The Outspan Part 12

"That--that you've come back."

"I can see that you want to drive me away."

"No, don't--don't go! 'That you went out.' Heaven forgive me! There, are you satisfied?"

"Yes, I'm satisfied now. I hate to give in--especially to a man."

"And to a woman?"

"Oh, I never give in to a woman. Women are so obstinate, and they're always wrong! What are you laughing at? Oh, well, I'm not like a woman now. I'm--you know what I mean--I'm stating the case. Besides, I meant _other_ women."

"Now, if I tell you something, you won't laugh at me and point the finger of scorn and press the heel of triumph?"

"No, I won't."

"Promise."

"I promise."

"Well, then, I _am_ glad that you went out, and I _was_ a bear to grudge it to you. And you--you have been far too good to me--far too good."

"No, no--indeed no! You are my charge, and I am your nurse. And, remember, had it not been for us you would not have been hurt. Had it not been for you we should not have been here. We brought you to death's door, and you saved us. I--I was only teasing you. I never meant--"

"Kate, child, Kate!"

"Hus.h.!.+ No, no--not now. Here is George. Good-night."

Yes, truly! The--man--finds--it--out--soon--enough!

In the morning Nairn and his horse were gone, and there was not a vestige of a trace to show how, why, or where! It was several days later that Geddy, who had been away for some weeks, dined at Heron's, and, as they were sitting on the stoep smoking and chatting, remarked:

"By the way, fancy whom I met on the way in! Our old friend Induna Nairn, looking ghastly, poor devil! Said he'd had a spill crossing a river or something. Surlier than ever. Glared at me with positive hatred when I asked him where he was going to to escape civilisation, and said, 'Zambesi, or h.e.l.l.' I could make nothing of him. Can't stand chaff, you know; never could. But I heard all about him from old Tom Callan--'Hot Tom,' you know."

Heron looked up curiously, but did not interrupt.

"It seems he's quite a great gun among the n.i.g.g.e.rs--a real Induna. Did you know that? I thought it was only a nickname, but it isn't. He's a sort of relation of the king's, etc."

"What the devil are you talking about?"

"Eh? what? A--a relation of the king's, I said."

"A _relation_! Nairn?"

"Well, a connection. You know what I mean. He married the king's favourite daughter."

"Great G.o.d!"

"Yes. You see, we were quite on the wrong tack. By George! I did laugh when I heard it."

Heron walked out on to the gravel path for a breath of air--out to ease the choking feeling in his throat; and he saw his sister rise from her chair, draw a shawl over her head, and move away to her own room.

That night there had come to the house a little Swazie boy. He had one very miserable fowl for sale, and he squatted on his haunches near the gate, heedless of the fact that his offer had been twice refused.

Through the night he stayed, and into the morning, and as the hot sun swung overhead he sat and waited still, never taking his eyes off the front stoep. And when at last Kate came out he tried his luck again.

She turned her armchair so as to get a good light on her book, and began to read, but in a few moments the child's voice close by startled her.

She looked up and saw a little black face, lighted by bright eyes and a flash of white teeth; in front of that, a wretched fowl lying on the cement stoep; and in front of that again, a folded note bearing her name. She picked up the note and read it.

"I had forgotten what a good woman was. Heaven bless you, Kate! It is not that I am ungrateful, but I wish to G.o.d Piet had left me to the river."

Kate leaned back quietly in the Madeira armchair, and closed her eyes.

When she looked again the little _umfaan_ was gone; but he had forgotten his fowl upon the stoep, which was an unusual thing for any _umfaan_ to do.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Ca.s.sIDY.

"And the greatest of these is charity."

I met Ca.s.sidy under trying circ.u.mstances. But it worked out all right eventually, princ.i.p.ally because, so far as I knew him--and that got to be pretty well--Ca.s.sidy was not amenable to circ.u.mstances. He beat them mostly, and some of them were pretty tough.

The circ.u.mstances surrounding our meeting were trying, because Ca.s.sidy was in bed after a hard day's work, and I aroused him at 3 a.m. by firing a revolver at his bulldog. His huts were on the railway works, and near the footpath to Jim Mackay's canteen--a pretty hot show. He used to be roused this way every Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, and occasionally throughout the week, by visitors, black and white, warlike and friendly, thieving and sociable, but all drunk. At first he got a bulldog, but they got to know him, and after awhile the tip went round that half a pound of beefsteak was a good buy and better than a blunderbuss for Ca.s.sidy's Cutting. Then he loaded fifty Number 12's with coa.r.s.e salt, mixed with pebbles and things, and, as he said to me afterwards:

"Ye were the fourth that night, and ye 'noyed me wid yer swearin' an'

shootin' an' that, so I just pa.s.sed the salt an' wint for the dust shot as bein' more convincing like; but the divil an' all of it was, I couldn't get the cartridge in by reason of drawin' the charge that was there already. Too bad! too bad! for dust shot it was, av I'd only known it, an' me thinkin' it was nothin' but salt. Lord, Lord! we're a miscontented lot! Av it wasn't for bein' greedy, I'd 've had ye wid the dust shot safe as death. Faith, ye niver know yer luck!"

That was all right from his point of view, but as I had left my horse dying of Dikkop sickness just this side of Kilo 26, and had walked along the formation carrying saddle and bridle up to Kilo 43--about ten miles--without a drink, and twice lost my way between unconnected sections, and twice walked over the ends of the formation where culverts should have been and rolled down twenty feet of embankment, and once got bogged in a bottoming pit in a vlei, and many times hacked my s.h.i.+ns against wheelbarrows and piles of picks stacked on the track, I think it was reasonable to let out at a bulldog that came at me like a hurricane out of the darkness and silence of 3 a.m. in the Bush veld, to say nothing of a half-finished railway cutting. And I think it only human to have cursed the owner with all my resources until the dog was called off.

I don't exactly know how it came about, but I slept in Ca.s.sidy's hut that night. He pushed me in before him, guiding me to the bed with a hand on each elbow. He said that there were no matches in the show and that it wasn't worth while looking for the candle, which, as he had no means of lighting it, I suppose it wasn't.

He had a rare brogue and a governing nasal drone, but it was the brogue that emboldened me to ask for whisky.

"Spirits!" said he; "not a drop, an' niver have; but jist sit ye where ye are, an' I'll fetch ye out some beer--Ba.s.s's, no less, av ye'll thry that; and can dhrink from the bottle."

He talked in jerks, and had a quaint knack of chucking remarks after an apparently completed sentence, evidently intending them to catch up to it and be tacked on. He dived under the bed somewhere, and a minute later I heard the squeaking of a corkscrew and the popping of a cork.

"Here y' are," said he, as he pressed the bottle into my two hands; "drink hearty, me lad, and praise yer G.o.d Dan O'Connell there's got too fat an' lazy to pull ye down."

I dare say he knew what he was talking about, but, for my part, I confess that nothing in the whole business had impressed me less than any lack of earnestness on Dan O'Connell's part. I sat awhile munching biscuits from a tin which he had placed on the table and gurgling down beer from the bottle. Ca.s.sidy was asleep. Ten minutes pa.s.sed, and I was finis.h.i.+ng the beer, when he sat up again, as I judged from the sound, and remarked in a brisk, clear tone:

"Ye called me a mud-dollopin', d.y.k.e-diggin', Amsterdam'd Dutchman!

Ye'll take back the Dutchman, I believe?"

"I will indeed," I said, laughing.

"An' the mud?"