In April Selous was appointed Captain of the "H" troop of the Bulawayo Field Force, and went out to clear the road and establish forts at Fig Tree and Mangwe. First he erected a very strong little fort called Fort Molyneux. Further on, at Fort Halstead, he made another, and at the Matoli river a third. All this he did with the Matabele army lying on the Khami river, about twelve miles west of Bulawayo, whilst another large army was in the Elibaini hills close by. Yet they did not attack Selous' patrols or fort builders, and did not approach Bulawayo until the middle of April, when a small fight occurred between the scouts under Grey and Van Niekerk and a large body of the enemy. The scouts then returned. Shortly after this Selous joined in patrols with Captain Macfarlane and Captain Bisset in trying to dislodge the enemy from positions close to the town, and in the last-named attack on the Umguza the Matabele lost heavily. During this fight, and whilst firing hard, Selous' pony ran away and he was soon surrounded by large numbers of Matabele. The incident is best related in his own words:--[49] "A few bullets were again beginning to ping past us, so I did not want to lose any time, but before I could take my pony by the bridle he suddenly threw up his head and spinning round trotted off, luckily in the direction from which we had come. Being so very steady a pony, I imagine that a bullet must have grazed him and startled him into playing me this sorry trick at such a very inconvenient moment. 'Come on as hard as you can, and I'll catch your horse and bring him back to you,' said Windley, and started off after the faithless steed. But the steed would not allow himself to be caught, and when his pursuer approached him broke from a trot into a gallop, and finally showed a clean pair of heels. "When my pony went off with Windley after him, leaving me, comparatively speaking, _plante la_, the Kafirs thought they had got me, and commenced to shout out encouragingly to one another and also to make a kind of hissing noise, like the word "jee" long drawn out. All this time I was running as hard as I could after Windley and my runaway horse. As I ran, carrying my rifle at the trail, I felt in my bandolier with my left hand to see how many cartridges were still at my disposal, and found that I had fired away all but two of the thirty I had come out with, one being left in the belt and the other in my rifle. Glancing round, I saw that the foremost Kafirs were gaining on me fast, though had this incident occurred in 1876 instead of 1896, with the start I had got I would have run away from any of them.