"Oh, yes he would," I answered with cheerful magnanimity, for I was in secret hugely pleased with myself--not from any innate vanity, but because I should return to Gonya's Kloof with enhanced prestige. And for certain reasons I could do with all the prestige I could capture, just then.

We had fallen back on where Brian had left his horse. "You can have my saddle as soon as we can get out of these kloofs," he said. "I expect you'll get sick of riding barebacked sooner than I shall. At present we needn't lose any time. The other horses? Oh, they'll follow us all right. Later on we can lead them."

"This is a nice, peaceful country of yours, Brian," I said, as we held on our way, for we saw no more of our late enemies. "If this sort of thing happens in time of profound peace, may I ask what it's like in time of war?"

He laughed.

"You may have a chance of seeing for yourself. Well, you have had an adventure, so long"--for I had told him of the sort of night I had spent. "You shouldn't have gone chevying on after those schepsels all by yourself. I kept shouting out to you to come back, and you wouldn't.

I thought you'd soon give it up, and we had our own hands pretty full.

I started the other two off with the oxen, and came back to look for you. Thought I'd find you'd only been spending the night under a bush."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"HAND TO THE LABOUR--HEART AND HAND."

"Bring back Meerkat," had been Beryl's parting injunction, and I had fulfilled it to the letter. And as I restored her favourite horse, literally with my own hands--and none the worse for his enforced travels, though the other two returned with sore backs--I was conceited enough to think that the pleased light of welcome that came over Beryl's sweet face was not entirely due to satisfaction at his recovery, and that approbation of his rescuer bore some small share therein.

"Well done, Kenrick," sang out Iris, clapping her hands. "Man, but you're no sort of a raw Britisher anyhow." And I own that the dear child's frank and homely form of approval fell gratefully upon my ears just then.

"You should have seen Revell sabreing them all right and left with a sjambok when they cheeked him at that kraal," guffawed Trask. "Oh--h--"

The last in a subdued howl, evolved by the contact of Brian's boot with the speaker's shin, under the table. For in another moment Trask would have blundered out the whole story as a joke of the first water, in antic.i.p.ation whereof Revell was beginning to redden furiously.

"He got us out of that in the nick of time," struck in Brian with his wonted tact. "Pa.s.s on the grog, Trask. Help yourself first--thanks.

Well, we've brought back the whole plunder, except one of the oxen, and Kenrick's gun. The first they've scoffed, and the second we shan't see again, I'm afraid. Eh, dad?"

"I'm afraid not. You've done well--very well. I never expected you'd recover so much. I'm very much obliged to you fellows for your help."

Of course we all disclaimed any expression of thanks; but later on what does this prince of good fellows do but send for a first-rate gun to replace my missing piece. No, he would not listen to any protest. I had lost my own in recovering his property, therefore it was only fair he should make it good.

Later on, too, when Beryl heard the story of my own perilous and nerve-trying experience--(much of the detail of our expedition had, for obvious reasons, been kept from the children)--she said--

"Why did you do it? Why did you run such a terrible risk? I would sooner have lost all the horses in the world. Heavens! and you were so near being murdered! No, you ought not to have taken such a risk. Why, I should never have forgiven myself--never. It is too horrible."

She was intensely moved. Her eyes softened strangely, and there was something of a quaver in her voice. And yet my first impressions had credited Beryl Matterson with a cold disposition! Had we been alone together now I don't know what I might have said or done--or rather I believe I do know. As it was, I answered lightly--

"Oh, I don't suppose it would have come to that. Probably they were only trying to scare me, and, by Jove! they succeeded, I'll own to that.

When it came to the point they'd likely have turned me adrift. Don't you think so, Mr Matterson?"

"No, I don't. They'd have killed you as sure as eggs," was the decisive reply. "They're a mighty _schelm_ lot up Kameel Kloof way, and there has been more than one disappearance of white men during the last few years. But you can't bring them to book. They swarm like red ants in that location, and no Kafir will ever give another away."

In point of fact I was not ill-pleased with this decision, simply and solely because the peril I had come through would enhance my interest in the eyes of Beryl, especially as it had been incurred in her particular service.

Our return had been effected without incident or opposition, and to me there was a strong smack of the old border raiding kind of business as we brought back the recovered spoil, recovered by our own prompt.i.tude and dash. As for myself, I had undergone some experience of the n.o.ble savage in his own haunts, and began to feel quite a seasoned frontiersman. And yet barely three months ago I had been worrying along in the most approved mill-horse round in a City office. Heavens! what a change had come into my life.

Immediately on our return, all concerned in it had held a council of war, confined rigidly to the four of us. The fewer in the know the better, Brian had declared, wherefore he had not disclosed the whole facts of the case even to his father. One of the thieves had been shot, whether killed or disabled of course we had no idea. On that we must keep our own counsel, absolutely and strictly, and to make a.s.surance doubly sure we must never so much as mention the matter again even among ourselves.

Incidentally the rest of us thought it just as well that Trask had accounted for him, because Trask was the weak link in the chain, whereas now that he was the one most concerned, self-preservation alone would keep him from giving away the affair under an impulse of senseless brag.

"You see," p.r.o.nounced Brian, "as long as we keep dark the Kafirs'll keep dark, too. They'll think nothing of one fellow getting hurt, because it's quite in accordance with their laws and customs that some one should get hurt in a little affair of the kind. But if we start stirring up things--setting the police on to the track, and so forth-- why then it's likely the other business will crop up, and that'll be more than awkward, for the _schelm_ wasn't even going for us, but running away. Running away, mind. There's no doubt about it but that we--or rather, Holt--struck upon a regular nest of cattle-thieves; but we can do nothing further under the circ.u.mstances, nothing whatever. So mum's the word, absolutely. Is that understood?"

All hands agreed to this, but none more emphatically than Trask, who, by the way, was a little less proud of his feat now that it was put in this new and exceedingly awkward light.

"Very well, then, that's settled," declared Brian, characteristically dismissing the affair from his mind.

After this things settled down at Gonya's Kloof, ordinarily and without incident. And yet, to me, so radical was the change compared with all my former life, that every day seemed replete with incident, even what to the others was mere ordinary routine. I threw myself with zest into everything, and both Brian and his father declared after a month or two that if I went on at this rate I should know as much as they could teach me before I had been with them a year, and already knew a great deal more than Trask did after four: a p.r.o.nouncement which was exceedingly gratifying to me.

I look back upon those days as among the very happiest of my life. Not that it was all picnicking by any means. There was plenty of work-- hard, at times distasteful, even unpleasant. There were times when such meant rising in the dark, saddling up in the grey dawn, and spending the whole long day ranging the veldt in quest of strayed stock, and that beneath a steady, cold, incessant downpour, which soon defied mere waterproof, and would have extinguished the comforting pipe but for the over-sheltering hat brim. Or, subst.i.tute for the downpour a fierce sun, burning down upon hill and kloof, until one felt almost light-headed with the heat. Or the shearing, which meant a daily round from dawn till dark in a hot stuffy shed, redolent of grease and wool, and sheep, and musky, perspiring natives--and this running into weeks. But there was always something, and seldom indeed could one call any time actually and indisputably one's own.

Does this sound hardly compatible with the statement I have made above?

It need not; for however hard or arduous the work, I was happy in it. I felt that I was mastering the secret of a new walk in life, and to me a highly attractive and independent one. I was simply glowing with health, and in condition as hard as nails, for although the weather would now and again run into a trying extreme, on the whole the climate was gloriously healthy and exhilarating. Then, too, I was sharing in the only real home I had ever known--certainly the very happiest one I had ever seen. It mattered not how hard the day had been, there was always the evening, and we would sit restfully out on the stoep, smoking our pipes and chatting beneath the dark firmament aflame with stars, while the shrill bay of jackals ran weirdly along the distant hillside, and the ghostly whistle of plover circled dimly overhead and around, and the breaths of the night air were sweet with the distillation from flowering plant or shrub. Or, within the house Beryl would play for us, or sing a song or two in her sweet, natural, unaffected way. Or even the harmless squabbling of the two children would afford many a laugh.

"Tired, Kenrick?" said Septimus Matterson one such evening, after an unusually hard day of it. "Ha-ha! Stock-farming isn't all picnicking and sport, is it?"

"Not much; but then I never expected it would be," I answered. "I am only just healthily tired--just enough to thoroughly appreciate this prize comfortable chair."

"Anyway, you're looking just twice the man you were when you came.

Isn't he, Beryl?"

"Hardly that, father, or we should have to widen the front door," she answered demurely. We all laughed.

"Man, Beryl. That reminds me of Trask, when he tries to be funny,"

grunted that impudent pup, George.

"That reminds _me_ that it's high time you were in bed, George,"

returned Beryl, equable and smiling. "So off you go there now, and sharp."

Her word was law in matters of this kind, admitting of no appeal, so Master George slouched off accordingly, making a virtue of necessity by declaring he was beastly tired, and further had only stopped up to help amuse us; which final speech certainly carried that effect.

Beryl remained talking with us a little while longer, then she, too, went inside.

"What on earth I should do without my girl, Kenrick, I don't know,"

thereafter said her father. "Yet I suppose I shall have to some day."

"Will you?" I said vacuously, for the words raised an uncomfortable twinge.

"Why, yes, I suppose so, in the ordinary way of things."

"Oh! um--yes, ah! I suppose so," I echoed idiotically, feeling devoutly thankful that the gloom of night concealed a stupid reddening which I could feel spreading over my asinine countenance, and wondering if the other detected the inconsequent inanity of the rejoinder begotten of an _arriere-pensee_. But I realised keenly the only side of the situation that would reconcile me to Beryl's father having to do without her.

I had now had time to straighten out my affairs in England; and arrange for having my capital transferred to this country, though this could not be done yet, by reason of its investment requiring notice of withdrawal.

I had caused such of my personal belongings as I needed--and such were not extensive--to be shipped out to me, also some money which I could touch, and this I promptly invested in live stock, under the advice of my most competent of instructors. So by now I reckoned myself fairly and squarely launched. By the way, the man whose boat had const.i.tuted the first step in my change of fortunes, having found out my ident.i.ty, had put in a claim for compensation, but had been directed to wait. Now he too was paid in full, and so everybody was satisfied.

We were nearing midsummer, i.e. Christmas and the New Year, but the intensifying heat notwithstanding, the face of the veldt was smiling and green, for we had had a series of splendid rains. Such a season, it was p.r.o.nounced, had not been known for years. Stock was fat and thriving, and there was little or no disease. Even our turbulent neighbours had quieted down, and were busy ploughing and sowing, with the result that there was an abnormal but welcome lull in cattle lifting and other maraudings along the border, whose white inhabitants were, for the nonce, content.