In the Whirl of the Rising Part 28

On a half-sheet of notepaper he wrote hurriedly--laconically--

"Farm attacked by Matabele, and blown up. Peters, Ancram, and self escaped--have just come in. Went to warn Tewson, found whole family ma.s.sacred. Saw impi this morning, heading as though towards Kezane Store. Warn Isard, and take precautions.

"Lamont."

This he folded and addressed to the Resident Magistrate, and the boy was started off at once.

"I've a bit of good news for you, Mr Lamont," said Foster, as the latter returned--tubbed, and to that extent refreshed--to begin upon the much needed food. "That _rooi-schimmel_ horse you left with Greene the day you were in for the race meeting--well, he's all right again now.

Greene brought him in couple of days back, and there isn't an atom of lameness about him."

"That's good news indeed, for it strikes me there's plenty of work sticking out for him."

They had just finished breakfast, and were enjoying the luxury of an excellent cigar when Orwell arrived. He was in a great state of excitement, and glanced meaningly in the direction of Foster, but this the hotel-keeper pretended not to see. He was all on thorns to hear the news himself, for that news there was--great and grave--he felt sure.

"Is this a fact, Lamont?" began Orwell, producing the slip of paper.

"Good Lord, man, but the whole country must be in a blaze!"

"So it must. By the way, Orwell, of course you've got that laager all fixed up by this time."

"Er, well--no--the fact is we have been planning it out, and--er--"

"You haven't got it up yet? Well, if you'll take my advice you'll set about it at once. It isn't a case of 'another of Lamont's scares' this time," he added, with somewhat excusable bitterness. "By the way, Foster, you might bring us another bottle of the same. Oh, and you'll join us again."

"Thanks. But, Mr Lamont, for G.o.d's sake, say what _has_ happened. We are a trifle interested too, as well as our officials, and I, for one, have got a wife and family into the bargain."

The hotel-keeper was a very good fellow, and he and Lamont liked each other. Said the latter--

"Quite right, Foster. Fetch the liquid first and then you shall hear all about it. It's time everyone knew, but I don't want to create a panic. One of 'Lamont's scares.'"

Orwell looked rather foolish.

"Oh, don't keep harping on that, old chap," he said. "We are all liable to make mistakes, and I, for one, am the first to own it. And now the first thing to do is to organise a defence committee, and set to work with a will."

Then, as the hotel-keeper returned, Lamont started to narrate all that had befallen, the attack on Peters, then on the homestead, and how they had stood off the savages until night.

"They must have found dynamite while looting," he said, "for soon after we'd left we heard the devil of an explosion."

He continued his narrative shortly and succinctly. When he got to the ma.s.sacre of the Tewsons, his listeners grew white with horror.

"Yes. We saw what we don't want to see again, and would like to forget we ever had seen. And now we'd better get hold of the best men here, Orwell, and fix up a plan. Jennings and Fullerton, and some of the others."

"Fullerton's not here," said Orwell. "He started for Buluwayo only this morning with his wife and sister. Wyndham's driving them--"

"WHAT?"

It was Lamont who had spoken--shouted, rather. And in truth the interruption was startling. He who made it was leaning forward over the table, his dark face without a vestige of colour, his eyes staring as though already they beheld a reproduction of the grim horror upon which they had so recently gazed, only, in this case--

"Yes. But they had an escort," explained Orwell wonderingly. "Isard sent some police with them."

"Some police! How many?" in a dry staccato tone.

"Oh, a dozen, he told me. Some of his best men--"

"Come on, Peters," shouted Lamont, springing to his feet and not waiting to hear any more. "We've got our work cut out for us, and we'll get at it at once. An escort--a dozen police--and the whole country up in a blaze! Foster, let me have the best horse you've got in your stables for Peters--you shall name your own price. Now then, who'll volunteer?"

going out into the bar, where several men had already collected. It had got about somehow that something was in the wind, and more and more were rolling up at Foster's to see what they could find out. "Who'll volunteer? Fullerton's been idiot enough to start his womenkind off for Buluwayo this morning. They'll be at the Kezane Store by the time we catch them up, and we saw with our own eyes an impi, a couple of hundred strong, heading straight for that very point this morning. The whole country's in a blaze. My farm's been blown up, and Tewson and his family are all murdered."

"That's quite true," said Peters.

"Well, Peters and I, and as many of you as will volunteer, are going to start off down the road now at once to the rescue of Fullerton's outfit--if no one'll join, the two of us will go alone. You see we've just seen white women and children who'd been cut up into pieces.

Fullerton has women with him. Who'll volunteer?"

Several men stepped forward without hesitation. Others would have, but one had no horse, another no rifle, and so forth. All these objections were met by Lamont without a moment's hesitation.

"Get them then," he said, "and that at once. I'll be responsible for those who are too out of luck to get them for themselves. Get them, and roll up here as soon as ever you can. Not a minute to lose."

To describe the state of excitement that prevailed is rather beyond our strength. Most of the men were wiry, hard-bitten prospectors, some of them, as the speaker had put it, 'out of luck,' a euphemism for out of funds, others were doing a spell of taking it easy, but all were enthusiastic to join. But all stared at Lamont with wonder. He whom they had never known other than the soul of coolness, and reticence, and caution, was now on fire. His eyes seemed to blaze from his colourless face, his voice trembled with its earnestness as he drove home his appeal to them by drawing a picture of these two helpless women, refined and daintily raised, at the mercy of--in the power of--these black fiends; of whose 'mercy' in such cases, he and those with him had, with their own eyes, just beheld a sample.

"I say, Lamont," began Orwell, most of the men having gone away to effect their preparations, "don't you think you're rather over-estimating the risk. You know you're tired and excited, and all that."

"No, I don't. I know what I'm about, and I know what I've seen. I tell you, Orwell, if you'd listened to me a fortnight ago instead of loftily pooh-poohing everything I told you, it might have made a lot of difference."

"What's all this scare-mongering about," began another man who had just entered. "Here they are telling me, Lamont, that you're organising an expedition to go to the relief of the Fullertons. Why, man, they've got a dozen of our police with them."

The speaker was Isard's subaltern. Isard himself was out on a patrol just then.

"All serene, Blackmore. If they had a hundred of your police they might not have one too many. At any rate I've served against the wily Matabele. I don't know whether you have."

"Er--perhaps not. Still you can't want so many men. We've none too many left for the defence of the town."

"Oh, d.a.m.n the defence of the town! These two helpless women are in the heart of the country. They ought never to have been allowed to move from here. Fullerton's a bigger fool than even I took him for."

"How about Ancram?" struck in Peters, anxious to avert a breeze. "Shall we take him?"

Ancram the while had dropped on a couch the moment he had done breakfast, and had gone fast asleep, thoroughly worn out with exhaustion. He was there still.

"No. He's no use. Leave him to help in 'the defence of the town,'"

sneered Lamont. "Hallo, Jim Steele. We haven't had that sc.r.a.p yet, but it'll keep a little longer. I want you now to come and help fight someone else. The whole country's in a blaze! Fullerton's outfit's along the Buluwayo road, and Peters and I saw a big impi making straight in that direction this morning."

"I'll go, Lamont," said the big fellow, who had just come in to see what all the row was about. "Oh, this is nuts! We'll make those black swine spit. How many cartridges shall I take?"

"Just as many as ever you can carry. The same applies to all hands."

There was a trampling of horses outside. Already the men were beginning to roll up, and soon Lamont found himself at the head of some two dozen, well-armed and fairly well mounted, all alert and willing, and chock-full of eagerness for a fight.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.