Читать книгу Harley Greenoak's Charge - Mitford Bertram - Страница 9

Simcox’s farm, Buffels Draai, comprised about as wild a tract of bush country as exists, although not many hours’ ride or drive from the busiest of Cape Colony towns. Before Dick Selmes had been in the house two hours he had completely won the hearts of Mrs Simcox and the two grown-up nice, plain, homely girls, but blessed with no particular outward attractions; while Simcox himself pronounced him, when out of his hearing, as nice a young fellow as he had ever run against. Before he had been in the house two weeks he had shot many bush-bucks, and other unconsidered trifles, and knew his way all about the place. He took a vivid interest in everything, and imbibed veldt-craft with an adaptability which surprised his host and Harley Greenoak. Likewise he had learned what an astonishing number of things he could do without, together with what an astonishing number of things he could do for himself.

Just about that time they were seated out on the stoep one evening, talking over a projected bush-buck hunt, when there arose a sudden and terrific clamour from the dogs lying around the house. These sprang up, and rushed, barking and growling furiously, towards the nearest bush line.

“Magtig!” exclaimed Simcox. “Wonder if those infernal half-tame elephants are going to give us a look round? The dogs are more than ordinarily excited.”

“Tame?” said Dick, inquiringly, as they stood up to gaze in the direction of the hubbub.

“Well, they’re just tame enough to be schelm and do a heap of mischief, otherwise they’re wild enough. There are buffalo too, but there is no tameness about them. They generally stick away in the thicker thorns on the other side of the bush. Here, let’s go over and see what’s up.”

They got a gun apiece and set forth. The cause of the racket was soon revealed, and it took the form of a badly-scared old Hottentot, who had fortunately found a handy tree. The dogs were driven off, and even as they took him to the house he told his story, and a tragical story it was. A buffalo had killed Jan Bruintjes, the boy who brought the mail-bags from the local post-office. The narrator and he were walking along the road, when an enormous buffalo bull rushed out of the bush and caught Jan on its horns, flung him into the air, and when he fell, ripped and gored him again and again. Dead? Oh, he was so torn as to be hardly recognisable. He himself had hidden, and then, when the beast had gone, went back to look at his friend. Where did it happen? About half an hour from the house, where the road made a bend towards Krantz Hoek. He had come straight to tell Baas Simcox.

“Well, we can’t do anything to-night,” declared the latter, “first thing in the morning, I’ll go round and investigate. I wonder if that’s the brute that chevied the Alexandria post cart last year? The driver tootled his horn, but it had the opposite effect intended. The horses bolted and upset the cart against a tree. The driver was killed—not in the same way—gored to death. In fact this brute is suspected of having done for half a dozen in all, and it’s very likely true. He set up a perfect scare at one time, like an Indian man-eater would.”

“They must be a jolly nuisance,” said Dick. “If I lived here I’d jolly well thin them down.”

“Would you? Fine of 100 pounds a head. They’re strictly preserved.”

“Well, it’s a beastly shame.”

“So it is,” said Harley Greenoak. “But buffalo rank first among game called dangerous, especially in country like this.” And he told a yarn or two to bear out his statement.

One yarn led to another, and it was rather later than usual when they went to bed.

The story he had just heard fired Dick Selmes’ imagination to such an extent that when he got to his room he felt it was impossible to go to sleep or even to turn in. He hung out of his open window, and in the sombre shadow of the depths of the moonlit bush, seemed to see the whole horrid tragedy re-enacted. The boom of night-flying beetles, the chirp of the tree-frog, the whistle of plover, now invisible overhead, now lighting on the ground in darting white spots, were all to him as the poetic voices of the weirder night which could contain such tragical possibilities: and it seemed that each ghostly sound—whether of mysterious rustling, or the clatter of a stone—heralded the appearance of the terrible beast, pacing forth into the open, its wicked, massive horns still smeared with the unfortunate man’s blood. Then an idea struck him—struck him between the eyes, so to speak—for it was a momentous one. What if he—?

He got out his double gun, slipped a Martini cartridge into the rifle breech, a heavy charge of loepers into the smooth-bore, and two or three spare ones into his pocket. The window was only his own height from the ground. Out of this he dropped quietly, so as not to rouse the house.

But he reckoned without the dogs. Those faithful animals immediately sprang up, and from all directions came for him open-mouthed. They knew him well enough to quiet their clamour almost immediately, but even then their delighted whining at the prospect of a nocturnal hunt was almost as noisy. But he had to drive them back, even with stones. Then he struck into the darkest shades of the bush, relieved that the clamour had apparently aroused no one.

How glad he felt that he knew his way about fairly well by this time! In the bright moonlight he had no difficulty whatever in finding it. Yet every stealthy sound set his heart wildly beating, and he carried his gun at full cock. Ah, here was the place.

The white riband of road snaked away in the moonlight—and—here was the spot. Yes, the huge hoof-marks were plain, and the signs in the dust of a sudden scuffle; and there were two of the leathern letter-bags carried by the unfortunate man lying by the roadside, and then—Dick Selmes, for all, his pluck, for all his ambition, and the adventurous excitement that had swayed him, felt quite sick. For, lying there by the roadside, torn, horribly mangled, was the body of the unfortunate victim itself.

But somehow the sight, horrible though it was, roused in him a fierce longing for retribution. If he could but find the slayer! Yet, why not? He had no dogs to give the miscreant warning of his approach, and if it did “wind” him, in its present mood, why, it would not be the one of the two the most eager to vanish. He tried hard to follow the spoor; and up to a certain distance succeeded, then it got lost in the shadows of the bush. Even then he would not give up. He had the whole night before him, and—if he should return in the morning triumphant? The very thought acted like a spur.

Moving cautiously, his weapon cocked and ready, he was compelled to move slowly. And now every sound intensified itself tenfold, and once a bush-buck, undisturbed by his silent advance until he was close upon it, sprang up and bounded away with a rustle that made him think it could be nothing less than the gigantic destroyer itself.

Now he could not be far from the spot, he decided. Yes. Here was Krantz Hoek. There was the row of straight-stemmed euphorbia, pluming the crescent of the cliff, just as described by the old Hottentot. The bush around was mainly spekboem and mimosa, not growing tall, in fact scarcely higher than his head, and in some places not that. He began to feel conscious of a consuming thirst, but this was dry country and dry weather, so there was no remedy for that. He began to feel something else—to wit that he had been a fool to come, and somehow all the excitement and anticipation began to evaporate, and the process of evaporation seemed to progress with quite extraordinary rapidity. And then—and then—just as he had fully made up his mind to retrace his steps—if he could—a sudden clink and rattle of stones set him wide on the alert—and—Heavens! what was this?

Seeming to rise out of the ground, something huge and black rose up in the moonlight. There it stood, the terrible beast, the manslayer, gigantic in its might, and for a moment the spectator stood petrified. This then was what he had come out to find, he in his puniness! The curved horns gleamed viciously, the fierce head with its mail-clad frontlet moved to and fro, the dilated nostrils sniffing the air as though scenting the presence of an enemy.

It was a nerve-trying sight, and the startling suddenness of the apparition rendered it more so. Dick Selmes’ nerves were sound and in good training, yet the thought that here he was, alone with this monster, certain death before him if he failed to kill at the first shot, might well have unsteadied him. The great bull was standing turned sideways, and did not seem actually to have seen him. By slowly sinking down behind the bush he might still escape.

But escape was not what he had come out for. He had come out to kill, and that to his own hand. So aiming carefully where he thought the heart should be, he pressed the trigger.

The effect was startling. There was a snort and then a series of savage bellowings rent the night. The huge, grisly head was tossed from side to side and the white foam poured from the open mouth. Quickly Dick Selmes slipped another cartridge into the rifle brooch, but before he could so much as bring the piece to his shoulder the brute sighted him, and came straight for him.

In a flash Dick realised that there was nothing to aim at but the mail-clad head. He turned and ran, and as he ran, the dictum of Harley Greenoak as to the buffalo holding first rank among dangerous game, and held in greater respect than any by old hunters, leapt through his mind. And he in his rawness had come out to tackle this terror single-handed, and at night. The thunder of his huge pursuer shook the ground beneath him, the savage growling bellow of its appalling voice was in his ears, the vision of its mangled victim in his brain. It was upon him. Then he missed his footing and fell—shot head first into a large ant-bear hole, which yawned suddenly at his feet. Nothing else on this earth could have saved him. He felt the vibration as that vast bulk thundered past, and wormed himself with a mighty effort still further in, not without fears that those dreadful horns might still contrive to dig their way to him.

Suddenly the din ceased, but what was this? In front of him, in the black darkness something growled.

It was not the original excavator of the hole, he knew, for the ant-bear, which is not a “bear” at all but a timid and harmless beast, does not growl. Well, at any rate, as the destroyer seemed to have retreated, he had better retire as he had come, and leave this most opportune hiding-place to its lawful owner. To that intent he made a move to draw back.

But even with that slight move the growl grew more prolonged, more vicious. And then Dick Selmes realised that the peril which he had just escaped was as nothing to the ghastly peril he was in now. He could not withdraw.

The hole slanted downwards at an angle of forty-five, and even then it had required all the effort of despair to squeeze himself in where it narrowed. But to do this from above was one thing, to squeeze himself up again, and that backwards, was another. He could not do it.

The blood, all run to his head, seemed to burst his brain, and the perspiration streamed from every pore, as his most violent and powerful efforts failed to release him by a single inch. He was imprisoned by where the tunnel narrowed over his legs. If he could have got at his knife he might have done something, but his hands and arms were extended straight out in front of him, nor could he draw them back. He had performed his own funeral.

Who would know where to look for him? Even if he were found, it might not be for days, and by that time it would be too late. He had entombed himself, and a few yards in front of him some savage beast was growling in the pitch darkness—some beast, cowardly it might be in itself, but whose lair he was blocking, and which, realising his utter helplessness, would speedily attack him, and gnaw its way to freedom through him. Small wonder that an awful terror should freeze his every faculty.

What the creature might be he had no very definite idea. It was not a leopard, or it would have attacked him sooner. It was probably a hyaena or wild dog—both timid of mankind in the open, but anything is formidable when cornered. The growls grew increasingly loud and menacing—they seemed to be drawing nearer too—and every moment the helpless man expected to feel the snapping fangs tearing at his face and head. Again he made a frantic effort, but utterly without avail. The suffocating atmosphere, together with the rush of the blood to the head owing to his position, was fast causing him to lose consciousness. He was in a place of darkness, being tormented by some raging demon. Surely this was death!

“That’s better. Buck up. I thought you were a ‘goner.’” And Harley Greenoak’s voice had a ring of concern, as he bent over his charge.

“So did I,” answered Dick, unsteadily, opening his eyes to the blessed air and light. “How did you get me out?”

“Man, I gripped you by the ankles, and just lugged. It was touch and go then, I can tell you.”

“But how did you know where to find me?”

“When I hear a fellow like you get up when he ought to be going to bed—when I see him slope into the bush with a gun, after the yarn we’ve just heard to-night, it stands to reason he wants looking after. Dick, your dad spoke true when he told me you were fond of getting into holes.”

“Well, if I hadn’t got into that hole I should have been still more done,” laughed Dick, at his own joke. And then he told the other about the buffalo.

“If yes,” said Greenoak, musingly. “You’ve got a hundred pounds to spare, I take it?”

“A hundred—” Then Dick broke off as a new light struck him. “Why, man, you don’t mean to say I’ve turned over the bull?”

“Dead as a door-nail—and with one Martini bullet, too. He’s lying just yonder. There’s a hundred-pound fine, you know.”

A ringing hurrah broke the calm stillness of the night.

“Then it’s worth it,” cried Dick. “By the way, there’s something in that hole—a wolf or a wild dog.”

“Oh,” and the other cocked his rifle.

“No,” said Dick, with a hand on his arm. “We’ll let it off—as it let me off.”

“We’ll just have to finish the night here,” said Greenoak; “that is if you want that head to stick up in your ancestral halls, and it’s jolly well worth it. Otherwise the jackals and wild dogs’ll mangle it out of all recognition before morning.”

Dick readily agreed, and the two, collecting some dry wood, soon had a roaring fire under way.

“Why, this is your first camp, Dick,” said Greenoak, reaching out a handful of tobacco for him to fill from, and then filling up himself.

“Rather,” was the answer. “Oh, it’s glorious—glorious,” jumping up again to go and look at the mighty beast, lying there but a few yards off in the moonlight. Harley Greenoak laughed.

“He’s all right. He won’t run away,” he said. “Nothing will touch him either while we are here. Better go to sleep.”

“Not much sleep for me to-night. No fear,” said Dick.

And he was right. The excitement, the keen fresh air, the sights and sounds of the surrounding forest were too much for this ardent young novice, and he hardly closed his eyes. Yet in the morning he was none the worse.

The astonishment in the Simcox household when they heard what had happened was something to witness. The feminine element started in to scold Harley Greenoak for allowing his charge to run such a tremendous risk.

“Oh, he’d have to find his feet some time,” was the rejoinder. “He seems to have done it tolerably well too, for a young beginner.”

A week or two went by, which Dick Selmes divided about equally between hunting bush-buck and rendering Greenoak’s life a burden to him as to whether the head was being sufficiently cured, or whether it was quite safely out of the way of dogs or other destroyers and so forth. One morning that long-suffering individual remarked:

“We’ll move on to-morrow, Dick.”

“Well yes, I suppose it’s about time. But—where?”

“Why, there’s an old friend of mine named Hesketh who’s just written me to bring you along. His farm’s up in the Rooi Ruggensbergen. Man, but it’s wild there I can tell you.”

“All the better. What does the said Hesketh consist of?”

“Himself. He’s a primitive old customer, and you’ll have to rough it there. I warn you of that.”

“The shoot good?”

“It just is.”

“Hurrah then!” cried Dick. “I’m on.”

“Well, we’ll go back to the Bay, and pick up a Cape cart—it’ll always sell again when we’ve done with it—and some more ammunition. Another horse, too, won’t hurt. These two we got from Simcox are all right, but you’ve already shown a tendency to ride yours to death. A fellow who’s as keen as you are can’t go on for ever pushing the same horse over all sorts of ground from sunrise to sunset.”

“Good—and good again!” assented Dick.

The farewell he took of his entertainers was a very cordial one. Their hospitality had been as genuine as it was unceremonious. He had shared their life as one of themselves, and if the experience was totally different to any former one, why he had thoroughly enjoyed it, and said so, in no half-hearted way. Further, he had readily promised to repeat it on his way homeward.

“That’s a thoroughly nice young chap,” pronounced Simcox, decisively, as their late guests turned for a final wave of the hand before disappearing from view down the kloof. “Not an atom of ‘side,’ takes us as he finds us, and no nonsense about him. I hope he’ll look in again, on his way back.”

And Simcox’s women-kind quite enthusiastically agreed with Simcox.