In the Whirl of the Rising Part 26

"Mine," p.r.o.nounced the former. "By the way, Langrishe, there are a dozen thirsty police outside. Serve them a good tot all round."

In the rough dining-room a small Makalaka boy was spreading a murky cloth on a murkier table. The inhabitants of the room were mostly flies, and, incidentally, Lucy and Clare. But they were used to these little defects of detail, by that time.

"Can't give you anything but tinned stuff, ladies," said Langrishe, gruffly apologetic. "Everything fresh has died of the drought or the rinderpest."

That too, did not afflict them, and they discussed Paysandu tongue in that rough-and-ready veldt shanty with an appet.i.te not always present at the most dainty and glittering of snowy tables. Then after a brief rest the mules were inspanned again. "Going to outspan at Skrine's?" said Langrishe, as, having settled up, they bade him good-bye.

"Don't know," answered Wyndham; "I'd like to get on to the Kezane."

"You can't. It's too far and too hot. You'll bust them mules."

"Oh well, I'll see how they get on. So long, Langrishe, we'll look in on the way back."

Poor Langrishe! he was a rough pioneer in a rough country, but a good fellow enough according to his lights. Little they thought, that gay and light-hearted party, as they bade him good-bye--little he thought himself--that not merely his days, but his hours were numbered--and that not even two figures would be needed to write the number of them; for one of the awful features of that ghastly rising was that it whirled down upon its victims as a veritable bolt from the blue. And its victims were scattered, singly or by twos and threes, throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Craftily Wyndham had manoeuvred that Clare should share the front seat with him. She could see the country better, he declared, and if there was more sun there was more air than in the back seat. Clare herself was nothing loth, and moreover the move met with Fullerton's approval.

That sybaritic engineer, feeling genial after a plain but plentiful lunch and two or three long whiskies-and-sodas, felt likewise a little drowsy; and the back seat was more comfortable for the purpose of forty winks. Wyndham was actuated by another motive. He was proud of his driving and he wanted the girl to witness and appreciate it. And she did, and said so, thereby raising Wyndham to the seventh heaven of delighted complacency.

More than once he stole a glance of admiration at the beautiful, animated face beside him. The heat, and a modic.u.m of dust, seemed to affect her not one whit. Poor Lucy Fullerton in the back seat, not less drowsy than her proprietor, was looking a trifle red and puffy from the effects of both, but Clare, in her fresh and cool attire and straw hat, was as fresh and cool and smiling as though heat and dust did not exist.

She did not even want to put up a sunshade, that most abominable of nuisances on the part of the sharer of your driving seat, what time your way lies over none too smooth roads, and through an occasional stony and slippery drift. And they chatted and joked merrily and light-heartedly as they sped over the sunlit landscape with its variety of towering granite kopje near by and hazy line of distant ridge far away against the deep blue of heaven's vault, what time both Fullertons snored placidly behind, one discordantly, the other lightly.

"Our good Fullerton is guilty of a snore fit to give a dead man the nightmare, isn't he, Miss Vidal?" said Wyndham presently, turning his head to look at the offender. That estimable engineer lay back in his corner in an uncomfortable att.i.tude, his mouth wide open and emitting sounds that baffle description. "I really think we ought to wake him."

Clare laughed. "No, no. Let him alone. He's quite happy now."

"He reminds me of a man who was one of a shooting party I was with up on the Inyati. There were several of us, and we slept in a _scherm_, very snug and jolly we were too. But the moonlight nights were heavenly, and I was restless and couldn't sleep--so I used to get up and light my pipe, and stroll about outside, and admire the view, and all that sort of thing. Well, after a couple of nights or so the chap who slept next me objected--swore I was an outrageously restless beggar and disturbed him half a dozen times a night, and wouldn't I go and sleep on the other side of the _scherm_ in future? I put it to him how the demon could I be anything but restless when I found myself turned in alongside of a saw-mill in full blast--not even a respectable saw-mill either, and one of regular habits, but one that started on a hard-grained slab and buzzed through that, then struck a hard knot and bucked and kicked and returned to the charge, and finally screamed through it, and no sooner had it resumed the even tenor of its way than a nail had to be negotiated. Well, as for the cutting through of that nail, I give it up. I suppose the infernal regions alone could produce such sounds of soul-splitting stridency as those evolved by my next-door neighbour's blowpipes when it got to that."

Clare was convulsed.

"How did you settle it?" she said.

"Why, he went and turned in alongside of a man who was stone deaf in one ear, and half in the other, so it didn't matter. Fullerton is a terror to snore, too, and with a little more practice he'll be as good as the other man. Just listen to him."

"Eh? What's that about me?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the object of this remark, starting up spasmodically, and rubbing his eyes. "Why, I believe I've been asleep."

"I don't know about that, old chap," laughed Wyndham. "What we do know is that you must have worked off a biggish contract in the plank sawing line, since we last heard the sound of your manly voice. Don't we, Miss Vidal?"

"Well, this scooting through the air--hot air too--makes one snoozy,"

explained Fullerton, uttering a cavernous yawn. "Hallo! I must have been asleep a good time, we're at Skrine's already."

They had topped a rise, and now on the slope beneath, and in front, stood two or three buildings, with the usual native huts and goat kraal behind. But about the place no sign of life showed.

"Great Scott! I believe there isn't a soul on the place," said Wyndham anxiously. "No, I thought not," as they rattled up to the door, and saw that it was securely shut, and that of the stable padlocked. Then, putting his head round the tent of the waggon, "Sergeant!"

"Sir?" answered the non-com. trotting up.

"Fall back just out of earshot with your men, and do a little language for us, will you? We can't, we've got ladies with us. Skrine's store's no good. Skrine's away and his idiotic stable's locked up. No use outspanning here."

The police sergeant spluttered--and those in the waggon laughed. Yet not very light-heartedly. It was really a nuisance, for it meant that they must push on another stage to the Kezane Store--the original plan, but one which Wyndham had already recognised that Langrishe was right in advising him to abandon; for the heat and the pace had already told on the mules.

They would have laughed less light-heartedly, or rather they would not have laughed at all, had they known that about a mile back, and only a few hundred yards from the road, the bodies of Skrine and three other men, who had fled thus far for their lives, were lying among the bushes, their skulls smashed, and their poor faces hacked and gory beyond recognition, stamped with the ghastly imprint of their awful death-agony, staring upward to the serene and cloudless blue of heaven.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

TOO LATE.

"Not even a bucket, to give the poor devils of mules a drink, Fullerton," said Wyndham, who had been investigating around. "Really, Skrine's beastly inconsiderate."

"Oh, mules are like donkeys," was the impatient answer. "They can get along on a thistle and a half. The only thing to do is to make 'em."

"Oh, can they! Well, in this case I'm afraid they've got to. Come up!"

He shook up the reins and cracked his whip. The long-suffering beasts tautened to their collars, and pulled out again. They were rather fine animals, with a strong Spanish cross in them, and attaining somewhat to the Spanish dimensions. Still, by the time another three miles had been covered, it was evident that they had lost heart. Their spirits and their pace alike began to flag. It was a hot day, and Matabeleland is a thirsty country, to beast no less than to man.

Somehow, too, the spirits of the party seemed to suffer in proportion.

Nothing is more depressing than driving a flagging team, and Wyndham accordingly was less given to mirth and anecdote, even with the stimulus of Clare Vidal at his side, than he had been up till now. Fullerton, characteristically, became snappish and ironical, and roundly cursed Skrine--poor Skrine--for leaving his place shut up and useless. What business had a man to keep a roadside store--and, of course, canteen-- unless it were for the benefit of travellers? They ought to object to the renewal of such a fellow's licence, by Jove they ought! Thus Fullerton.

"I don't believe we'll get to the Kezane before dark at this rate," he growled, "even if we get there at all. We shall probably have to outspan in the veldt. What do you think, Wyndham?"

"Oh, we'll get there all right."

"Er? And what if it's shut up too?"

"Then we'll have to make a camp, that's all. See now, Fullerton, the point of my loading up emergency supplies. You were inclined rather to poke fun at the idea this morning."

"By Jove, you're right after all," conceded Fullerton.

"I've been that way before, and experience, if a hard teacher, is a jolly effective one," said Wyndham. "We shall have to spare the mules a bit though. They're not going at all well."

Then Lucy Fullerton announced she had a headache. She had been looking forward to a cup of tea at Skrine's, and missing this, combined with the heat of the day, had given her a headache. But Clare was as fresh as when they started.

The road had become very rough here, and they were going at a walking pace. Fullerton had dropped off to sleep again, and, as Wyndham put it, had taken on his timber sawing job once more. Suddenly a shot--and then another, rang out some little way behind.

"The police seem to have started a buck," said Wyndham, looking backward round the tilt of the trap. Then, as he withdrew his head, and gathering the reins whipped up the mules to a smart trot, there was a something in the expression of his face that Clare noticed, and instinctively guessed at the reason--and the expression was one of eager anxiety. She, too, put out her head and looked back.

Half the police were dismounted, and, even as she looked, were in the act of delivering a volley among the bushes on the left side of the road. And creeping, and running, and dodging among the said bushes, she made out dark forms, the forms of armed savages; and the line these were taking would bring them straight upon the mule-waggon.

Somehow her predominating instinct was not fear but interest. She had never seen natives in their war-trappings before, and now she looked upon the shields and a.s.segais and cow-hair adornments with vivid interest as something novel and picturesque. The fire of the police had checked them, or rather caused them to swerve, but they continued to run through the bush parallel with the waggon, though giving it a wide berth. But, as the police cantered forward so as to protect the waggon, they closed in nearer.

"What's the row?" testily cried Fullerton, whom the sound of the volley had started wide awake.

"We can keep them back for the present, sir," said the sergeant, riding alongside. "Luckily they don't seem to have any guns. But there's no harm in pushing on to the Kezane as quick as possible."

This Wyndham had already begun to do. But the ground was rough and bad, and the mules were anything but fresh. The fleet-footed natives could easily keep pace with them, if not outstrip them. These could be seen from time to time, flitting through the bushes, their obvious intent being to get ahead if possible and rush the whole outfit at some point in the road where the conditions would be more favourable to themselves.

Lucy Fullerton had uttered a little cry of alarm and then went deadly pale. Her sister, on the other hand, was absolutely cool, and watched every movement of the foe with a deepening interest. Wyndham, his face now stern and set, was giving all his attention to his driving.

Fullerton was cursing his own idiocy at having left his revolver behind.