“Where are you, father? Oh, there.”
The sweet, clear, fluty voice came upon him like an omen, and then the girl stepped to his side where he sat. One quick glance at the bag of gold, another at her father’s face, and instinct supplied the rest. She knew his particular weakness, but she said nothing then.
“We were talking over a certain deal, dear, Undhlawafa and I. The terms are good.”
“Well, I’ve interrupted you. But to-morrow will do as well, won’t it?” she answered carelessly. “Let’s go home.”
The induna sat tranquilly taking snuff. He, for his part, felt pretty sure that his offer would be closed with – if not to-night, why, then, to-morrow. Verna, for her part, felt rather more sure that it would not. But Ben Halse got up to leave, and the bag containing two hundred golden sovereigns still remained in the possession of Undhlawafa.
Chapter Six.
The Police
Sergeant Meyrick and First Class Trooper Francis, of the Natal Police, were riding at a foot’s pace along the rough and sandy waggon track which skirts the Lumisana forest, and they were proceeding northward.
Both men were excellent samples of that efficient corps: young, athletic, hard as nails. Neither was of colonial birth, but had been some years in the force, and by now thoroughly knew their way about. To-day they were doing a patrol, for which purpose they had started from their isolated station the previous afternoon and had camped in the veldt towards midnight. A thick mist, which had come down during the small hours, blotting out everything, had delayed their morning start. Now it had rolled back, revealing great bushy Slopes, and rocks shining grey and red in the moisture, which moisture the sun was doing his best to parch up.
The two men looked thoroughly smart and serviceable in their khaki-coloured uniforms and helmets, each with a regulation revolver slung round him in a holster, but no rifle. Their mounts were wiry, hard-bitten nags of medium height, and in good condition.
“I’m still puzzling over that shot we heard,” Meyrick was saying. “Why, it seemed to come from bang in the thick of the bush; but who the deuce would be letting off guns right there at that time of night. No nigger would go in there then for a bribe. It’s too much tagati. They funk it like the devil.”
“Tagati! I should think so,” laughed Francis. “I still don’t believe it was a shot at all. I’ve a theory it was a sort of meteorite exploding. Seemed to come from up in the air too.”
“Sound travels the devil’s own distance at night. What if it was beyond the forest belt? There are kraals out that way.”
The other was unconvinced.
“Sound does travel, as you say,” he rejoined. “But for that very reason no blooming nigger would lash off a gun in the middle of the night to give away that there was such a thing in existence among the kraals. An assegai or knobkerrie would do the trick just as well, and make no noise about it. No, I stick to my meteorite theory.”
“Right-oh! It’s going to be damned hot,” loosening his uniform jacket. “Let’s push on or we shan’t get to old Halse’s by dinner-time, and he does you thundering well when you get to his shebang. Whatever they may say about old Ben, he’s the most hospitable chap you’d strike in a lifetime.”
“Isn’t he a retired gun-runner – if he has retired, that is?” said Francis, who was new to that part of the country. “At least so the yarn goes.”
“The said yarn is very likely true. There are ‘no witnesses present,’ so I don’t mind recording my private belief that it is. But there’s this to be said – that when he did anything in that line it was only when the niggers were fighting each other, and in that case he rendered humanity a service by helping to keep their numbers down. I don’t believe he’d trade them a single gas-pipe if they were going for us. I’ve a better opinion of old Ben than that.”
“Don’t know. I haven’t been up here so long as you; but I’ve heard it said, down country, that gun-running gets into the blood. ‘Once a gun-runner, always a gun-runner.’ What-oh! Suppose Dinuzulu were to start any tricks, wouldn’t our friend Ben see his way to making his little bit then?”
“I don’t believe he would; and what’s more to the point, I don’t see how he could. But I say – hang gun-running. Don’t you get smashed upon his daughter. She’s a record of a fine girl.”
“So I’ve heard from you chaps until I’m sick. You all seem smashed on her.”
“By Jove! She can ride and shoot with any of us,” went on Meyrick, rather enthusiastically, which caused his comrade to guffaw.
“I don’t freeze on to ‘male’ women,” he said.
“You just wait until you see her,” was the rejoinder. “Not much ‘male’ about her.”
“What a chap you are on the other sex, Meyrick. What’s the good of a fellow in the force, with no chance of promotion, bothering about all that. Much better make ourselves jolly as we are.”
“Good old cynic, Frank,” said the other. “Wait till you see Verna Halse, and I’ll bet you get smashed. Nice name ‘Verna,’ isn’t it?”
“Don’t know it’s anything out of the ordinary. But cynic or not, here we are, a brace of superfluous and utterly impecunious sons of two worthy country parsons, bunked out here to fish for ourselves. You’ll be made a Sub-Inspector soon, you’ve got it in you. I shan’t, and I haven’t. So I’m not going to bother about ‘skirt.’”
They had reached the spot where the tongue of forest points off onto the road edge and there ends. The ground was more open here.
“Hot as blazes!” commented Francis, swabbing his forehead. “What’s this? Au! Gahle – gahle!”
The latter as three native women, squatted in the grass by the roadside, stood up to give the salute, the suddenness whereof caused the horses to shy. In the grass beside them lay several bundles such as native women often carry when passing from place to place, only these were unusually large.
The two police troopers fired off a humorous expostulation – they had both qualified in their knowledge of the Zulu for extra linguistic pay – and passed on their way. The track grew steeper and steeper, and the sun hotter and yet more hot. They would soon be at Ben Halse’s store, with the prospect of an excellent dinner and a welcome rest before them. And behind them, in a contrary direction, laughing to themselves, travelled the three women they had just passed, bending under the burden of the loads poised upon their heads – the said loads containing each a goodly quarter of koodoo meat, of the meat of the lordly koodoo bull, the possession of which would have entailed upon them, and upon all concerned, if detected, the direst of pains and penalties. Yet there was nothing suspicious-looking about those bundles, nothing to make any reasonable being under the sun think it worthwhile investigating their contents.
“I wonder what sort of a man this Mr Denham is, father?” said Verna, as she stood, in the middle of the morning, watching the cleaning and preparation for preserving the great head, which was being effected by a native under the critical supervision of his master.
“Quite all right,” was the answer. “He pays down on the nail, or rather, by return mail; never haggles or votes the prices too long. It’s all I can do to resist the temptation to put them up.”
“Well, then, go on resisting it, dear. I’m sure it’ll pay in the long run,” said the girl decisively.
“Yes, I’ve always had an instinct that way myself. Denham gives thundering good prices as it is, and, I tell you, we’ve made a pretty good thing out of him.”
“But I wonder what he’s like personally,” went on Verna. “I wish you hadn’t lost that photo