In the Whirl of the Rising

Chapter Two.

A Pioneer Farm

The walls of the room were hung with dark blue “limbo,” which gave an impression of refreshing coolness and restful, subdued light, in grateful contrast to the hot, white glare outside. The furniture of the room was pre-eminently of the useful order, consisting of a plain ‘stinkwood’ table, three or four ditto chairs much the worse for wear, a sideboard consisting of two packing-cases knocked into one, a bookshelf, and a camp bedstead whereon now reclined the, at present, sole occupant and – in general – proprietor of the place.

He had been indulging in a siesta, which had run into hours. The naturally dark face was tanned a rich brown by the up-country sun and winds, and it was just the face that the up-country life would go to strengthen – with its firm eyes and square, determined chin. As now seen it was clear that the thoughts of its owner were not of a pleasant nature. Briefly, they might be summed up somewhat in this wise —

“Is that foolery destined to haunt me for the remainder of my natural life? I shut it down and turned my back on it more than a year ago – and yet, and yet, I can’t even take an afternoon snooze without dreaming all that idiocy over again.”

The jaded lassitude usually attendant on immediately awakening out of a day sleep to those who seldom indulge in one was upon this man. Moreover, the last vision of his dreams had been one of a lovely, reproachful face – a recollection of a bitter parting and love turned to hate; a rehearsal of the whole heart-breaking experience, reproduced with that vivid reality which a dream can infuse. All of which hardly conduced to a cheerful frame of mind.

“Wonder when Peters will be back,” ran on his reflections. “He said this evening. Peters is a most effectual antidote to the blues, and – By the way, there’s nothing much for skoff. I’d better take a look round ‘the poultry yard.’”

With a yawn he rose from the couch and stood upright. His erect, firmly-knit form was well set off by the prevailing costume of the country, namely, a light shirt, breeches and gaiters, and leather belt. He flung on the usual broad-brimmed cowboy hat, and, taking a gun and a handful of cartridges, stood in the doorway for a moment, looking forth.

The glare of the hot hours was already toning off into that exquisitely soft and mellow light, where afternoon merges into the African evening. He looked forth upon an expanse of park-like country, rolling away from his very door. Three or four great granite kopjes rose farther on, and, beyond these, a dark line, extending as far as the eye could reach, marked the margin of a vast forest tract. Taking a few steps forward he turned. Here an entirely different scene was before his gaze. Behind the rude house of plaster and thatch, from which he had just emerged, was a large circular enclosure, stockaded with mopani poles and thorny mimosa boughs, while another and smaller stockade, similarly constructed, enclosed several conical huts. He had laughed at his native servants when they had urged the necessity of building such a stockade. Lions? Hyenas? Why, no wild animal would venture inside a hut. Look at his own house. It was not stockaded. To which they had replied in true native fashion that that might be so. The Inkosi was a very great and powerful white man, but they were only poor helpless black men; and, moreover, that wild animals had been known to take people out of their huts. So he had laughed and let them have their way.

Such was Piers Lamont’s pioneer farm in Matabeleland. It had been granted him by reason of his services during the war of occupation in ’93, and he had sold it – for a song – when he wanted a run home. He had bought it back – very much on the same terms – a few months previously, on his return to the old up-country life.

“Ho, Zingela!” he called.

“Nkose!” and a young native appeared from the enclosure containing the conical huts. He was tall and slim, and straight as a dart, and had a pleasing face.

“Come with me,” said Lamont, speaking the Sindabele very fairly; “I am going down to the river bank to collect a few birds for the pot. You shall carry them.”

“Nkose!” sung out the boy with great heartiness.

The South African native is a born sportsman, and if there is a service congenial to him it is the participation, even vicariously, in any form of sport.

They strolled leisurely down among the tree-stems by the river bank. The francolin, or bush pheasant, whirred up out of the tall tambuti grass one or two at a time. Crack! crack! went the gun, and in less than half an hour Lamont’s cartridges, of which he had taken ten, were exhausted, and Zingela was carrying nine birds as they retraced their steps homeward.

“Cook them all, Zingela. The other Inkosi will be home to-night, and will be hungry.” Then as the boy, with a murmur of assent, withdrew, Lamont dropped into one of the cane chairs on the low stoep, beneath the projecting verandah of thatch, and lit a pipe.

The sun sank lower and lower, and the evening light became more golden and entrancing. It was an hour and a scene to promote meditation, retrospection, and he did not want retrospection. Still it was there. Like most things we don’t want, it would intrude. The influence of his recent dream was still upon him, and from it there was no getting away.

Rather more than a year ago, and Violet Courtland had indignantly, and in public, branded him as a coward. He had striven to put the incident from his mind and her and her recollection from his life – and had mostly succeeded. There were times when her recollection would be forced back upon him, though such occasions were becoming rarer and their effect fainter. Every occasion of the kind had been succeeded by a fierce reaction of vindictive rancour against one who could so have misjudged him, and so would this. Yet it was more vivid, more saturating, than any of them.

“Not if she went on her knees to me would I ever forgive her that one thing,” he would say fiercely to himself on the occasion of such reactions, thus unconsciously paraphrasing the very words that had been said about him, more than a year ago, and upwards of seven thousand miles away. And there would occur to him the idea that life here was too easy, too stagnant. Yet he had not had things all his own way. The dread scourge which had swept steadily down from the north had not spared him; that rinderpest which had decimated his neighbours’ cattle, as well as that of the natives, had decimated – was still decimating – his own. Even this, however, could not avail to afford him the anxiety which might constitute the one nail destined to drive out the other; for its ravages, however much they might spell loss, and serious loss, could never to him spell utter ruin, as was the case with some others.

Now a sound of distant lowing, and the occasional clear shout of the driver, told that his own herd was being driven in for the night; and then the calves which had already been brought in woke up, in responsive bellow, to greet the approaching herd. Lamont rose and went round to the kraal. Here was a possible source of anxiety, and narrowly and eagerly did he scan the animals as they passed him, lest haply he might discern symptoms of the dread pestilence. But none appeared, nor did a closer investigation as he moved about within the kraal show further cause for anxiety. So preoccupied was he with this that he entirely failed to notice the approach of a horseman in the growing dusk, until the circumstance was brought to his notice by the sharp crack of a whip and a cheery hail.

“Evenin’, Lamont.”

“Peters, by George! Well, I said you’d be back to-night. You’re as punctual as a jolly clock, old man.”

The speaker was outside the gate now, and the two men exchanged a cordial hand-grip.

“Jolly glad you are back too,” he went on. “I’ve got on a fit of holy blues to-night.”

“Oh well, then, it’s a good job I’ve brought along a chum. He’ll help liven you.”

“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 the door and shot it. Now you have to go away from the homestead a bit, but you can always get as many as you want. Are you fond of shooting?”

“Rather. I say, Lamont, d’you remember what jolly shoots we had at Courtland?”

“Are you fond of fighting, Ancram?” said Lamont.

The other stared. There was a grim directness in the question. Both were thinking the same thing. It seemed an odd question to be put by a man who had been publicly accused of cowardice. Its propounder was enjoying the other’s confusion.

“Fighting?” echoed Ancram.

“Yes. Because if you are you’ve come to the right shop for it. You’ll get plenty if you remain in the country, and that before very long too.”

“Why? Who is there to fight?”

“The Matabele.”

“But I thought they were all conquered – licked into a cocked hat.”

“So did, so do, a lot of other people who ought to know better. But they’re not. Let this rinderpest go a little further, and when the Government has shot a few more of their cattle – then we shall see.”

“By Jove! I had no idea of that.”

“Or you wouldn’t have come,” Lamont could not help appending. He had detected a note of consternation in Ancram’s tone. And Ancram was one of those who had stood by and endorsed the accusation of cowardice hurled against himself.

“Oh yes, I would,” answered the other, with rather a forced laugh. “But I say, Lamont, what about you two fellows – and others in a lonely place like this? Where would you come in?”

“Nowhere, unless we got wind and scooted in time. But that’s just the difficulty.”

“Phew! But don’t you take any precaution?”

“Not any. We take our chance instead. Chance is the name of a very great god up-country, as you’ll find out if you stop out here long.”

“Well, it would be a jolly good job if we did have a war,” rejoined Ancram airily. “Give us lots of fun. I should enjoy it.”

Peters looked quickly up.

“Fun! Enjoy it!” he repeated. “D’you hear that, Lamont? Wonder how much fun he’d have voted it – how much he’d have enjoyed it – if he’d been along with us on the retreat from the Shangani.”

“Oh, damn the retreat from the Shangani!” burst forth Lamont. “Ain’t you sick of that sick old yarn yet, Peters? Because I am.”

Ancram stared. There seemed nothing to warrant the ill-tempered outburst – unless – Ah, that was it. Lamont had hoisted the white feather in some way while on the expedition referred to, and of course was shy of hearing it mentioned. But, strangely enough, Peters didn’t seem to resent the tone or the brusque interruption. On the contrary he inclined to the apologetic.

“Oh, keep your hair on, Lamont,” he answered deprecatingly. “You know, Ancram, I shouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t been for – ”

“Will you have another whisky-and-selz, Ancram, or will you try some black tea?” interrupted Lamont, speaking quickly. “Can’t offer you any milk with it because of the drought, except tinned, and that makes it entirely beastly.”

“I should think so,” answered Ancram, again wondering at the rudeness of the pointed interruption. “But isn’t it the deuce on the nerves? Keeps you awake, and all that.”

“In civilisation it would. Not up here. I’ve often, while lying out in camp, polished off three big beakers of it – black as ink, mind – and dropped off fast asleep when only half through my first pipe.”

“By Jove! that knocks a good old superstition endways, anyway.”

“Good job if they were all knocked endways. Now here’s another – ” And then Lamont, fastening on to another topic proceeded to thresh it out, and, in fact, for him, became quite voluble, so much so that Peters could not have got a word in edgeways even if he had wanted to, which he did not. At him Ancram stole more than one glance, expecting to descry an offended look. But he descried nothing of the sort. Peters went on placidly with his supper, nodding occasional assent to the other’s remarks. But Lamont had got what he wanted; he had got clean away from the retreat from the Shangani. There was no possibility of reopening that subject, short of dragging it in by the tail. All of which set the new arrival wondering still more.

“Then if these Matabele chaps were to rise,” went on Ancram, “you – we – should all get our throats cut?”

“From ear to ear,” supplied Lamont, with grim uncompromising crispness.

“Oh, come. I say, Lamont, you’re getting at a fellow, don’t you know.”

“No, I don’t. But if you don’t believe me ask Peters.”

“The Captain’s – er – oh! – ah! – I mean Lamont’s right,” declared Peters, half briskly, half deprecatorily, as he noted the positive scowl which wrinkled his friend’s dark brows. The reason wherefor was that the latter, having held a subordinate command during the war of occupation, had experienced much trouble in convincing Peters and others that they were not to call him ‘Captain’ ever after. That sort of tin-pot aping of military rank was bad enough while they were on active service, he declared – afterwards it was simply poisonous, and there were enough ‘captains’ and ‘majors’ and ‘colonels’ knocking about Matabeleland to stock a whole Army Corps with, if they had been genuine.

Again Ancram wondered. What the deuce did it all mean, he tried to unravel, that a tough, hard-bitten frontiersman, such as he had already estimated Peters to be, should care twopence for the frown or smile of a fellow like Lamont, whom he himself had seen show the white feather on an occasion when there was the least possible excuse of all for it – indeed, he wished he himself had been at hand at the time, instead of arriving on the scene just after the rescue had been effected? Yet, somehow, there was something very solid, very square, about this, as even he realised, involuntary host of his, sitting there the very embodiment of self-possession, devil-may-care-ishness, even masterful dominance. It did not fit in, somehow, with that scene in the falling dusk, by the frozen mere at Courtland, on Christmas Eve.

“But,” he persisted, “do you really and seriously mean, Lamont, that if these chaps were to break out to-night they would cut all our throats?”

“Really and seriously, Ancram. But didn’t I tell you that the great god Chance was a ruling factor up here? You’ll soon tumble to his little ways. Here – try some of this Magaliesburg,” pushing a large two-pound bag towards him.

“Er – thanks. I think I’ll stick to my mixture. The fellows at Pagadi gave me some of that the other night, and I didn’t care for it.”