage even, let alone stick his head into the brute's mouth. No, I expect we are all funksticks on some point or other. What?"

"Perhaps," said Isard frostily, not in the least agreeing. Outwardly he was a tall, fine, soldierly man, looking well set up and smart in his uniform and spurs, and 'Jameson' hat. He had a bit of a reputation for 'side,' and now he little relished playing second fiddle to a man he esteemed as lightly as he did Lamont. "I don't know that the fellow's yarn isn't all c.o.c.k-and-bull and mare's-nest," he went on. "You see, it's in his interest to pose as the saviour of Gandela."