A Vendetta of the Desert Part 16

"Not angry? Hark. Did you not hear a sound?"

"Yes, I hear the wild ostriches booming in the valley."

"Close the window and come away, child; the darkness is full of horror.

You are right not to go to bed. I could not sleep to-night."

"Why do you fear the open window, Aunt?"

"The night is dark." She shuddered and crouched into the corner of the sofa.

"The day is ever dark to me, yet I fear not."

"Last night the dogs howled and I saw white shapes flitting among the trees where the graves are."

"What of that? Shapes often flit about me; I call them and they are here; I bid them depart and they are gone."

"Child,--you are blind and thus cannot understand.--Hark.--Is not that a sound of shouting, afar off?"

"It is but the jackals howling on the hill-side.--The time has not yet come.--But, Aunt,--let me tell you farther of the things I know."

"Not to-night,--I am in terror enough as it is."

"What I have to tell you will not terrify you, for you are guiltless."

"Guiltless,--yes; but G.o.d visits the sins of the guilty upon the guiltless. But it is not for myself that I fear."

"One of the things which I see with clearness is that there is no reason for your terror."

Aletta bowed her head forward on her hands. The candle had almost burnt out; only a faint, uncertain flicker arose out of the socket. She started, and lifted her head:

"Listen,--that is surely a sound."

"Yes,--the springbucks came over the mountain last week; you hear the bellowing of the rams on the upland ledge and the clas.h.i.+ng of their horns as they fight--But I can hear that my father draws nearer."

"If he be not coming in anger, why does he hasten thus? But you cannot hear him; the sound is in your own ears."

"May not one hasten in love as well as in hate? The wagon has now reached the rocky pa.s.s between the kopjes. It will soon be here."

Aletta arose and walked over to the window. She linked her arm in that of Elsie and tried to draw the blind girl away from her post.

"Come to bed,--I am not so terrified as I was a while ago."

"Hark.--Even the ears of one who is not blind can hear that."

A light breeze was streaming up the valley, driving the mist before it in broken ma.s.ses. From the rough, stony pa.s.s could be heard the heavy thumpings of the ma.s.sive wheels. Aletta once more sank to her knees in agony.

"Oh G.o.d,--you have brought him here.--Oh G.o.d,--soften his heart--"

"Aunt,--G.o.d heard your prayer long before you spoke it. His heart has been softened."

"No, no, child. I hear anger in the noise of the wheels and in the clappings of the whip.--Nine years--nine years--and innocent.--Oh G.o.d, soften his heart,--or let my husband get away.--Elsie,--I charge you not to tell your father what road my husband has gone.--Tell him that your uncle went a month ago.--Let us go to the huts and warn the servants--"

"Aunt,--wait just a little while and you will see. I shall walk down the road and meet my father."

"Yes,--yes,--and, Elsie,--pray to him for the sake of a lonely old woman who seems to have never known joy.--Go, child--but wait--No, I cannot stay here alone; I fear the darkness."

"Come with me, Aunt."

"Yes,--yes,--but what if it be not his wagon?"

"It is my father's wagon. Come." The breeze had freshened; the mist had been rolled out of the valley, leaving it clear to the stars, but the vapour hung in wisps from every mountain head and streamed away white in the s.h.i.+ning of the rising moon. As the two walked down the road it was she who was blind that walked forward with unfaltering steps, leading her who could see, but who faltered at every yard.

Nearer and nearer came the clattering wagon, and the driver's voice as he shouted to the team could be clearly heard. Aletta sank down upon a stone at the wayside and Elsie, after walking on for a few paces, stood motionless in the middle of the road. Her loosened hair floated on the wind; her tall figure, clad in fluttering white, made a striking picture in the light of the now fully arisen moon.

The leader threw up his hand and stopped the team with a call; Stepha.n.u.s sprang from the wagon box, ran forward and clasped Elsie to his breast.

"My little child--grown into a woman--her face s.h.i.+ning as brightly as the sun she has never seen, and making night like day.--But where is my brother--where is Gideon--?"

Aletta staggered forward and knelt in the road at his feet.

"Oh, Stepha.n.u.s,--have mercy and let him be.--He fled when he heard you were coming.--Have mercy.--He has suffered too--"

"We both need the mercy of G.o.d.--Aletta, do not kneel to me.--Where is my brother Gideon?"

He drew the half-unconscious woman to her feet and she burst into a storm of tears.

"Oh, Stepha.n.u.s," she said, "you are not deceiving me?--Tell me,--have you forgiven the wrong?"

"Yes, Aletta,--as I hope to be forgiven. Whither did Gideon go? Let me follow him."

"Thank G.o.d,--thank G.o.d, who has heard my prayer."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

HOW KANU PROSPERED.

Kanu arose from his hard couch on the floor of the cavern wherein he dwelt with his followers and clambered to the top of the rocky ridge which capped the krantz at the foot of which the cavern was situated.

It was hunger and thirst which drove him forth thus restlessly under the midnight stars. Every night for more than a month he had sat for hours at this spot. Rain had not fallen for nearly two years and the little brackish fountain in the kloof below, on which these Bushmen were solely dependent for water to keep body and soul together, had shrunk and shrunk until it was reduced to a mere trickle. As the fountain shrank it became more and more brackish; so much so that after his long day of unsuccessful hunting Kanu had been unable to quench his thirst at it.

When he reached the top of the ridge the Bushman instinctively turned his gaze to the north-east. The sky was absolutely cloudless and the stars were s.h.i.+ning and throbbing as they only s.h.i.+ne and throb over the desert. He sat long motionless and was about to return, sick at soul, to the cave, when he caught his breath short, and his heart gave a great throb, for a faint flash lit up the horizon for a instant. Another flash, brighter than the first, soon followed. Kanu clambered swiftly down the steep hill-side, wakened the other cave-dwellers and informed them of what he had seen. In a few seconds the cave was the scene of bustling activity, preparatory to an immediate migration.

These distant flashes of lightning had for the little clan--or rather family of Bushmen, an all-important significance, for they meant that in some distant region beyond the north-eastern horizon a thunderstorm was raging and thus the long drought had broken on the vast plains sloping northward to the mighty, mysterious Gariep.

The cave was situated in a spur of that rugged range of iron-black hills known as the Kamiesbergen, and which were now, after the long-protracted drought, covered with blackened stumps marking the spots where, after rain, the graceful sheaves of the "twa" gra.s.s grow. The Bushmen knew there was no chance of rain falling where they were, for their moisture came in the winter season in the form of wet mists from the sea. These never pa.s.sed the limit of the hills. On the other hand, the only rains which visited the plains were those which swept down with the thunderstorms from the torrid north, when the great clouds advanced with roarings as though to smite the hills asunder but, within the compa.s.s of a vulture's swoop, would be stopped as though by a wall of invisible adamant and sent reeling to the eastward.

It was now midsummer and the Bushmen well knew that they would never be able to survive in their present situation until midwinter, before which season no rain from the southward was to be expected. For some time they had realised that their only chance of escaping a death of terrible suffering lay in cutting the track of the first thunder shower which would, as they were well aware, be the track of the others soon following. Should they succeed in doing this they would revel in a belt of desert turned as though by magic into a smiling garden, full of game, and with many a rock-bottomed, sand-filled depression in which good water could be easily reached by burrowing.