In the Whirl of the Rising Part 17

The witch-doctor dared not refuse. With a broad grin, as though he were entering into the fun of the thing, he threw into the air--_the white signal_.

Again, and again, every time the cheering broke forth, Lamont banteringly bade him throw it higher, promising much _tywala_ when the proceedings were over, till finally many of the spectators turned their attention to him and laughed like anything, cheering _him_. And one of them remarked that it was worth coming for alone, just to see the old boy flinging up his cap and hooraying like a white man and a brother.

They little knew, those light-hearted ones, that but for one man's nerve and presence of mind the red signal would have gone up, and then--

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

ON EHLATINI.

When Clare Vidal awoke on the morning after the race meeting, and her thoughts went back to some of the events and incidents of that sporting and festive gathering, she was fain to own herself sorely puzzled: and those events and incidents, it may as well be said, comprised the extraordinary behaviour of Lamont. He had deliberately snubbed her. He had been especially favoured in being singled out and asked to help her--and, incidentally, her sister--and had, lamely, but decidedly refused. Refused! Why, not a man there present but would have sprung to comply with such a request--such a command--as she laughingly recalled how on their first arrival in the country, by the Umtali route at the close of the war of occupation, she had been christened 'The Queen of the Laager,' when a pa.s.sing scare had rendered it advisable to laager up. Yet this one had refused--refused her! Well, what then? He was simply a morose, unmannerly misogynistic brute! No. She could not look upon it in this light at all.

She had awakened early, and felt that a walk in the cloudless morning air, before the sun rays developed into an oppressive steaminess, would do her good. Gandela at large had not awakened early. There had been a good deal of late carousing among the rougher spirits there gathered together for the occasion, and a good deal of house-to-house visitation, also late, on the part of the more refined. So Gandela at large slept late proportionately.

The Fullertons' house was on the very outskirts of the towns.h.i.+p, and she stepped forth straight on to the open veldt. The dew lay, sparkling and silvery, upon the green mimosa fronds, and made a diamond carpet of the parched burnt-up gra.s.s upon which her steps left footprints. How beautiful was the early morning in this fresh open land. The call and twitter of birds made strange unknown melody as she pa.s.sed on her way, leaving the s.h.i.+ning zinc roofs of the straggling towns.h.i.+p, turning her face toward the free open country. There lay the race-course, away on her left, and her face was set toward the dark bushy ridge of Ehlatini.

Two 'go-away' birds sped before her, uttering their cat-like call, as, with crest perkily erect and flicking their tails, they danced from frond to frond. How cool the inviting depths of that bush line looked, billowing down the slope of the hill, challenging exploration of their bosky recesses.

Clare was in splendid physical form, and walked with a straight willowy swing from the hips, rejoicing in the sheer physical exercise of her youth and strength. She looked up at the ridge above her, then back at the scattered towns.h.i.+p behind. To gain the summit would mean a fine view, also taking in the far, unknown stretch of country beyond. She had never wandered this way before, and it would be a novelty and something to expatiate upon to those lazy people whom she had left behind in a state of prolonged slumber. Slumber! and on such a morning.

The morning air blew balmy and warm, straight down from the Zambesi and beyond; straight down from the heart of the great mysterious continent.

Later on it would be hot, oppressive. And in the shade of the mimosa, and wild fig, and mahobo-hobo, birds piped and called to each other.

Clare struck into a narrow path, which wound up, a mere cattle-track, through the thickness of the bush. It was delightful this roaming about a wild land alone. Soon, with no great effort or tax upon her powers of wind and limb, she had gained the summit of the ridge.

And then, on the farther side, other ridges went ribbing away in the distance, like billows of dark verdure; but on the right, where they ended, sloping abruptly to the more even ground of the gently undulating country beyond, far away in a film of light and vista, to lose itself in a hazy blue on the skyline nearly a hundred miles distant, stretched a vast mysterious wilderness. Then she sat down beneath the shade of a large overhanging wild fig, to take it all in.

She was used to wildness, and loved it. Reared in one of the wildest tracts of wild Ireland, she had delighted to go forth on solitary rambles, with trout rod and creel, more than ankle deep in soft bog soil, tramping laboriously to her field of action in high mountain lough, where the shrieking gust of a squall every half hour or so drove her to refuge beneath some great rock, what time the trout sulked, only to rise fast and furious when the rain squall had pa.s.sed, and the raven croaked from the s.h.i.+ning wet crags. And this solemn blue vista, stretching away in its vastness, formed a contrast indeed to the stormy glistening grandeur of her former mountain home; here with its hot, sub-tropical steaminess; yet there was that in common between both of them--that both were the wilds.

In the dreaminess of her reverie she started suddenly. The loud neighing of a horse, together with the violent flapping of an empty saddle as the animal shook himself, caused a sudden inroad upon her meditations that produced that effect. There, hitched to a bush, stood a horse, one moreover that she seemed to recognise. Yes, it was the large, high-withered roan that Lamont had ridden when, at her urgent request, he had entered for the tent-pegging compet.i.tion and--had not won.

In a moment Clare's meditations, dreamy and otherwise, were scattered to the winds. There was the horse, but--where was its owner? A strange inclination--impulse, rather--to get away, to return before he should discover her presence, came upon her. Yet--why? Why on earth--why?

But whatever the ground for such aspirations they were not to be fulfilled, for at that moment a voice hailed her--an astonished voice.

"Why, Miss Vidal, good morning. Who in the world would have dreamed of meeting you up here?"

"I might say the same, Mr Lamont. I thought I would take a bit of a stroll while all Gandela was sleeping off last night's orgies. Strange, but I've never been up here. I suppose it is because the climb rather froze Lucy off--and I didn't bother to come alone. Do you know I think this country makes people very lazy."

"Oh yes. There's a steaminess about it that gets on to one's energies somehow. It'll infect you too when you've been out here a little longer."

"Now don't talk down to me, Mr Lamont. I feel quite an old pioneer. I came up here during the war, you know."

"Yes, yes. Just over two years ago."

"Well, you needn't be so supercilious. Especially as you don't seem to have been over-successful yourself this morning."

"Successful? Oh, I see," following her glance to the magazine rifle he carried. "No. Game is scarce since the rinderpest, and especially right near Gandela, like this."

"Look what I found just now, in the bush, before I got to the top here,"

she said. "It must be some sort of native ornament."

She held out to him two white cow-tails, fastened to a kind of bracelet of twisted sinew.

"Yes, it is. Very much of a native ornament."

The tone was dry, and--she thought--rather curious. She went on--

"I have more than one grievance against you, Mr Lamont. First of all, why didn't you come in and see us last night? We had quite a number of men dropping in."

"All the more reason why I shouldn't, isn't it? Too much of a crowd, you know."

"No, I don't. We can never have too much of a crowd of our friends."

He laughed--again, she thought, strangely.

"That's novel doctrine to me, anyway," he said. "I was always under the impression one could--and very much so. But I don't think your brother-in-law likes me. Isn't that good enough excuse?"

"No, it isn't. d.i.c.k doesn't const.i.tute the whole establishment. But, here is another thing. I own I've been dying of curiosity over it ever since. Why was it of so much importance that you should spend the rest of the day with that snuffy old savage? You were sticking to him closer than a brother. In fact you were at each other's elbow all the time.

More than one noticed it."

"Oh, did they?" and here she noticed a touch of concern in his tone.

Then, as if he had come to some sudden resolution, "I believe you have good nerves, Miss Vidal?"

"Yes," wonderingly.

"Well, get Fullerton to take, or send, you and your sister into Buluwayo without further delay."

Now Clare wondered indeed.

"Why?" she said simply.

"Yes, that's a fair question. But if I explain, will you undertake not to get panic-stricken, and also to leave events to me--in short, not to give away what I may tell you, no, not even to your sister."

"Why, of course. But--you don't mean to say these savages are meditating a war--on us?"

"Yes I do. And not only that, but the whole thing is cut and dried, and it's only a question when to begin. Now I shall be able to answer your other question. You thought me no end boorish and ungracious yesterday.

Well, the reason why I stuck to old Qubani like a brother, instead of being of service to you, was that, if I had not, the whole of Gandela would at this moment be a heap of ashes, and the race-course piled with the bodies of every man, woman, and child in the place."

"Good Heavens! You don't mean that?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Clare, staring at him.

"Certainly I do. There was an impi stationed here--up here where we are sitting, and at a signal from Qubani it was to rush the whole show. And then--"

"What was the signal?"

"He was to throw up the red cap he was wearing. It was to be done during the prize-giving, so as to be less noticeable."

"And--you prevented him?"