“A chum? Where is he?”
“With the carts. They’re about at the three-mile draai now. His horse knocked out. This was the way of it,” went on Peters, who, having off-saddled his own mount and handed it over to a boy, led the way to the house. “You know Fuliya’s bend on the Pagadi road. No, you don’t? Well, no matter. Here’s luck, old man.”
Down went two long tumblers of whisky-and-selzogene.
“We’ll have another when the other chap turns up,” said Peters, with a jolly laugh. “Well, as I was saying, just before I got to that bend I saw two ugly Makalakas cross the road.”
“Nothing wonderful in that. Most likely they only wanted to get to the other side,” said Lamont slily.
“Eh? Oh, I see. Well they did, of course. They dived into the mopani. But, you know, they gave me the idea of being up to some devilment. They didn’t see me neither, and they had axes and assegais, but of course it was none of my business if they were going to stick or hack some other nigger, so I just rode on. A mile or so farther, just the other side of a dry sluit, I saw a brand-new bush-buck spoor leading into the mopani. I could do with some fresh meat just then – dead sick of ‘bully’ – so started to see if I could get near enough to him with the .303. Well I didn’t. I saw something else that drove the other clean out of my head. On the opposite side of the sluit from me a man staggered out from the trees – a white man – and fell. ‘That’s what those two devils were up to, was it,’ I thought. They’d assegaied him from behind, and would be here in a minute to collect the plunder. You know, Lamont, more than one white man has disappeared in that mopani belt, but it’s always been put down to thirst.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“Well, I just dropped down in the tambuti grass, and wormed forward to where I could see over a bit o’ rock. Then I drew a careful bead on the exact spot where the nigger would stand to finish off the chap, and – by the Lord! – there the nigger was, with an axe all ready in his fist. In about a second he had skipped his own length in the air, and was prancing about on the ground. He’d got it through the head, you see.”
“Good! Did the other show up?”
“Didn’t he? They showed up together. He cleared. But he was too late. I got him too.”
“Good old right and left! Well done, Peters! And the white man – who was he, and was he badly damaged?”
“He wasn’t damaged at all. But he’d have been dead of thirst before night, even if the niggers had never sighted him. He’s a Johnny Raw, and he’d been drawing sort of figures of eight all about that mopani patch for the last forty-eight hours. I didn’t tell him there’d been any shootin’, or any niggers at all, and ain’t going to. That sounds like the carts,” as the noise of wheels and whip cracking drew nearer and nearer. “Yes; it is.”
As the carts drew up, Lamont went back into the room for a moment to get something he had left. When he turned, a tall figure stood in the doorway framed against the darkness beyond.
“Lamont – isn’t it?”
This was a fairly familiar method of address from a perfect stranger, even in a land of generally prevailing free-and-easiness, and Lamont stiffened.
“Let me see, I know the voice,” he said, staring at the new arrival. “But – ”
The other laughed.
“Thought I’d give you a little surprise,” he said. “I’m Ancram. We were staying at Courtland together, don’t you remember?”
“Oh yes – perfectly. Come in. I didn’t recognise you at first because – er – ”
“I haven’t had a shave for a week,” supplemented the other, with an easy laugh. “Well, we can put that right now.”
“It did make a difference certainly. Well, and how are you, Ancram?”
“Hallo!” sung out Peters, appearing at the door. “Brought off your surprise yet, Ancram? He said I wasn’t to give away his name, Lamont, because he wanted to spring a surprise on you. Ha-ha!”
Chapter Three.
Taking in the Stranger
Decidedly Lamont had had a surprise sprung upon him. Whether it was an agreeable one or not is another matter.
His greeting of the new arrival was polite rather than cordial; even pleasant, but not spontaneous. There was a vast difference in his handshake here to that wherewith he had welcomed Peters, for instance; nor did he use the formula, “Glad to see you.” Ancram noticed this, and so did Peters.
Lamont was nothing if not downright, and would never say a thing he did not mean. Peters knew this, wherefore he began to feel mightily uncomfortable, and wished he hadn’t brought the stranger along. But then Ancram had asked him point-blank if he could tell him where to find Lamont, who was a friend of his, and whom he had heard was settled somewhere in these parts; and he had received the question with a great roar of laughter, replying that no man in all Rhodesia was more fully qualified to give him that very information. But if this outsider’s presence was going to prove a thorn in the side of his friend, – rather than do anything to annoy whom he would have cut off his right hand, – why, the sooner they scooted him off the better, decided Peters. Aloud he said —
“Here’s luck, Ancram. What would you have given for this jolly long drink when you were strolling about in the doorstland, hey?”
“Just about all I was worth,” laughed the other, sending down the remains of his whisky-and-selzogene with infinite gusto.
“I’m afraid you’ll find these quarters a bit rough, Ancram,” said Lamont. “New country, you know, and all that kind of thing.”
The other protested that he liked nothing better than roughing it, and how awfully jolly it was to run against Lamont again. But even he was conscious of a something which restrained him from making further reference to Courtland.
Outwardly Ancram was a tall, well-built fellow, several years younger than Lamont. He was good-looking, but the face was one of a very ordinary type, with nothing about it to stamp itself upon the recollection. As a fellow-guest at Courtland, Lamont had rather disliked him for his own sake, and still more because he had tried to get between himself and Violet. Moreover, Ancram had been among those who muttered against him on the bank of the frozen mere what time his fiancée had put upon him that abominable and unmerited insult. And now the fellow turned up here, claiming his hospitality, and talking to him as if he was his dearest friend.
“Excuse my seeming inhospitality, Ancram,” he said. “I must go and help give an eye to the off-loading, but if you like to go in there you’ll find all the ingredients for a wash-up. We shall have supper directly.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right, old chap,” was the airy reply, “By the way, I’ll come with you.”
Outside, by the light of three or four lanterns, several natives were busily unloading the donkey-carts and transferring their contents to the strongly-built hut which constituted the store-room: bags and boxes, and pockets of sugar, and packages of candles and soap – all sorts of necessaries and a few luxuries.
“Aha!” laughed Peters, shaking one case; “was beginning to think this had been forgotten. What’d become of us then, hey, Ancram?”
“Why, what is it?”
“Scotch. Pother’s Squareface. Well, we’re nearly through now, and I shan’t be sorry to get my champers into a steak of that sable.”
“Well, you won’t be able to,” said Lamont. “There’s none left. But I went down into ‘the poultry yard’ and picked up a few pheasants.”
“We call the river bank our poultry yard, Ancram,” explained Peters, when they were seated at table discussing the products of the same. “When we first came up here, Lamont and I, if we wanted a bird or two we just went to