Forging the Blades Part 10

"I shouldn't be surprised. I've been in these parts a good many years, and I was up in Matabeleland in '96, when they started there, as you know. We were in a prospecting camp just like this, and I shan't forget the nine days three of us had dodging the rebels. Others weren't so lucky. Well, it'd be pretty much the same here, only we couldn't dodge these because there's no cover. It'd simply mean mincemeat."

"Gaudy look out. In truth, Robson, a prospector's life is not a happy one."

"No fear, it isn't. Here I've been at it on and off over sixteen years in all parts of this country pretty well. I struck something once, but it petered out, and still I've kept on. Once a prospector, always a prospector. Learn from me, Harry Stride, and chuck it. You're not too old now, but you soon will be."

"Oh, I don't know. There's a sort of glorious uncertainty about it-- never knowing what may turn up."

"Except when there's the glorious certainty of knowing that nothing is going to turn up, as in the present case. Yet, I own, there's something about it that gets into the blood, and stays there."

"Well, what d'you think, Robson? We don't seem to be doing much good here. How would it be to change quarters?"

"If there's any stuff in the country at all it's here. I've located it pretty accurately. The stuff is here, there's no doubt about that, but--is there enough of it? We'll try a little longer."

"All right, old chap. I'm on. I say, I'll tell you a rum find I made on the way up yesterday afternoon. I'd just got through the Bobi drift--beastly place, you know--swarming with crocs. I lashed a couple of shots into the river to scare any that might be about. Well, on this side, just above water level, and stuck in the brushwood, I found--what d'you think?"

"Haven't an idea. A dead n.i.g.g.e.r, maybe."

"No fear. It was a saddle. What d'you think of that?"

"A saddle?"

"Yes, or what remained of one. The offside flap had been torn off, so had both stirrup-irons, the stirrup leather remained. Now comes the curious part of it. While I was looking at the thing and wondering how the devil it got there, I suddenly spotted a round hole in the flap that remained. It looked devilish like a bullet hole, and I'm dead cert, it was."

"That's rum," said Robson, now vividly interested.

"Isn't it? It took me rather aback. What's more, the saddle looked as if it hadn't been so very long in the water. What do you make of it?"

"What did you do with it?"

"Do with it? I loaded it up and left it with d.i.c.kinson at Makanya.

He's the sergeant of police there, and has a name for being rather smart."

"Well, and what was his notion?"

"We talked it over together and agreed the affair looked uncommonly fishy. It had evidently been a good saddle too, not one that a n.i.g.g.e.r would ride on. But how had it got there, that's the point?"

"Ay, that's the point."

"You see there's no drift for miles and miles above the Bobi drift.

It's all that beastly fever-stricken Makanya forest, and there's nothing on earth to induce a white man to go in there. And, as I said, there's no doubt but that the saddle had belonged to a white man. Both d.i.c.kinson and I agreed as to that."

Robson sat puffing at his pipe for a few minutes in silence. He was thinking.

"I wonder if it spells foul play," he said eventually. "Quite sure it was a bullet hole, Harry?"

"Well, I put it to d.i.c.kinson without mentioning my own suspicions, and he p.r.o.nounced it one right away."

"I wonder if some poor devil got lost travelling alone, and got in among a disaffected lot who made an end of him. They may have shot his horse to destroy all trace, or in trying to bring him up to a round stop.

Anyway, why the deuce should they have chucked the saddle into the river? It isn't like a n.i.g.g.e.r to destroy a.s.setable property either.

No. As you say, Harry, the thing looks devilish fishy."

"What about the stirrup-irons being gone, Robson?"

"That makes more for my theory. Metal of any kind is valuable to them.

They can forge it into a.s.segais. Besides, anything hard and s.h.i.+ning appeals to them."

Stride started upright.

"By Jove!" he cried suddenly. "There's one point I forgot. The girths were intact. That horse had never been off-saddled."

Again the other thought a moment.

"Now we are getting onto fresh ground. The poor devil must have missed his way and got into the river. The crocs, did the rest. They took care of him and his gee, depend upon it."

"But the bullet hole?"

"Dash it! I forgot that. Well, here's a mystery, and no mistake.

We'll think it out further. But d.i.c.kinson has it in hand, and he knows n.i.g.g.e.rs down to the ground--was raised here, you know. Harry, if you're going to start for Ezulwini first thing to-morrow you'd better turn in."

CHAPTER NINE.

THE NEW ARRIVAL.

"I suppose you couldn't tell me where to find a man named Halse, could you, Mrs Shelford? He lives somewhere in this country."

The pretty and popular hostess of the Nodwengu Hotel at Ezulwini looked up quickly from her plate. So did several others seated at table.

"Yes," she answered, a little surprised. "Do you know him, then, Mr Denham?"

"Well, in a sort of a way," was the answer. "That is, I've heard a good deal about him, and was rather interested to make his acquaintance."

Now the expression "heard a good deal about him" raised a covert smile on more than one face round the table.

"Ben Halse lives up in the Lumisana district," answered the hostess.

"But it's an out-of-the-way place, and not easily got at."

"All the better. I like out-of-the-way places. They're so jolly interesting. That's why I p.r.i.c.ked out a cross-country course here."

The speaker was a tall man, broad-shouldered and well set up, with a square, intellectual head; fair, clear-eyed and self-possessed, and might have been in the late thirties, i.e. in his very prime. He had arrived at Ezulwini the evening before, on horseback, and his baggage for the present consisted of what that unreliable animal could carry strapped across the saddle.

"By the way," said another man at the table, "I heard something about Ben Halse being due here just about now. Heard anything about it, Mrs Shelford?"

"No."

"Perhaps he's going to the opposition shop," said the other mischievously.