by John Buchan
‘But those four tourists can’t do anything,’ I said. ‘One I know is a crook, and I think the other is, and they’ve got an ugly Portugoose with them that I swear I’ve seen before. But that’s only three, and they are cumbered with two women.’
‘The vrows have gone back to the town,’ said Peter solemnly. ‘They will wait quietly there till the others return. They will make the whole thing seem innocent – naughty, perhaps, but innocent. But the three you speak of are not the only ones. By this time they have been joined by others, and these others are very great scoundrels. You say, how do I know? I will tell you. I am at home in Makapan’s country and Makapan’s people do what I ask them. They have brought me news which is surer and speedier than Captain Jim can get. There is very bad mischief brewing. Listen, and I will tell you.’
The gist of Peter’s story was that after they had got rid of the women Troth and Albinus had moved down from the scarp into the bush-veld. The third, the Portugoose, Peter knew all about. His name was Dorando, and Peter had come across his tracks in many queer places; he had done time for I.D.B. and for selling illicit liquor, and was wanted in Mozambique on a variety of charges from highway robbery to cold-blooded murder. An odd travelling companion for two innocent sight-seeing tourists! Down in the flats the three had been joined by two other daisies, one an Australian who had been mixed up in the Kruger Treasure business, and one a man from the Diamond Fields called Stringer. I opened my eyes when I heard about the last, for Jim Stringer was an ill-omened name at that time in South Africa. He was the typical ‘bad man’, daring and resourceful and reputed a dead shot. I was under the impression that he had been safely tucked away for his share in a big Johannesburg burglary.
‘He came out of tronk last month,’ said Peter, ‘and your friends must have met him as they came up-country and arranged things. What do you say, Dick? Here are three skellums that I know well, and your two friends who are not good people. They have with them four boys, Shangaans whom I do not know, but they are Makinde’s people, and Makinde’s kraal is a dirty nest. What are they after, think you? They are not staying in the flats. They have already moved up into the Berg, and they are moving fast, and they are moving north. They are not looking for gold, and they are not hunting, and they are not admiring the scenery. Where are they going? I can tell you that, for I found it out before they joined Jim Stringer. The two English do not drink, or if they drink they do not babble. But Dorando drinks and babbles. One of Makapan’s people, who is my friend, was their guide, and he heard Dorando talk when he was drunk. They are going to Mafudi’s kraal. Now who is at Mafudi’s kraal, Dick? They do not want to see old Mafudi in his red blanket. There is somebody else there.’
‘Haraldsen!’ I exclaimed.
‘Ja! The Baas,’ Peter always called Haraldsen the Baas, for he had often worked for him, as guide and transport-rider, and Haraldsen had more than once got him out of scrapes. Peter was a loyal soul, and if his allegiance was vowed to anyone alive it was to the old Dane.
‘But what on earth can they have to do with Haraldsen?’ I demanded.
‘I do not know,’ he said; ‘but they have got it in for the Baas. Consider, Dick. He is not a young man, and he is up here alone, with his little band of Basutos and the Dutchman Malan, who is clever but not a fighter, for he has but the one arm. The Baas is very rich, and he is believed to know many secrets. These skellums have some business with him and it will not be clean business. Perhaps it is an old quarrel. Perhaps he has put it across your friends Troth and Albinus in old days. Or perhaps it is just plain robbery, and they mean to make him squeal. He cannot have much money with him, but they may force him to find them money. I do not know, but I am certain of one thing, that they mean to lay hands on the Baas – and he will not come happily out of their hands – perhaps not alive.’
I was fairly flabbergasted by Peter’s tale. At first I thought he was talking through his hat, for we were civilized folk in Rhodesia, and violence was more or less a thing of the past. But Peter never talked wildly, and the more I thought of it the less I liked it. Five desperadoes up in that lonely corner could do pretty much what they pleased with Haraldsen and his one-armed assistant. I remembered the old fellow’s reputation for having hunted gold all his life and having struck it in a good many places. What more likely than that some hungry rogues should try to get him alone in the wilds and force out of him either money or knowledge?
‘What do you mean to do?’ I asked.
‘I am going straight to Mafudi’s,’ said Peter. ‘And I think you are coming with me, Dick.’
Of course I couldn’t refuse, but I felt bound to go cautiously. Would it not be better to get Arcoll and the police? I didn’t relish the notion of a private scrap with people who would certainly not stick at trifles. Besides, could we do any real good? Haraldsen and Malan might be ruled out as combatants, and we three would be up against five hefty scallywags.
Peter overruled all my objections in his quiet way. Arcoll was a hundred miles off. A native runner had been sent to him, but it was impossible for him to arrive at Mafudi’s in time, for Troth and his little lot would be there by tomorrow morning. As for being outnumbered, we were five honest men against five rascals, and in all rascals he believed there was a yellow streak. ‘I can shoot a little,’ he said, ‘and you can shoot a little, Dick.’ He turned inquiringly to Lombard.
‘I can loose off at any rate,’ said Lombard. He was looking rather excited, for this adventure was a piece of luck he had not hoped for.
The upshot was that we had no rest that night. I sent off one of my boys with another message for Arcoll, giving him more details than Peter had given him, and suggesting a road in by the north-west which I feared he might not think of. I left Hendrik and the mules and the rest of the outfit to come on later – and I remember wondering what kind of situation they would find when they reached Mafudi’s. The three of us took the road just after ten o’clock. Peter’s boy accompanied us, a tough little Bechuana from Khama’s country.
I had travelled the route several times before, and Peter knew it well, but in any case it was not hard to find, for it kept to the open ground near the edge of the scarp, bending inland only to avoid the deep-cut kloofs. There was a wonderful moon which made the whole landscape swim in warm light – an African moon, which is not the pale thing of the north, but as masterful as the sun itself. When it set we were on high ground, a plateau of long grass and thorns, with the great hollow of the lower veld making a gulf of darkness on our right. The road was easy enough to follow, and when dawn came with a rush of gold and crimson out of the east we were close to the three queer little peaks between which lay Mafudi’s kraal.
We went straight to Haraldsen’s camp, which was about half a mile from the kraal on one of the ridges. It was the ordinary prospector’s camp of which at that time you could have found a score or two in Rhodesia, but more professional than most, for Haraldsen had the cash with which to do things properly. Gold is not my pidgin, but the heaps of quartz I passed looked healthy. He had struck an outcrop which he thought promising, and was busy tracing the run of the reef, having sunk two seventy-foot shafts about a quarter of a mile apart. But I wasn’t concerned with old Haraldsen’s operations, but with Haraldsen himself. We had been sighted by his boys, and he stood outside his tent awaiting us, a figure like a patriarch with the sun on his shaggy head.
While our breakfast coffee was being made I told him our story, for there was no time to lose, since Peter calculated that Troth and his lot, by the road they were coming, could not be more than five miles off. Haraldsen had a face so weathered and set in lines that it didn’t reveal much of his thoughts, and he had grey eyes as steady as a good dog’s. But the mention of Troth woke him up and the name of Albinus didn’t please him. He seemed to be more worried about them than about the other scallywags.
‘Troth I know,’ he said in his deep voice and his precise accent, for he always spoke English as if he had got it from old-fashione
d books. ‘He is a great scoundrel and my enemy. Once – long ago – he was my partner for a little. He does not like me, and he has a reason, for I most earnestly laboured to have him put in tronk. He comes now like a ghost out of the past, and he means evil.’ Of Albinus, he would only say that his father had had a great devil in him, and that he did not think that the devil had been exorcized in the son.
He had not the smallest doubt that the gang were after him, but he didn’t explain why. All he said was, ‘They will try to make me do their will, and if I do not consent they will kill me. Unless, indeed, I first kill them.’
I tried as usual to put the common sense of it. ‘If they find us with you,’ I said, ‘they won’t dare to do anything. A quiet murder might be in their line, but they won’t want to fight a battle.’
But Haraldsen shook his head. He knew Troth, he said, and he knew about Albinus. He must have laid these gentry out pretty flat some time or other for them to have such a murderous grudge against him, or else he knew the depth and desperation of their greed. But what impressed me most was Peter’s view. He knew about Stringer and Dorando, and was clear that they would not go home without loot. They would not think of consequences, for they could leak away into the backworld of Africa.
I was never one for a fight except in the last resort, so I proposed that Haraldsen would take his best horse and make a bolt for it, leaving us to face the music, since there was nothing much to be got out of Peter and Lombard and myself. But Haraldsen wouldn’t hear of this. ‘If I flee,’ he said, ‘they will find me later and I shall live with a menace over my head. That I will not face. Better to meet them here and have done with it.’
That was all very well, but I wasn’t keen on being mixed up in any Saga-battle. I asked him if his boys were any use. ‘None,’ he said. ‘They are Mashonas and are timid as rabbits. Besides, I will not have them hurt.’
‘What about Mafudi’s men?’ I asked.
It was Peter who answered. ‘Mafudi is always drunk, and also very old. Once his people were warriors, but now they have no guns. They will not fight.’
‘Well, then, it’s the five of us – and one of us crippled – against the five of them.’
But it was worse than that, for it appeared that Malan had a bad go of fever and might be counted out. Also Haraldsen had run out of ammunition and had sent a boy off to get a fresh supply, and as his rifles were Mannlichers and ours Mausers we could do nothing to help him out. This seemed to me fairly to put the lid on it, but Peter did not lose his cheerfulness. ‘We must make a plan,’ he said – a great phrase of his; and he delicately scratched the tip of his left ear, which was always a sign that his mind was working hard.
‘This is my plan,’ he said at last. ‘We must find a place where we can defend ourselves. Captain Arcoll will be here today – or perhaps tonight – at any rate not later than tomorrow. We cannot fight these skellums on fair terms in the open, but in a strong fort we may beat them off for perhaps twelve hours, perhaps more.’
‘But where is your fort?’ I asked. As I looked round the bright open place, the jumble of kopjes with the green of Mafudi’s crops in the heart of it, I didn’t see much hope of a refuge we could hold. It was all open and bare, and we hadn’t time to dig trenches or build a scherm.
‘There is the Hill of the Blue Leopard,’ said Peter, using a Mashona word. ‘It is above the kraal – you can see the corner of it beyond that ridge. It is a very holy place where few go but the priests, and it has round it a five-foot hedge of thorns and a big fence of stakes. I do not know what is inside except a black stone which fell from heaven. It is there that the young men must watch during the Circumcision. If we get in there, Dick, I think we could laugh at your friends for a little – long enough to give Captain Arcoll time to get here. There is another thing. If the skellums were strong enough to break in, I think that Mafudi’s men might be very angry. It is true that they have no guns, but very angry men can do much with knobkerries and axes.’
‘But they’ll never let us enter,’ I protested.
‘Perhaps they will. I will try. I have always been good friends with Mafudi’s folk.’ And without another word he strode off in the direction of the kraal.
I was doubtful about his success, for I knew how jealous the natives were of their sacred places, especially the Mashonas, who have always been in the hands of their priests. Still I knew that Peter had an amazing gift among the tribes, for he was not the kind of man who damned them all as niggers. People used to say that he was the only white man who had ever been present at the great Purification Dance of the Amatolas. It was a nervous business waiting for his return, for he took a long time about it. I made Haraldsen collect his valuables, and we prepared a sort of litter for Malan, who was at that stage of fever when a man is pretty well unconscious of his surroundings. Always I kept my eye on the corner of the kloof where any moment Troth and his gang might be expected to appear.
But they did not come, and at last Peter did. He had succeeded in persuading the elders of the tribe to let us inside the sacred enclosure. He did not tell me what arguments he had used, for that was never his way; he presented the world with results and left it to guess his methods. We bundled up our traps in a mighty hurry, for there was no time to lose, hoisted Malan into his litter, and told Haraldsen’s boys to take the horses up into the berg and to lie low till we sent for them. In the kraal, in the open space in the centre of the kyas, we were met by most of Mafudi’s people, all as silent as the tomb, which is not common among Kaffirs. We had to have water poured on our heads – what the books call a lustration – and to have little dabs of green paint stuck on our foreheads. Peter’s Bechuana boy was not allowed to be of our party, only the white men. Then we were solemnly conducted up a narrow bush road to the Hill of the Blue Leopard, and as we started there was a great ‘Ouch,’ a sound like a sigh, from all the natives. There was a kind of cattle-gate in the wall of the scherm, which a priest ceremonially opened, and the four of us and Malan in his litter passed into the holy place.
At first sight it looked as if we had found a sanctuary. The hill was perhaps a hundred feet high, and most of it was covered with thick bush, except a bald cone at the top where the sacred stone lay. The bush was mostly waak-em-beetje thorn and quite impenetrable, but it was seamed and criss-crossed by dozens of little paths, worn smooth like a pebble by ages of ceremonial. One of the items in the Circumcision rite was a kind of demented hide-and-seek in this maze. Around the foot of the hill, as I have said, was a dense quickset scherm which it would have taken a regiment to hack through. The only danger-point was the gate, and I thought that in case of trouble two of us might manage to hold it, for I didn’t envy the job of the men who tried to rush it in the face of concealed rifles. Anyhow, we could hold it long enough, I thought, to give Arcoll time to turn up. Indeed, I had hopes that Troth and his gang would miss us altogether. They would find Haraldsen’s camp deserted and conclude that he had moved on.
In every bit of my forecast I was wrong. In the first place our enemies came round the edge of the kloof in time to see the movement of Mafudi’s people towards the little hill, and if they didn’t guess then what had happened, they knew all right when they got to Haraldsen’s camp. For his boys had been too slow over the job of scattering into the woods. One of them they caught, and, since they meant business and were not fastidious in their methods, they soon made the poor devil blab what he knew or guessed. The consequence was that half an hour after we were inside the scherm the others were making hell in Mafudi’s kraal. I had found a lair well up the hill where I could spy out the land, and I saw that Troth’s party was bigger than I had supposed. I made out Troth and Albinus, their natty outfits a little the worse for wear, and the trim figure of Dorando, and Jim Stringer’s long legs. They had left their natives behind, but they had four other white men with them, and I didn’t like the cut of their jib. They were eight to our four, odds of two to one. I called Peter up beside me, and his eyes, sharp as a
berghaan’s, examined the reinforcements. He recognized the Australian and one other, a Lydenburg man whose name he mentioned and then spat. ‘I think we must fight, Dick,’ he said quietly. ‘The greed of these men is so great that it will make them brave. And I know that Dorando and Stringer are bad, but no cowards.’
I thought the same, so I started out to make my dispositions, for I had learned some soldiering in the late war. Haraldsen I kept out of sight, for his life was the most valuable of the lot, and besides I meant to pretend that we knew nothing about him. Peter, who was far the best shot among us, I placed behind a rock where he had a good view of the approaches. I told him not to shoot unless they tried to rush the gate, and then to cripple if possible and not kill, for I didn’t want bloodshed and a formal inquiry and screeds in the papers – that would do no good to either Haraldsen or me. Lombard and I took our stations near the gate, which was a solid thing of log and wattle jointed between two tree trunks. We had a rifle and a revolver apiece, but I would have preferred shot-guns. I could see that Lombard was twittering with excitement, but he kept a set face, though he was very white.
The affair was slow in beginning. It was after midday before Dorando and Stringer appeared on the track that led up from the kraal. They had a handkerchief tied to a rifle muzzle by way of a white flag. I halted them when they were six yards from the gate, and asked what they wanted.
Butter wouldn’t have melted in their mouths. They had come to see Mr Haraldsen, who was a friend of theirs – to see him on business. They understood that he was on the hill. Would he step out and come down to luncheon with them? They were kind enough to include me in the invitation.
I said that I knew nothing about Mr Haraldsen, but that I knew a good deal about them. I proposed another plan: let them leave their guns where they stood, and come inside the scherm and take a bite with us. They thanked me, and said they would be delighted, and moved to the gate, but they did not drop their rifles, and I saw the bulge of revolvers in their pockets. ‘Stop,’ I shouted. ‘Down guns or stay where you are,’ and Lombard and I showed our pistols.
