Читать книгу Harley Greenoak's Charge - Mitford Bertram - Страница 11

“But that is Slaang Kloof, Baas.”

“I never said it wasn’t. But—what if it is Slaang Kloof?”

“We cannot go in, Baas.” And the speaker’s pleasing, good-humoured face took on a dogged, not to say obstinate expression. A little more acquaintance with the country and its natives, and Dick Selmes would have known that when the countenance of one of these took on that expression, why, he might as well whisper words of sweet reasonableness into the long ears of an experienced and jibbing mule.

“Why can’t we go in, Kleinbooi?” he said shortly.

“Ou! It is a place of tagati—of witchcraft,” answered the Fingo.

“Witchcraft? Bosh!” exploded Dick. “Come now, Kleinbooi. Lay those dogs on to the spoor sharp, or my chances of getting that buck will become nothing at all, and I can’t afford to lose such a fine ram as that because of your humbugging superstitions.”

But the Fingo only shook his head.

“I can’t do it, Baas,” he said. “Oud Baas (the Old Master) would not allow it. He allows nothing living to go into Slaang Kloof.”

“But why? In Heaven’s name, why?” rejoined Dick, impatiently.

“Because what goes in there living comes out dead,” answered the other, seriously.

Dick Selmes stamped his foot, and mildly—very mildly—swore. He looked at his companion, who seemed most abominably in earnest, otherwise he was inclined to suspect that the Fingo was amusing himself at the expense of a new-comer. But, plainly, he could not go against the wishes of his host, and if the latter chose to give way to the absurd superstitions of mere savages, he supposed his weakness must be respected, but it was precious annoying all the same.

The dogs, some half-dozen great rough-haired mongrels, lay panting on the ground. One or two were restless, and showed a desire to start off upon the yet warm spoor which led into the forbidden place, but a stern mandate from the Fingo promptly checked this, and they lay down again.

These two, the white man and the black, were standing in a wide amphitheatre of bush, walled by rocky heights, now split asunder in gigantic, castellated crags, or frowning down in straight, smooth krantzes, the nesting-places of innumerable aasvogels; as the long vertical streaks down their red, ironstone faces could testify. In front of them, opening out, as it were, through an immense natural portal formed by two jutting spurs of rock, was a lateral valley, covered with dense forest and sloping up to a loftier pile of mountain beyond, the slope ending in a line of broken cliff abounding in holes and caves. This much was visible from where they stood. But not a step nearer would the Fingo advance. Dick Selmes looked wistful.

“It was just there he went in, Kleinbooi,” pointing to the slope under one of the jutting rock portals. “I glimpsed him for a minute, just under the krantz on that bare patch. By Jove, it’s a pity to lose a fine bush-buck ram, and he was hit hard, too. If only you had been nearer with the dogs!”

“It is time to go home now, Baas,” said the Fingo, with a glance at the sun, which was now dipping low to the skyline, causing the great rock faces to glow red gold in the slanting beams. The scene was one of wild rugged grandeur and beauty, softened by the cooing of hundreds of doves, the cheery piping whistle of spreeuws echoing from among the krantzes, and other mellow and varying bird-voices in the recesses of the brake.

“Has anybody ever met his death in there, Kleinbooi?” resumed Dick.

“Several, Baas.”

“What kills them?”

“That is what nobody knows.” And the speaker was so obviously unwilling to pursue the subject that Dick said nothing further upon it, but he made up his mind to question Harley Greenoak thereon without loss of time.

When the two came to where they had left their horses, it was evident that the hunt had not been altogether unsuccessful, for behind Dick’s saddle was strapped a fine duiker ram, while from that of the Fingo hung several guinea-fowl and three or four dik-kop. Still, Selmes would not altogether feel comforted over the quarry he had lost.

This Kleinbooi was his host’s right-hand man. He was a capital hunter, and was sent out with Dick what time no one else felt inclined to go, and in this capacity it was an advantage that he was able to speak excellent English. Harley Greenoak was not sorry, for his part; for such was his young charge’s “keenness” that he would have dragged him out all day and every day in quest of some form of sport, and half the night, too, very frequently.

That evening, after supper, as they were seated indoors, for the farm was of considerable altitude and the nights were fresh, Dick Selmes was wondering how he should broach the subject to their host. Old Ephraim Hesketh was one of the early settlers of 1820. He was a widower, and lived alone on his vast farm in the wildest recesses of the Rooi Ruggensbergen. He was a tall, lank old man, of the simplest of habits, who went to bed with the sun and got up with the same, chewed biltong when he was hungry, and drank calabash milk when he was thirsty, and, owing to his solitary life, was laconic and scanty of speech. This being so, it may be credited that his domestic arrangements were primitive in the extreme; and even adaptable Dick Selmes had looked a trifle blank when he first saw his room, with its battered tin wash-basin, empty-bottle candlestick, bare thatch, and gaping wainscottings, into which latter a remarkably large centipede was at that moment disappearing. In short, Simcox’s place, though rough, was a palace compared with Haakdoornfontein, as old Hesketh’s place was called.

“Well, young buffalo hunter,” said the latter, as they sat down to an exceedingly frugal repast, “and how many of my bush-bucks have you accounted for to-day? We can’t provide record buffaloes for you here, you see. You must get back to the Addo or trek right up-country for that.”

Dick Selmes laughed; then, judging the moment opportune, he launched out into an account of Kleinbooi’s point-blank refusal to enter the forbidden kloof.

“He was quite right,” said the old man, decisively, and his face seemed to grow serious. “Yes, quite right. In fact, I told him not even to take you near it if possible, but I suppose he didn’t know he was doing so in the excitement of the hunt.”

Dick Selmes’ face lit up with eagerness. If this hardened old settler, who believed in little else, believed in this weird mystery, why, it would be worth hearing about. “Would you mind—er—spinning the yarn, Mr Hesketh?” he blurted out eagerly.

“Well, it’s a fact that for some years past not a man Jack who has gone into that kloof from this end—and you can’t get into it from anywhere else—has come out alive,” answered the old man. “When searched for and spoored down, they were found quite near the entrance, stone dead.”

“What killed them?”

“That’s what many of us would like to know. There was a mark, just where the neck joins the shoulder at the back, a tiny mark hardly bigger than a pin-point, a mere discoloration, and the bodies wore every appearance of death by snake-bite. That’s how the place got its name—Slaang—or Snake Kloof.”

“By Jove! And what sort of a snake was it?” said Dick.

“There was no snake. The most careful search revealed no trace of the spoor of anything of the kind. Besides, a snake-bite invariably contains two punctures. This was only one. Another strange thing is that the mark was always the same, and in the same place, where the neck joins the shoulder; and yet another—that the people, when found, had, in each case, fallen when facing the way out of the kloof, as if they’d been running away from something. What? How many have come to grief? Seven in all—one Hottentot and six Kafirs. They had gone in after strayed stock, or to take out a bees’ nest, or something of the kind. The Hottentot was the only one who was still conscious, and he knew absolutely nothing of what had happened to him or when it had. I nearly pulled him through by treating him for snake-bite, but it was too long after, and he kicked the bucket, like the rest. Have I been in since? No. I’m too old.”

“But what on earth is your theory of it, Mr Hesketh?” asked Dick Selmes, who was very much impressed by the story, and the old man’s way of telling it. “Is there some kind of tree snake that drops down and swings itself up again after biting them? That would account for lack of spoor, you know.”

“Quite right, young buffalo hunter,” nodded old Hesketh. “But we’ve got no snakes that do that. All the tree sorts are harmless. The thing stumps me but—there it is.”

“By Jingo, but I’d like to—” And Dick stopped short. Old Hesketh turned on him a lack-lustre eye.

“To try and solve the mystery yourself?” he supplied. “M’yes. You’d better let it alone, young fellow. Keep your energies for another destroying buffalo, and you may come out of that with a whole skin. Eh, Greenoak?”

The latter, who had been a silent listener, nodded assent. Old Hesketh had—for him—taken an immense fancy to Dick since hearing of his shooting the buffalo bull in the Addo Bush, and that alone and with a single bullet. He was far too plucky a young fellow to be allowed to commit suicide in such an unsatisfactory cause as this, he decided.

“Don’t let him cut into any such foolishness, Greenoak,” he went on. “Keep your eye on him, Greenoak. Keep your eye on him.”

And Greenoak promised he would. Then he went to bed, and, contrary to his usual custom, did not go to sleep immediately, but lay awake thinking. And at the same time precisely the same thing was holding good of Dick Selmes.

Now, in the course of the next two or three days, while the latter seldom missed an opportunity of plying his host with questions regarding Slaang Kloof, Harley Greenoak never opened his mouth on the subject. He seemed to treat it as a mere incident: a strange incident, it was true, but still an incident, and he had come across too many such in the course of a life adventurous beyond most lives to deem one incident, more or less, worth making any fuss about. He seemed, in short, to have dismissed it from his mind.

Consequently, it is strange that a day or two later, Harley Greenoak might have been seen—were there say one to see him—standing before the entrance of Slaang Kloof alone.

His strong, bearded, sun-tanned face was set and thoughtful; his gnarled hands were closed round the barrels of a double gun, whose stock was grounded; and, slung round him, was a sort of bundle that bulged. The rifle barrel held a Martini cartridge, the smooth-bore a heavy charge of Treble A buckshot.

He stood gazing into the place of fear, as though reading every tree and bush in its sombre forest depths.

As a matter of fact, he was there to solve its secret. Old Hesketh, to whom his reputation was known as a clearer-up of many a dark and blood-fraught mystery of the veldt, and who was an old friend of his into the bargain, had sent for him with that express object, and, as it was an entirely out-of-the-way and new part of the country to show his charge, he had heartily welcomed the idea. But he had no notion whatever of counting his said charge into the adventure with him.

He looked at the two jutting rock spurs as though calculating the distance of one from the other. Then he walked steadily forward until well within the portals of the sinister and fatal valley.

Superficially it differed in no way from any round dozen of the wild bushy kloofs on any other part of the farm. There was the same vegetation, mimosa and other varieties of acacia, spongy spekboem, and spidery Kafir bean—the geranium and plumbago throwing out a confusion of scarlet and light mauve—here a row of euphorbia, there a patch of yellow-woods, from whose limbs depended a tangle of long, straight monkey-ropes. Here all was dim and cool and delightful, the sunshine completely shut off or but faintly networked in patches on the ground and tree trunks. But it was here that every instinctive faculty of grasp and perception implanted in the up-country man became keenly alert and awake. For, by a course of intuitive calculations, he had located this spot as the one where the fell and fatal terror had overtaken its victims.

The nerve and courage of Harley Greenoak were entirely beyond question, but that did not dull his imagination or render him dead to the fact that in this cool and peaceful forest retreat he walked in very great peril indeed, that if he would escape this hidden death which had overtaken others, awful in its mysterious suddenness, he would have to muster every faculty of quick observation, lightning-like decision of action, and untiring alertness which he possessed.

As he walked, apparently unconcerned, his ears were open to every sound, and, although he knew that it was from above the peril should come, he did not look up, at least not directly. Then, suddenly, and without apparent reason, he leaped nimbly about a yard to his left; for his trained ear had caught the faintest possible sound overhead, and, as he did so, there was a soft hiss past his ear. Harley Greenoak had escaped death that time.

Quick as thought he threw up his gun, but in the moment between that action and the roar of the piece he glimpsed the most hideous and revolting object imaginable. The simian face, staring in bestial ferocity, the horn-like ears, the brown misshapen frame and limbs, were more suggestive of some forest fiend than of anything human. When the smoke had cleared away the thing had disappeared.

What did it mean? For the first time Harley Greenoak felt a thrill of superstitious misgiving as unpleasant as it was strange. He to miss, and to miss at that short distance, with a charge of buckshot too—for he had fired the smooth-bore barrel—why, it was incredible! Nothing human could have escaped. Yet this thing had done so. It had not fallen, it had simply disappeared.

He stared upward at the spot. The tall, yellow-wood tree was strong and sound, and showed no sign of hole or cleft that would have held a rat. Ha!

Lying behind a large limb, motionless as the wood itself, blending so completely with its colour as to escape detection, was the object of his search, watching him. But for the glint of the eye, he would have failed to discover it at all. Again his gun roared.

But—too late. With superhuman agility the thing had leapt away, and, springing from branch to branch with the quickness and security of cat and monkey combined, it seemed a hopeless chase to Greenoak, who, as he ran, marking its course by the swaying of the branches, had already reloaded both barrels. Just the fraction of a glimpse, and it was his last chance. Again the reverberation of the report rolled bellowing from cliff to cliff. With it was a shrill, beast-like scream, and something thudded heavily to the earth. Harley Greenoak walked leisurely up to it, and after a moment’s examination came away with a smile of grim satisfaction on his face, It was not to last, though. He had not gone far when a stony glare of horror came into his eyes as they rested on something lying on the ground, the form of a man, the form of Dick Selmes, his charge.

It was lying on its face with arms extended. But as he stood over it the eyes opened with a dull stupid stare, as that of a person awakened out of a heavy sleep.

“Wake up, Dick. Wake up, man,” said Greenoak, decidedly, lugging him into a sitting posture. “Here, take a drink of this.”

From the bundle that bulged he produced a bottle of brandy.

“Don’t want to,” said the other, sleepily.

“But you must, man. If you don’t you’re a dead ’un.”

This told, and Dick obeyed. The effect of the spirit was marvellous, for, having swallowed enough to have rendered him helpless twice over under ordinary circumstances, it merely invigorated him now. Quick as thought Greenoak had cut away his shirt collar, and, sure enough, there on the neck was the fatal mark, the tiny, discoloured speck. This Greenoak promptly lanced, applying a mixture which he had with him. Then he made his charge get up and walk smartly up and down with him. In which occupation they were found by old Hesketh, who, having heard the shots, faint and far, had saddled up and hurried on in case the investigator should be in need of assistance.

When sufficiently restored, Dick Selmes was able to explain how he came to be there, and this he did somewhat shamefacedly. He had suspected that Greenoak was going to make some such investigation, and resented not being allowed to share in the adventure. Accordingly, he had pretended to go and hunt in a contrary direction, but had soon slipped round, so soon indeed as almost to reach Slaang Kloof first. He had entered the kloof not far behind him, and had kept him in view.

“Well, it nearly cost you your life, young fellow,” said Hesketh. “Tell you what. You must have learnt something if you could keep Harley Greenoak in sight without his knowing it. What were you shooting at, Greenoak?”

“The mystery of Slaang Kloof is cleared up,” answered the latter, laconically.

“I knew you’d do it if any one could. Well, what was it?”

“I’ll show you later on. Now then, Dick. Take some more stuff, and walk quicker.”

Harley Greenoak was not one to be hurried, but when they did return to investigate, he took them straight to where he had fired his first shot under the shade of the yellow-wood trees.

“Why, this is where I first felt queer,” said Dick.

“No doubt,” stooping down and picking up something that looked like a bit of stick about six or eight inches long. “See that?” showing a tiny needle-like point. “That’s what made you feel queer, and all the others too. It’s tipped with a strong and subtle poison.”

“By Jove! You don’t say so.”

“Rather. I’ve got a theory that your clothes helped to save you. You were saying, Hesketh, that the only one of those who came to grief here and recovered consciousness was a Hottentot. Well, he would have had clothes on, and the Kaffirs wouldn’t.”

“Something in that, may be,” answered the old man.

A little farther on he picked up another of the tiny arrows. This one was sticking in the ground.

“The one I dodged,” he said. “Come on further.”

He led the way. Suddenly Dick Selmes gave a start.

“What’s that?” he said. “Ugh!”

“The mystery,” answered Greenoak.

The monkey-like shape lying there looked more hideous and horrible in death, if possible than when it skipped along the tree-tops.

“But what is it?”

“A survivor of the original Bushmen who lived among the holes and caves of these mountains. He adopted this method of setting up a scare in order to have the run of this place unmolested. You see, if he went on the ground he’d leave spoor, and he knew that—hence the tree dodge.”

“How is it we never found any of these arrows?” said old Hesketh.

“Probably you never thought of looking for them.”

“No more we did.”

“You see,” explained Greenoak, “when you were spinning that yarn about the kloof it brought back to my mind one similar case I’d known of the kind, and I began to put two and two together. Well, the murdering little beast has only got what he deserved, but it’ll save bother if we keep our mouths shut, all the same.”

“But how do you know there are no more of ’em, Greenoak?” said Dick Selmes.

“I’m sure there aren’t. This one is as old as Methuselah. He’d be the only one. You can use Slaang Kloof again, Hesketh.”