Renshaw Fanning's Quest: A Tale of the High Veldt

Renshaw nodded.

“That’s it!” he said. “By the way, you haven’t let drop anything about it to any one, Marian.”

She felt hurt.

“I should have thought you knew me better than that. Ah, I see. Only a woman, after all!” she added, with a smile. “That’s what you were thinking?”

“No. It came out instinctively. You must forgive me, Marian. I really believe I’m half crazed on the subject of that confoundedly elusive Golconda. Well, we shall find it this time.”

“We?”

“Yes. I’m going to cut Sellon into the scheme. It’s an undertaking that’ll carry two. Besides, he’s a good fellow, and I owe him a turn for pulling me through that fever.”

“I’m sorry to tread upon your quixotic susceptibilities, Renshaw,” said Marian, after a brief pause, “but if you were not as astoundingly unselfish as most of us are the other way, it might strike you that if Mr Sellon has done you one good turn, you have done him several. If he saved your life by nursing you through that fever, as you say – though it is by no means certain you would not have pulled through it without him – you have saved his on another occasion. Where would he have been with that snake crawling over him, for instance? – Ugh!”

“I say, Marian. It isn’t like you to be so ungenerous,” was the astonished reply. “Wasn’t it awfully good of the chap to stick there in my hovel all those weeks, boring himself to death just for the sake of looking after me? Come now!”

“Where would he have been if your ‘hovel’ had not come so opportunely in sight when he was lost in the veldt, exhausted and without food or water?” came the calm, ready rejoinder.

“Oh, I say, come now. We can’t count that. It wouldn’t be fair. But – look here, Marian. You don’t like Sellon? Now, why not?”

“There you’re wrong,” she answered after a pause. “Within the ordinary meaning of the word, I do ‘like’ him. I think him a very pleasant, well-informed man, and good company. But he is not a man I should trust.”

“Not, eh? But, in the name of all conscience, why not?”

“That I can’t tell you, Renshaw. I don’t quite know myself, except that somehow or other he doesn’t seem to ring true. It’s a question of ear, like a false note. There, though, this is shameful. Here I am taking away a person’s character in the most reckless way, with nothing more definite to go upon but my woman’s instinct. I wouldn’t mention such a thing to any one else in the world – not even to Chris or Hilda. But I always did make a father-confessor of you,” she added, with a smile.

“And I hope you always will. Still, Marian, with all due deference to your woman’s instinct, it’s just on the cards it may in this instance be erroneous.”

“Perhaps so. I hope so. I mean it sincerely, not ironically. But, Renshaw – how much do you know of this Mr Sellon? Who is he?”

“Well, the fact is, I don’t know much – beyond that he’s knocking around here on the look-out for anything that may turn up trumps – like a good many of us. He’s a man who seems to have seen a good deal of the world – and, as you say, he’s good company. Seems well bred, too.”

“Oh yes,” acquiesced Marian, half absently. “But we had better forget that I ventured an unfavourable opinion on him.” And as at that moment they were invaded by twelve-year-old Effie, the subject perforce dropped.

“Is Violet inside, Effie?” asked Marian.

“Inside? Not she. Not when somebody else is outside. She’s spooning away somewhere – as usual.”

“That’s a nice way for little girls to talk,” said Marion, severely.

“Well, so she is,” went on Precocity, with the abominable straightforwardness of her tender years. “Wasn’t it always too hot to move, if any one suggested going out in the morning, until ‘somebody’ came? Now – ahem!”

“You’re talking nonsense, you naughty child,” said Marian, angrily. “In fact, you don’t know yourself what you’re talking about.”

“Eh? Don’t I? If you had seen what I saw – only the day before yesterday – ”

“But we didn’t see it, and we don’t want to know anything about it,” struck in Renshaw, sternly. “I never expected you to turn into a little mischief-maker, Effie.”

“You needn’t be so cross, Uncle Renshaw,” whimpered Miss Precocity, in whose affections the speaker held a prime place. “I only thought it rather good fun.” (Boo-hoo-hoo!)

“I didn’t mean to be hard upon you, dear – but spreading stories is generally anything but fun – not unusually least of all to those who spread them. Never repeat anything, Effie. Half the mischief in life comes out of tittle-tattle.”

But at that very moment, as though to turn the edge of the above highly salutary and not uncalled-for precept, who should heave in sight but the very pair under discussion, though in fact Christopher Selwood made up a third. The sight seemed to dry up Effie’s snivelling as if by magic.

“There! Didn’t I say so?” she muttered maliciously, and judiciously fled indoors.

“Still at work, Marian?” cried Violet, as the trio came up. “Why, what a regular Darby and Joan you two look,” she added, with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. For although she laid herself out to keep well in with Marian, yet it was characteristic of her that she could not refrain from launching such a shaft as this – no, not even though her life depended on it.

And to her quick eye it seemed that there was ever so faint an indication that the bolt had struck home.

Chapter Thirteen.

A Tale of Blood

The town of Port Lamport was picturesquely situated on a wide bend of the Umtirara River. It contained a population of about fifteen hundred – whites, that is – and was the seat of magistracy for the surrounding district.

In former times Fort Lamport had been one of the more important of a chain of military posts extending along what was then the Kafir frontier, but after a series of long and harassing wars, resulting in the removal of those troublesome neighbours further eastward, Fort Lamport, in common with other military posts, was abandoned as such. A town, however, had sprung up around it, and this, as a centre of commerce, and also of native trade – for there were still large native locations in the surrounding district – throve apace.

It was not much of a place to look at; and in its main features differed little, if at all, from any other up-country township. The houses, mostly one-storied, were all squat and ugly. There were half a dozen churches and chapels, also squat and ugly. There were several hotels, and four or five native canteens. There were the public offices and gaol, these being the old fort buildings, converted to that use. There were the usual half-dozen streets – long, straggling, and very dusty – and the usual market square, also very dusty; the average number of general stores – dealing in anything, from a pianoforte to a pot of blacking – and the average number of waggons and spans of oxen standing half the day in front of them. As for the good citizens – well, of course, they considered their town the foremost in the Colony, and, on the whole, were not much more given to strife and litigation among themselves than the inhabitants of a small community generally are.

But if the town itself was unattractive, its environment was not, with its background of rounded hills, their slopes covered with dense forest, while above and beyond rose the higher peaks of the Umtirara range.

In the smoking-room of one of the hotels above mentioned lounged Renshaw Fanning. It was the hot and drowsy hour immediately succeeding luncheon, and he was nodding over the Fort Lamport Courier, a typical sheet, which managed to supply news to its constituent world a week or so after the said news had become public property through other mediums.

Small wonder, then, that Renshaw felt drowsy, and that the paper should slip from his relaxing grasp. Instinctively he made a clutch at it, and the action roused him. His eye fell upon a paragraph which he had overlooked —

“Horrible Murder by Escaped Convicts.”

With the fascination which a sensational subject never altogether fails to inspire, drowsy as he felt, he ran his eye down the paragraph.

“No less than seven desperadoes succeeded in making their escape from the Kowie convict station last Monday under circumstances of considerable daring. While the gang was on its way to the scene of its labours in charge of one white and two native constables armed with loaded rifles, these scoundrels, evidently acting in concert, managed to overpower and disarm their guardians at one stroke. Leaving the latter terribly beaten about the head, and half dead, and taking their rifles and cartridges, they made off into the bush. The remainder of the gang, though they rendered no assistance, seemed not eager to re-taste the sweets of liberty, for instead of following the example of their comrades they returned quietly to the town and reported the incident. Next morning early, the runaways visited an outlying vij-kraal belonging to a Dutch farmer named Van Wyk, and there perpetrated a peculiarly atrocious murder. The vij-kraal was in charge of a Hottentot herd, who, hearing a noise in the kraal, ran out of his hut just as the scoundrels were making off with two sheep. He gave chase, when suddenly, and without any warning, one of them turned round and shot him through the chest. The whole gang then returned, dragged out the unfortunate man’s wife and three children, and deliberately butchered them one after the other in cold blood. The bodies were found during the day by the owner of the place, who came upon them quite unexpectedly. They were lying side by side, with their throats cut from ear to ear; and he describes it as the most horrible and sickening sight he ever beheld. The herd himself, though mortally wounded, had lived long enough to make a statement, which places the identity of the atrocious miscreants beyond all doubt. It may interest our readers to learn that among the runaways were the two Kafirs, Muntiwa and Booi, who were tried at the Circuit Court recently held here, and sentenced to seven years’ hard labour each for stock-stealing. The rest were Hottentots and Bastards. (Half-bloods are thus termed in Cape Colony parlance.) At the same time we feel it a duty to warn our readers, and especially those occupying isolated farms in the Umtirara range, to keep a sharp look-out, as it is by no means unlikely that these two scoundrels may hark back to their old retreat, and with their gang perhaps do considerable mischief before they are finally run to earth.”

Not one atom of drowsiness in Renshaw now. The sting of the above paragraph, like that of the scorpion, lay in the tail. His blood ran cold. Heavens! That household of unprotected women! For Christopher Selwood was away from home on a week’s absence, visiting a distant property of his, and Sellon, by way of a change and seeing the country, had accompanied him. Renshaw himself had ridden into Fort Lamport the previous day on urgent business of his own – nothing less than to interview a possible purchaser of his far-away desert farm. Under ordinary circumstances, it was no uncommon thing to leave the household without male protection for a day or two, or even longer. But now – good heavens!

He glanced at the date of the newspaper. There should be a later one, he said to himself. Feverishly he hunted about for it, trying to hope that it might contain intelligence of the recapture of the runaways. Ah, there it was! With trembling hands he tore open the double sheet, and glanced down the columns.

“The Escaped Convicts.

“Our surmise has proved correct. The runaways have taken refuge in the Umtirara range, from whose dense and rugged fastnesses they will, we fear, long be able to defy the best efforts of the wholly inadequate police force at present at the disposal of the district. They entered a farmer’s house on the lower drift, yesterday, during the owner’s absence, and by dint of threats induced his wife and daughters to give them up all the firearms in the house. They got possession of two guns and a revolver, and a quantity of ammunition, and decamped in the direction of the mountains. It is a mercy they did not maltreat the inmates.”

The cold perspiration started forth in beads upon the reader’s forehead. The event recorded had occurred yesterday; the newspaper was of to-day’s date. He might yet be in time. But would he be? It was three o’clock. Sunningdale was distant thirty-five miles. By the hardest riding he could not arrive before dark, for the road was bad in parts, and his horse was but an indifferent one.

In exactly five minutes he was in the saddle and riding rapidly down the street. It crossed his mind that he was totally unarmed, for in the settled parts of the Colony it is quite an exceptional thing to carry weapons. He could not even turn into the nearest store and purchase a six-shooter, for no such transaction can take place without a magistrate’s permit – to obtain which would mean going out of his way, possibly delay at the office, should that functionary chance to be engaged at the time. No, he could not afford to lose a minute.

It was a hot afternoon. The sun glared fiercely down as he rode over the dozen miles of open undulating country which lay between the town and the first line of wooded hills. A quarter of an hour’s off-saddle at a roadside inn – a feverish quarter of an hour, spent with his watch in his hand. Then on again.

Soon he was among the hills. Away up a diverging kloof lay a Boer homestead, about a mile distant. Should he turn off to it and try and borrow a weapon, or, at any rate, a fresh horse, and warn the inmates? Prudence answered No. Two miles out of his road, delay in the middle, and all on the purest chance. On, on!