Harley Greenoak's Charge Part 20

"First taste," he said grimly. "This go on all day. How you like that?

Now--you read?"

"No!" thundered the victim.

Then something else thundered. Crack! Crack! The barbarian with the hot iron pitched heavily forward, shot through the brain, while another of those holding Sandgate shared the same fate. Crack! Crack! Not a moment of interval--down went two more, and those immediately next to the prisoners; then two more in the same way. Instinctively the others sprang back, realising that this was the point of danger; but still that unceasing fire went on pitilessly decimating them. Wildly they looked at the point whence it came, but vainly, for the morning mist had so thickened that they could but dimly see the outline of the rocks which overhung the back of the hollow. A great and thunderous roar, accompanying a hail of heavy slugs into the very thick of them, completed their discomfiture. With a wholesome recollection of the artillery practice some of them had witnessed on the banks of the Tsolo River not long before, they cried that the _Amapolise_ were upon them, and disappeared helter-skelter into the mist and the bush at the lower side of the hollow.

Our two friends could hardly believe in their good fortune. Yet--no escape was to be theirs. A man was beside them--a black man--and in his hand a knife. They would be murdered, of course, in the hour of rescue.

But--he was cutting their bonds.

"Quick! Come with me," he said in English, at the same time collecting the Police carbines and revolvers lying on the ground, which the panic-stricken Kafirs had omitted to carry away. Him they followed-- Sandgate limping painfully--as he led the way to the rocks above, where, ensconced in a cleft which commanded the hollow beneath, Harley Greenoak sat coolly refilling the magazine of a Winchester repeating rifle, while an old elephant gun of enormous calibre lay on the ground beside him.

"You're well out of that," he said, hardly looking up. "Lucky I got back to camp when I did, and John Voss came in at the same time with the notion he had picked up that Pahlandhle's crowd were particularly on the look-out for express-riders. I formed my plan there and then; borrowed Mainwaring's Winchester--dashed bad shooting-gun it is too--and, with John Voss's old elephant _roer_ to give the idea of artillery, why-- brought the whole thing off. Even then the mist counted for something."

In the last-named both now recognised one of the smartest native detectives attached to the F.A.M. Police.

"Come along," went on Greenoak, rising. "We must get on with those despatches. No time to lose."

"But--they are lost," said Sandgate, wearily.

"No, they ain't. John's got 'em."

The black man grinned as he handed the paper over to the corporal.

"But our horses?" said d.i.c.k Selmes, dismayed.

"Well, I got back one of them," answered Greenoak, equably. "One of you can ride John's--he's quite able to make his way back to the Kangala alone. So there are mounts for the three of us, and the sooner we get on to the Isiwa fort the better.

"Well, d.i.c.k," he went on, "I take it you've found your first experience of express-riding 'thunderingly exciting,' as you were saying the other day."

"I should think so--ugh!" And something like a shudder accompanied the words, as the speaker recalled their recent ghastly experience, and the lamentable fate of the unfortunate man whose body lay just beneath, and which they could not even spare the time to bury.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE AMMUNITION ESCORT.

"Where did you pick up that man, Jacob Snyman?" said Harley Greenoak.

"He's not been long attached to the Force," answered Sub-Inspector Ladell.

"Yes, I know, but _where_ did you pick him up?"

"That's more than I can tell you. He's rather a pet of the Commandant's; helps him to find new sorts of b.u.t.terflies and creeping things that the old man is dead nuts on collecting. So he took him on in the native detective line."

Harley Greenoak did not reply, but his thoughts took this very definite shape--

"That's all very well, but a taste for entomology on the part of an untrousered savage isn't going to get this escort safe and sound to the Kangala Camp. One more occasion for keeping one's eyes wide-open."

The object of this inquiry was a thick-set, very black-hued Kafir, at the present moment not untrousered, for he wore the F.A.M. Police uniform of dark cord, and was driving one of the two ammunition waggons, which, with their escort, were just getting out of sight of the solid earth bastion of Fort Isiwa. The said escort consisted of sixty men, under the command of a Sub-Inspector, beside whom Greenoak was riding.

With him was d.i.c.k Selmes. The latter now struck in--

"What's the row with Jacob--eh, Greenoak?"

"I don't know that I said anything was."

"No. But you'd got on that suspicious look of yours when you spoke of him. I believe you're out of it this time. Now, I should say Jacob was as good a chap as ever lived, even though he is as black as the ace of spades. I've been yarning with him a heap."

"Have you? I think I'll follow your example then," returned Greenoak, reining in his horse so as to bring it abreast of the foremost of the ammunition waggons, ahead of which they had been riding.

The driver saluted. Though, as d.i.c.k Selmes had said, he was as black as the ace of spades, he had an extremely pleasant face and manner.

Greenoak addressed him in the Xosa tongue, being tolerably sure that none of the Police troopers within earshot possessed anything but the merest smattering of that language, most of them not even that.

Further, to make a.s.surance doubly sure, he talked "dark." The while, d.i.c.k and Sub-Inspector Ladell also talked.

"Tell you what, Selmes," the latter was saying, "you're a regular Jonah.

You're always getting yourself into some hobble, and Greenoak seems always to be getting you out of it. Now, I'll trouble you to mind your P's and Q's while we're on this service, for we can spare neither time nor men till we're through with it. It's an important one, I can tell you, a dashed important one."

"Don't I know it?" answered d.i.c.k. "Didn't I take my full share of getting the despatches through? I couldn't help it if that poor unlucky idiot Stokes got drunk and killed."

"No, you certainly couldn't help that. But you're a Jonah, man. Yes, decidedly a Jonah."

"A Jonah be hanged!" laughed the other, lightly. "Well, Greenoak, what have you got out of Jacob Snyman?"

"Oh, nothing," was the casual reply. But though the speaker's face wore its usual mask-like imperturbability, the speaker's mind was revolving very grave thoughts indeed.

The escort, and its momentous charge, had effected a prompt and early start from Fort Isiwa, far earlier than could have been expected; for, thanks to Harley Greenoak's skilful guidance, the way across country of the express-riders had been nearly halved. The convoy, proceeding at something of a forced pace, had covered about three hours of ground since the said start.

The road lay over gently undulating ground, dotted with mimosa, now over a rise, only to dip down again into a corresponding depression. Away, against the blue mountain range in the distance, arose here and there a column of thick white smoke in the still atmosphere. It wanted an hour to sundown. Then, suddenly, the lay of the land became steeper. Dark kloofs, thickly bushed, seemed to shoot forth like tongues, up to within a hundred yards of the high, switchback-like ridge which formed the line of march. But no Kafirs were met. It was as if the land were, in their own idiom for war, "dead." Even the few kraals which lay just off the road here and there, showed no sign of life.

By the advice of Harley Greenoak scouts had been thrown out ahead of the convoy. To this, Sub-Inspector Ladell, who, though as plucky as they make them, was not a particularly experienced officer, had at first demurred.

"Why, dash it all, there's no war," he had protested. "By putting on all this show we're making them think we're afraid of them."

"Well, take your own line. You're in command of this racket, not me,"

was the imperturbable rejoinder.

But the scouts _were_ thrown out.

Now, as the convoy ascended a rise, two of these came galloping in.

Several bodies of Kafirs, they reported, were ma.s.sed in a shallow bushy kloof which ran up to the road ahead. They themselves had not been interfered with, but their appearance had been marked by considerable excitement. Moreover, the savages were all armed, for they had seen the glint of a.s.segais and gun-barrels.

"Hurrah!" sang out d.i.c.k Selmes. "Now we are going to have an almighty blue fight." But Ladell, alive to the gravity of his charge and his own responsibility, was not disposed to share his enthusiasm. Had he already got his convoy safe to the Kangala Camp, he would thoroughly have enjoyed the prospect of fighting all the ochre-smeared denizens of Kafirland--come one, come all. Now, the thing wore a different face.

"Well, we are going through," he said grimly. Then he gave orders that the escort should form up in close order round the two waggons, and thus they gained the top of the next rise.

"Down there, sir," said one of the men, who had brought in the news.

A bushy kloof fell away on their left front, its upper end nearly touching the road by about fifty yards. This was alive with wild forms, their red-ochre showing in contrast to the dark green of the foliage.