The Outspan Part 5

"Are you going to give me that whisky?"

Again no answer; but I walked nearer, as I could see Gowan's hands close and go back, and his chest came up with hard breathing.

"Are--you--going--to--give--me--that--whisky?" asked Munroe again, slowly and deliberately.

"No!" roared Gowan, with a tiger-like spring at the other man; "I'll see you in h.e.l.l first!"

I caught Gowan's uplifted arm, but Munroe never flinched, and, pulling himself together with something of a shake, he said in a perfectly sober, even tone and with diabolical malevolence:

"Then I'll see your friend dead and rotten before I stir a hand to help him;" and with that he marched back to the blankets and lay down again.

An hour pa.s.sed, and he never stirred a finger--never even blinked his staring eyes. Then the Mackays, Key, and I held a council, and decided to give him the liquor as a last--a truly forlorn--hope. It was left to me to see him, and I went over bottle and gla.s.s in hand.

He wouldn't touch it.

I argued, begged, and prayed; but it had no effect whatever. He just lay there, resting on one arm, with the cruel, shallow glitter in his eyes that one sees in those of wild beasts. I returned to the others, and we had another talk, and then I offered him money--a price: all that we could give! That fetched him. He sat up, and looked at me for about a minute, and then said, shaking with hate:

"Your liquor I won't touch. Your money won't buy me. As soon as it's cool enough to move, I go back; and if you've ever heard of Doc Munroe, you'll take that for a last answer."

That was a facer, and when I went back and told the others, opinions were divided as to what to do. Gowan and Key were for the rifle cure.

If he wouldn't operate, shoot him!

But we urged another--a last--delay, say till noon; and they gave way, but warned us it would be useless.

The heat that day was awful. No breeze, no relief--only dead, oppressive heat, reflected to and fro the steel-blue sky and the hard-baked earth.

The fires were out--we had cooked nothing that day--and the camp looked dead and deserted. One or more of us would always be with Soltke; the others would be lying in the shadow of a tree or under a waggon. We had some faint hope that the district surgeon would turn up, but not before the morrow, and, knowing Soltke's condition, that seemed useless, so that our only real chance was with Munroe.

As we lay there, dismally and hopelessly waiting, we were suddenly startled by a most peculiar and unnatural bark. The two dogs also jumped up and ran out on to the road. We could see nothing except that Munroe had gone. The noise was repeated, and the dogs growled, and every hair stood up on their backs.

"Great G.o.d! look there!" came from Donald.

Following his glance, we saw, low down amongst the thick buffalo gra.s.s, the wild, haggard face of Doc Munroe. His shock red hair half covered his eyes, which glittered and glared like a lioness's. As we stood he barked again, and made a jump out to the margin of the gra.s.s. He was mad--stark, staring mad--with delirium tremens! In one of his hands, half hidden by the gra.s.s, we could see a Bushman's friend, and the bright blade seemed to catch an ugly gleam from the man's eyes and reflect it malevolently back on us.

Munroe was a big man, and, although ruined in health by years of hard drinking, would have been a very ugly customer while the mad fit lasted; so we just stood our ground, ready to take him any way he wanted to come. After a minute or two he seemed to feel the effect of four pairs of eyes looking steadily at him, and the wild beast died out, and his body, which had been as rigid as a "standing" pointer's, became visibly limp and nerveless. He got up heavily, with a silly, hysterical laugh, and stood meekly before us, looking as foolish and harmless as a human being might. He sidled over towards Donald Mackay, keeping as far as possible from Gowan, whom he clearly distrusted, and looking furtively about, as though others besides us might hear him, he said, with a sickly smile and in a thin, uncertain voice:

"I was playin', Donald, old man, only playin'. You know me--old Doc Munroe. _You_ weren't frightened, Donald, eh? He! he! I _like_ to bark, ye know. I _like_ it, and who'll stop me if I like it, eh? You could see I was playin', old partner. _You_ knew it, didn't you?"

The man was wretchedly weak and shaky, and as he continued to look about anxiously, he wiped the heavy drops of cold perspiration off his colourless face with the dirty strip of kapalaan which did service for a pocket-handkerchief. He sidled up closer and closer to Donald, and watched with growing intentness and terror the place from which he had just emerged. Mackay quietly imprisoned the knife-hand, but Munroe never noticed that, and only clung closer to him, and began to mutter and cry out again, quivering with excitement and terror, which grew on him, until he shrieked to Donald to save him, and to "knife him over there"--pointing to the tree beneath which he had hidden. Key took the proffered knife, and, walking quietly towards the tree, began to hack it in an unenthusiastic manner; and the relief that this seemed to give Munroe would have been ludicrous but for the desperate hopelessness it brought for poor Soltke.

It was no longer possible to keep up our well-intended fiction about the doctor requiring rest, for Munroe's maniac laughter and shrieks of terror became so frequent and awful that they must have startled one half a mile away. He became so violent that we were obliged to take him down to the spruit, and to tie him down there in the shadow of a high bank, with one of the n.i.g.g.e.rs to look after him, and an occasional visit from one of us to see if all was well.

Soltke bore the news as he had borne all that went before, with silent, martyr-like patience. He seemed to have guessed it: not a muscle moved, not a feature changed. He listened to it as calmly as he listened to our expressed hope that the district surgeon would turn up by sundown, and with as little personal concern.

Towards evening he spoke a good deal to us all, but in a way that made our hearts sink. He spoke of his home and his past life--for the first time--and of something that was troubling him greatly. He also admitted that his leg was feeling very hot, and that he felt twinges of pain shooting up into the groin and body.

At sundown he asked for his Prayer-Book, and later on, when we had left him alone for a while, and sat in silent, helpless despair by the neglected fire, he asked for Robbie. At last, at about ten o'clock that night, we heard the welcome sound of a horse's trotting, and to our unspeakable delight the cheery little doctor turned up. Poor old Soltke did brighten up then, and the smile which had never failed him throughout the days of suffering seemed to me more easy and hopeful. In less than an hour the shattered leg was off. In spite of the bad light and the rude appliances all went well, and with infinite relief we saw Soltke doze off under the merciful influence of the morphia which the doctor had brought. We felt that we had rounded the turn, and could afford to sleep easy. The little doctor, who had ridden seventy miles since sun-up, rolled into his blankets near where Soltke slept, and was in the land of dreams long before we, who were restless from very relief and joy, could settle down to close our eyes.

I seemed to have dozed for but a few minutes, when in my dreams, as it seemed to me, I heard in the faintest but clearest whisper the doctor saying: "Mortification, you know! I couldn't see it by candle-light, or we might have spared him the operation."

He was just dead. He sighed himself out, as the doctor said, like a tired child to sleep. We buried him close to the road under a big thorn-tree, which we stripped of its bark for a couple of feet to serve for a headstone for his grave. It was the tree where we had seen him on his knees at prayer. And as it neared sundown, we called for the oxen, and inspanned for the evening trek.

The doctor had gone. He had to get back those seventy miles to see another patient, whose life perhaps depended upon the grit of his gallant little horse.

During the night Munroe had managed to get loose, and with a madman's cunning had got away with his horse and disappeared, which was perhaps a good thing for him.

The boys had packed everything on the waggons, and were las.h.i.+ng the bedding in the tent waggon so as to be out of the way of the dust and the thorns, when one of them picked up and handed out to us the open book and writing materials, just as Soltke had left them three days before, when he had jumped out to shoot the blue jay.

The diary lay open at the last-written page, and we read:

"The most verus.h.i.+us of reptile is the Whuy-per--"

Robbie closed the book gently and put it away. It didn't seem the least bit funny then.

At midnight, when the long night trek was over, and we were rolled in our blankets near the camp-fire, Robbie's heart was full, and he spoke-- slowly and in half-broken tones:

"Ye mind the time he sent for me? Ye do? Yes; well, it was to ask my forgiveness for what he said the day I struck him. Ay, he did that!"

Robbie looked slowly round the circle through dimmed gla.s.ses, and then went on hesitatingly:

"And he said, too, that we had all been too good to him, and that he had played it low on us; and that he--he hoped the good G.o.d would pardon him the greatest crime of all. And he said that I must give his Prayer-Book and his zither," (Robbie continued in a lower and reverent tone) "to--to his child--his little boy."

"_Soltke's child_?" came from all together.

Robbie nodded, and there was a s.p.a.ce of time when everyone s.h.i.+fted a little and felt chilled; but it was Gowan who put our common thought into words.

"Where is his wife?" he asked slowly. "Dead!" said Robbie. "I--I didn't know he was married." Robbie's look was a prayer for mercy, as he answered: "He wasn't!"

CHAPTER THREE.

INDUNA NAIRN.

ONE.

"Moodie's" was concession ground, and belonged to a company; but as "findings is keepings" is the first law of the prospector, there were quite a number of people, otherwise honest and well-principled, who thought that it would be the right thing to rush it and peg it, and parcel it out among themselves upon such terms and conditions as a committee of their own number might decide.

So of course they rushed it!

They were good men and true, and they were strong in their righteous indignation, but in nothing else; and when it came to trying conclusions with a Government, they, being penniless, short-rationed, and few in numbers, went under, and were carried off under arrest to Pretoria, the committee designate going in bulk, with their proposers and seconders thrown in.

It was then that the real inwardness of an embarra.s.sing position was revealed. The case of "The State _versus_ H. Bankerpitt and Twenty-nine Others" could not come on for many weeks, and the Government, being mistrusted by the Pretoria tradesmen, who would no longer accept "good-fors" of even a few s.h.i.+llings value, attempted to masquerade stern necessity as simple grace, and offered to release the prisoners on bail.

The offer was rejected with derision.

Next day Government went one better and offered to release them on parole without bail. But even this did not tempt them, and eventually a delegate was deputed to interview the prisoners so as to ascertain their wishes. The unanimous reply was:

"You brought us here. You can keep us here. We are quite contented."