'Tween Snow and Fire: A Tale of the Last Kafir War Read online

  CHAPTER TWO.

  "YOU HAVE STRUCK A CHIEF."

  "_Baleka_ [Run], you dogs!" cried Carhayes, who had taken theopportunity of slipping a couple of fresh cartridges into his gun."_Baleka_, or I'll shoot the lot of you."

  He looked as if he meant it, too. The Kafirs, deeming discretion thebetter part of valour, judged it expedient to temporise.

  "Don't shoot again, _Baas_! [Master.] You have already killed oneman!" they said significantly.

  "And I'll kill four!" was the infuriated reply. "_Baleka_, do youhear--quick--sharp--at once, or you're dead men!"

  "Don't do anything so foolish, Tom," said a voice at his side, and ahand was stretched out as though to arrest the aim of the threateningpiece. "For God's sake, remember. We are not at war--yet."

  "That be hanged!" came the rough rejoinder. "Anyway, we'll give thesefellows a royal thrashing. We are two to three--that's good enoughodds. Come along, Eustace, and we'll lick them within an inch of theirlives."

  "We'll do nothing of the sort," replied the other quietly and firmly.Then, with an anxiety in his face which he could not altogether conceal,he walked his horse over to the prostrate Kafir. But the lattersuddenly staggered to his feet. His left shoulder was streaming withblood, and the concussion of the close discharge had stunned him. Evenhis would-be slayer looked somewhat relieved over this turn whichaffairs had taken, and for this he had to thank the plunging of hishorse, for it is difficult to shoot straight, even point blank, with arestive steed beneath one, let alone the additional handicap of being ina white rage at the time.

  Of his wound the Kafir took not the smallest notice. He stoodcontemplating the two white men with a scowl of bitter hatred deepeningupon his ochre-besmeared visage. His three countrymen halted irresolutea little distance--a respectful distance, thought Carhayes with asneer--in the background, as though waiting to see if their assistanceshould be required. Then he spoke:

  "Now hear my words, you whom the people call Umlilwane. I know you,even though you do not know me--better for you if you did, for then youwould not have wounded the sleeping lion, nor have aroused the anger ofthe hooded snake, who is swift to strike. Ha! I am Hlangani," hecontinued, raising his voice to a perfect roar of menace, and his eyesblazed like live coals as he pointed to the shot wounds in his shoulder,now black and hideous with clotted blood. "I am Hlangani, the son ofNgcesiba, a man of the House of Gcaleka. What man living am I afraidof? Behold me here as I stand. Shoot again, Umlilwane--shoot again, ifyou dare. _Hau_! Hear my `word.' You have slain my dog--my whitehunting dog, the last of his breed--who can outrun every other huntingdog in the land, even as the wind outstrippeth the crawling ox-wagon,and you have shed my blood, the blood of a chief. You had better firsthave cut off your right hand, _for it is better to lose a hand thanone's mind_. This is my `word,' Umlilwane--bear it in memory, _for youhave struck a chief_--a man of the House of Gcaleka."

  [Umlilwane: "Little Fire"--Kafirs are fond of bestowing nicknames. Thisone referred to its bearer's habitually short temper.]

  "Damn the House of Gcaleka, anyway," said Carhayes, with a sneer as thesavage, having vented his denunciation, stalked scowlingly away with hiscompatriots. "Look here, _isidenge_," [fool], he continued. "This ismy word. Keep clear of me, for the next time you fall foul of me I'llshoot you dead. And now, Eustace," turning to his companion, "we hadbetter load up this buck-meat and carry it home. What on earth is thegood of my trying to preserve the game, with a whole location of theseblack scum not ten miles from my door?" he went on, as he placed thecarcase of the unfortunate steinbok on the crupper of his horse.

  "No good. No good, whatever, as I am always telling you," rejoined theother decisively, "Kafir locations and game can't exist side by side.Doesn't it ever strike you, Tom, that this game-preserving mania iscosting you--costing us, excessively dear."

  "Hang it. I suppose it is," growled Carhayes. "I'll clear out, _trek_to some other part of the country where a fellow isn't overrun by a lotof worthless, lazy, red Kafirs. I wish to Heaven they'd only start thisprecious war. I'd take it out of some of their hides. Have some bettersport than buck-hunting then, eh?"

  "Perhaps. But there may be no war after all. Meanwhile you have wonthe enmity of every Kafir in Nteya's and Ncanduku's locations. Iwouldn't give ten pounds for our two hundred pound pair of breedingostriches, if it meant leaving them here three days from now, that'sall."

  "Oh, shut up croaking, Eustace," snarled Carhayes, "And by the way, whothe deuce is this sweep Hlangani, and what is he doing on this side ofthe river anyway?"

  "He's a Gcaleka, as he said, and a petty chief under Kreli; and theGaikas on this side are sure to take up his quarrel. I know them."

  "H'm. It strikes me you know these black scoundrels rather well,Eustace. What a queer chap you are. Now, I wonder what on earth hasmade you take such an interest in them of late."

  "So do I. I suppose, though, I find them interesting, especially sinceI have learned to talk with them pretty easily. And they areinteresting. On the whole, I like them."

  Carhayes made no reply, unless an inarticulate growl could be construedas such, and the two men rode on in silence. They were distant cousins,these two, and as regarded their farming operations, partners. Yetnever were two men more utterly dissimilar. Carhayes, the older by amatter of ten years, was just on the wrong side of forty--but hispowerfully built frame was as tough and vigorous as in the mostenergetic days of his youth. He was rather a good looking man, but thefirm set of his lips beneath the thick, fair beard, and a certainshortness of the neck, set forth his choleric disposition at firstglance. The other was slightly the taller of the two, and while lackingthe broad, massive proportions of his cousin, was straight, and well setup. But Eustace Milne's face would have puzzled the keenest characterreader. It was a blank. Not that there was aught of stupidity orwoodenness stamped thereon. On the contrary, there were moments when itwould light up with a rare attractiveness, but its normal expression wasof that impassibility which you may see upon the countenance of a priestor a lawyer of intellect and wide experience, whose vocation involves anintimate and profoundly varied acquaintance with human nature in all itschequered lights and shades; rarely, however, upon that of one so young.

  From the high ridge on which the two men were riding, the eye couldwander at will over the rolling, grassy plains and mimosa-dotted dalesof Kaffraria. The pure azure of the heavens was unflecked by a singlecloud. The light, balmy air of this early spring day was asinvigorating as wine. Far away to the southeast the sweep of undulatinggrass land melted into an indistinct blue haze--the Indian Ocean--whilein the opposite direction the panorama was barred by the hump-likeKabousie Heights, their green slopes alternating with lines of darkforest in a straggling labyrinth of intersecting kloofs. Far away overthe golden, sunlit plains, the white walls of a farmhouse or two werediscernible, and here and there, rising in a line upon the stillatmosphere, a column of grey smoke marked the locality of many a distantkraal lying along the spurs of the hills. So still, so transparent,indeed, was the air that even the voices of their savage inhabitants andthe low of cattle floated faintly across the wide and intervening space.Beneath--against the opposite ridge, about half a mile distant, the redochre on their clothing and persons showing in vivid and pleasingcontrast against the green of the hillside, moved ten or a dozenKafirs--men, women, and children. They stepped out in line at a brisk,elastic pace, and the lazy hum of their conversation drifted to the earsof the two white men so plainly that they could almost catch its burden.

  To the younger of these two men the splendid vastness of thismagnificent panorama, framing the picturesque figures of its barbarousinhabitants, made up a scene of which he never wearied, for though atpresent a Kaffrarian stock farmer, he had the mind of a thinker, aphilosopher, and a poet. To the elder, however, there was nothingnoteworthy or attractive about it. We fear he regarded the beautifulrolling plains as so much better or worse _veldt_ for purpos
es ofstock-feeding, and was apt to resent the continued and unbroken blue ofthe glorious vault above as likely to lead to an inconvenient scarcityof rain, if not to a positive drought. As for the dozen Kafirs in theforeground, so far from discerning anything poetical or picturesqueabout them, he looked upon them as just that number of black scoundrelsmaking their way to the nearest canteen to get drunk on the proceeds ofthe barter of skins flayed from stolen sheep--his own sheep among thoseof others.

  As if to emphasise this last idea, cresting the ridge at that moment,they came in sight of a large, straggling flock. Straggling indeed! Intwos and threes, in clumps of a dozen, and in clumps of fifty, theanimals, though numbering but eleven hundred, were spread over nearlytwo miles of _veldt_. It was the flock in charge of the defaulting andcontumacious Goniwe, who, however, having caught a glimpse of theapproach of his two masters, might be descried hurriedly collecting hisscattered charges. Carhayes ground his teeth.

  "I'll rip his black hide off him. I'll teach him to let the sheep go tothe devil while he hunts our bucks." And gripping his reins he drovehis spurs into his horse's flanks, with fell intent toward the offendingKafir.

  "Wait--wait!" urged the more prudent Eustace. "For Heaven's sake, don'tgive yourself away again. If you must lick the boy, wait until you gethim--and the sheep--safe home this evening. If you give him beans now,its more than likely he'll leave the whole flock in the _veldt_ andwon't come back at all--not forgetting, of course, to drive off a dozenor two to Nteya's location."

  There was reason in this, and Carhayes acquiesced with a snarl. Tocollect the scattered sheep was to the two mounted men a labour of nogreat difficulty or time, and with a stern injunction to Goniwe not tobe found playing the fool a second time, the pair turned their horses'heads and rode homeward.