Read Ebook: 'Tween Snow and Fire: A Tale of the Last Kafir War by Mitford Bertram

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Ebook has 1520 lines and 110845 words, and 31 pages

with fury, Carhayes discharges his remaining barrel full at the tall savage, who is still advancing towards him, and whose threatening demeanour and formidable aspect seems to warrant even that extreme step in self-defence. The Kafir falls.

Surprised, half cowed by this unlooked for contingency, the others pause irresolute. Before they can recover themselves a warning shout, close at hand, creates a diversion which seems likely to throw a new light on the face of affairs.

"YOU HAVE STRUCK A CHIEF."

He looked as if he meant it, too. The Kafirs, deeming discretion the better part of valour, judged it expedient to temporise.

"Don't do anything so foolish, Tom," said a voice at his side, and a hand was stretched out as though to arrest the aim of the threatening piece. "For God's sake, remember. We are not at war--yet."

"That be hanged!" came the rough rejoinder. "Anyway, we'll give these fellows a royal thrashing. We are two to three--that's good enough odds. Come along, Eustace, and we'll lick them within an inch of their lives."

"We'll do nothing of the sort," replied the other quietly and firmly. Then, with an anxiety in his face which he could not altogether conceal, he walked his horse over to the prostrate Kafir. But the latter suddenly staggered to his feet. His left shoulder was streaming with blood, and the concussion of the close discharge had stunned him. Even his would-be slayer looked somewhat relieved over this turn which affairs had taken, and for this he had to thank the plunging of his horse, for it is difficult to shoot straight, even point blank, with a restive steed beneath one, let alone the additional handicap of being in a white rage at the time.

Of his wound the Kafir took not the smallest notice. He stood contemplating the two white men with a scowl of bitter hatred deepening upon his ochre-besmeared visage. His three countrymen halted irresolute a little distance--a respectful distance, thought Carhayes with a sneer--in the background, as though waiting to see if their assistance should be required. Then he spoke:

"No good. No good, whatever, as I am always telling you," rejoined the other decisively, "Kafir locations and game can't exist side by side. Doesn't it ever strike you, Tom, that this game-preserving mania is costing you--costing us, excessively dear."

"Perhaps. But there may be no war after all. Meanwhile you have won the enmity of every Kafir in Nteya's and Ncanduku's locations. I wouldn't give ten pounds for our two hundred pound pair of breeding ostriches, if it meant leaving them here three days from now, that's all."

"Oh, shut up croaking, Eustace," snarled Carhayes, "And by the way, who the deuce is this sweep Hlangani, and what is he doing on this side of the river anyway?"

"He's a Gcaleka, as he said, and a petty chief under Kreli; and the Gaikas on this side are sure to take up his quarrel. I know them."

"H'm. It strikes me you know these black scoundrels rather well, Eustace. What a queer chap you are. Now, I wonder what on earth has made you take such an interest in them of late."

Carhayes made no reply, unless an inarticulate growl could be construed as such, and the two men rode on in silence. They were distant cousins, these two, and as regarded their farming operations, partners. Yet never were two men more utterly dissimilar. Carhayes, the older by a matter of ten years, was just on the wrong side of forty--but his powerfully built frame was as tough and vigorous as in the most energetic days of his youth. He was rather a good looking man, but the firm set of his lips beneath the thick, fair beard, and a certain shortness of the neck, set forth his choleric disposition at first glance. The other was slightly the taller of the two, and while lacking the broad, massive proportions of his cousin, was straight, and well set up. But Eustace Milne's face would have puzzled the keenest character reader. It was a blank. Not that there was aught of stupidity or woodenness stamped thereon. On the contrary, there were moments when it would light up with a rare attractiveness, but its normal expression was of that impassibility which you may see upon the countenance of a priest or a lawyer of intellect and wide experience, whose vocation involves an intimate and profoundly varied acquaintance with human nature in all its chequered lights and shades; rarely, however, upon that of one so young.

From the high ridge on which the two men were riding, the eye could wander at will over the rolling, grassy plains and mimosa-dotted dales of Kaffraria. The pure azure of the heavens was unflecked by a single cloud. The light, balmy air of this early spring day was as invigorating as wine. Far away to the southeast the sweep of undulating grass land melted into an indistinct blue haze--the Indian Ocean--while in the opposite direction the panorama was barred by the hump-like Kabousie Heights, their green slopes alternating with lines of dark forest in a straggling labyrinth of intersecting kloofs. Far away over the golden, sunlit plains, the white walls of a farmhouse or two were discernible, and here and there, rising in a line upon the still atmosphere, a column of grey smoke marked the locality of many a distant kraal lying along the spurs of the hills. So still, so transparent, indeed, was the air that even the voices of their savage inhabitants and the low of cattle floated faintly across the wide and intervening space. Beneath--against the opposite ridge, about half a mile distant, the red ochre on their clothing and persons showing in vivid and pleasing contrast against the green of the hillside, moved ten or a dozen Kafirs--men, women, and children. They stepped out in line at a brisk, elastic pace, and the lazy hum of their conversation drifted to the ears of the two white men so plainly that they could almost catch its burden.

"I'll rip his black hide off him. I'll teach him to let the sheep go to the devil while he hunts our bucks." And gripping his reins he drove his spurs into his horse's flanks, with fell intent toward the offending Kafir.

There was reason in this, and Carhayes acquiesced with a snarl. To collect the scattered sheep was to the two mounted men a labour of no great difficulty or time, and with a stern injunction to Goniwe not to be found playing the fool a second time, the pair turned their horses' heads and rode homeward.

EANSWYTH.

Anta's Kloof--such was the name of Tom Carhayes' farm--was situated on the very edge of the Gaika location. This was unfortunate, because its owner got on but poorly with his barbarous neighbours. They, for their part, bore him no good will either.

Nearer, nearer to his western bed, dipped the sinking sun, throwing out long slanting darts of golden rays ere bringing to a close, in a flood of effulgent glory, the sweet African spring day. They fell on the placid surface of the dam, lying below in the kloof, causing it to shine like a sea of quicksilver. They brought out the vivid green of the willows, whose feathery boughs drooped upon the cool water. They blended with the soft, restful cooing of ring doves, swaying upon many a mimosa spray, or winging their way swiftly from the mealie lands to their evening roost and they seemed to impart a blithe gladsomeness to the mellow shout of the hoopoe, echoing from the cool shade of yonder rugged and bush-clad kloof.

Round the house a dozen or so tiny ostrich chicks were picking at the ground, or disputing the possession of some unexpected dainty with a tribe of long-legged fowls. Quaint enough they looked, these little, fluffy balls, with their bright eyes, and tawny, spotted necks; frail enough, too, and apt to come off badly at the spur or beak of any truculent rooster who should resent their share of the plunder aforesaid. Nominally they are under the care of a small Kafir boy, but the little black rascal--his master being absent and his mistress soft hearted--prefers the congenial associations of yonder group of beehive huts away there behind the sheep kraals, and the fun of building miniature kraals with mud and three or four boon companions, so the ostrich chicks are left to herd themselves. But the volleying boom of their male parent, down there in the great enclosure, rolls out loudly enough on the evening air, and the huge bird may be described in all the glory of his jet and snowy plumage, with inflated throat, rearing himself to his full height, rolling his fiery eye in search of an adversary.

She came of a good old Colonial family, but had been educated in England. Well educated, too; thanks to which salutary storing of a mind eagerly open to culture, many an otherwise dull and unoccupied hour of her four years of married life--frequently left, as she was, alone for a whole day at a time--was turned to brightness. Alone? Yes, for she was childless.

When she had married bluff, hot-tempered Tom Carhayes, who was nearly fifteen years her senior, and had gone to live on a Kaffrarian stock farm, her acquaintance unanimously declared she had "thrown herself away." But whether this was so or not, certain it is that Eanswyth herself evinced no sort of indication to that effect, and indeed more than one of the aforesaid acquaintance eventually came to envy her calm, cheerful contentment. To the expression of which sentiment she would reply with a quiet smile that she supposed she was cut out for a "blue-stocking," and that the restful seclusion, not to say monotony, of her life, afforded her ample time for indulging her studious tastes.

After three years her husband's cousin had come to live with them. Eustace Milne, who was possessed of moderate means, had devoted the few years subsequent on leaving college to "seeing the world," and it must be owned he had managed to see a good deal of it in the time. But tiring eventually of the process, he had made overtures to his cousin to enter into partnership with the latter in his stock-farming operations. Carhayes, who at that time had been somewhat unlucky, having been hard hit by a couple of very bad seasons, and thinking moreover that the presence in the house of his cousin, whom he knew and rather liked, would make life a little more cheerful for Eanswyth, agreed, and forthwith Eustace had sailed for the Cape. He had put a fair amount of capital into the concern and more than a fair amount of energy, and at this time the operations of the two men were flourishing exceedingly.

Bearing these facts in mind there was, we repeat, every excuse for Eanswyth's anxiety. But suddenly a sigh of relief escaped her. The tramp of hoofs reaching her ears caused her to turn, and there, approaching the house from a wholly unexpected direction, came the two familiar mounted figures.

"LOVE SETTLING UNAWARES."

"Well, old girl, and how have you been getting through the day," was Carhayes' unceremonious greeting as he slid from his horse. Eustace turned away his head, and the faintest shadow of contempt flitted across his impassive countenance. Had this glorious creature stood in the same relationship towards himself he could no more have dreamed of addressing her as "old girl" than he could have of carving his name across the front of the silver altar which is exhibited once a year in the "Battistero" at Florence.

"Pretty well, Tom," she answered smilingly. "And you? I hope you haven't been getting into any more mischief. Has he, Eustace."

"I hope you didn't shoot their dogs," said Eanswyth anxiously.

"Didn't I! one of 'em, that is. Do you think I'm the man to be bounced by Jack Kafir? Not much I'm not. I was bound to let daylight through the brute, and I did."

"Through the Kafir?" cried Eanswyth, in horror, turning pale.

"Through both," answered Carhayes, with a roar of laughter. "Through both, by Jove! Ask Eustace. He came up just in time to be in at the death. But, don't get scared, old girl. I only `barked' the nigger, and sent the dog to hunt bucks in some other world. I had to do it. Those chaps were four to one, you see, and shied Icerries at me. They had assegais, too."

Eustace, listening to these remarks, frowned slightly. The selfish coarseness of his cousin in thus revealing the whole unfortunate episode, with the sure result of doubling this delicate woman's anxiety whenever she should be left--as she so often was--alone, revolted him. Had he been Carhayes he would have kept his own counsel in the matter.

He dived into the house, and, deaf to his wife's entreaties and expostulations, armed himself with the formidable rawhide whip in addition to his gun, and flinging the bridle once more across the horse's neck, sprang into the saddle.

"Coming, Eustace?" he cried.

"No. I think not. The sheep can't be far off, and you can easily bring them in, even if, as is not unlikely, Goniwe has sloped. Besides, I don't think we ought to leave Eanswyth all alone."

With a spluttered exclamation of impatience, Carhayes clapped spurs to his horse and cantered away down the kloof to recover his sheep and execute summary vengeance upon their defective herd.

"Do go after him, Eustace. Don't think about me. I don't in the least mind being left alone. Do go. You are the only one who can act as a check upon him, and I fear he will get himself--all of us--into some terrible scrape. I almost hope Goniwe has run away, for if Tom comes across him in his present humour he will half kill the boy."

"He won't come across him. On that point you may set your mind quite at ease. He will have no opportunity of getting into hot water, and I certainly shan't think of leaving you alone here to-night for the sake of salvaging a few sheep more or less. We must make up our minds to lose some, I'm afraid, but the bulk of them will be all right."

"He won't meet any. There isn't a chance of it. Look here, Eanswyth; Tom must take care of himself for once. I'm not going to leave you alone here now for the sake of fifty Toms."

"Why! Have you heard anything fresh?" she queried anxiously, detecting a veiled significance in his words.

"Certainly not. Nothing at all. Haven't been near Komgha for ten days, and haven't seen anyone since. Now, I'll just take my horse round to the stable and give him a feed--and be with you in a minute."

Yes, he loved her. This keen-witted, philosophical man of the world was madly in love with the beautiful wife of his middle-aged cousin. He loved her with all the raging abandonment of a strong nature that does nothing by halves; yet during nearly a year spent beneath the same roof--nearly a year of easy, pleasant, social intercourse--never by word or sign had he betrayed his secret--at least, so he imagined.

No man could be more unfitted to hold possession of such a priceless treasure as this--argued the man who did not hold it.

"Confess, Eanswyth, that you are very glad I didn't take you at your word and go after Tom," said Eustace, as they were sitting cosily at table.

"Perhaps I am. I have been getting so dreadfully nervous and low spirited of late--so different to the strong-minded creature I used to be," she said with a rueful smile. "I am becoming quite frightened to be left alone."

"Are you? Well, I think I can undertake to promise that you shall not be left alone again. One of us must always make a point of being around the house while the other is away. But look here, Eanswyth; I really think you oughtn't to go on staying here at present. Why don't you go down to the Colony and stay in one or other of the towns, or even at that other farm of Tom's, until things are settled again?"

"I won't do that. And I'm really not in the least afraid for myself. I don't believe the Kafirs would harm me."

"Then why are you nervous at being left alone?" was the very pertinent rejoinder.

"Not on my own account. It is only that solitude gives me time to think. I am always imagining Tom coming to frightful grief in some form or other."

"Would it do anything towards persuading you to adopt the more prudent course and leave here for a while, if I were to tell you that Josane was urging that very thing this morning?" said Eustace when she returned. The said Josane was a grizzled old Kafir who held the post of cattle-herd under the two cousins. He was a Gcaleka, and had fled from Kreli's country some years previously, thereby narrowly escaping one of the varied and horrible forms of death by torture habitually meted out to those accused of his hypothetical offence--for he had been "smelt out" by a witch-doctor. He was therefore not likely to throw in his lot with his own countrymen against his white protectors, by whom he was looked upon as an intelligent and thoroughly trustworthy man, which indeed he was.

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