The wound was not a mortal one--at the moment--and the enraged brute turned instantly at Nakeesa, struck her to earth, and then fastened his teeth, with a hideous, crunching sound, deep in the bones of her neck.

For a good half minute it continued this deadly work, then, noticing the year-old child, crying in the back of the woman's cloak, it gripped that also between its teeth, and put an end to it. Meanwhile Kwaneet, almost uninjured by the lion's first rush, had crawled away unnoticed, and, with Nakeesa's elder lad, regained a place of safety.

So Nakeesa lay there dead by the river, her days of toil and of pleasure all ended. She had shown two great extremes of evil and good in her nineteen years of existence. She had refused to save the life of Sinikwe (the man who treated her ill, and whom she loathed) from the puff-adder--an act as good as murder, most men will say. And for Kwaneet, who had treated her with some kindliness, and whom she loved with as much love as a Masarwa is capable of, she had given her whole being--life itself. She could do no more.

As for Kwaneet, having satisfied himself, without much emotion, at a later period of the day, of the death of his wife and child, and having taken as much zebra meat as the lion had left, he went his way.

Nakeesa's elder child--now three years old--was, of course, a perfectly useless enc.u.mbrance to him. He therefore sold the boy to some Batauana people for a new a.s.segai, and soon after returned to his desert life.

Nakeesa's bones are long since scattered, broken, and devoured by the beasts of the desert; but her skull, a little, round, smooth skull, lies there, yellow and discoloured, in the far swamps of the Tamalakan river.

Her poor, squalid, desert love-story can scarcely be said to point a moral, or even adorn a tale. It merely affords one more instance of the complex nature of the human heart--of human emotions--even in the crudest and most savage aspect of African life.

CHAPTER THREE.

A DESERT MYSTERY.

One of the cheeriest of Christmas Days was that spent on the pleasant banks of the Limpopo River, not many years since. Two hunting friends were trekking through Bechua.n.a.land towards the Zambesi, and it happened by great good fortune that, just at the junction of the Notwani and Limpopo Rivers, they found outspanned the wagons of two hunters and traders southward bound from the far interior. These men were travelling down-country with heavy loads of ivory, ostrich feathers, skins, and other produce, and they had with them a big troop of cattle obtained in barter. In these fitful encounters in the African wilderness men are always well met, and it needed no pressing from the new-found acquaintances to induce them to outspan together, and combine forces for Christmas cheer and Christmas chatter. A brief council of war soon settled the all-important question of commissariat.

Smallfield, the younger of the traders, had shot a good rooibok the evening before, which furnished venison for all, and they had already baked a store of bread from fresh Boer meal. The new-comers, on their side, freshly equipped from Kimberley, could provide tinned plum-puddings, tinned tomatoes, peas, jams, and other luxuries, including dried onions, most precious of vegetables in the veldt; and they had further some excellent Scotch whisky. They had, besides, half a dozen brace of guinea-fowl and pheasants, shot during the day in the jungles bordering the river, so that all the concomitants of a capital African banquet were ready to hand.

Just at sundown the preparations were complete, and no merrier party, you may swear, ever sat down to their Christmas meal. They supped by the light of a roaring camp-fire, eked out by a lantern or two placed on the cases that served for tables. The servants were enjoying themselves at another fire at a little distance; the oxen lay peacefully at their yokes; the wagons loomed large alongside, their white tents reflecting cheerfully the ruddy blaze of the fire; the night was perfect, still and warm, and the stars, like a million diamond sparks, scintillated in the intense darkness of the dome above. What wonder, then, that all felt happy and contented?

Supper at length over, the coffee-kettle was banished to obscurity and the whisky produced. The travellers lit their pipes and toasted their absent friends and each other, and then ensued a long and delightful evening.

The traders were two capital, manly fellows, well versed in the sports and toils and pleasures of the far interior; the new-comers themselves had been in the hunting veldt before, and they had all, therefore, many things in common. Many and many a yarn of the chase and adventure they exchanged; many a head of gallant game they slew again by the cheerful blaze. The up-country trekkers mentioned that they thought of trying a new bit of veldt, rather away from the beaten track, if but they could find water in the desert, and good guides and spoorers--they were bent on entering the wild and little-known tract of country north of the road to the Mababi veldt. "Well," said the elder of the traders--Kenstone was his name--"you'll find game there after the rains--giraffe, gemsbok, hartebeest, eland, koodoo, roan antelope, and perhaps a few elephant, or a rhinoceros or two. But it's a wild, barren veldt; the country as you go north is a good deal broken, and, unless the rains have been good, water is terribly scarce there. As for myself," (gazing rather moodily at the camp-fire, and stroking his thick, brown beard), "I once went into that veldt, and never wish to see it again. I had a most uncanny adventure there--an experience I never again wish to repeat if I live to a hundred. In all the years (and they are close on five-and-twenty now) I have been in the hunting veldt, I never spent so incomprehensible and horrible a time as the few days I am thinking of. Ugh!" and the big man shivered as he spoke.

Naturally the curiosity of his audience was at once excited. The younger trader, Smallfield, spoke first.

"Why, George," he said, "I never heard you speak of that country. I never even knew you had been in it. What's the yarn? It must be something out of the common if it gives _you_ the blues. You're not sentimental, as far as I remember."

"No, Jim," returned Kenstone, "I never mentioned the thing to you or to any one else, bar, perhaps, two or three folks. It's eleven years gone since it all happened. My old partner, Angus (he's down in the Colony now), who was with me at the time, knows all about it, and I reported some of the circ.u.mstances to a Transvaal Landdrost when we got back.

Otherwise I have never talked about the matter--I should only be chaffed, and it's not a pleasant topic at the best of times. It gave me a very nasty _schrijk_ [Fright] at the time, I remember. However, it's all far enough away now; if you and these gentlemen would like to hear the yarn, as it's Christmas-time, and we're so well met, why, I'll break my rule and tell you all about it. And mind, what I tell you are solid facts. You know I don't 'blow,' Jim, or spout tall yarns for the benefit of down-country folks or bar-loafers at Kimberley. What I saw I saw, and, please G.o.d, hope never to see again."

All were as keen as mustard for the story, and Kenstone went on.

"Well, let me fill my pipe, and give me another _soupje_ of whisky, and," (nodding a health to his hearers over his gla.s.s) "here goes:--

"It was in '74 that Angus and I were making our third trip to the Lake N'gami country. This time we had got leave from Khama to trade and hunt in Mababi and the Chobe River country; and we meant to push even beyond, to the region between the Sunta and the Okavango, if the fever would let us. We made a good trek of it across the 'thirst'--there had been very late rains that year--and even after crossing the Lake River we made good travelling well on towards the Mababi flat. We heard from the Makobas and Masarwas along the river that there was still some water standing in the bush on our right hand, that there were elephant in there, and that other game was abundant. It is not often that this veldt is accessible--from scarcity of water--and it seemed good enough to quit the wagon road for a time, and try the bush for ivory. Before reaching Scio Pans, therefore, we turned right-handed, and struck into the bush with one wagon--the other, in charge of our head driver, being sent on to the water, there to await our coming.

"We had some Masarwa bushmen with us, and they were as keen as hawks at the prospect of showing us heavy game, and getting a liberal supply of flesh. Northward we trekked steadily through wild desolate country for the best part of one day, and outspanned by a desert pool for the night.

Here we were greatly disappointed to find no spoor of elephant, although giraffe, ostrich, gemsbok, and hartebeest were fairly plentiful. Next day at dawn we again pushed doggedly on, Angus and I taking different directions, and riding some miles ahead of the wagon on the look-out for elephant-spoor. I rode behind a Masarwa at a steady pace all morning without finding the least sign of the game we wanted, and, after an off-saddle at midday, once more pushed on in a north-westerly direction.

"Rather suddenly we came upon a _klompje_ of giraffe, and as the elephants seemed very much in the air and we wanted meat, I rammed the spurs in and galloped headlong for the _kameels_ [Camels. The Boer term for giraffe]. It was desperately hot, and we were shut up in thick th.o.r.n.y bush in which not a breath of wind stirred, and I consequently had not got my coat on. The beast I rode for, a fat, fresh young cow, led me a pretty dance of two miles, h.e.l.l for leather, at a terrific pace through the very th.o.r.n.i.e.s.t jungle she could pick; and although I presently ranged close up to her rump, and with my third bullet (firing from my horse) brought her down with a crash, she had taken pretty heavy toll of me. My flannel shirt was torn to ribbons, and my chest and shoulders were rarely gashed about. Never hunt 'camel', gentlemen, in thick bush, without a stout coat on; that's the advice of an old veldt-man, and it's worth remembering. I ought to have known better that day, but I was not prepared for game at that particular moment.

"Well, I stuck my knife into the cow's back and found her well covered with fat, and the Masarwa coming up soon after, we set to work to skin and cut her up. Presently, having fastened about twenty pounds of meat to my saddle, and carrying the long, prehensile tongue dangling far below my belt, I saddled up, leaving the Masarwa, who had a calabash of water, to finish the job and wait for the wagon to pick him up next morning.

"I myself took a sweep north-north-east, with the intention of working round to the wagon before sundown.

"I had not left the Masarwa half an hour, when I suddenly, to my intense surprise, cut the spoor of a wagon running pretty well east and west, and going westward. It was not fresh, but at the same time not very old either. It might have been a month or two old at most. 'Now,' thought I, 'what in the mischief does this mean?' Very few hunters use this veldt. I knew Khama had sent no wagons that way this season, and the only white man in front of us this year was Dirk Starreberg, one of the few Dutch hunters to whom Khama gave permission to hunt in his veldt.

Starreberg's wagon it could only be. And yet it struck me as strange that Dirk, whom I knew well--for he was a noted interior hunter--should be trekking in this veldt. He was, I knew, bound for the Victoria Falls. Probably, like ourselves, enticed by the unwonted water supply and the possibility of a slap at the elephants, he had turned off somewhere between Nata River and Daka, and pushed across for the Chobe.

Thus reasoning, I turned my horse's head, and, with the westering sun now on my right flank, struck homeward for the wagon. I rode on for half a mile, and then came another strange thing. As I crossed an open glade I saw coming towards me the figure of a man. I knew in a moment who it was. The slouching walk, the big, burly form, the vast red beard, the rifle carried--as Dirk always carried his--by the muzzle end, with the stock poised behind his shoulder--it was none but Dirk Starreberg himself. But there was something amiss with him. He looked worn and troubled, almost distraught, it seemed to me, at that distance; and he gazed neither to right nor left of him, but pa.s.sed hurriedly and very swiftly in front of me at a distance of about eighty paces.

"'Hallo! Dirk!' I shouted. 'Allemaghte! war loup jij? Wacht een bitje, Dirk!' (Almighty! where are you off to? Wait a little, Dirk!) To my utter astonishment, the man took not the slightest notice, but pa.s.sed on. I became indignant, and yelled, 'Dirk, Dirk, have you no manners? It's me, George Kenstone. I want you. Stop!' Still the man pa.s.sed on. In another moment he had reached the bush again. He turned now, beckoned to me with his right hand, and, in another instant, had disappeared into the low forest.

"I was extremely annoyed, and after staring like a fool for a second or two, struck in spurs rather sharply and galloped after him. I was not three seconds in reaching the bush where he had entered, but, to my surprise, Dirk had vanished. I searched hither and thither, shouted-- ay, swore--but still no Dirk. I came back, at length, to the point where I had last seen the Boer. Surprise Number 3. There was my own spoor as plain as a pikestaff in the red sand, but of Dirk Starreberg _not one trace of spoor was to be seen_!

"Now, spoor, as you all know, is a thing that never lies. I had seen Dirk cross the clearing and enter the bush at this point. Where were his tracks? I got off my horse and hunted carefully every bit of the way across the glade where I had seen Dirk pa.s.s. I am a reasonable good veldt-man, but--so help me G.o.d!--I never could find one trace of the man's spoor, this way or that. I rubbed my eyes. It was incomprehensible. I searched again and again, carefully and methodically, with the same result. There was always my own and my horse's spoor, but no one else's.

"By this time I was not a little bothered. There must be some infernal mystery which I could not fathom. My eyesight had never yet failed me.

It was broad daylight, and I was neither asleep, nor dreaming, nor drunk. An old childish superst.i.tion crept for an instant upon my mind, to be instantly cast aside. And yet the flesh, even of grown manhood, is weak. I remember distinctly that I shivered, blazing hot as was the afternoon. The bush seemed very still and lonely, and I am bound to say it suddenly struck me it was time to move for the wagon. I got on to my good nag, walked him away, and presently set him into a brisk canter, which I only once slackened till I made the camp, just at sundown, a couple of hours later.

"I told Angus what I had seen. He laughed, and told me I had evidently missed the spoor, although he admitted that it was strange that Dirk had made no sign when I hailed him; and next morning we moved on rapidly, picked up the meat of the dead giraffe, and then a little later struck the wagon-spoor I had found yesterday. This we followed briskly until four o'clock p.m., when we came upon an old outspan, and discovery Number 4.

"Here was a good-sized water-pit in limestone formation. There were the remains of the camp-fire; and it was evident, from several indications, that the wagon, whosever it was, had stood at least two days at this spot. The camel-thorn trees [Giraffe-acacias] grew pretty thickly all around, and there was a good deal of bush, and altogether it was a sequestered, silent spot. Lying by the largest of the dead fires was an object that instantly quickened our interest in the mystery we were unravelling--the skeleton of a man, clean-picked by the foul vultures, but apparently untouched by jackals or hyaenas. There were still the tattered remains of clothing upon it, and one velschoen--a Boer velschoen--upon the right foot. I turned over the poor bleached framework to try and discover some inkling of its end. As I did so, out pattered from the skull on to the sand a solid Martini-Henry bullet, slightly flattened on one side of its apex, manifestly from impact with some bone it had encountered--probably a cheek-bone. A closer scrutiny revealed a big hole in rear of the skull just behind the right ear.

"'By George!' exclaimed Angus, who was bending over me, 'there's been foul play here. That shot was fired at pretty close quarters.'

"I nodded, and at that instant my Masarwa, who had been searching about near us, picked up and brought me a bunch of long red hair.

"'So help me G.o.d!' I could not help exclaiming, 'that's from Dirk Starreberg's beard, for any money! He has been murdered here--that's certain. If it was an accident, they would have buried him. The question is, who is the murderer?'

"We hunted about, but found no more traces, except the other velschoen and the remains of a Dutchman's broad-brimmed hat. We outspanned for the night, and sat down to think it over and have a pipe while supper was being got ready.

"'Angus,' I said, 'I don't half like things. There's some dark riddle here. The figure I saw yesterday afternoon was Dirk Starreberg's. I knew him well, and never could mistake him. And, strangely enough, he was heading, when I last saw him, for this very spot. If I believed in ghosts, which I don't, I should say I had seen Dirk's spook. What do you make of it all? I'm beginning to think I'm dreaming, or going dotty. It beats me altogether.'

"'Well,' returned Angus, in his quaint way, 'it's the most extraordinary rum go I ever heard of. We'd better trek on in the morning, first thing, and see what else we can discover. Those are Dirk's bones undoubtedly; we must try and do something for the poor chap, though he is dead.'

"I don't know what was wrong that night, but several times the oxen were startled, and sprang to their feet; and the nags--fastened up to the wagon-wheels--were desperately scared once or twice, and pulled at their _riems_ as though they must break them; the dogs, too, barked and howled, and behaved very strangely. And yet no lions were near us.

Once or twice we looked out, but saw nothing. All of us, masters and boys, were uncomfortable--we could hardly explain why, and the men undoubtedly knew nothing of what I had seen the day before.

"At dawn next morning we were not sorry to inspan and trek; and, following the old wagon-spoor, we pushed on, determined if possible to get to the bottom of the affair. All that day and all the next we toiled on, only outspanning once or twice during the daytime, and at night, by water, to rest and refresh the oxen for a few hours. At last, an hour before sunset of the second day, Angus and I, who were riding ahead of the wagon, spied suddenly among some camel-thorn trees the tent of a wagon, to which we cantered. Suddenly, as we reined up, the fore-clap was cast aside, and a wild figure of a woman appeared, and scrambled down from the wagon-box. It was Vrouw Starreberg, but terribly, sadly altered from the stout, if somewhat grim, good-wife I had last seen a couple of years before. Her dark stuff dress was torn and cut about by the thorn-bushes; her erst fat, smooth face, broad though it still was, was lined and haggard, and terribly fallen away; but, above all, there was a rolling vacancy, a wildness, in her eye, that made me fear at once for her reason. Under one arm she clasped tightly a big Bible, and never in the subsequent days that we were together did she once relinquish it. It seemed that some terrible calamity had overturned her reason.

"'Whence come ye, George Kenstone?' (she had known me well for years), she cried in a harsh, high-pitched scream, very painful to listen to.

'Take me out of this desert, and back to my home. I have been cast away these six weeks able to move neither hand nor foot for freedom. The man I called husband is dead, and my servants have fled, and the oxen are gone--the Lord knows where.'

"I scarce knew how to begin with her.

"'I'm sorry, Tant' Starreberg,' I said, 'to find you in this plight.

I'm afraid there has been sad mischief, and your husband has been shot.

Is it not so? We will help you gladly, of course, and early in the morning, when the oxen will be rested, we will take you out of this place. I fear you have suffered much. But how came poor Dirk by his end? Was it the boys?'

"At the mention of Dirk her whole expression changed; her eyes filled with a terrible light. In her best days Vrouw Starreberg was a hard-featured, ugly woman. Now she looked almost fiendish.

"'_Poor_ Dirk?' she shrieked with a horrible scorn. '_Poor_ Dirk? No, I am not afraid to own it! The man you call Dirk Starreberg--he was no more husband of mine--died by my hand. I shot him; yes, dead I shot him, as he sat by his fire. And why? Because he lied and was unfaithful. Because he forsook me for that mop-headed, blue-eyed, pink-faced doll--Alletta Veeland. And when at last I had discovered all--he talked over-much in his sleep, the traitor!--and taxed him with it, here in this very veldt, he laughed me to scorn, and told me he was tired of my black face and my sour ways, and gloried in his evil love.

Ja! he taunted me that I was old and barren--I that had made a man of him, and brought him gold, and flocks, and herds, and set him up. And so I shot him, as I say. I could endure it no longer; and the servants, having trekked to this place with me, fled, and the oxen wandered, and I am alone, the Lord help me!' At the next instant the poor, overwrought creature fell in a swoon upon the sand.

"Well, it was all very horrible; although even now we hardly knew what to believe. But we brought her to, gave her some brandy, and put her into her wagon to rest. And later on I took her some soup and bread, and made her eat it. She was exhausted now, and told me in a low voice that she had lived on meal and water for weeks past. Presently we turned in, and all was quiet.

"It was, I suppose, some little time after midnight that Angus and I were roused by a loud voice beyond the camp-fire, which lay between the other wagon and our own. We listened; it was the vrouw herself.