A Frontier Mystery

I answered that there was little on earth to see there, that it was a greasy, dusty place, hardly fit for ladies, and so on, but that such as it was they would be more than welcome.

“And you will show us some Zulus for the occasion?” added her sister, with one of those glances which made me resolve to assemble half Tyingoza’s location if she set her heart upon it.

“Well, yes,” I said. “Only you mustn’t take me by surprise. It’s a rough and tumble place, and I might be taken just at the very moment when I couldn’t offer you a decent lunch.”

But they declared that this was just what they wanted – to take me by surprise, and see exactly how I lived, and so on. The while a desperate idea had come into my head, but, would it bear carrying out?

“Look here,” I said. “If you would really like to ride up there, it occurs to me I might show you something that would interest you – nothing to do with the store particularly. But I could collect a lot of Tyingoza’s people and scare up a regular native dance. They do it well, and it’s worth seeing, I can tell you.”

“Why that would be charming,” cried the youngest girl. “Aïda, we must go. Do you hear? Father, what do you think? Let’s all go, and make a day of it.”

“I was going to venture yet further, Major,” I said. “I was going to suggest that you make a night of it. There’s my hut – it’s very cool and comfortable – and I have a capital tent waggon. If the ladies could make shift with such by way of sleeping quarters, why we could turn in under a blanket in the store. It isn’t a luxurious bedroom, but I daresay, for one night, a couple of soldiers like yourselves could manage.”

“Rather,” cried Falkner enthusiastically. “That’s a ripping idea of yours, Glanton. What d’you think, uncle? Shall we fix up a day? No time like the present.”

“Well, I think the idea isn’t a bad one, if we are not putting you out, Glanton. But – what about the farm? We can’t leave it entirely to itself.”

This certainly was a difficulty. I thought for a moment; then I said:

“I might be able to straighten that for you, Major. I will send you down a man – a native, one of Tyingoza’s people, but as trustworthy as steel. You know, most of them are that way if put in a position of trust. Well you needn’t be afraid of anything going wrong – stocklifting and that – while he’s in charge. How’s that?”

“Capital!” went up from the girls.

“You seem to ‘straighten’ everything for us, Mr Glanton,” said the eldest, gratefully.

“Well this is a very small thing after all,” I protested. “I’m only afraid you will find the quarters a bit rough.”

But this they declared was nothing. It only remained to fix the day. They would enjoy it above all things, they repeated.

“You’ll have the same room as last time, Mr Glanton,” said Mrs Sewin, as she bade me good-night.

“Why, I was just thinking of going home,” I protested.

But this was over-ruled, and that unanimously. The Major wanted to have a talk with me, and couldn’t do it comfortably if I was in a hurry to be off all the time. Besides – what did it matter? Nobody would be wanting to do a deal during the night, so I might just as well remain where I was, and so on. Well, I didn’t want much pressing, and it was obvious my welcome hadn’t worn thin just yet.

“Let’s take the grog out on to the stoep, uncle,” said Falkner. “It’s cooler there.”

“What d’you think, Glanton?” said the Major, when we were comfortably seated outside, each with a glass of grog before him and a pipe of good Magaliesberg – than which there is no better tobacco in the world – in full blast. “Why is it I can’t do anything with these damned fellows of yours? Now in India I could make any sort of native do anything I wanted, and no bother about it. He had to, don’t you know.”

“Exactly, Major, he had to and these haven’t. Wherein lies all the difference.”

“I believe I was a damned fool to come and squat here at all,” he growled.

“I don’t agree with you, Major,” I said. “You’ve only got to try and understand them, and they’re all right. I don’t mean to say they’re perfect, no one is, but make the best of them. To begin with, learn the language.”

“Good Lord, I’m too old to begin learning languages.”

“Not a bit of it,” I said. “I knew a man once – he must have been about your age, Major, an old Indian, too, only he had been a civilian – who had gone stone blind late in life. But he had a hobby for languages, and I’m blest if he hadn’t taken up this one among others. He had got hold of the Bible in Zulu, done up by missionaries of course, and began putting all sorts of grammar cases to me. I own he fairly stumped me. I told him I didn’t know anything of Biblical Zulu – had always found that in use at the kraals good enough. Then he had the crow over me. But you ought to have a try at it, certainly your nephew ought.”

“By Jove, I believe I will,” growled Falkner. “Only it’d be an infernal grind.”

“Not much more grind than punching a boy’s head because he can’t understand you,” I said, “especially when the weather’s hot; and far more profitable. Still I can rather enter into your feelings. The feeling of helplessness when we can’t make out what the other fellow is talking about is prone to engender irritability. I was not guiltless myself in that line when I first went up-country. You set to work. Miss Sewin was saying this evening that she intended to.”

“Oh was she?” growled Falkner again, with renewed interest, and the glance he gave me was not at all friendly, I thought.

“Well, you take my tip, Major, and then I don’t think you’ll at all regret coming here. No, by Jove, I don’t.”

“You don’t, eh? Well I’m getting up a first-rate garden certainly. And the shooting around here isn’t bad of its kind.”

I hugged myself, metaphorically. Less than ever, by the experiences of a few hours, did I wish these people to give up in disgust.

Chapter Five.

A Disappearance and a Revel

“What is this about Nyakami?”

“U’ Nyakami? Is he dead?” answered Tyingoza, pausing with his snuff-spoon in mid air.

“That is what some would like to know,” I went on. “But they have not found him yet.”

I had named, by his native name, a neighbour of mine, who farmed some way down the river. Though in actual fact he was rather too far off to be termed exactly a neighbour. His real and British name was Hensley, and he had disappeared.

Sounds strange, doesn’t it, and it certainly was. People don’t disappear in Natal like they do in London, or any other large and civilised city, least of all highly respectable and fairly substantial colonists, of which Hensley was one. But this man had, and the strangest part of it was that he had not only disappeared but had done so leaving no trace. Not only that, but no one could be found who could swear to having been the last to see him.

He lived alone, and was an ordinary type of the frontier stock farmer. He was fairly prosperous and there was no reason on earth why he should have taken himself out of the way. No reason on earth was there either why he should have been put out of the way. He was on good terms with the natives, could always get plenty of servants, and so on. No, there was no reason in the world for his disappearance, yet he had disappeared – how and when nobody seemed to have the faintest idea.

The news had reached me through native sources, as a large portion of my news did. Indeed it is hardly credible the quantity I used to learn about my neighbours in this way; some of whom would have been mightily disconcerted could they have guessed that I, or anybody else, had an inkling of anything of the sort. The Natal Mounted Police had been investigating, but neither they nor their native detectives had been able to lay hand on the slightest clue. The man might have been caught up to heaven at midnight for all there was to show what had become of him.

“Not found him yet?” echoed Tyingoza, when he had absorbed his snuff. “Au! he will find himself. Men are strange, Iqalaqala, especially white men. And this one – if he wants to disappear why should he not?”

“Wants to disappear? But this one has no reason to want anything of the kind. Some men might, but this one not. You know him, Tyingoza, as well as I. What do you think?”

There was a comical twinkle in the chief’s eyes. He merely answered:

“Who can think in such a case?”

Obviously there was nothing to be got out of Tyingoza – as yet – so I left the subject. In fact I had a far more interesting subject on my mind just then, for this was the day the Sewins had fixed upon for their visit to me, and so I fell to discussing with the chief the arrangements which were to be made for their entertainment. He had promised that a goodly number of his people should muster, and I had promised them cattle to kill in proportion to the number that would require feasting. This ought to ensure a very good roll up indeed. The disappearance of Hensley was to me a very secondary matter to-day.

By the way, I was in a state of fidget absolutely unwonted with me; and my “boy” Tom simply gaped with astonishment at the thorough turn-out I made him give my hut; and when I fetched a roll of Salampore cloth to hang around the walls so as to conceal the grass thatching I could see that he was entertaining considerable doubts as to his master’s sanity.

He would have entertained even graver doubts could he have witnessed a still further stage of imbecility into which I lapsed. I found myself looking in the glass – not for ordinary purposes of toilet, be it noted, and I have set out upon this narrative determined to spare none of my own weaknesses, but because I was anxious to see what sort of fellow I looked – and I don’t know that I felt particularly flattered by the result; for, confound it, I was no longer in my first youth, and a face bronzed and roughened by twenty years of knocking about, struck me as nothing particularly attractive to the other sex. Yet it was only the roughness of weather and more or less hard times that had told upon it, for I had always been rather abstemious and had set my face like a flint against the wild roaring sprees that some of my friends in the same line were prone to indulge in. If I had not the “clean run” look of Falkner Sewin, my eye was every whit as clear and I had a trifle the advantage of him in height, and held myself quite as straight. No, it was absurd to try and start comparisons with Sewin, who was quite ten years younger, and had never known any hardening experiences, so I turned from the looking-glass imprecating one Godfrey Glanton as a silly ass, who had much better trek away right up-country and stay there altogether. And this idea was the first intimation that I had returned to sanity again.

My guests arrived earlier than I had expected, somewhere in the middle of the afternoon to wit, and the first thing they did was to reproach me for having put myself out for them so as they called it.

“I warned you there was nothing particular to see, didn’t I?” I said, as I showed them the inside of the store.

“But I think there is,” declared Miss Sewin, gazing around at the various “notions” disposed along the shelves or hanging about from the beams. “And how tidy you keep it all. Ah – ” as an idea struck her, “I believe you have had it all put ship-shape for the occasion. Confess now, Mr Glanton, haven’t you?”