Aletta: A Tale of the Boer Invasion

Chapter Seven.

An Evil Ambush

Standing there within the cave, which had now become his hiding-place, Colvin Kershaw was conscious of very mingled feelings. His hiding-place! Why should he be in hiding? why should he not go forth? Only that to do so would place his life in very serious jeopardy – not at the moment perhaps, for they would hardly venture to murder him openly and in broad daylight; besides, he had his revolver on. No, it would be afterwards, when they could waylay him at some unexpected part of the track – and what was the use of a revolver against the rifles of two or more cleverly ambushed foes? They could shoot him down without the slightest risk to themselves, and shoot him down he knew they would, and that without a moment’s hesitation, once they became aware that he had discovered their perilous because treasonable secret. He would never get out of the mountains alive.

Nor was it reassuring when he satisfied himself as to the identity of the new arrivals, for they were none other than Gideon Roux himself and Hermanus Delport, the big Dutchman who had fallen foul of Frank Wenlock at the roadside inn. Both bore characters of evil repute.

Would they never go on? They were talking voluminously, but were too far off for the burden of their words to travel. The big man was holding his rifle aloft as though threatening Gert with the butt thereof; but the Griqua stood his ground, calm and unintimidated. Would they never go on? Colvin felt his position growing more and more ignominious. Then again, what if they should conclude to come up and investigate? But they did not. To his intense relief they put their horses into the track again and cantered off in the direction whither he himself was bound.

“Very schelm Boer, Gideon Roux, sir,” said Gert, in reply to his master’s questioning. “They asked where my Baas was, and I told them gone after a reebok. They laughed over an Englishman shooting reebok with a revolver, when he could not even shoot anything with a rifle. Then, Baas, Hermanus he said I was a lying Hottentot, and threatened to knock my brains out with the butt of his gun. He said Hottentots and Englishmen were equally liars.”

“Well, it’s of no consequence. But I’m afraid the chances of getting my money out of Gideon Roux to-day are very poor.”

“Does Baas want to get money out of Gideon Roux, then?”

“Of course I do, you ass. He hasn’t paid for those sheep yet.”

“One hundred and twenty-five pounds, Baas. If I had ten pounds I would not offer it for the chance of that hundred and twenty-five pounds;” and Gert shook his head, puckering his face into the most whimsical expression.

“Well, Gert, I believe you’re right. However, I may get some of it. But I don’t think we shall see Gideon. Now that he knows I’m coming up he won’t be at home.”

The contrast between Ratels Hoek and Gideon Roux’ farm was about in proportion to that between their respective owners. A long, low building, with dirty whitewashed walls and thatched roof, standing against a bleak and desolate hill-slope – the front door opening in two parts – dilapidated stone kraals, situated on the slope aforesaid, so that in time of the rains all the drainage thence rushed round the back wall of the house – some draggle-tailed poultry, and two or three fever-stricken sheep – this is what Colvin saw as he rode up to his destination. The while, the air was thick with an awful combination of adjacent dead goat and a partly decomposed oxhide, in process of preparation for the making of reims.

Even as he had expected, Gideon Roux was not at home. His wife, a large, fat, and albeit quite young, already shapeless person, untidy and slatternly of attire, came forward and tendered a moist paw, with the simple salutation “Daag!” or “good-day” – an example followed by her sister, who was a replica of herself though a trifle more shapely and less slovenly but not less awkward. Several brats, in varying stages of dirt, hung around, finger in mouth, gaping at the new arrival. There were some strange Boers there too, with whom Colvin exchanged greetings; but their manner was awkward and constrained. It was a relief to him when his hostess declared that dinner was ready.

It was an appalling meal to the civilised palate and digestion that to which they now sat down. There was a stew, fearfully and wonderfully made, of leathery goat, sweetened to a nauseating point with quince jam, and, for vegetable, boiled pumpkin, containing almost as much water as pumpkin. The cloth was excessively grimy, and, worse still, bore many an ancient stain which showed that the day of its last washing must have been lost in the mists of antiquity, and there was no salt. The coffee, moreover, tasted like a decoction of split peas, and was plentifully interwoven with hair, and straw as from the thatch. The women did not sit down to table with them, but handed in the dishes from the kitchen, and then sat and waited until the men had done.

Through all her natural stolidity it struck Colvin that both the countenance and manner of his hostess wore a flurried, not to say scared, look. She seemed to try and avoid conversation with him; and it squared with the fact of Gideon Roux being from home. Could any information be got out of her? To this end he began to question her in an artless conversational way.

“Gideon will be in directly, Juffrouw?”

“Nee, Mynheer Kershaw. He will not be in. He left home yesterday morning and I do not expect him back until to-morrow night.”

“So? That is strange. Why, I thought I saw him just now, the other side of the poort– just half an hour’s ride from here. He was coming in this direction too.”

“Nee, nee– that cannot be.” And the look of alarm upon the woman’s face seemed to deepen.

“Strange that. Why, I even recognised the man who was riding with him. It looked like Hermanus Delport.”

There was no mistaking the effect this time. She looked downright hideously scared. It could not be, she reiterated. He must have been mistaken. And then to cover her confusion she turned away to a cupboard, and, unlocking it, brought out a decanter of Boer brandy, which she placed upon the table.

“Maagtig, kerel!” cried one of the Dutchmen, seizing the bottle gleefully, and pouring out a copious soepje. “It is true you must have been seeing spoeks. The poort is said to be haunted, you know.”

Colvin fell into the humour of the thing seemingly, and replied in like bantering vein. But he was thinking the while, and thinking hard. The fear evinced by Gideon Roux’ wife would not be manifested by a stolid practical Boer woman under the mere circumstances of a neighbour having come to press her husband for the payment of a by no means ruinous debt. It was something deeper than that. It was more like the demeanour of a naturally respectable and law-abiding person who was made the involuntary sharer of some grim and terrible secret, which she dared neither to divulge nor even hint at. It set him thinking, and the burden of his thoughts was that his return home should be effected as much as possible by daylight, and as far as possible by a different route.

Now, Gideon Roux was no fool of a Boer, neither was his confederate Hermanus Delport, consequently, having disappeared over the neck in the direction of the former’s home, they proceeded to execute a backward manoeuvre. Leaving their horses standing about twenty yards the other side, and well out of sight, they stealthily retraced their steps until they could gain a point which commanded a view of Gert Bondelzwart and the two horses under his charge. Not long had they been there before they saw all they wanted to see. They saw Colvin emerge from the cave under the krantz, and descend to where he had left his servant. But they did not wait until he had rejoined the latter. Mounting their horses, they sent those astonished animals along at a break-neck gallop, which brought them to the homestead fully twenty minutes earlier than the expected visitor. It took them less than five to execute their next move, which was to exchange their long Martinis for a Mauser rifle apiece – a weapon which had not then, openly at any rate, reached the Wildschutsberg section of country, and which they fished out from some hidden recess. Cartridges and a bottle of ‘dop’ they placed in a haversack, and with a significant injunction to their fellow-countrymen there gathered, to keep the Englishman talking and making merry as late as possible, they rode off into the veldt again, taking a line which would put them out of sight of the house in about three minutes.

“He knows too much, that damned Englishman,” snarled Gideon Roux, shading a match to light his pipe, while his steed took him along at a fast “triple.” He was a sinister-looking, swarthy-faced Boer, with a short black beard and a great hooked nose like the beak of a bird of prey. “We must teach him – him and his Hottentot – not to come pushing his snout into other people’s affairs.”

“That is so,” assented the other. “But, Gideon, what if there is a noise made about it, and they are found afterwards? The English will hang us. And he is a friend of Oom Stephanus.”

“Maagtig! By the time they are found the English will not be here to hang anybody, and we, ou’ maat (old chum) – we shall have deserved the thanks of all true patriots for having put out of the way an enemy of our country. Oom Stephanus – well, he is a patriot now, his own nephew, Adrian De la Rey, told me so. What is one cursed Englishman more than another to a good patriot. He cannot be a friend to such.”

“That is so,” replied the big Boer laconically.

For about an hour they kept on their way, and their way was a rough one, for they avoided the regular track, winding in and out among the mountains, now putting their horses up a steep boulder-strewn slope, then being obliged to dismount in order to lead the animals down a kind of natural rock staircase. Finally, they drew rein upon a neck, where, lying between two great boulders, themselves utterly invisible from below, they could command the broken, winding, rocky track for some little distance, either way.

“He cannot be here yet,” said Gideon Roux as he scanned the road, which, like a snake, wound along the valley beneath. “Hans Vermaak will see to that. Only, I hope Katrina will not let them have too much to drink. Hans is quite fool enough to get drunk and jolly, and insist on the Englishman stopping the night Hans is the devil to drink, and then he becomes jolly. That is where he is such a fool.”

They hid the horses well down over the other side of the ridge, lest the approach of the other animals should cause them to neigh, then returned to their positions under the rocks. The road was about three hundred yards beneath, and on the other side of it was the river bed, now dry. This circumstance, too, came into the strategy of the murderous pair.

“See now, Mani,” (Hermanus abbreviated), said Gideon Roux. “If we shoot as we always shoot, both will drop into the river bed. And to-night,” looking upward at a black cloud which was thickly and gradually spreading, “the river will come down. I will take the Englishman, and you take the Hottentot.”

“Ja, but I am not so sure with these damned Mausers,” growled Hermanus Delport, looking up and down his weapon. “I might miss – then where would we be? We had better have kept to our old Martinis. We understand them.”

“Nee, nee. It comes to the same thing, I tell you, and if you miss you can go on shooting until you raak. I know I shan’t miss. Maagtig, kerel! What are you doing? Put away that pipe!”

But Hermanus protested he was not going to do without his smoke for all the adjectival English in Africa or in England either, and it took at least ten minutes of his confederate’s time and talk to persuade him that not only the spark but the smoke of a pipe was visible for any distance in the clear, yet half-gloomy atmosphere then prevailing. For the leaden lour of the heavens pointed to the coming of a storm.

In effect the surroundings were very much in harmony with the dark deed of blood which these two miscreants were here to perpetrate. The wild and rugged recesses of the Wildschutsbergen, sparsely inhabited and but seldom travelled, spread around in grim, forbidding desolation. Great krantzes towered skyward, rearing up from the apex of smooth boulder-strewn grass slopes, and here and there a lofty coffee-canister shaped cone, turret-headed, and belted round with the same smooth cliff-face, stood like a giant sentinel. Below, the valleys, deep and rugged, seamed with dongas, and that through which the track lay, skirting the now dry bed of the Sneeuw River. No sign of life was upon this abode of desolation; no grazing flock, or stray klompje of horses, not even a bird, springing chirruping from the grass; and away yonder the further crags stood against a background of inky cloud, which, gradually working nearer, amid low mutterings of thunder, was bringing the storm which should act as accomplice in hiding the slain victims of the two ambushed murderers.

“That is right,” chuckled Gideon Roux, rubbing his hands. “The river will come down to-night like the devil. By this time to-morrow the Englishman and his Hottentot will be nearly at the sea. It is hundreds of miles off, but a flooded river travels as quick as a train.”

“What if they are stranded half-way?” said the other, with an evil sneer.

“Then the jackals will eat them. Either way it matters nothing.”

Darker and darker it grew. The storm cloud began to throw out loose masses of flying scud, through which the moon now and again shone out in fitful gleam. Still, to these two their prey came not in sight.

“I like not this,” growled Hermanus. “This is no light to shoot by. We may miss one or both, and to miss one is as bad as to miss both. Besides, the river may not take them down after all. We two may be hanged for to-night’s work, Gideon.”

“Hanged? Oh, yes! See now, Mani, why I would have it done with Mausers. Their bullet makes a small hole, our Martini bullet makes a large hole. And there is not a Mauser or a Lee-Metford in the Wildschutsberg. Afterwards our guns are examined, and they are the old Martinis. Our bullet does not fit the hole. Now, do you not see, you eselkop?”

“Ja, I see. But —stil, man. Here they come.”

A clink of the hoof of a shod horse coming down the track was borne faintly upward. The two assassins crouched in their ambush, a tigerish glare in their eyes. Their pieces were levelled.

“Ready, Hermanus,” whispered Gideon Roux. “When they come six paces the other side of yon white stone, then shoot.”

Chapter Eight.

Tragical – And Aletta

Hans Vermaak had and had not carried out his instructions; which is to say that in so far as he had he had done so by halves.

By nature he was a genial soul was Hans Vermaak, by inclination a jovial one. He would not wantonly have hurt a fly or an Englishman, let alone so companionable a one as Colvin Kershaw; but then the terrible point to which racial hatred was worked up had engendered a feverish thirst for conspiring that was almost Celtic, in the stolid and pre-eminently practical Boer. The discovery of the concealed arms would be a serious thing, a very serious thing, but of its seriousness, great as that was, they took an exaggerated view. Inherently the Boer is a great respecter of the law and of the person of its representative or representatives, and most of these were sufficiently unsophisticated to look upon their undoubtedly treasonable proceeding as a hanging matter if brought to the notice of the authorities. Hence none felt any qualm as to the strong measures to be adopted towards the hostile sharer of the secret.

In vino Veritas! When we say that none felt a qualm we should have exempted Hans Vermaak – in his cups. The misgiving expressed by Gideon Roux as to the potential liberality of his spouse in the matter of the grog was not unfounded. There was enough in the bottle to make three Dutchmen – two would not partake – very lively, and the liveliest of all was Hans Vermaak. He became, moreover, enormously fraternal towards Colvin, who was deftly drawing him out, and finally did exactly as Gideon Roux had predicted, insisted upon his remaining the night, for he, Hans, was Gideon’s brother-in-law, and therefore one of the family. He forgot the patriot cause, and only remembered it to declare that this was too good an Englishman to be shot, and so forth, which declaration under ordinary circumstances might mean nothing, but read by the light of subsequent events and the speaker’s manner, Colvin took to mean rather a great deal.

The latter made several futile attempts at getting away, and at length succeeded. He himself, although he had borne his share, was in no wise affected by the liquor he had been taking – for the matter of that he could have drunk the lot of them under the table over and over again – and throughout the talk, which became more and more boisterous and unguarded, had kept an ear open and an eye keenly alive to every sign. But by the time he did break loose, and Gert was standing before the door with the horses saddled up, he realised that the more prudential side of his resolution had failed and that an infinitesimal portion of his homeward journey would be accomplished by daylight.

He had bidden good-bye all-round – not failing to observe during the process the awful look of scare upon the face of his hostess as she just touched his hand with a limp, moist paw. He had paced his horse about a hundred yards from the door, not sorry to see the last of the frowsy, dirty place, when he heard his name called. Turning in the saddle, he beheld the genial Hans hurrying towards him.

“Which way do you go home by?” said the Dutchman, somewhat flurriedly.

“Oh, the usual way, Hans.”

“So? You are going home, then.”

“Oh yes.”

“But you must not. Klip Poort is bad to go through at night Ja, it is bad, very bad. Go some other road. There is the road to Stephanus De la Rey’s, for instance. Go by it.”

“But it is about twice the distance,” objected Colvin, who began to read considerable meaning into the other’s anxiety regarding his movements.

“That matters nothing. Look, you are a good sort of Englishman and I like you. Klip Poort is bad to go through at night, very bad.”

“Very well, Hans, I’ll take your advice. So long.”

Klip Poort, the point referred to, was a narrow, rugged defile overhung with large rocks, about five miles on his homeward way. As well as the road passing through, it likewise gave passage to the Sneeuw River, which, when full to any great extent, flooded the roadway to some depth. It might very well be to this form of danger that the Boer’s hidden warning applied, and yet some unaccountable instinct warned Colvin that it was not.

“Gert.”

“Baas?”

“Did you hear what Hans Vermaak was saying just now?”

“Part of it, sir.”

“Why do you think he wanted us not to go back by way of Klip Poort?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Gert, you are an ass.”

“Perhaps he thought the river might be ‘down,’ sir. The clouds are very thick and black up in the bergen.”

“Yes.”

An indescribable feeling of helpless apprehensiveness came over Colvin, and indeed it is a creepy thing the consciousness that at any step during the next half-dozen miles or so you are a target for a concealed enemy whose marksmanship is unerring. For this was about what he had reduced the situation to in his own mind, and within the same heartily anathematised the foolish curiosity which had moved him to go up and explore the hiding-place of the concealed arms. That Gideon Roux and his confederate were aware that he shared their secret he now believed. They must have waited to watch him, and have seen him come out of the cave; and with this idea the full force of Vermaak’s warning came home to him.

But was that warning genuine? Was it not destined rather to induce him to take the other way? It was impossible to determine. Sorely perplexed, he rode on, thinking the matter over, and that deeply. The sky overhead grew darker and darker with the spread of a great cloud – the earth with the fall of evening. There was a moon, but it was obscured. By the time the rocks which marked the entrance to the poort came into view it was already night.

Two ways branched here – one his ordinary way home, the other that which Hans Vermaak had urged him to take. Some twenty feet down, at the bottom of a precipitous slope, was the river bed, dry save for a shallow, stagnant reach here and there. Which way should he take? Now was the time to decide.

“Get on, Aasvogel, you fool! Ah, would you, then?”

This to his horse, accompanied by a sharp rowelling with each heel. For the animal had stopped short with a suddenness calculated to unseat and certainly irritate the rider, and was backing and shying like the panic-stricken idiot it was; the cause of all this fluster being a white stone standing almost vertically up from the roadside, in the gloom looking for all the world like the traditional ghost.

“Whigge – whirr!” Something hummed through the air, and that so near he could feel the draught. Two jets of flame had darted forth from the hillside above, simultaneously with a dry, double crack. Two more followed, but had it been a hundred Colvin was utterly powerless to investigate, for his horse, which had already sprung forward beneath the sharp dig of the spurs, now took to wild and frantic flight, and for some moments was completely out of hand. By the time he got it in hand again he had been carried a good mile from the scene of this startling though not wholly unexpected occurrence.

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“You d – d Englishman! Be quiet. I’ll knock your head off just now.”