"Sounds probable," repeated Clare. "It's more than probable--it's true.
I fell in with Mr Lamont up on Ehlatini the next morning, and he
showed me all the tracks made by the impi. I picked up a couple of
cow-tail armlets--or leglets--which they'd dropped, just like the ones
these are wearing."
"By Jove!"
There was silence after that Wyndham was anxious to get his team through
a narrowing sort of point ahead, where the ground rose abruptly to an
overhanging portal on either side, and where rocks and stones, shadowed
by wild fig-trees, would afford dangerous cover to the enemy were he to
arrive there first, even though apparently without firearms. Under the
double incentive of whip and voice the mules seemed to have forgotten
their fatigue and were pulling out manfully. But to her
brother-in-law's suggestion, that she should give up the front seat to
him and come in at the back, Clare returned a flat refusal.
"I want to see this," she said, "and see it well. You can put up the
side sail and see it from there."
"But that'll expose Lucy," he fumed.
"No, it won't. You'll be in front of her. And they haven't got guns."
There was no help for it. Wyndham pleaded, but to him too she returned
a deaf ear. She sat there--calm, cool, collected, fingering her weapon,
and a determined and dangerous look of battle in her eyes.
But pull the mules never so heartily the fleet-footed savages kept the
pace, and kept it well. Half the police would gallop forward to check
their advance with a volley, but as soon as ever they reined in their
horses--lo, there was nobody in sight to fire a volley at. And then it
became evident that the foe had divided, and that these human wolves
were hunting their prey on both sides of the road.
"_I--ji--jji! Ijji--jji! Ha! Ha_!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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