‘Go to hell, you swine!’ Sarie shot at them from between white lips.
‘If there’s any hell in this world or the next we’re leaving you to enjoy it,’ Philbeach countered. Then, with a jerk of his pistol, he motioned the outspan to proceed.
Ten minutes later it had disappeared over the crest, leaving the Van Niekerks and Sandy to face their last night behind the protective barrier of fire from the remaining timbers of old John’s wagon. Then … eighty miles of desert or … the leopards!
21
Death in the Sunshine
Henry Long raised no protest at Philbeach’s proposal to hold up his nephews when they returned out of the Valley. Ordinarily he would have cavilled at open robbery, but despite his care of himself his resistance had been lowered by sleeplessness and a mild attack of fever. As he faced the big, beefy giant outside Patricia’s bivouac he realised for the first time how foolish he had been to ignore her warning and place his trust in such an unscrupulous partner. But the natural cunning which he hid under half-lowered eyelids still remained to him. Come what might he was determined to secure his share of this amazing wealth which had enabled his brother to spend the last years of his life in reckless luxury. If Philbeach would not risk penetrating farther into the grip of this terrible country, the others would be certain to return with a fat consignment of uncut diamonds if they ever found the Valley. Let Philbeach and his friends hold Michael and the Bennetts up then if they chose, for his nephews had never meant a thing to him. He would keep out of it and felt confident that he could protect himself and Patricia with his own revolver. Getting the diamonds was by no means an end of the business, for when they got back to Zwart Modder the stones would have to be smuggled out of the country. If Philbeach refused to split with him he could always threaten to hand him over to the police.
After they had breakfasted, however, Henry was under the unpleasant necessity of having to tell his daughter about this change in their plans. She was horrified to hear of his decision and implored him either to turn back or order the convoy to proceed at once.
Philbeach strolled up in time to catch the last words of her desperate appeal to Henry and laughed openly at her anxious, harassed expression. Frenzied with fear now both for herself and Michael, she stood up and lashed him with her tongue, telling him, in a spate of angry words, how she loathed, hated and despised him.
Her outburst did little good, for Henry shrugged non-committally. His mind was made up and he was determined to conserve his energy rather than dissipate it by a useless wrangle in the rapidly increasing heat. The other only grinned and turned away to join this henchmen who were seated beneath the shadow of some out-crop at a little distance from the wagon.
Now that they were no longer faced with those gruelling journeys day by day, when horizon seemed to melt into horizon as they trudged on beside the wagon, life became a trifle easier. Patricia reaped one benefit at least from the new situation. Philbeach’s open declaration that he would not scruple to hold up the other party and, if necessary, actually fire upon them, had at last awakened Henry to the danger of their own position, and to the fact that the time might even come when he would have to protect himself from this man in whom he had previously trusted. The result was a bridging of the estrangement which had recently existed between father and daughter.
During the days that they spent in the narrow entrance of the valley which led to the beetling crags, beyond which the others were sweltering on their way towards the hidden fortune, Henry behaved with a kindness and consideration to Patricia which she had never known in him before. Once again she came to believe that in some strange way she was herself to blame and had quite misjudged his motives.
After Philbeach’s attempt upon her on the first morning of their halt Henry saw to it that he had no other opportunity to molest her. He even exerted himself to go for short walks with her across the rough, broken ground in the early morning or the comparative cool of the evening, and arranged that she should share his bivouac for the future.
Darkie, Ginger and Philbeach took turns each day, posted on horseback at the bend of the valley from which they could see a mile or more along it, in order to watch for the convoy. On the sixth afternoon Ginger came galloping back to report that a little column of dust which could only indicate one thing was visible in the distance.
Philbeach had long since made his dispositions. Darkie and Ginger were to conceal themselves one on each side of a narrow gully through which the wagon would have to pass. He would halt the convoy himself and demand that any stones which they had secured should be handed over. At the least sign of any resistance the other two were to blaze away with their rifles from the rocks above without further warning.
Patricia, before whom they had openly discussed their intentions, had no difficulty in guessing what the outcome of the business would be. Philbeach did not mean the others ever to get back to Zwart Modder. By riding out alone he intended to provoke his victims to a fight in order to afford a reasonable excuse for the others to shoot them down. Michael, she felt convinced, would be certain to put up a fight for the wealth which he had secured after these terrible hardships. He was even more certain to do so if he thought that he only had one antagonist to tackle. Night after night she woke shuddering, her hair damp with perspiration, from an awful vision, partly dream and partly conjured up by her half-waking imagination. She saw herself standing behind a rock in the valley mouth … she heard the crack of rifles and saw Michael pitch from his saddle as the bullets thudded into his chest … then she saw herself rushing towards him as he lay on the ground with blood streaming from him.
Somehow she had got to stop this terrible nightmare becoming a reality. So she also made her plans, ready for the terrible moment when the wagon should at last advance out of that deathly valley.
Immediately Philbeach had posted his men and started to walk towards the gully, leading his horse by its bridle, she ran towards her own little roan and climbed quickly into the saddle.
Next second she was off, galloping madly down the stretch to the corner beyond which the wagon should emerge at any moment.
As Philbeach caught the sound of her horse’s hoofs he swung on his heel and yelled at her to halt. She took no notice and, lowering her head, raced past him just as he raised his rifle and bellowed:
‘Stop!—damn you!—or I’ll shoot.’
Henry, who was standing twenty yards behind him, rushed forward to knock up the rifle, but he was too late. A crack like a whip echoed again and again through the rocky pass and Patricia felt the roan lurch beneath her. She grabbed at its mane and then another shot rang out, this time from Ginger. With a heart-rending neigh the little beast collapsed beneath her, shot both in the near hind quarter and through the head.
She pitched from her saddle a dozen yards away and, sprawling along the ground, tore her hands and gashed her knee upon some outcrop. She staggered to her feet and, her shoulders hunched, her eyes starting from her sockets, her hair streaming behind her, began to run; petrified with fear that any second she would receive a bullet in the back, yet still determined to reach the corner and warn the oncoming party.
‘Stop, d’you hear? If you don’t, I’ll shoot you,’ yelled Philbeach. He gave Henry a savage push which threw him to the ground and then sank on to one knee to take better aim with his rifle.
Henry sprang up again and thrust his revolver into his red, brutal face. ‘I’ll kill you,’ he cried desperately, ‘unless you put that rifle down.’
Philbeach shrugged and lowered his weapon. ‘All right—you’ll kill me, eh?’ he sneered. Then, with a simulated lurch, he fell against Henry and wrenched the revolver from his shaking hand. ‘Now get after her and bring her back,’ he thundered. ‘If you don’t I’ll out the two of you.’
Henry’s lined face went grey as he realised that he was now defenceless and that this great hot sweaty man with the hard small eyes meant every word he said. He turned, as Philbeach raised the rifle again, a
nd began to run after Patricia.
Panting with her exertions she raced on, half-blinded by the perspiration which streamed into her eyes; then she caught her toe upon a snag of stone and pitched forward to her full length on the ground. For a moment she lay there half-stunned and gasping, but struggled to her feet again. The corner was now only fifty yards away but her fall had given Henry a chance to decrease the distance between them and he was hard behind her, shouting as his breath came in quick, painful gasps:
‘Stop! Patricia. Stop, or he’ll fire again.’
With her heart pounding in her breast, limping a little from the pain in her bleeding knee, she dashed round the bend only to discover that there was no wagon to be seen. Another bend about half a mile distant shut off a large portion of the Valley from view, and it was in the open space beyond this that Ginger must have sighted the convoy.
As she stopped, leaning for support against a rock, a solitary figure on foot came round it. For an instant she thought it was Michael, then that it must be the Hottentot whom they had secured to guide their party. Half-blinded by dust and sweat, she could hardly make out the figure at all for a moment. As she was still straining to clear her eyes that she might see more plainly, Henry came up beside her and, seizing her by the arm, almost swung her off her feet.
It was only then that she caught sight of the great, tawny, sinuous leopard that stood within a few feet of her, just by the rock where she had halted. It was staring at her with evil menace in its great yellow eyes.
As the brute sprang she screamed and fell sideways. There was a snarling roar, a horrible choking gurgle and, as she tried to fling herself farther back upon the ground, she saw that the great cat was whirling round and round with her father underneath it. The fore-claws were buried in his shoulders and the hind ones tearing at his body.
She screamed again, half-mad with terror. The leopard suddenly stopped gyrating, then, seizing Henry’s neck in its great teeth, it shook him like a rat. A rifle cracked, the leopard leaped sideways across her father’s body and then Patricia fainted.
22
The Land of the Great Thirst
After Michael had made his amazing discovery he began to pick up some of those strange stones which lay all about him glowing dully in the moonlight; soon he put the few that he had gathered down, for an utter weariness descended on him again and this time he fell into a sound healthy slumber.
When he awoke the sun had already topped the mountains. Having bathed in the river, he set about making preparations for his attempt to rejoin Ernest. He now found that only the half-light of the evening, when he had arrived in the Valley, had prevented him from realising at once that it was indeed the place which he had undergone so much hardship to discover.
On the sandy shores of the lake into which the great waterfall thundered there seemed to be a curious opalescent sheen. It had all the colours of the rainbow, and little points of light struck his eyes from all directions. As he stood there, the solitary inhabitant of that strange hidden cañon empty of man and beast alike, he realised why it had been christened the ‘Place of the Great Glitter’ by those native discovers who had penetrated to it in past times and preserved the legend in their tribes for posterity.
He spent the whole of the early morning hours in gathering the precious stones; contemptuously disregarding the smaller stuff and those with a reddish hue which he knew to be garnets until he had picked up as many really fine specimens as he thought he would be able to carry. He then scrutinised each one of the glassy pebbles through a magnifying glass, which he had brought for the purpose, in order to assure himself that every one was a diamond. He had taken the trouble to study the specimens in the British Museum with the greatest care on the morning before he left London, and, as far as he could ascertain, none of his final selection contained a serious flaw.
Then, instead of trying to sleep through the midday heat, as had been his custom during their days of journeying, he stripped off his clothes and lay down in the shallow waters at the river’s edge, with his head sheltered from the sun by a slab of projecting rock. He had already made up his mind by which funnel he would attempt to scale the rocky walls which hemmed him in, but it might be hours or even days before he could reach the outspan. In the latter case his greater danger, apart from wild animals, lay in the limited quantity of water which he would be able to carry; but his education, if not profound, was at least enough for him to know that the mouth is not the only way by which the body can obtain the liquid which it requires.
Until the previous afternoon he had been unable to wash even his face, let alone his limbs, for days past, so that the skin of his whole body had become dry and parched. Now, by allowing it to soak for several hours, he hoped to adjust the deficit and by these means economise to the lowest point the ration which it would be necessary for him to drink once he set off on his journey.
He made a hearty lunch, even cramming himself to satiety after his appetite had vanished, knowing that he would not be able to carry all the supplies which he had rescued from the piece of raft. Then, making a careful selection from the rest, he made up a packet and tied it to his belt. The diamonds he distributed as evenly as possible about his person and, having filled his water bottle to the brim, he knelt down and drank from the river until he could drink no more. After that he took George’s ground sheet and his own and, forming them as well as he could into bunchy sacks, filled both with water, tying their outer edges together firmly with a piece of string. He strung the two bags upon his back in the manner of a rucksack and then, feeling far more like sleep after his heavy meal than scaling mountains, he began the ascent of the funnel.
His progress was easy to begin with but as the rough walls grew steeper his difficulties increased, added to which he began to suffer acute pains in his stomach from the excessive amount of water that he had drunk.
The heat was intense and at one time he almost gave up the ascent. However, he laboured on with grim determination and, his fingers bleeding, hauled himself on to the top of the precipice where he lay panting and exhausted. When he recovered a little he glanced at his watch and found that his climb had taken something over two hours and that the time was now ten past five.
He pulled himself together again as soon as he was able and began to make his way round the top of the steep cliff that edged the valley in the direction of Ernest’s wagon. At one point he found himself faced with a yawning chasm, so was forced to make a detour of some three miles before he could circumvent the gulf, but just as the sun was setting he arrived on the top of the enormous rock face of the mountain through which the underground river ran. There below him, like toy animals, he could see the grazing oxen, but the wagon was hidden from him by a projecting ridge. Even if Ernest or the natives were on the look-out for him they would not be able to see his signals from where he stood. He realised that it would be necessary for him to make a detour of many miles in order to reach Ernest, as the mountain on which he was standing was sheer cliff down to the opening of the underground river.
For half an hour he shouted, yodelled and hallooed, while from time to time he threw chunks of rock down into the gorge in the hope of attracting their attention, but all his efforts proved unsuccessful. At that distance it was obviously impossible for them to hear his voice and the stones that he hurled fell, as far as he could judge, a good three hundred yards short of the nearest oxen.
As the afterglow faded he became anxious for his safety. Here, on the high levels, which communicated on either side with steep but easily-negotiable slopes, he would be exposed to the attack of any wild thing that prowled the hilltops in the night. His only hope of safety lay in finding a cave in which he could shelter during the dark hours. He abandoned his attempt to attract the attention of the party lying hundreds of feet below him, and began to search in frantic haste for a suitable shelter in which to spend the night.
His water bags flapping behind him, he ran along the uneven ground of the flat-topped mountai
n. No break in the bare inhospitable tableland seemed to offer a likely shelter, so he covered the best part of a mile in fifteen minutes towards where the mountain broke into clefts and gullies. Yet even here he could find no place which was altogether suitable. For days, it seemed, he had passed caves by the hundred in the stony hill-sides, yet when his need was so urgent he could not find one that would answer his purpose.
He stumbled and slipped from slope to slope, the loose shale sliding from beneath his feet and tinkling down the mountain side, while darkness closed in around him. At last he reached a depression between two summits and, peering anxiously among the boulders that strewed its bottom, made his way as quickly as he could along it. The bed of the hollow opened into a junction where several others led off from it and here at last he found an opening in the rocks where, with reasonable luck, he might pass the night in safety after he had barricaded the entrance.
He started to shift the nearest large stones that he could carry and after an hour he had erected a five-foot barrier. Then, wriggling through the small hole he had left into the pitchy darkness of the shallow cave, he closed that too and then sank to the floor utterly worn out. He had no torch or matches, so had to take his chance of the cave being free of small reptiles, but he was so weary that he hardly thought of it. His head pillowed on his arm, he dropped off to sleep.
In the early morning he awoke with a feeling of weight across his thighs and, lifting his head, was terrified to see in the faint light that filtered between the stones of his barricade a large yellow snake, sleeping comfortably upon his body. The brute was about three feet long and had the flattened hooded neck of a cobra.
He gazed at it in fascinated horror, straining to keep his body perfectly still for fear that the snake should wake. He racked his brain for a way of dealing with it, but it seemed that his mind had gone completely blank except for a mental picture of the reptile raising its head at any moment to strike.
The Fabulous Valley Page 19
