Harley Greenoak's Charge Part 11

Greenoak's quick ear caught a shade of disappointment in the tone, almost of consternation. Then d.i.c.k's departure would cause a blank; for of course she knew that the two were moving about together.

"You must remember we've been here a good while already," he answered, "and there's such a thing as wearing out one's welcome. Besides, I want to show the young one some further sides of the life of the country."

"No fear of your wearing out anything of the kind here," rejoined Hazel, quickly. "As for the other consideration, well, that counts for something, I suppose. Here we are."

Their uphill progress was at an end. They had reached a high, stony neck, or saddle, between two great crags. In front the slope fell abruptly away for over a thousand feet to a spread of rolling plains, spa.r.s.ely bushed, and extending for miles and miles. Here and there, at long intervals, a thread of smoke, rising from homestead or native kraal, ascended, but for an immensity of distance the expanse lay, monotonous in its green-brown roll, intersected, in darker line, by the willow-fringed banks of a nearly dry river-bed. Beyond, in the clear atmosphere, seeming about twenty miles distant, though fully fifty, rose mountain piles, flat-topped, in ma.s.sive walls, or breaking off into turreted cones. Northward others, more distant still, floating apparently in mid-air, owing to the mirage-like effect of distance and clearness, but everywhere a sense of grand, open, unbounded s.p.a.ce. The far-away bark of a dog, or the disturbed crowing of c.o.c.k koorhaans, came up out of the stillness. On the side from which they had ascended was the vast, crater-like hollow, the tangle of rugged and bush-grown kloofs, and slopes covered with forest trees rising to lap in wave-bound verdure the grim iron faces of red rock walls and castellated crags. It was a scene that in the balmy yet exhilarating air of the cloudless day one could sit there and revel in for ever.

"You can almost see our place from here," said Hazel. "That kopje just shuts it off, and you wouldn't think it was forty miles as the crow flies. This is a favourite perch of mine. I often used to climb up here."

"Did you drag your uncle up, too?"

"Oh yes. He'd ride though. But he doesn't care a rap for scenery.

He'd light his pipe, and in about ten minutes be fast asleep."

"I'll light mine, but I promise you I won't go to sleep."

"No, don't. You must talk to me instead. Tell me some of your experiences. You must have had so many, and such wonderful ones."

Harley Greenoak laughed deprecatorily. This formula was so frequent wherever he went that it had become stereotyped. As a rule it annoyed him; now, however, it was hard to connect such a word with the owner of that sparkling face, of the wide, l.u.s.trous, almost admiring eyes turned upon his own.

"One can't spin yarns to order," he said. "If something suggests one, out it comes--or doesn't."

CHAPTER TEN.

DRIFT.

She made no answer, at first. They were in shade now, and she had flung off her sun-bonnet, and her glance was turned forth upon the wide veldt lying beneath, while the light breeze stirred the little escaped rings of her dark hair. No wonder he had found it difficult to get his charge away from Haakdoornfontein, thought the only spectator. The thought was quickly followed by another. Was he so unaffectedly anxious to get away from it himself? Well, why should he be? This bright, beautiful child had brought such suns.h.i.+ne into their daily life, why should he not enjoy his share of it simply because he was no longer young? Harley Greenoak had a strong sense of the ridiculous. Now he saw himself, rough, middle-aged, rapidly turning grey, and secretly he laughed; but it was a laugh not altogether free from wistfulness.

"What an experience yours must have been!" she went on. "I suppose you can't even count the number of people whose lives you have saved?"

"I never tried--er--and excuse me, Miss Brandon, but--you didn't bring me up here to make me brag, did you?"

"To make _you_ brag?" she repeated. "That would be a feat--one that I don't believe any one ever accomplished yet."

"I hope not. I'm only a plain man, Miss Brandon. I don't know that I ever had much education, but I've always held a theory of my own that every one is put into the world to be of some use, and I've always tried to act up to it."

"Haven't you just, and succeeded too? I suppose all South Africa knows that."

The soft-voiced flattery, the glance that accompanied it, were calculated to stir the pulses of even so strong a man as Harley Greenoak, and this he himself realised while striving to neutralise their effect.

"When I was young," he went on, "people used to look on me as a sort of ne'er-do-well, something not far short of a scamp, because I elected for a wandering life instead of what they called 'settling down to something.' Perhaps they were right, perhaps not."

"They were idiots," broke forth Hazel, impulsively.

"I don't know," went on the other, with a smile at the interruption.

"Anyhow, I believe in a man taking to what he's most fitted for, and I've lived to know that this is the life I'm the most fitted for. Some might call it an idle life, but if I may say so without bragging, I believe it has been of more service to other people than if I had launched out in the 'settling down' line of business."

"I should think so indeed," said the girl, her beautiful eyes aglow with sympathy and admiration. Secretly she was delighted. She had made Harley Greenoak talk--and not merely talk, but talk about himself--a thing which, if popular report spoke truly, no one had ever succeeded in doing yet.

"Once I tried farming, but it was no manner of use. The wandering instinct was in my blood, I suppose. Even transport riding--and I was pretty lucky at that while it lasted--was too slow for me. Too much sticking to the road, you see. I've been a little of everything, but,"--with a whimsical laugh--"I certainly never expected to turn bear-leader in my old age."

"Uncommonly lucky for the 'bear,'" p.r.o.nounced Hazel.

"Well, the said 'bear' is apt to get into hot water rather easily.

Otherwise he hasn't got any vice."

"And you are apt to get him out of hot water rather easily. Oh, I've heard all about it."

"That was part of my charge. It was all in the day's work. Over and about that, I've grown quite fond of the boy. He's as taking a lad as I've ever known."

Hazel agreed, and promptly turned the subject from the belauded d.i.c.k Selmes to other matters. The while, she was thinking; and if her companion could have read her thoughts--and even his penetration couldn't do that--why, it is possible that he would have run up against the biggest surprise he had ever experienced in his life.

Even so Harley Greenoak was conscious of some modic.u.m of surprise; and that was evoked by the way in which his companion was making him talk-- drawing him, so to say--and, somehow, the experience was a pleasant one.

Not until afterwards did it occur to him that he had come near being thrown a trifle off his balance by the soft insidious flatteries of this beautiful girl, reclining there in an att.i.tude of easy grace. The warm, sunlit air, the height of s.p.a.ce, looking down, as it were, upon two worlds, the free openness of it all was Greenoak's natural heritage, and under no other surroundings could he be so thoroughly at his best. So she led him on to talk, and he had a dry, quaint, philosophical way of handling things which amused and appealed to her immensely. Suddenly the report of a gun, just beneath, together with the cry of dogs hot-foot on a quarry.

"That's d.i.c.k. He's worked round to this side of the farm," said Greenoak. "Shall we go down and see what he's been doing, for it strikes me we've been sitting here rather a long time?"

"Oh, you have found it long, then?" with mock offended air, then colouring slightly as she realised what an utter ba.n.a.lity she had fired off for the benefit of a man of Harley Greenoak's calibre.

"No, I haven't," he answered quite evenly. "I've enjoyed the lounge and the talk very much." And then Hazel felt more disgusted with herself still.

"Let's go back to the house," she said. "I believe it's getting rather hot."

She chatted as they wound their way downwards along the bush-path, but not so brightly as when they had come up it. Somewhat wonderingly, Greenoak noted that she displayed no interest in the absent d.i.c.k. The latter arrived not long after themselves.

"There you are, Miss Brandon, I've redeemed my pledge," he cried. "Got a whacking big bush-buck ram. Do come and look at it."

"Got him just under Bromvogel Nek--eh, d.i.c.k?" said Greenoak.

"Yes. But--how did you know?"

"Heard your shot, and the dogs on to something wounded. We took a walk up there, Miss Brandon and I."

"Oh--" And d.i.c.k Selmes stopped short, and then thought what an a.s.s he was making of himself. So that was why Hazel had been so anxious for him to go out and hunt! Old Greenoak was coming out of his sh.e.l.l-- coming out with a vengeance.

As they went outside Kleinbooi, the Fingo, was in the act of offloading the quarry. It certainly was a fine ram, but d.i.c.k noticed with inward disgust and heart-searching that Hazel seemed to show but little interest in it, or in his own doings. And by this time it had become of very great importance to him that she should feel interest in his own doings.

"What would you say to moving on, d.i.c.k?" said Greenoak that afternoon.

"We've been here a good while, you know."

The other's face fell.

"Yes, I'm afraid we have," he said. "But where shall we go next?"

Greenoak gave him some inkling of the bearing of the Commandant's letter, and the idea caught on, but with half the alacrity wherewith it would have been received had a certain entrancing young person not been a fellow-guest at Haakdoornfontein.

"When shall we start?" asked d.i.c.k, somewhat ruefully.