The Outspan Part 8

"Well, I suppose it becomes an easy task when the bill of fare doesn't vary once a month;" and Nairn looked up curiously at his guest.

"But how do you manage it, eh? No boy ever cooked like this."

Nairn delayed replying until a faint guilty flush touched up the other's cheeks, and then laughingly--and with a significant look of complete intelligence--he said:

"I was just wondering, Mr Geddy, if you were as favourably impressed with it _the last time you were here_?"

Had the roof dropped in on him the collapse of Geddy would not have been more complete. Heron laughed unrestrainedly, perhaps because (as has been said) there is something not altogether displeasing in the misfortunes of our friends; perhaps, too, because his view of the incident referred to was untinged by the bitter sense of personal humiliation, and his humour had therefore full play.

Nairn did not press his discomfited guest, but, smiling pleasantly, took up the burden of the talk.

"I know quite well what you thought of me, and I know even something of what you said about 'the white dog,' etc, but I think (and I fancy neither of you will take offence at plain speaking)--I think that I did right in repulsing what had all the appearance of imposition." He pushed back his chair and turned to the younger man. "Just put yourself in my place, now, Geddy. I came to this place of my own choice. I seek nothing of other men, and I desire to go my own way unmolested. I was here before your people came in their feverish hunt for gold. I dare say I shall be here when you have ended the fruitless search. If things should turn against me and your luck be in the ascendant--why! there is room in Africa for us both. I can move on."

Nairn spoke in an easy, unemotional way, as though discussing an abstract question of minor importance.

"Do you know," he continued after a while, "I sought out this spot and I chose this life because here there is no nineteenth century, no struggle, no ambition, no unrest. Here is absolute peace and content for me because I need take no thought of the morrow. You who spend your lives and energies on the outside edge of civilisation paving a way for others' feet--you are beglamoured by your 'life of freedom, adventure, and romance,' My dear sirs, that is a view that I cannot pretend even to understand, much less sympathise with. It may appear unnatural to you, but it is a fact, that I dislike the society of civilised men, and most of all that of the pioneers--the sappers and miners of civilisation--who think a white skin a warrant for anything. Odd as it may seem to you, I do not regard each white man as a friend or a brother. On the contrary, I see in him a possible enemy and a certain nuisance."

Nairn leaned back in his chair, and thoughtfully polished the bowl of his pipe.

They had finished dinner, and were lighting up for a smoke. The others puffed away in silence.

He had said his say candidly and without heat, and no offence had been meant or taken. Presently Heron said:

"What puzzles me, Nairn, is, since you distrust every white man you see, what the devil made you ask _us_ in?"

"Ay! that's it," said Geddy good-humouredly. "That's the very question I was going to ask. What made you change your opinion?"

"Well," said Nairn, with simple directness, "your case is peculiar. I had a certain sympathy with you, you see, for we are all outlaws together--I from choice!"

Both men coloured faintly, and Geddy asked at once:

"How could you know that at the time? How did you know us--or me?"

"My dear fellow, I knew you by several means. In the first place, I had met you before--you see, I do not see so many white faces that I can't remember them; and in the second place, the _umfaan_ to whom you spoke that night, you recollect, also recognised you."

Geddy, who recalled in a flash both the question he had asked that night and the answer given by the boy, shrank under Nairn's direct, calm look.

"But," he continued without pause, "you forget--or did you not know?-- that for a month there was a detachment of police on the watch for you here."

"Lucifer! What luck we didn't come sooner!" exclaimed Heron, aghast.

"They'd have had us, as sure as G.o.d made little apples!"

"Oh, that was all right," said Nairn, smiling. "I was well posted as to their plans and movements. You see, I heard of your affair in Delagoa, and I knew you had gone for a spell to Mahaash's and Sebougwaan's, and you were safe enough there. In any case, I took the precaution of sending word to Mahaash to stop you if you wanted to come back before the coast was clear. He had a letter for you from me for some time, but returned it yesterday with a message to say you were coming this way, and that was why I was expecting you when you turned up this morning."

Geddy put out his hand, saying:

"By G.o.d, Nairn, you are a trump! You've been a perfect Providence to us; and--and I take back all I said about you that other time."

Nairn smiled and shook his head.

"I'm afraid," he answered, "that it was only because you were in a sc.r.a.pe that I sided with you at all. It seemed a bit of a d.a.m.ned shame that the Government should set on a couple of fellows because they had chosen to settle their grievances their own way, which is what you did, I believe?"

Heron smiled grimly, and nodded reply.

"You seem to have had pretty good information about us," Geddy remarked.

"I suppose your neighbours keep you well posted?"

"Yes; there are Boswells among them, too. I have had faithfully retailed to me the whole of the affair of Mahaash and the silver spur.

Don't put another chief to ride a bucking horse with a spur. They may not all fall as lightly as Mahaash, and they may not all be as good-tempered."

"Upon my soul," said Heron, "I did it in perfect good faith. He wanted a present, and I gave him what I could best spare. How could I possibly know that that old crock would buck?"

"Well, you had a lucky escape. Umketch would have had you kerried.

They don't like to appear ridiculous. How did you lose your pocket-book, Geddy?"

"How--the--deuce--"

Nairn laughed heartily.

"Why, man, it has been here for weeks, waiting for you! They bring me all these things, with their gossip and their troubles. An old fellow, a witch-doctor, brought the pocket-book. He said he found it by divination--casting the dollas; the old fraud! He walked up here, some forty miles, just to gossip about you. It took him three days before he produced the book. The first day he talked of the prospects of rain, and the gra.s.s and the cattle; the next he spoke about the rumours that were afloat about white men working into the ground and bursting it open with guns, and wondered if white men would overrun Swazieland; and he wound up with the admission that he had _heard_ of two having been seen, and on horseback, too, and with rifles. Notwithstanding which, he believed them to be English, for one had given a shilling to a young girl as a present, and the other had a book in which he wrote. There it is on the shelf beside you. He wanted to sell it, but I took it from him, and told him he would probably have bad luck, and one of his cows would be barren or lose her calf this year because he had meddled with your goods, and failed to return the book to you. He stole it, of course?"

"The old scoundrel!" said Geddy, reaching for the book; "he must have found it while we were yet in sight. I left it in a hut in one of the kraals."

"Yes; I'm afraid he was an old thief," said Nairn. "The raw Swazie would think nothing of a twenty or thirty mile jaunt to return it; but these witch-doctors are mostly old Basuto ruffians, steeped in guile.

They have few scruples when there is a prospect of profit."

"On my word," laughed Heron, "I don't know what you may not know about us with agencies like this, and a whole nation making a confidante of you! What a rum life you do lead!"

Nairn looked at him curiously, and remarking dryly that they were a very peculiar people, rose from his seat, and made it clear that he thought it time for bed. He showed them to his own room, where an extra bed had been fixed up, and wishing them "Good-night," left them.

Quoth Geddy:

"I didn't like to ask him where he would sleep if we took his room, as one feels bound to do in common civility. I'd have got another of those gentle cold-blooded sneers for my pains. You know, old chap, with all due respect--and all that sort of thing--for our host, he's beastly uncivil the moment you ask questions. It's a regular case of scratch the Russian and you find the Tartar."

"Yes; you're right. Although it seems a bit ungrateful to say so, I'm dashed if I'd care to have much to do with him. Did you see him shut up when I remarked about his living a queer life? Gad! his lips closed up until they fitted like the valves of an oyster. He's as suspicious as the devil!"

"I say, look here--a photo! Just look, man! 'Harrison Nairn' on the back of it! Quite a decent-looking chap. Heron, I wonder who _she_ is?"

"G.o.d knows! I don't!"

"Someone else's, you can bet, or he wouldn't lie so low, eh?"

"H'm! looks devilish like it."

"I say, Heron."

"What?"

"I wonder what he'd say if he heard us, eh?"