In the Whirl of the Rising

“Oh yes. Slightly, and didn’t care for him at that. He turned up at my place here one night. Peters had picked him up in woeful plight down Pagadi way – and gave me the idea he had come to stay. I’ve nothing to say against the chap, mind, but I don’t care for him.”

Clare was no mischief-maker, still she could not help saying —

“Well, I don’t think he’s any friend of yours, from what I’ve heard.”

“No? I suppose not. He’s been putting about a yarn or two of his own here with regard to me, with just that substratum of truth about it that makes the half lie the most telling. But – good Lord, what does it matter?”

Clare’s eyes opened wide. There was no affectation about this indifference – and how different this man was to the general ruck. Instead of getting into a fume and promising to call the delinquent to account, and so forth, as most men would have done, this one simply lay back against the hard cold stone, puffed out a cloud of smoke, and said, “What does it matter?”

“Then you are indifferent to the opinion of other people about you?” she said.

“Utterly. Utterly and entirely. I look at it from this point of view. If anything is said to my discredit, those whose opinions are worth having won’t believe it. If they do, their opinions are not worth having – from my stand-point. See?”

“Yes, I do. You are a practical philosopher.”

“I don’t aim at being. The conclusion is sheer common-sense.”

Then there fell silence. The rays of the newly risen sun poured down hotter and hotter upon the parched-up land, but the air was wonderfully clear. Behind lay the township, its zinc roofs flashing and shimmering in the unstinted morning radiance. Before lay roll upon roll of billowy verdure, and, on the right, a vast expanse stretching away, blue with distance, to the far skyline. Bright, peaceful and free, yet at that moment seething with demoniacal hate and the planning of demoniacal deeds. Yet here they sat, these two, conversing as unconcernedly as though such things were as completely impossible, as completely of the past, as one of them, at any rate, had up to half an hour ago imagined.

“I must be going back,” said Clare. “This is only a before breakfast constitutional.”

“I’ll go too. I’ve found out all I want to. I shall start back home this evening.”

“This evening? Why, you are never going back to that lonely farm again, with these savages plotting to murder us all?”

“Yes, I am. They won’t do it yet I am persuaded of that.”

Clare’s eyes dilated, as he walked beside her, leading his horse. The ‘coward’ again, she could not help thinking to herself. How many of those who so decried him, knowing what he did, would have started on a long solitary ride across the country to return to a solitary, and practically defenceless, dwelling at the end of the journey?

“But get Fullerton to take you into Buluwayo for a time,” he repeated, as they neared the township. “This place is too small, and straggling, and might be rushed.”

“But he won’t. He’d laugh at the idea, if I put it to him.”

“Yes. I know. Fullerton’s a pig-headed chap – very. Still you needn’t put it on its true grounds. Make out you want to shop, or see a dentist, or something, and get your sister to back you up. It’ll be strange if you can’t work it between you. Only – do it – do it.”

She was impressed by his earnestness, and duly promised.

“Do look in and see us before you go out, Mr Lamont,” she said, as they regained the township. “When do you start?”

“About sundown. There’s a nice new moon, and it’s pleasanter to ride at night, also easier on one’s horse.”

“Well, we shall be at home all the afternoon, Lucy and I. Good-bye for the present.”

Chapter Fifteen.

A Council of War

When the strokes of the horse’s hoofs told that he had mounted and was riding away, Clare could not resist turning to glance back at him. How well he looked in the saddle, she thought, and then the calm strength of the almost melancholy face as he talked to her, the easy indifference to what would have irritated and stung most men, came back to her. This was an individuality absolutely new to her experience, and one of vivid interest, so vivid indeed that she began to recognise with a sort of wonder that she could not get it out of her thoughts. She recalled their conversation. If he had laid himself out to say exactly the right thing all through it, he could not have pleased her more, and yet it was obvious that he was talking perfectly naturally, and without premeditation – certainly without an idea of pleasing anybody. But – was she going to make a sort of hero of the man? Well, it certainly began to look something like it. So when at the breakfast-table Fullerton remarked —

“Didn’t I see you talking to Lamont just now, Clare, over by the Sea Deep stands?” she felt that the mere question evolved within her quite an unexpected degree of combativeness.

“Yes, you very probably did,” she answered. “We met during my morning constitutional while you lazy people were snoring. He’s very interesting.”

“Is he?”

The tone, savouring of curt incredulity, whipped up the combative instinct still more, as she answered, with quite unnecessary crispness —

“Certainly. He’s got ideas, anyhow. So there’s that much interesting about him, if only for the scarcity of those who have.”

“Ideas or not, he funked again yesterday. When Jim Steele wanted him to take his coat off,” sneered Fullerton. Then the accumulated combativeness broke its barriers and fairly overwhelmed the incautious sneerer.

“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, Dick. 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,” pronounced 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,” pronounced 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 cucumber.”

“’M – yes. A collected cucumber,” said Isard.

“Oh, don’t be an ass, Isard. Now, I wonder if it’s a case of the nigger 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 cock-and-bull and mare’s-nest,” he went on. “You see, it’s in his interest to pose as the saviour of Gandela.”

And he clanked out, not quite so convinced of what he preached, all the same.

“Say, Mr Lamont,” grinned the bar-keeper, as he and Driffield entered the hotel, “I’m afraid you won’t be able to pull off that scrap with Jim Steele to-day. He’s much too boozed.”

“Is he? Oh well, I really can’t be expected to hang about Gandela waiting till Jim Steele condescends to be sober again. Now can I? I put it to anyone.”

“Certainly not,” said Driffield. “You’ve given him every chance.”

A murmur of assent went up from those in the room, with one or two exceptions. These, charitably opined, though they did not say so, that it was ‘slim’ of Lamont putting off the affair, knowing what sort of state the other man would be in for the next three days at least. Lamont went on —

“He can take it on any time he likes. For the matter of that he can come out to my place and have it there. I’ll put him up for the occasion. Peters ’ll see fair play. What more can I do!”

It was agreed that the speaker stood vindicated.

Chapter Sixteen.

First Blood

Peters was fossicking away at his shaft sinking, rather as if nothing had happened, yet all the while he was thinking out the situation from every side.

For a good deal had happened, and that since the averted tragedy of the race meeting. True to his word Lamont had made another visit to Zwabeka’s kraal, and had persisted in making it alone. This Peters would not hear of, and after considerable altercation they had gone together. But for all they elicited – anything definite, that is – they might just as well have stayed at home; yet there was a something in the demeanour of the savages that seemed to make up for this. They were altogether too cordial, too effusive – in short, over-acted their part. From this, also true to his word, Lamont had duly sent in to Orwell the deductions he had drawn.

It had been a risky venture, knowing what they did. They had avoided spending a night there, and all the while, not seeming to be, were keenly on the alert, outwardly chaffing at ease with their doubtful entertainers. Qubani was away; where, nobody knew. Au! an isanusi was not an ordinary mortal, they said. His goings and comings were perforce mysterious at times. However, they had returned in safety and had experienced no overt manifestation of hostility.

On these things was Peters pondering as he kept his boys tolerably hard at their job. The new development of affairs was particularly vexatious to him, in that he had of late detected signs that this time he was not toiling in vain. Any day, any moment, might disclose a rich field, and then what fun it would be to go to Lamont and say – “What have I always told you? We’ve ‘struck ile’ at last, and now you can get away home – and clear off all the encumbrances on your family place, and then – where the devil do I come in?” Yes, he had often rehearsed the revelation, and doing so had come to the conclusion that even luck had its seamy side.

What on earth would he do when Lamont had gone for good? Lamont would probably marry and take up his position, and then he, Peters, with all the wealth he was going to take out of this hole in front of him – why, he was far happier as things were.

You see, he was rather an out-of-the-way character was Peters.

Now a murmur among his boys attracted his attention, and Lamont himself appeared on the scene.

“Here, what the devil d’you think, Peters?” he said glumly, as he slid from the saddle. “Here’s this fellow Ancram turned up again.”

“Ancram? Good Lord! Has he come to stay?”

“Rather. He borrowed a horse from Fullerton, and he’s got luggage enough on his saddle to weigh down two railway porters. Said he had such a good time before that he must come and see us again. I couldn’t turn him away, and so there he is, damn him.”

Peters roared.

“Don’t you get your shirt out over it, old chap,” he said. “We’ll work him out with a real scare this time – and that mighty sharp.”

Here again how little did the speaker know how much earnest there was underlying this promise. The shimmer of heat rose from the pleasant roll of undulating country. The tranquil life of the veldt lay outspread around, peaceful, sunny, smiling; but – beneath?

“That’s all jolly fine,” rejoined Lamont disgustedly. “But he’s grown too knowing since he’s been at Gandela. I believe he smokes that we were ‘kidding’ him before.”

“Well, we’ll do it more to the purpose this time, and no mistake. Oh, don’t you bother about it, Lamont. We’ll get the biggest grin out of him we ever got yet. He shall earn his keep that way, by the Lord Harry!”

“It’ll have to be a big one then; I detest the chap. Well, I must be getting on. Two more rinderpest cases. What do you think of that?”

“Nothing. Wait till I get a little deeper here; and if all the cattle in Matabeleland were to snuff out, it wouldn’t matter.”

“Well, that’s what they’re going to do. This is a God-forsaken country, after all. So long.”

About an hour after Lamont had gone, two young Matabele came into the camp, and saluted pleasantly.

“Why, who are these, Inyovu?” asked Peters, seeing that in outward appearance they were the very image of his boy.

“They are my brothers, Nkose.”

“Your brothers? And what do they want?”

“They would like to work at the mine, Nkose.”

“But I don’t want them. I have boys enough.”

“But such are only Makalaka, Nkose. These are much better. Au!”

With the last exclamation the speaker turned sharply. As he did so, Peters instinctively turned his head to look in the same direction, and – received a whack on the back of it that made him stagger. A shout was raised —

“Throw him in! Throw him in!” The mouth of the shaft gaped behind him. The three young savages closed with him, and Inyovu called to the other two to pinion him while he got in another blow with the pick-handle. They were young, and athletic. Peters was not young, but was athletic too, and the struggle became a furious one. He could not draw his revolver, because, foreseeing the attempt, one of them had kept a hand upon it. Inyovu the while was dancing round the combatants, holding a pick-handle all ready to strike when he saw a chance of not felling one of his brothers instead. Then Peters saw his chance, and – kicked. Right in the pit of the stomach it caught the man who was giving him most trouble. With a gasp of anguish this fellow staggered back, then doubling up, toppled down the shaft behind him. Quick as lightning, and taking advantage of the momentary panic, Peters shot forth his left fist, and caught Inyovu under the jaw. It was a regular knock-out blow, and Inyovu dropped. The other, however, still hung on, and, looking up, the reason for this became clear.

Heading for the spot at a run came quite a number of natives, and shields and assegais glancing through the sparse bush told upon what sort of errand were these. It was manifest that the rising had begun.

Do what he would Peters could not throw off his wiry antagonist, who hung on to him like a terrier, utterly impervious to kicks or blows, the object being to prevent him from effecting his escape until the others should come up, and then – good-night! The Makalaka boys had already taken to their heels and were fleeing wildly.

Then fortune favoured him. His adversary slipped on a loose stone, and in trying to save himself loosed the hand which had been gripping the revolver holster. It was a slip there was no retrieving, and in a twinkling a bullet crashed through his ribs, sending him spinning round and round, to flatten out, face downward, to the earth.