"Believe me, yours always sincerely,--

"Ella Harling."

Ella's letter, addressed to "Mr John Gress.e.x, Bechua.n.a.land Border Police. (To be forwarded)," still lay unopened in Parton's pocket. It had remained there these five days past, although the man to whom it had been addressed had ridden and rested for some days within six feet of it. Fifty times a day had Parton cursed himself for a villain in detaining it, and yet--and yet--he could not give Ella up and help Tom Mainwaring, and so--even after the affair of the broken arm--it had stayed there within his tunic.

Parton's first note was to Ella Harling, telling her of Gress.e.x's (Mainwaring we may now call him) serious condition, and begging her, if possible, to come up by rail at once from Kimberley to Vryburg and thence drive as rapidly as possible the hundred miles across the veldt to Masura's-town, where she would find a trooper who would bring her out to the cattle post where Mainwaring lay. That, as Parton said to himself, was something off his mind. It was some little expiation for the wrong he had done Ella and his old friend, and he felt pounds better already.

His next letter was to the officer in command at Vryburg during his absence, reporting affairs, and requesting that two more troopers should be at once sent to Masura's-town, to aid in bringing in the prisoners and cattle, and to keep in check any attempt by the disaffected Masura to create trouble. He requested also that a light waggon might be dispatched for the wounded man, with certain nursing comforts and drugs that might be useful. He begged that, if possible, a doctor should also be sent, as the case was an urgent and serious one. One of the troopers, mounted on the best horse--the lieutenant's--was despatched with these letters, with directions to put Miss Harling's note into an envelope, carefully addressed, before posting it at Vryburg. The trooper was partially told Mainwaring's story, and put upon his honour not to read the contents of the letter, at present envelopeless. He was a good fellow, and made a big ride, covering the 120 odd miles to Vryburg in two days on the single horse.

For the next seven days Parton had his hands pretty full at the desert cattle post. He had to guard carefully his prisoners, to see that the cattle were not re-stolen or re-captured, and to overawe Masura, who came out to know why his men were being killed and his cattle seized; and above all he had the heavy charge of nursing Tom Mainwaring, who for some days was spitting blood and in a state of high fever.

For three days and nights Parton nursed him most tenderly and carefully, feeding him with milk and thin mealie-meal gruel and beef-tea made from a slaughtered ox.

Thanks to a sound const.i.tution, Mainwaring turned the corner, and on the fifth day from the affray began slowly to mend. He was still so weak that Parton, burning though he now was to complete his expiation and ease himself of his remaining load of trouble, feared to risk the telling of strange and exciting news. On the morning of the seventh day, however, Mainwaring seemed so much stronger, and the arrival of Ella Harling, if she came at all, must be so near at hand, that Parton delayed no longer. He made a full confession of his delinquencies, told Mainwaring all that had happened, of his recent stroke of good fortune, and finally handed him Ella's letter.

"Tom," he said at the end, "I have behaved to you all through the piece like a perfect beast. You, on the other hand, have played the game like a man. You helped me over the broken arm and finally saved my life in that scrimmage--very nearly at the expense of your own. I think I must have been mad. I can only humbly beg your pardon and ask you to try to forgive and forget, and to remember that if I fell I was sorely tried and tempted."

Tom Mainwaring put up his hand--it had become a very thin hand in these few days, though the tan had not gone from it--and said in a husky voice, for he was very feeble:

"Don't say another word, old chap. You have made a mistake--ran out of the course a bit--but you're all right at the finish. And you've nursed me like a brick. I should have been a dead man by now if it hadn't been for all your kindness and thought. Don't let's ever have another word about the past. You've done the right thing, and few men would have cared to be tried as high as you have been. I've had the luck this journey; yours will come."

The two men shook hands silently, and the past, with its tortures, its miseries and mistakes was almost wiped away.

It was now the 24th December. Parton anxiously expected and hoped that Ella Harling and her friends would arrive during the day. He wanted some comforts too for Mainwaring, now that he was within hail of convalescence. All he had in the kraal was some mealie-meal, milk, coffee, and sundry cattle--Tom's beef-tea as he called them.

All that day he watched and waited impatiently, sitting much with Tom Mainwaring, and keeping him as quiet as possible. At last, towards sunset, the little Bushman, who had been perched upon the hut roof as a lookout, cried excitedly that he could see a cloud of dust from the direction of Masura's-town. In less than an hour quite a considerable cavalcade came in. Ella Harling, looking very handsome, and, considering her journey, wonderfully spick and span, drove in with her uncle and pretty cousin in a Cape cart. The doctor and two fresh troopers rode alongside, and a light spring waggon, drawn by half a dozen mules, laden with many luxuries and comforts, followed no great way behind.

Parton led Miss Harling silently to Mainwaring's hut, and, with a wistful look on his face, turned round and quitted her side as she entered the open doorway. The meeting between Ella and Tom Mainwaring was a very tender and yet a very serious one--few more touching have ever taken place in the African wilderness. Presently the doctor came in; Tom was put under his care, and the little party proceeded to make themselves comfortable for Christmas. A tent was pitched for the ladies, another for the colonel and the doctor, the stores were got out, and the place made as cheery and as habitable as possible. The troopers had shot a buck and some partridges and guinea-fowl, and an ox had been slaughtered, so that there was no lack of fresh meat.

Few stranger and yet happier Christmas days have been spent in the veldt. Even Tom Mainwaring, weak though he still was, with Ella beside him and the prospect of long years of life before them both, was as happy as a man with a big spear-wound in his back possibly could be. As for the rest of the company, they had a great and glorious time. There was rifle-shooting at targets in the morning, a big dinner under a shady giraffe-acacia tree at two o'clock, and yarns and much smoking all the afternoon and evening. Colonel Mellersh had thoughtfully loaded a case of champagne, some tinned plum puddings, several boxes of cigars, and some whisky on the spring waggon, and nothing was wanting to complete the proper festivity of the season. Even Parton, having thrown aside his cares, resigned himself, almost with cheerfulness, to the inevitable, and did his best to contribute to the general happiness.

Tom Mainwaring and Ella Harling were married at Cape Town within the next three months--so soon, in fact, as Mainwaring could get his discharge from the Border Police. He and his wife often recall that strange Christmas in the veldt, which, indeed, is not likely to be forgotten by any member of the gathering.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THEIR LAST TREK.

The sun was setting as usual in a glow of marvellous splendour as Alida Van Zyl came out from her hartebeest house--a rough wattle and daub structure, thatched with reeds--and, shading her eyes, looked across the country. The little house stood on the lower slope of the Queebe Hills, no great way from Lake Ngami. It was a wonderful sunset. In the north-west a thousand flakes of cloud flushed with crimson lake, just as they had flushed above the vast plains of that wild Ngami country a million times before. Near the sky-line, in a blaze of red and gold, the sun sank rapidly, a ma.s.s of fire so dazzling that Alida's eyes could not bear to dwell upon it. Far upwards the cool and wondrous calm of the clear and translucent pale green sky contrasted strangely with the battle of colour beneath.

Alida shaded her eyes again, looked keenly down the rude waggon-track that led up to the dwelling, and listened. As she had expected--for she had news of her husband's coming from the Lake--she presently heard the faint cries of a native; that would be Hans Hottentot, the waggon driver, and then through the still air the full, thick, pistol-like crack of the waggon-whip. At these sounds her somewhat impa.s.sive face lightened and she turned into the hut again.

In twenty minutes' time the waggon had drawn up in front of the dwelling, and Karel Van Zyl, a big, strong Dutchman of seven and twenty, had dismounted from his good grey nag and embraced his wife, who now stood with a face beaming with joy, clasping her two year old child in her arms ready to receive him.

"Zo, Alie," said Karel, holding his young wife by the shoulders and looking first tenderly at her broad kindly face and then at the yellow-haired child lying in her arms, "here we are at last. It has been a long hunt, but a pretty good one. I left a waggon-load of ivory, rhenoster horns, and hides at Jan Stromboom's at the Lake and got a good price for them I traded fifty good oxen as well and sold them at 3 pounds 10 shillings a head to Stromboom also, after no end of a haggle.

It was worth a day's bargaining though; the beasts cost me no more than thirty shillings apiece all told."

Then laying the back of his huge sunburnt hand against the cheek of the sleeping babe, which he had just kissed, he added, "And how is little Jan? Surely the child has grown a foot since I left him?"

Alida smiled contentedly, patted her man's arm and answered, "Yes, the child has done well since the cool weather came, and he grows every day.

He gets as _slim_ (cunning) as a monkey and crawls so that I have to keep a boy to watch him, the little rascal. But _kom binnen_ and have supper. You must be starving."

Van Zyl gave some orders to his Hottentot man, as to his horse, the trek oxen and some loose cows and calves, and went indoors.

Half an hour later husband and wife came forth again, and, sitting beneath the pleasant starlight, talked of the future. Their coffee stood on a little table in front of them, and Van Zyl, stretching out his long legs and displaying two or three inches of bare ankle above his velschoons--the up-country Boer is seldom guilty of socks--puffed with huge contentment at a big-bowled pipe.

"Karel," said his wife, after hearing of his last expedition, "I am getting tired of this flat Ngami country, with never a soul to speak to while you are away. When shall we give it up and go back to the Transvaal? I long to see the blue hills again and to hear the voices of friends. Surely you have done well enough these last few years. You can buy and stock a good farm--6,000 morgen at least. [A morgen is rather more than two acres.] And you told me when we married--now three years agone, Karel,"--she laid her hand upon his as she spoke, "that you did not mean to spend all your life, like your father, in the hunting veldt."

"No, Alie, I don't," rejoined Van Zyl, taking his wife's hand into his two and pressing it tenderly. "You shall go back to the Transvaal, my la.s.s, and we will buy a farm in Rustenburg and live comfortably and go to Nachtmaal (Communion) once a quarter. And if I do want a hunt now and again, why I'll cross the Crocodile River and try the Nuanetsi and Sabi River veldt, where Roelof Van Staden and his friends travel to.

But we must have one more trek together, Alie, and this time you and the child shall go with me. Coming to the Lake, on my way home from this last hunt, I met messengers from Ndala, captain of a tribe far up the Okavango, who asks me to take my waggon up to his kraal and hunt elephants in his country. He promises me the half of all ivory shot, and will find spoorers and show me his best veldt and give me every help. Twice before has Ndala sent to me thus, and once to my father in years gone by. I believe it is a splendid hunting veldt. Elephants as thick as pallah in river bush, thousands of buffalo, plenty of rhenoster and lots of other game. We ought, with luck, to pick up four hundred pounds worth of ivory. And so, wife, we'll pack the waggon, get more powder and cartridges at the Lake and trek up to Ndala's."

"And this shall be your last trek in this country, Karel?" asked his wife.

"Myn maghtet, the very last," said Van Zyl. "How soon can we start?"

"I shall be ready in three days," returned Alie.

"In three days be it," said Van Zyl in his deep voice. And then, with a mighty yawn, he stretched himself, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and, putting his arm round his wife's waist, went indoors for the night.

Two months later the Van Zyls were nearing Ndala's kraal on the Okavango, sometimes called the Cubangwe River--that great and little known stream flowing from the north-west towards Lake Ngami. They had had a hard trek of it past the Lake; across a score or two of streams and small rivers, skirting many a swamp and lagoon, and now at last, one hot afternoon, as they looked up the broad, shining river, they set eyes on a green island lying in midstream, dotted about with huts, and knew that they were in sight of Ndala's kraal. Hans, the Hottentot, had once been up to this place and knew Ndala, and Hans pointed out the captain's hut and showed them where their waggon should stand by the river bank, and so they outspanned and prepared to make themselves comfortable.

Across the river, beyond the island, the country undulated gently in well-wooded, bush-clad, sandy ridges, with here and there a palm or a baobab to catch the eye. Reddish boulders of sandstone projected from the river's brim, between the southern sh.o.r.e and the island, forming a little cataract over which the swift waters poured with a pleasant and not too angry or unseemly swirl. And as they unyoked the tired oxen and Alida Van Zyl, tired with sitting, descended from the waggon to look about her, all seemed fair and pleasant and peaceful to the travel-stained trekkers. For they had had a hard pa.s.sage up the river, and the cattle were in need of rest and good feeding, if they were to drag the great waggon back to the Lake and thence--Alida's soul rejoiced as she thought of it--to the dearly-loved Transvaal once more.

And now long, narrow, dug-out canoes shot out from the island and came paddling across the stream with envoys from the chief, to know whose was the waggon and what was the business of the newcomers, and to bring a message of greeting and peace from Ndala, the lord and ruler of all this wild and little known country.

Whilst his wife unpacked some of her waggon gear, and Zwaartbooi, the foreloper, got out the pots and kettle and lit a fire to prepare the evening meal, Van Zyl, taking with him Hans as interpreter, ferried across in one of the native canoes to interview Ndala.

The chief, a tall youngish Cubangwe, with a rather shifty eye, received them in his kotla, an open inclosure adjoining his hut, surrounded by a tall reed fence. He expressed himself pleased to see Van Zyl and hoped that he might have much fortune with the elephants in his country. Then Van Zyl, having thanked the chief for his courtesy, ordered his Hottentot, Hans, to lay before Ndala the presents which had been brought for him. These were a fine blanket of gaudy colours, a quant.i.ty of beads, a cheap smooth-bore musket, and some powder, bullets and caps.

As these articles were temptingly laid before Ndala, the chief's eyes gleamed approvingly and, in spite of his efforts, a broad grin overspread his features. Then more conversation followed between Ndala and Hans--conversation which Van Zyl was unable to follow--and presently, after half an hour's interview, the reception was at an end.

Van Zyl was paddled back to his waggon, and during supper related to his wife the friendly reception he had met with from the Cubangwe captain.

Next morning at about eight o'clock Ndala in person came over to the Boer's camp. Never before had he seen a white man's waggon, and he was naturally burning with curiosity to set eyes upon the treasures gathered within the recesses of that mysterious house on wheels. He brought with him as presents a goat, some Kaffir corn, and a tusk of ivory weighing about 30 lbs. Nothing would content him but that he should mount the fore-kist (box) of the waggon and pry into that strangely fascinating interior. He saw many things that stirred his cupidity. Two fine rifles, cartridges, bags of sugar and coffee, cases of trading gear-- store-clothing, cheap knives, blankets, beads, looking-gla.s.ses, powder, lead, and other rich and rare things which were being got out for purposes of trading and with a view to re-settling the contents of the waggon after the confusion of a long trek. And, with the greedy delight of a miser with his gold, he plunged his arms up to the elbows in a case of blue and white bird's eye beads, which lay too temptingly exposed to his gaze, and asked that the whole of this fabulous treasure should be despatched to his kraal. To this Van Zyl demurred. He would give the chief a portion of the beads, a complete suit of cord clothes, a shirt and a pair of velschoons. After a long and heated argument, conducted through the interpretation of Hans, Ndala somewhat sulkily gave way and expressed himself content to take what the Boer offered him. As for Van Zyl, his eyes flashed angrily, as, turning to his wife, sitting in the shade near the back of the waggon, he said, "They are all alike these kaal (naked) Kaffir captains. Thieves and schelms, only desiring to rob of his all the white man who ventures into their country. I thought, from what Hans had said, that this Ndala was a better fellow; but, Allemaghte! he's no better than the rest of the dirty cattle. However, there's ivory to be got here, without doubt, and we must have patience."

"For my part," Alida replied, "I like the appearance of this man not at all. Watch him, Karel. I believe he will try to do you an ill turn before you have finished with him."

Meanwhile Ndala had been holding conversation with Hans, as he peered about the camp and inspected the cattle, and especially that, to him, wonderful curiosity the Dutchman's hunting horse. Van Zyl had started from the Queebe Hills with three nags. Of these one had died of horse-sickness, while another had been killed by lions, so that only his grey, a tried old favourite, "salted" against the sickness and a splendid beast in the hunting veldt, remained to him. Ndala gazed long and curiously at the shapely grey, as Hans indicated its good points and expatiated on its manifold virtues.

Once more the chief wandered back to the waggon, where Van Zyl was measuring out some of the blue and white beads into a skin bag. His greed was too much for him, and again through Hans he demanded that the Dutchman should hand him over the whole case full, pointing out that, considering his importance as monarch over all these regions, so trifling a present ought not to be denied to him.

But Van Zyl was, like many of the Dutch Afrikanders, a man of quick temper, little accustomed to be dictated to by natives who in his own country were mere hewers of wood and drawers of water to the white man.

The blood sprang to his face, his eyes flashed angrily, and, flinging down the leather bag of beads, which he had just tied up, he turned angrily upon the chief.

"Tell him," he said, with an impatient gesture to Hans, "that he may take it or leave it. I have offered gifts enough until I see elephants and gather ivory. If Ndala is not content, tell him I'll inspan the waggon again and trek out of his country and go into some other veldt, where elephants are at least as plentiful and chiefs more accommodating."

Ndala had taken one quick glance at the angry Boer, as he burst forth, and now stood, till he had finished speaking, motionless, impa.s.sive, with eyes downcast. He uttered not another word to Van Zyl, but with a swift motion of his hand from Hans to the bag of beads, said to the Hottentot:

"Carry it to the boat. I will go across again."

Accompanied by three of his headmen who had come across with him, Ndala stalked down to the sh.o.r.e, talking meanwhile quietly to Hans. Arrived at his boat, he saw his presents carefully bestowed, and then taking his seat was poled over to his kraal.

Late that night, while the Van Zyls slept peacefully in their waggon, Hans, the Hottentot, crept stealthily down to the river, without waking a single member of the camp, and was ferried across to Ndala's by a couple of strong-armed natives waiting for him with their canoe.