A Veldt Vendetta Part 28

"But--where then?" I asked, thoroughly mystified.

"I am going to take him to look upon those he has murdered. Then I am going to shoot him dead--there, at the place where he has murdered them."

I gasped.

"Great heavens, Beryl! you are never going to do anything so mad!"

"I am. What do you suppose I brought him all this way for--Be careful, Kuliso," relapsing into Kafir. "My eyes are on you, although I'm talking. The bullet, too, is just as ready."

To say that I was thunderstruck is to put it mildly. When I had agreed to our daring and desperate scheme, the arrest of the chief in the very thick of his own followers, I had never bargained for this. The idea was that by seizing him ourselves we could bring him to justice and thus prevent his escape, for if his said arrest were attempted in the ordinary way his followers would never give him up. They would resist any attempt to take him by force, as sure as such attempt were made.

This would probably bring on a war, but not condign punishment upon Kuliso. I was filled with admiration for the prompt.i.tude and resolution with which she had forced him to accompany us, but that he was marching to his swift and certain doom had never entered my head--that Beryl had const.i.tuted herself his judge, jury and executioner, least of all. No, a.s.suredly I had never bargained for this.

"Think better of it," I urged. "Think better of it, and let us carry out our original plan and take him into the town."

"It was never _my_ original plan," she answered, in the same low, monotonous tone. "Besides, to use your own words, we should never get him anything like as far. He'd be rescued or give us the slip long before. No. My original plan is the one I am going to carry out--Cross the road, Kuliso. That's right. Keep straight on."

"Beryl, you cannot do this thing yourself," I urged earnestly. "We will manage to keep possession of him somehow, but--leave the rest to the hangman."

"The hangman would never get him, in that case. The Government itself would find some pretext for letting him go, for fear of bringing on a war. Kenrick, you stood beside me when we found _them_--you, too, saw them. Have you so soon forgotten?"

"Forgotten? It would take more than a lifetime to forget that. Still, for your own sake do not do this. I believe you yourself will regret it afterwards. And then the law may call it murder. What then?"

"There isn't a jury in the land that would convict me," she said. "They would call it an act of justice. And it will be. I have thought it all out, you see."

What was I to answer? She was very likely right in her surmise. I remembered Brian's words, uttered the day after my arrival here--words to that very effect.

"Even then it will wear an ugly look," I persisted. "We bring this man a considerable distance across country--the two of us--then shoot him in cold blood."

"Has your blood cooled then, Kenrick?" she said. "Mine hasn't, nor will it, until I see this murderer lying dead beside those he has killed."

"Understand, I am not pleading for his life," I went on, "only that you should not be his executioner. Besides, what if he is the wrong man?

What if he should be speaking the truth after all when he says he knows nothing about it?"

"A chief is responsible for the acts of his followers, even under their own law. And he was not speaking the truth; he was lying. I know these people better than you do, Kenrick. If he knew nothing of--of--what has happened, do you think I could have frightened him into going with us?

Not for a moment. He knew all about it, and encouraged it, if he did not actually instigate it. He is the princ.i.p.al murderer; afterwards I shall find out the others."

"I was wrong in something I said just now," she went on while I was thinking what next to urge. "I told you I had thought the matter all out. Well, I was wrong. There was one side of it that escaped me."

"And that is?" I said eagerly, catching at a possible straw.

"Yourself."

"Me?"

"Yes. I don't want you to suffer for this in any way. You have helped me this far, Kenrick. Now go--and leave the rest to me. You are not supposed to know what I am about to do; and I'll take care it shall never leak out that you did. Go back to the house and wait for me."

"That's so likely, isn't it?" I answered. "Of course, under any circ.u.mstances I'd be sure to slink off and leave you in the middle of the veldt at night, surrounded by Kuliso's cut-throats, watching an opportunity to revenge the death of their chief. That would be me all over, wouldn't it?"

"If only I could see some way out of it--for you! Let me think."

"No, Beryl. Don't think. There's nothing further to be said. Whatever this is we are in it together."

It must not be supposed that during all this talk Beryl's vigilance over her captive was relaxed for one single moment. Nor must it be supposed that I--that either of us--imagined that we were going to have things all our own way, and that Kuliso's people had tamely left their chief to his fate.

We could not see them, but that they were keeping us under observation the whole way neither of us had a shadow of a doubt. But while keeping a sharp look-out, I was able to turn over the situation in my mind. If only Brian had been here. As it was, would he not hold me responsible for Beryl's action, and any disastrous consequences which might ensue?

Well, for that matter he could hardly do so, if only that he knew his sister well enough to know also that under the circ.u.mstances she would simply laugh at the advice or attempted control of anybody, and that had I discountenanced her project by refusing to accompany her she would simply have embarked on it alone, and then--putting the question on its lowest ground--what sort of figure should I have cut?

Now we were drawing near the fatal spot. We seemed to be moving in a dream--worse--a nightmare. The face of the murdered boy, swollen and ghastly, staring upward to the full broad moon, again seemed to come before my gaze--and that other face, calm, placid, as overtaken by death before a last moment of fleeting horror had had time to stamp it. My nerves were strung to the utmost tension. The Ndhlambe chief would now guess why he had been brought here, and that moment would be his last; for, thus rendered desperate, would he not make one last effort for life? All was still--still as death, save for the tread of the horses; yet momentarily I awaited the roar of the shot which should send Kuliso into that unseen world whither his victims had preceded him.

Then just what I had expected came to pa.s.s. Suddenly, and by a rapid, serpentine movement, the chief flung himself down, wriggling for the shade of a thick clump of bush we were pa.s.sing, and simultaneously dark, sinuous forms started up in front, around us, seeming to spring from nowhere. Beryl's pistol cracked, and then I saw a huge savage--naked, ochre-stained--poising a heavy k.n.o.bkerrie for a throw. He could not, at that short distance, miss his mark--and that mark, Beryl. And he was behind her, and--she did not see him. It was all done in a second. I drove the spurs home, standing up in the stirrups to catch or ward off the murderous club as, with a whizz, it left his hand. I felt a sharp, fiery dig in the side, in my ears a jarring, roaring crash. My sight was scorched as with the blaze of a million fires, and then--blankness-- oblivion!

CHAPTER THIRTY.

"AT LAST!"

"Hush. Don't talk yet. It's too soon."

A cool hand was laid upon my forehead, while another smoothed the pillows. Bending over me was the face that had been with me in the life for months--in imagination through all the unnameable horrors of my delirium. The large eyes were infinitely tender now, the serene face soft and pitiful.

"It was only my delirium then? It was not true, not real?"

But as I gasped out the question, for I was very weak, my glance lighted on the black heaviness of Beryl's attire. Then I knew that it was true.

"Don't talk any more or you will never get well. And you have got to get well."

"And then you will leave me. I don't want to get well."

"I haven't left you all these weeks, Kenrick, so am not likely to begin now," she answered. "But if you don't obey orders I will. So be quiet."

This was irrefutable; besides, there was that in the sight of her, in her words, in her tones, which shed over me a kind of drowsy peace. I lay still, content to watch her as she sat by my bed doing some needlework, not forgetting every now and then, with watchful care, to brush away the flies that threatened to disturb me. Strange to say, I seemed to feel no curiosity as to the extent of my injuries, or as to what had happened, or even where I was. Her presence was all-sufficient, and soon I dropped off to sleep again.

I pa.s.s over the days of convalescence, the recollection of which is somewhat confused. Beryl was seldom absent from my bedside, and I retain a sort of consciousness of others stealing in to look at me. But on such occasions I feigned sleep. I didn't want to see anybody else-- anybody but her.

One morning I opened my eyes, feeling strangely well. The object of my unvarying first glance was not there. Her accustomed seat was occupied by Brian.

"Feel better, old chap?" he said, coming over to me. "That's right.

Pentridge said you'd take a sudden turn."

"Pentridge? Oh, he's been herding me then? But--Brian--where am I?"

For almost for the first time I realised the strangeness of my surroundings.

"Why, you're where you've been the last few weeks--at Fort Lamport--in the new cottage hospital. Pentridge wanted to turn out of his house, and put us all in there, but he'd only just got into it himself, and it's all at sixes and sevens."

The mention of Pentridge seemed to bring back all the old bitterness, and I lay still, not caring to talk any more. But Brian was not of the same mind.

"Do you know, Kenrick, again you have been a sort of Providence to us,"

he said. "But for you, Beryl would have been killed stone dead--if you hadn't stopped that kerrie. Nothing could have saved her. I saw it."