Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland Part 6

Under a group of tall straggling trees among the gra.s.s and low scrub, on the banks of an almost dried up river bed, a small camp had been pitched.

The party had lost their mules, and pending their recovery had already been there seven days. The three cart loads of provisions they were conveying to the large camp were drawn up under the trees and had a sail thrown across them to form a shelter for some of the men; while on the other side of the cleared and open s.p.a.ce that formed the camp, a smaller sail was thrown across two poles forming a rough tent; and away to the left, a little cut off from the rest of the camp by some low bushes, was the bell-shaped tent of the captain, under a tall tree. Before the bell-shaped tent stood a short stunted tree; its thick white stem gnarled and knotted; while two stunted misshapen branches, like arms, stretched out on either side.

Before this tree, up and down, with his gun upon his arm, his head bent and his eyes fixed on the ground, while the hot sun blazed on his shoulders, walked a man.

Three or four fires were burning about the camp in different parts, three cooking the mealies and rice which formed the diet of the men, their stock of tinned meats having been exhausted; while the fourth, which was watched by a native boy, contained the more appetising meal of the Captain.

Most of the men were out of camp; the coloured boys having gone to fetch the mules, which had been discovered in the hills a few miles off, and were expected to arrive in the evening; and the white men had gone out to see what game they could bring down with their guns to flavour the mealie pots, or to reconnoitre the country; though all native habitations had been destroyed within a radius of thirty miles, and the land was as bare of black men as a child's hand of hair; and even the beasts seemed to have vanished.

In the shade of the tent, formed of the canvas across two posts, lay three white men, whose work it was to watch the pots and guard the camp.

They were all three Colonial Englishmen, and lay on the ground on their stomachs, pa.s.sing the time by carrying on a desultory conversation, or taking a few whiffs, slowly, and with care, from their pipes, for tobacco was precious in the camp.

Under some bushes a few yards off lay a huge trooper, whose nationality was uncertain, but who was held to hail from some part of the British Isles, and who had travelled round the world. He was currently reported to have done three years' labour for attempted rape in Australia, but nothing certain was known regarding his antecedents. He had been up on guard half the night, and was now taking his rest lying on his back with his arm thrown over his face; but a slight movement could be noted in his jaw as he slowly chewed a piece of tobacco; and occasionally when he turned it round the mouth opened, and disclosed two rows of broken yellow stumps set in very red gums.

The three Colonial Englishmen took no notice of him. Two, who were slowly smoking, were of the large and powerful build, and somewhat loose set about the shoulders, which is common among Colonial Europeans of the third generation, whether Dutch or English, and had the placidity and general good temper of expression which commonly marks the Colonial European who grows up beyond the range of the cities. The third was smaller and more wiry and of an unusually nervous type, with aquiline nose, and sallow hatchet face, with a somewhat discontented expression.

He was holding forth, while his companions smoked and listened.

"Now what I say is this," he brought his hand down on the red sand; "here we are with about one half teaspoon of Dop given us at night, while he has ten empty champagne bottles lying behind his tent. And we have to live on the mealies we're convoying for the horses, while he has pati and beef, and lives like a lord! It's all very well for the regulars; they know what they're in for, and they've got gentlemen over them anyhow, and one can stomach anything if you know what kind of a fellow you've got over you. English officers are gentlemen, anyhow; or if one was under Selous now--"

"Oh, Selous's a MAN!" broke out the other two, taking their pipes from their mouths.

"Yes, well, that's what I say. But these fellows, who couldn't do as farmers, and couldn't do as shopkeepers, and G.o.d knows what else; and their friends in England didn't want to have them; they're sent out here to boss it over us! It's a d.a.m.ned shame! Why, I want to know, amn't I as good as any of these fellows, who come swelling it about here? Friends got money, I suppose!" He cast his sharp glance over towards the bell tent. "If they gave us real English officers now--"

"Ah!" said the biggest of his companions, who, in spite of his huge form, had something of the simplicity and good nature of a child in his handsome face; "it's because you're not a big enough swell, you know!

He'll be a colonel, or a general, before we've done with him. I call them all generals or colonels up here; it's safest, you know; if they're not that today they will be tomorrow!"

This was intended as a joke, and in that hot weather, and in that dull world, anything was good enough to laugh at: the third man smiled, but the first speaker remained serious.

"I only know this," he said, "I'd teach these fellows a lesson, if any one belonging to me had been among the people they left to be murdered here, while they went gallivanting to the Transvaal. If my mother or sister had been killed here, I'd have taken a pistol and blown out the brains of the great Panjandrum, and the little ones after him. Fine administration of a country, this, to invite people to come in and live here, and then take every fighting man out of the country on a gold hunting marauding expedition to the Transvaal, and leave us to face the bitter end. I look upon every man and woman who was killed here as murdered by the Chartered Company."

"Well, Jameson only did what he was told. He had to obey orders, like the rest of us. He didn't make the plan, and he's got the punishment."

"What business had he to listen? What's all this fine administration they talk of? It's six years since I came to this country, and I've worked like a n.i.g.g.e.r ever since I came, and what have I, or any men who've worked hard at real, honest farming, got for it? Everything in the land is given away for the benefit of a few big folks over the water or swells out here. If England took over the Chartered Company tomorrow, what would she find?--everything of value in the land given over to private concessionaires--they'll line their pockets if the whole land goes to pot! It'll be the jackals eating all the flesh off the horse's bones, and calling the lion in to lick the bones."

"Oh, you wait a bit and you'll be squared," said the handsome man. "I've been here five years and had lots of promises, though I haven't got anything else yet; but I expect it to come some day, so I keep my mouth shut! If they asked me to sign a paper, that Mr. Over-the-Way"--he nodded towards the bell tent--"never got drunk or didn't know how to swear, I'd sign it, if there was a good dose of squaring to come after it. I could stand a good lot of that sort of thing--squaring--if it would only come my way."

The men laughed in a dreary sort of way, and the third man, who had not spoken yet, rolled round on to his back, and took the pipe from his mouth.

"I tell you what," said the keen man, "those of us up here who have got a bit of land and are trying honestly and fairly to work, are getting pretty sick of this humbugging fighting. If we'd had a few men like the Curries and Bowkers of the old days up here from the first, all this would never have happened. And there's no knowing when a reason won't turn up for keeping the b.l.o.o.d.y thing on or stopping it off for a time, to break out just when one's settled down to work. It's a d.a.m.ned convenient thing to have a war like this to turn on and off."

Slowly the third man keeled round on to his stomach again: "Let resignation wait. We fight the Matabele again tomorrow," he said, sententiously.

A low t.i.tter ran round the group. Even the man under the bushes, though his eyes were still closed and his arm across his face, let his mouth relax a little, and showed his yellow teeth.

"I'm always expecting," said the big handsome man, "to have a paper come round, signed by all the n.i.g.g.e.r chiefs, saying how much they love the B.S.A. Company, and how glad they are the Panjandrum has got them, and how awfully good he is to them; and they're going to subscribe to the brazen statue. There's nothing a man can't be squared to do."

The third man lay on his back again, lazily examining his hand, which he held above his face. "What's that in the Bible," he said, slowly, "about the statue, whose thighs and belly were of bra.s.s, and its feet of mud?"

"I don't know much about the Bible," said the keen man, "I'm going to see if my pot isn't boiling over. Won't yours burn?"

"No, I asked the Captain's boy to keep an eye on it--but I expect he won't. Do you put the rice in with the mealies?"

"Got to; I've got no other pot. And the fellows don't object. It's a tasty variety, you know!"

The keen-faced man slouched away across the square to where his fire burnt; and presently the other man rose and went, either to look at his own pot or sleep under the carts; and the large Colonial man was left alone. His fire was burning satisfactorily about fifty feet off, and he folded his arms on the ground and rested his forehead on them, and watched lazily the little black ants that ran about in the red sand, just under his nose.

A great stillness settled down on the camp. Now and again a stick cracked in the fires, and the cicadas cried aloud in the tree stems; but except where the solitary paced up and down before the little flat-topped tree in front of the captain's tent, not a creature stirred in the whole camp; and the snores of the trooper under the bushes might be heard half across the camp.

The intense midday heat had settled down.

At last there was the sound of someone breaking through the long gra.s.s and bushes which had only been removed for a few feet round the camp, and the figure of a man emerged bearing in one hand a gun, and in the other a bird which he had shot. He was evidently an Englishman, and not long from Europe, by the bloom of the skin, which was perceptible in spite of the superficial tan. His face was at the moment flushed with heat; but the clear blue eyes and delicate features lost none of their sensitive refinement.

He came up to the Colonial, and dropped the bird before him. "That is all I've got," he said.

He threw himself also down on the ground, and put his gun under the loose flap of the tent.

The Colonial raised his head; and without taking his elbows from the ground took up the bird. "I'll put it into the pot; it'll give it the flavour of something except weevily mealies"; he said, and fell to plucking it.

The Englishman took his hat off, and lifted the fine damp hair from his forehead.

"Knocked up, eh?" said the Colonial, glancing kindly up at him. "I've a few drops in my flask still."

"Oh, no, I can stand it well enough. It's only a little warm." He gave a slight cough, and laid his head down sideways on his arm. His eyes watched mechanically the Colonial's manipulation of the bird. He had left England to escape phthisis; and he had gone to Mashonaland because it was a place where he could earn an open-air living, and save his parents from the burden of his support.

"What's Halket doing over there?" he asked suddenly, raising his head.

"Weren't you here this morning?" asked the Colonial. "Didn't you know they'd had a devil of a row?"

"Who?" asked the Englishman, half raising himself on his elbows.

"Halket and the Captain." The Colonial paused in the plucking. "My G.o.d, you never saw anything like it!"

The Englishman sat upright now, and looked keenly over the bushes where Halket's bent head might be seen as he paced to and fro.

"What's he doing out there in this blazing sun?"

"He's on guard," said the Colonial. "I thought you were here when it happened. It's the best thing I ever saw or heard of in my whole life!"

He rolled half over on his side and laughed at the remembrance. "You see, some of the men went down into the river, to look for fresh pools of water, and they found a n.i.g.g.e.r, hidden away in a hole in the bank, not five hundred yards from here! They found the b.l.o.o.d.y rascal by a little path he tramped down to the water, trodden hard, just like a porcupine's walk. They got him in the hole like an aardvark, with a bush over the mouth, so you couldn't see it. He'd evidently been there a long time, the floor was full of bones of fish he'd caught in the pool, and there was a bit of root like a stick half gnawed through. He'd been potted, and got two bullet wounds in the thigh; but he could walk already. It's evident he was just waiting till we were gone, to clear off after his people. He'd got that beastly scurvy look a n.i.g.g.e.r gets when he hasn't had anything to eat for a long time.

"Well, they hauled him up before the Captain, of course; and he blew and swore, and said the n.i.g.g.e.r was a spy, and was to be hanged tomorrow; he'd hang him tonight, only the big troop might catch us up this evening, so he'd wait to hear what the Colonel said; but if they didn't come he'd hang him first thing tomorrow morning, or have him shot, as sure as the sun rose. He made the fellows tie him up to that little tree before his tent, with riems round his legs, and riems round his waist, and a riem round his neck."

"What did the native say?" asked the Englishman.

"Oh, he didn't say anything. There wasn't a soul in the camp could have understood him if he had. The coloured boys don't know his language. I expect he's one of those b.l.o.o.d.y fellows we hit the day we cleared the bush out yonder; but how he got down that bank with his leg in the state it must have been, I don't know. He didn't try to fight when they caught him; just stared in front of him--fright, I suppose. He must have been a big strapping devil before he was taken down.

"Well, I tell you, we'd just got him fixed up, and the Captain was just going into his tent to have a drink, and we chaps were all standing round, when up steps Halket, right before the Captain, and pulls his front lock--you know the way he has? Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d, if you could have seen it! I'll never forget it to my dying day!" The Colonial seemed bursting with internal laughter. "He begins, 'Sir, may I speak to you?'

in a formal kind of way, like a fellow introducing a deputation; and then all of a sudden he starts off--oh, my G.o.d, you never heard such a thing! It was like a boy in Sunday-school saying up a piece of Scripture he's learnt off by heart, and got all ready beforehand, and he's not going to be stopped till he gets to the end of it."

"What did he say," asked the Englishman.