The League of the Leopard Part 33

"Did you lib for chop them bush boy, Amadu?"

"One of him, sah," was the grim answer. "He done leave them rifle."

"Let me see," said Maxwell. "That is an old cha.s.sepot. Rideau had a number of them. You don't quite follow? Well, you got the wrong man, Amadu. Don't stand there, but slit up this jacket. Chop them doff piece up the side of him."

Amadu did it with the still wet blade, and groaned again when Maxwell, turning his head a little, looked down at the slow, red trickle from his right side, then pa.s.sed his hand across his lips and nodded when he saw what there was upon it.

"Take them lil' silver bottle out of my pocket and pull the top off him," he said very slowly; and when Amadu had done so he gulped down a draught of lukewarm brandy before he spoke again.

"I don't suppose it's much use, but you may as well take the knife that's in the pocket, and feel if there's any potleg near the top. Well, why don't you do it? You need not be frightened. It won't bleed much--that way."

Amadu shivered as he probed the wound. Maxwell's face grew grayer, and after a downward glance out of half-closed eyes he shook his head and stretched out one hand for more of the brandy. Then there was a heavy silence for several minutes.

"If I could lie still with ice to suck until somebody brought a surgeon there might be a chance; but that's out of the question here," he said in a rambling fashion, and then roused himself. "You don't understand.

Well, I'll try in the little I know of your own idiom. We have made two great journeys together, but now it is written that I shall shortly set out on a longer one alone, Amadu."

Maxwell spoke thickly, but there was a wry smile on his lips as he watched the big dark-skinned alien, who, rending his cotton robe, bound a pad of wet leaves upon the injured side.

"It is useless, Amadu." Maxwell coughed once or twice. "Listen. Because of something you may remember you dare not fail me, and this is my word to you. I made a promise which must be kept, and you will carry me to the white man's camp before six days are over, alive or dead."

Amadu looked eastward across the jungle, spread his palms outward, and then bent his head.

"By fire and salt, and the beard of the Prophet it shall be so," he said in his own tongue. "And I would it may also be written that I shall still follow my master should these dogs of bushmen meddle again."

"Your master is one of the infidel," replied Maxwell. "Now see that none of these others know what has overtaken me, and call up the hammock men."

Maxwell was leaning on Amadu's shoulder when the hammock appeared round the bend, and none of the black men who lifted him into it guessed how hard he had been hit; and the monotonous carrying chanty drowned the groans he could not quite suppress. The heavens were opened as the march began again, and the rain rushed down. It lashed the negroes' oily skins until they tingled, the trail became a streamlet, and the mire in places fouled them to the knee; but Amadu, having given his promise, saw to the keeping of it with a terrible persistence, and they trudged on doggedly, the dripping hammock always before them. As one worn-out bearer stumbled another replaced him, and the march progressed until long after darkness fell, and after a few hours' halt in drifting mist it began again.

So the long days and black nights pa.s.sed. There were odd flashes of sunlight, and once or twice the moon looked down; but between these times the air was filled with the steam of the saturated earth or with a rush of lukewarm water.

Late one night, when the weary carriers lay camped for a brief rest in thick forest, Maxwell beckoned Amadu. He lay in the slung hammock, a lantern burning behind his head.

"You will start in two hours. I must reach the camp before another night comes. My time is short," he said.

Amadu, looking down at him gravely, saw that the words were true; but he strove to deny them in his own tongue.

Maxwell smiled wearily, answering him in English beyond his complete comprehension.

"I have known many men of lighter tint I could part from more easily, Amadu. If we reach the camp before another night comes you shall have my big elephant gun."

The dusky man stood upright.

"I carried an Emir's standard. Will you bribe me with a gun to keep the oath I swore?"

Maxwell must have been in a state of torment about that time, but he was in his own way a man of extravagant pride, and it was perhaps to deny his weakness that he spoke again.

"Yet it is a good gun," he said, with a trace of his old dryness.

"Once you will remember at over a hundred paces it drove a smooth ball through a rash bushman's head. You could keep it in remembrance--couldn't you?"

The alien stooped and laid one of the thin hands on his own bent head, then dropped it suddenly, for from somewhere far off a faint sound scarcely more than audible trembled across the forest. Maxwell strove to raise himself to listen, but before he could speak his lieutenant sprang bolt upright, and his voice rang out. It was the sound of firing, and even at that distance something warned the listeners that the quick beat of it betokened modern rifles.

The hammock-bearers, who feared their new master rather more than the old, came up at the double; bundles were thrown hurriedly on to woolly crowns; the tired men swung into line; and the little camp grew empty.

Amadu, limping behind the hammock, laughed.

"If it be the will of Allah, I shall see that big gun make even a bigger hole in more than one heathen's head!"

CHAPTER XXI

RELIEF

Hilton Dane sat with a fouled rifle across his knees in an angle of the stockade protecting what had been the hospital camp. It was, however, a hospital no longer, for some of the sick had recovered, and the rest had died. Dane considered that he might have saved more of them had he been more skilled in medicine, but he had done his best according to his abilities; and none of the poor wretches seemed to blame him. Still, there were times when he felt like a murderer as some unfortunate sufferer's eyes turned in his direction, beseeching help, and he could do nothing but watch him die. They died, for the most part, as apathetically as they had lived, the heathen with the uncomplaining stolidity which had carried them through much hardship and cruelty, and those who followed the prophet testifying that it was Allah's will.

Dane remembered it all that morning as he looked round upon the remnant left him, for it seemed hardly possible that any would see another day.

When the pestilence relaxed its grip he had resumed the mining, until the tribesmen hemmed them in. Once the foe tried to storm the camp, and failed so signally that beyond creeping up and firing into it, they had not repeated the attempt until the preceding night, when a few succeeded in pa.s.sing the defenses. These, however, did not survive very long. On the other hand, the garrison could not get out, and though they had no lack of water, one cannot subsist upon fluid alone, and there was very little else.

The men lay about the stockade with their rusty guns beside them, the negro, Bad Dollar, filing his matchet, as he did continually. The man Dane called Monday, however, crouched close beside him. A curious friendship had sprung up between the two, and they would talk long together with mutual satisfaction, though neither of them fully understood his companion.

A ravine cut the camp off from the forest in the rear, and beyond the front stockade the ground fell steeply to the river. There was forest across it, but only the tops of the higher trees rose out of the mist which shrouded all the plain below.

"You tink Cappy Maxwell perhallups come to-day, sah?" asked Monday.

"He will certainly come some day," Dane answered with a cheerfulness he found it hard to a.s.sume. "It would be opportune if he came just now, especially as he might be too late to-morrow. A miss is rather better than a mile in the present case, but you let too many of your black friends get in last night, Monday."

The dusky man, for he was not a negro, looked up at the speaker doubtfully and shook his head.

"I no savvy all them palaver, sah, but Cappy Maxwell too much fine white man. All them black boy tink each morning they go look him. Cappy Maxwell say he lib for heah, and them boy believe him."

Dane glanced at the dejected objects, even then staring down expectantly into the drifting mist, then at the tally of days that would never be wholly forgotten which he had scored on a post of the stockade. A deeper notch marked each seventh, and after many calculations he had gashed a few across to indicate the probable date of Maxwell's departure from Little Mahu. The black men did not understand the meaning of those scores and regarded the making of them as a religious ceremony, but Dane fancied that Maxwell might understand if he reached the camp too late.

Then, perhaps because he was overwrought, he became conscious of an extravagant pride in his friend. Those half-naked Africans had waited, trusting in Maxwell's promise patiently and long, and trusting it implicitly still. This, it seemed to him, was no small testimony.

"I tink we look Cappy Maxwell one time, sah," Monday began again.

"If he is alive, you will," Dane answered as st.u.r.dily. "Stop those boys'

chattering. Something is going on down yonder now."

Monday stood up staring at the mist.

"Them parrot scream, sah, and them monkey talk. I tink them dam bushmen lib for come back again."

"Then don't let your boys start shooting until they crawl close in,"

Dane answered, with an indifference a.s.sumed to rea.s.sure the rest "Some of those fellows can't hit anything with a gun, and you had better keep a few as a standby in case they come in with a run. Let them wait until the bushmen lib for climb the stockade, and then split their heads with the matchets. You understand me?"

Monday apparently did so, for he moved off with a grin which betokened nothing pleasant for the bushmen; and Dane sat still with his eyes fixed on the forest. Something was evidently happening, but the mist was thick, and he could not see into its dim recesses. His few men were worn down by hunger and continuous watching, and he feared that if the foe pushed the attack with vigor they would certainly get in. There was no doubt that the garrison would make a grim last stand if they did, but that appeared at the best a poor consolation, and Dane became sensible of a coldly murderous indignation against the bushmen.