A Veldt Vendetta

And I told her briefly the plight I had found myself in, when Brian had come to the rescue. She listened with great interest.

“Well, I am more than ever glad he did. But what an experience! The landing one, though, I have been through myself; the bar at East London can be too terrific for words. By the way, we have a little sister staying down there now with some friends. We thought the sea-bathing would do her good, and she’s so fond of it. Did you see her, perhaps?”

“Yes. She met us outside the town to say good-bye. What a pretty child she is.”

“She is, and nicely she gets spoiled on the strength of it,” laughed Beryl, but the laugh was wholly a pleasant one, without a tinge of envy or resentment in it.

We chatted a little, and then she proposed we should stroll out and look at the garden and some tiny ostrich chicks she was trying to rear, and flinging on a large rough straw hat which was infinitely becoming, she led the way, down through an avenue of fig trees, and opened a light gate in the high quince hedge.

Then as I stood within the coolness of the garden, which covered some acreage of the side of the slope, I gained a most wonderful impression of the place that was destined to prove my home for a long time to come, and in whose joys and sorrows – yes, and impending tragedies of dark vendetta and bloodshed – I was fated to be associated. Below the house lay the sheep kraals, and already a woolly cataract was streaming into one of the thorn-protected enclosures, while another awaited its turn at a little distance off. The cattle kraal, too, was alive with dappled hides, and one unintermittent “moo” of restless and hungry calves, while a blue curling smoke reek from the huts of the Kafir farm servants rose upon the still evening atmosphere. What is there about that marvellous African sunset glow? I have seen it many a time since, under far different conditions – under the steamy heat of the lower Zambesi region, and amid piercing cold with many degrees of frost on the high Karoo; in the light dry air of the Kalahari, and in the languorous, semi-tropical richness of beautiful Natal; but never quite as I saw it that evening, standing beside Beryl Matterson. It was as a scene cut out of Eden, that wondrous changing glow which rested upon the whole valley, playing upon the rolling sea of foliage like the sweep of golden waves, striking the iron face of a noble cliff with a glint of bronze, then dying, to leave a pearly atmosphere redolent of distilling aromatic herbs, tuneful with the cooing of myriad doves and the whistle of plover and the hum of strange winged insects coming forth on their nightly quests.

“Let’s see. How long is it since you and Brian saw each other last, Mr Holt?” said my companion as we strolled between high quince hedges.

“Why, it must have been quite twelve years, rather over than under. And most of the time has not been good, as far as I was concerned. The financial crash that forced me to leave school when I did, kept me for years in a state of sedentary drudgery for a pittance. Something was saved out of the wreck at last, but by that time I had grown ‘groovy’ and fought shy of launching out into anything that involved risk. I preferred to keep my poor little one talent in a napkin, to the possibility of losing it in the process of turning it into two.”

She looked interested as she listened. The face which I had thought hard grew soft, sympathetic, and wholly alluring.

“There’s a good deal in that,” she laughed. “I must say I have often thought the poor one-talent man was rather hardly used. By the way, when Brian was sent to England to school it was with the idea of making a lawyer or a doctor of him, but he would come back to the farm. It was rather a sore point with our father for quite a long time after, but now he recognises that it is all for the best. My father is not what the insurance people call a ‘good’ life, Mr Holt.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that. What is wrong? Heart?”

“Yes. But I am boring you with all these family details, but having been Brian’s school chum seems to make you almost as one of ourselves.”

“Pray rid yourself of the impression that you are boring me, Miss Matterson – on the contrary, I am flattered. But I must not obtain your good opinion under false pretences. The fact is, Brian and I were not exactly school chums. There was too much difference between our ages – at that time, of course; which makes it all the more friendly and kind of him to have brought me here now.”

“Oh, that doesn’t make any difference. If you weren’t chums then you will be now, so it’s all the same.”

Then we talked about other things, and to my inquiries relating to this new land – new to me, that is – Beryl gave ready reply.

“You will have to return the favour, Mr Holt,” she said with a smile. “There are many things I shall ask you about by-and-by. After all, this sort of life is a good deal outside the world, and I have never been to England, you know. I am only a raw Colonial.”

I forget what answer I made; probably it was an idiotic one. But the idea of associating “rawness” with this well-bred, self-possessed, attractive girl at my side, seemed so outrageous that in all probability I overdid the thing in striving to demonstrate its absurdity.

On regaining the house we found Brian, who had just returned from counting in the flocks. He was not alone. Two Kafirs – tall, finely-built savages, their blankets and persons coloured terra-cotta red with ochre – stood at the steps of the stoep conversing with him, the mellow bass of their sonorous language and their far from ungraceful appearance and attitude lending another picturesque element to the rich unfamiliarity of the surroundings. They, however, were just taking their leave, bestowing upon us a quick, inquisitive glance, and a farewell salutation as they turned away.

“Two more of Kuliso’s wandering lambs, Beryl,” said Brian, with a significant laugh, as we joined him. “Yet none of ours, or sheep either, have vanished this time, so I suppose we ought to consider ourselves fortunate. The count is correct. By the way, Holt, I’m afraid one of the vicissitudes common to this country has deferred supper for a little. We can’t do better than sit out here, so long.”

There were cosy cane chairs upon the stoep, and as we sat chatting I said —

“Who is Kuliso?”

Brian laughed.

“One of the chiefs of the Ndhlambe location just east of us. A bad egg personally, and his clan is made up of ‘prize’ thieves and stock-lifters.”

“But you, Miss Matterson,” I went on. “Is it safe for you to go about alone among such neighbours?”

A glance of understanding, humorous withal, passed between brother and sister.

“Beryl is just about a dead shot, Holt,” said the former quietly.

“But even then, what can one do against a number, and that one a – ”

“A woman, you were going to say, Mr Holt,” supplied that equable, resolute voice, that had already begun to charm me.

“Ha, ha!” laughed Brian. “Are you afraid to throw up your hat in the air, Holt, now, just as we sit? But never mind. It wouldn’t be fair to spoil that new ‘smasher’ of yours. Mine’s a very old one. Look now.”

While he had spoken Beryl had disappeared within the house for a moment. Now she stood there holding a revolver – no toy, mind, but a real effective and business-like six-shooter. Up went Brian’s hat, whirling in mid-air. Just as it rested stationary for a fraction of a second at its highest flight, there was a sharp report; the hat gave a spasmodic jerk, like a live thing, and began to fall. But before it touched ground there was another report. Struck again, it gave a leap, and went skimming away to the ground in sidelong flight.

“Magnificent, by Jove!” broke from me. But that she had lowered the still smoking weapon, Beryl had not moved. Brian, however, had sprung from his seat to retrieve his hat.

“Call that nothing, Holt?” he cried, pointing out two clean bullet holes – one through the brim, the other through the crown. “Good thing it wasn’t yours, eh?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Brian, it’s too bad of you, to make me show off in that way,” said Beryl. “I can’t think why I did it. Now I must go and see to things inside, or you two poor hungry creatures will get nothing to eat to-night.”

She disappeared, and as the playful, chiding tone, the merrily deprecatory glance remained in my mind, I realised a strange impression. It seemed that all in a moment she had thrown aside that outer crust of reserve which she had worn for my benefit, and underneath I descried the real Beryl Matterson. And into a very sweet and alluring personality did my mental gaze seem to penetrate.

“Bushbuck chops, Holt,” said Brian, as we sat down to supper, in the snug, well-lighted dining-room, which in the comfort and refinement of its appointments bore token of the hand of a presiding genius – to wit, Beryl. “Rather out of season, buck, just now; still, we shoot one now and then, if only as a change from the eternal sheep. Try them. New kind of grub for you, eh?”

I did try them, and found them perfect, as indeed everything on the table was, and this was a farm on the average scale. I have since been at many a similar place run on a large scale where the appointments were slovenly in comparison. But then such did not own Beryl Matterson as a presiding goddess. Afterwards we adjourned to the stoep.

“Beryl will join us directly, Holt,” said Brian, as we lit our pipes. “She has to see to things a bit first. Girls over here have to do that, you know. I can tell you we should come off badly if they didn’t.”

Later on, when I got to my room at the end of the stoep, and turned in between snowy sheets, I appreciated what some of the aforesaid “seeing to things” on Beryl’s part involved.

“I expect the governor and George’ll sleep at Trask’s to-night, and turn up first thing in the morning,” declared Brian as it waxed late. And Beryl, who had long since joined us, concurred.

It was wholly delightful as we sat there chatting, in the soft night air – the range of hills opposite silvered and beautiful in the moonlight, and ever and anon the strange cry of bird or beast floating through the stillness, or the wailing whistle of plover circling above – and to me the experience was as strange as it was delightful. A day or two ago, I had felt lonely and forlorn indeed – a stranger in a strange land. Yet now here I was, in the most congenial surroundings beneath a hospitable roof whose inmates looked upon me as one of themselves and had made me thoroughly at home accordingly. And the fact that one of the said inmates was an unusually attractive girl did not, you may be sure, under the circumstances tend to lessen the feeling of thorough and comfortable enjoyment to which the situation caused me to give myself up. At last Brian began to yawn.

“Holt, old chap, you must excuse me,” he said. “We turn out early here and have to turn in tolerably ditto.”

I professed myself quite in accord with the idea. The fact was I felt just a little tired myself.

“So? Well, then, we’ll have a glass of grog and turn in.”

If I have dwelt upon the incidents of that first evening, I suppose it is because upon such one’s first and most vivid impressions are invariably based.

Chapter Eight.

A New Life

I awoke from a sound sleep, or rather was awakened by a knocking at the door. Remembering my disclaimer of susceptibility, I hardly like to own the persistency wherewith my dreams were haunted by visions of my hostess. But now the sun was already up, and as I shouted “Come in,” the opening door admitted a broad dazzling flash of his new-born radiance together with the form of a small Kafir girl bearing a cup of coffee. Sounds, too, of busy life came from outside.

A shave and a cool refreshing tub, and it did not take me long to get into my clothes. There was no one about the house, except a Kafir girl sweeping the stoep, but I heard voices in the direction of the kraals, and thither wending I came upon a great enclosure filled with cattle, and the hissing squirt of milk into zinc pails told what was going forward. As I climbed over the gate, the voices increased in volume, and expressed anger, not to say menace. Then a sight met my eyes, causing me to move forward a little quicker.

Brian Matterson was standing at the further end, and, confronting him, a huge Kafir. The latter was talking volubly in his own tongue, whose rolling bass seemed to convey a ferocity which even to my inexperienced ear was unmistakable. Moreover, he seemed to emphasise his arguments, whatever they, were, with a very suggestive grip upon a pair of hardwood sticks, which he held one in each hand. But Brian, who was totally unarmed, stood, one hand in his trousers pocket, talking quietly, and absolutely and entirely at his ease.

Suddenly the savage, an evil-looking, ochre-smeared ruffian, raised his voice to a roar of menace, and at the same time one of the sticks whirled through the air. But Brian merely stepped back a pace, and then what followed was beautiful to behold. His fists were playing like the drumsticks of a kettledrum, and down went his towering assailant into the dust of the cattle kraal – then springing up, down he went again. It was all done in a moment, before I could even reach the spot.

“That you, Holt?” said Brian, without, however, taking his eyes off his discomfited adversary, to whom he continued to address some further remarks in the tongue of the Amaxosa, and who, shuffling along the ground, rose to his feet some little way off and slunk away out of the enclosure, snarling out a deep-toned running fire of what sounded not in the least like benediction.

“What’s the row?” I said.

“Oh, nothing much. Rum thing, though, it should have happened the very first glimpse you get of us. Still, it had to be. That fellow, Sibuko, was with us here once, but we turned him off. He came back this morning, and it’s my belief he came back on purpose to have a row – and he’s got his wish.”

“Rather,” I said, in hearty admiration for the masterly way in which my former schoolfellow had reduced to order a formidable and muscular barbarian, an encounter with whom I myself would far rather have avoided than welcomed. “You did that well, Brian. Yet I don’t remember you as a superlative bruiser at old Wankley’s.”

“Nor am I now. After all, it’s nothing. These chaps can’t use their fists, you know.”

“How about their sticks?”

“Yes, that comes in. A smart Kafir with a couple of kerries is often a large contract – quickness is the great thing with either. Still, it’s unpleasant, and I don’t care about it. But you’ll hardly believe me when I tell you the necessity may not arise once in a year. Only, you can’t be defied on your own place. I told that chap to clear, and he answered point-blank that he wouldn’t. There was only one way of settling that difference of opinion, you see.”

And he turned to give an order to one of his Kafirs, calm, equable, as if nothing had happened.

“Have a smoke,” he went on, “or is it too early for you? Yes? Oh well, perhaps a fellow is better in moderation. Though I expect you’ll soon tumble into all our ways.” And he filled and lighted his pipe, while we chatted, but not for a moment did his attention slacken from what he was engaged upon, the superintending of the milking to wit.

It was a lovely cloudless morning, and there was something in the clear dry atmosphere that was exhilarating in the extreme. How would I take to this sort of life? I thought to myself. Already the old life seemed far away, and all behind. The charm of this new life – its freedom and glorious climate – were settling upon me; why should I not embark in it? I had the means, if I started carefully and modestly. I did not imagine for a moment there was a fortune in it, but neither was there in the branch of business in which my lines had hitherto been cast. And somehow, woven in with such meditations was already the image of Beryl Matterson; which was quite too absurd, remembering that twenty-four hours ago I had never seen her.

“Don’t you ever carry a six-shooter, Matterson?” I said, my mind reverting to the little difference of opinion I had just seen so effectually settled.

“Very seldom. You see, we are not outside the law here, and if I shot a fellow I should almost certainly find myself in a nasty awkward mess.”

“What – even in self-defence?”

“Even then. The English law is curiously wooden-headed on some points. The ‘sacredness of human life’ is one of them, especially with a judge or two we have here who will always go against a white man in favour of a Kafir; and if you were known to habitually carry arms it would go further against you still.”

“But what about your sister?”

“That’s different. There isn’t a jury on the frontier would convict a woman for shooting a Kafir, because they know perfectly well that such a thing couldn’t happen except in a case of the direst necessity. In fact, there are far too few women and girls who are able to take care of themselves, and they all ought to be.”

“I should very much think so,” I said, and the time was to come when these remarks were destined to recur to my mind with vivid clearness and weighty force.

“Hallo!” said Brian, “here’s the governor coming back.” And following his glance, I saw the white tent of a trap coming down the road from the opposite direction to that of our way the evening before. A minute or so more and it drew up opposite the kraals.

“Don’t say anything about what you’ve just seen, Holt,” he went on, as we made our way to the gate. “He doesn’t like that sort of thing, but for all that it’s sometimes inevitable.”

Of course I gave him the required assurance, and as we reached the gate the buggy pulled up, and there got out a strongly-built man of about fifty-five. He had a quiet-looking but determined face, which reminded me more of Beryl than of Brian, and a thick, full, brown beard, somewhat streaked with grey, and as Brian speedily introduced us his welcome of me was all that could be desired in the way of frank cordiality.

“I hope you will be able to make some stay with us, Mr Holt,” he said. “You have spent the night here, and, I take it, have seen what we have to offer you; but such as it is, you are very welcome.”

So this was Brian’s father! I confess he inspired in me more than a feeling of cordiality – for it was one of admiration. I knew men pretty well by that time, and was a bit of a cynic on the subject; but now I saw before me one whom I read as rather a unique specimen – a man who would say what he meant, and who would act as his judgment dictated, no matter what the whole world might think – a man whose word would be as his bond, even though it were to his own detriment; in short, in this frontier stock-farmer I saw a man who, no matter where he might be put down, or under what circumstances, would be a very tower of reliability: cool, intrepid, sound of judgment, come good, come ill. And in all my subsequent friendship with Septimus Matterson, I never had cause to swerve one hair’s breadth from my first impression – save in one instance only.

Now as two Kafirs came up to stand at the horses’ heads, somebody else jumped out of the buggy – a boy to wit, whom Mr Matterson promptly introduced as his youngest son. He was a boy of about fourteen, a good-looking boy, but with a roving mischievous look in his face; a boy, in short, to whom I did not take one bit. Equally readily I could see that he did not take to me.

“Just out from England, hey?” said this hopeful. “Man, but you’ll find it different here.”

Now this was hardly the form of address to be looked for from a youngster of his tender age to a man very considerably his senior; moreover, there was something patronising about it which prejudiced me against the speaker; in fact, I set him down at once as an unlicked cub. But of course I showed no sign of what I was thinking, and the work Brian had been superintending being at an end, we all went round to count the flocks – I don’t mean I bore any part in that operation, not then – and adjourned to the house for breakfast.

Chapter Nine.

Mainly Venatorial

Beryl looked wholly fresh and delightful as she welcomed us, and it was hard to believe she had been up nearly three hours “seeing to things,” as Brian put it. There was a good deal of talk, of wholly local interest, with regard to the expeditions of both father and son, and the results thereof, but even it was by no means without interest to me, for, after all, it let me into so much of the inner life of these strange new surroundings. Presently the young hopeful, looking up from a large plateful of oatmeal porridge and milk, observed —

“I say, Brian, let’s go down to Zwaart Kloof this morning and try for a bushbuck ram.”

“Well, I don’t know. Yes. Perhaps Mr Holt would like to try his luck. What do you say, Holt?”

I said I’d like nothing better, but for the trifling drawback that I had no gun – being only a shipwrecked mariner who had come away with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. But this was speedily over-ruled. There were plenty of guns in the house. No difficulty about that.

“Can you shoot, Mr Holt?” said the youngster, planting both elbows on the table, and eyeing me with rather disdainful incredulity.

“Well, yes, I can shoot,” I said. “Moderately, that is.”

“But you’re out from England,” went on the cub, as though that settled the matter.

“George, you little ass, shut up, and go and tell them to saddle up Bles and Punch for us,” said Brian. “You can ride Jack.”

A volume of expostulation in favour of some other steed having been silenced by Brian in quiet and peremptory fashion, the hopeful went out.

“I’m afraid you’ll find George rather a spoilt boy, Mr Holt,” said Beryl. “He and Iris seem to get their own way more than they ought. They are the little ones, you see.”

Of course I rejoined that it was quite natural – reserving my own opinion. In the case of the little girl it was candid: in the other – well “boy” to me is apt to spell horror; but a spoilt boy, and just a boy of George Matterson’s age, well – to fit him, my vocabulary has never yet been able to invent an adequate superlative.

“You’d better have a shot gun, Holt,” said Brian, as we started. “I always use one in thick bush; it’s all close shooting.”

He handed me a double Number Twelve bore, of first-rate make and poise, and kept in first-rate order too, and some treble A cartridges.

“You won’t use all those. You’ll be lucky if you get two fair and square shots,” he remarked.

“Good luck, Mr Holt,” called out Beryl after us.

I began to feel nervous. I was only an ordinary shot, and of this form of sport was, of course, utterly without experience – and said as much.

“You only shoot tame pheasants in England, don’t you, Mr Holt?” said George, in a tone that made me wish I could turn him into one of the fowl aforesaid. Could it really be that this impudent young pup was Beryl’s brother – or Brian’s too, for the matter of that?

We cantered down the valley, then struck up a lateral spur, and rounding it came upon a deep kloof running far up into the hillside – its side black with dense bush, the boerboen and plumed euphorbia, and half a dozen other varieties whose names I didn’t know then.

“Here, Tiger, Ratels, get to heel!” cried Brian, apostrophising the rough-haired dogs which had followed, all excited, at our horses’ heels. “George, take Mr Holt on to the opening above the little krantz. You know where to post him. If he doesn’t get a shot there he won’t get one anywhere. Then come back to me.”

We made a bit of a circuit, and some twenty minutes later found ourselves in a little open space, surrounded on three sides by dense bush, while the fourth seemed to be the brink of a precipitous fall in the ground. Here I was carefully posted in the combined cover of an ant-heap and a small mimosa.

“That’s where they always break cover,” whispered George. “Man, but you mustn’t make a sound. Don’t move – don’t cough, even. So long.”

Left alone, my nerves were all athrill with excitement, and I believe my hand shook. A couple of spreuws perched upon an adjoining bush, melodiously whistling, then, become mysteriously aware of my presence, flashed off – a pair of green-blue streaks, their note changed to one of alarm. Would they scare the game and turn it back? I thought agonisingly. Heavens! what if I should shoot badly, and miss? What a fool I should look – and this was, in a way, my début!