The suffocating atmosphere, together with the rush of the blood to the head owing to his position, was fast causing him to lose consciousness. He was in a place of darkness, being tormented by some raging demon. Surely this was death!
“That’s better. Buck up. I thought you were a ‘goner.’” And Harley Greenoak’s voice had a ring of concern, as he bent over his charge.
“So did I,” answered Dick, unsteadily, opening his eyes to the blessed air and light. “How did you get me out?”
“Man, I gripped you by the ankles, and just lugged. It was touch and go then, I can tell you.”
“But how did you know where to find me?”
“When I hear a fellow like you get up when he ought to be going to bed – when I see him slope into the bush with a gun, after the yarn we’ve just heard to-night, it stands to reason he wants looking after. Dick, your dad spoke true when he told me you were fond of getting into holes.”
“Well, if I hadn’t got into that hole I should have been still more done,” laughed Dick, at his own joke. And then he told the other about the buffalo.
“If yes,” said Greenoak, musingly. “You’ve got a hundred pounds to spare, I take it?”
“A hundred – ” Then Dick broke off as a new light struck him. “Why, man, you don’t mean to say I’ve turned over the bull?”
“Dead as a door-nail – and with one Martini bullet, too. He’s lying just yonder. There’s a hundred-pound fine, you know.”
A ringing hurrah broke the calm stillness of the night.
“Then it’s worth it,” cried Dick. “By the way, there’s something in that hole – a wolf or a wild dog.”
“Oh,” and the other cocked his rifle.
“No,” said Dick, with a hand on his arm. “We’ll let it off – as it let me off.”
“We’ll just have to finish the night here,” said Greenoak; “that is if you want that head to stick up in your ancestral halls, and it’s jolly well worth it. Otherwise the jackals and wild dogs’ll mangle it out of all recognition before morning.”
Dick readily agreed, and the two, collecting some dry wood, soon had a roaring fire under way.
“Why, this is your first camp, Dick,” said Greenoak, reaching out a handful of tobacco for him to fill from, and then filling up himself.
“Rather,” was the answer. “Oh, it’s glorious – glorious,” jumping up again to go and look at the mighty beast, lying there but a few yards off in the moonlight. Harley Greenoak laughed.
“He’s all right. He won’t run away,” he said. “Nothing will touch him either while we are here. Better go to sleep.”
“Not much sleep for me to-night. No fear,” said Dick.
And he was right. The excitement, the keen fresh air, the sights and sounds of the surrounding forest were too much for this ardent young novice, and he hardly closed his eyes. Yet in the morning he was none the worse.
The astonishment in the Simcox household when they heard what had happened was something to witness. The feminine element started in to scold Harley Greenoak for allowing his charge to run such a tremendous risk.
“Oh, he’d have to find his feet some time,” was the rejoinder. “He seems to have done it tolerably well too, for a young beginner.”
A week or two went by, which Dick Selmes divided about equally between hunting bush-buck and rendering Greenoak’s life a burden to him as to whether the head was being sufficiently cured, or whether it was quite safely out of the way of dogs or other destroyers and so forth. One morning that long-suffering individual remarked:
“We’ll move on to-morrow, Dick.”
“Well yes, I suppose it’s about time. But – where?”
“Why, there’s an old friend of mine named Hesketh who’s just written me to bring you along. His farm’s up in the Rooi Ruggensbergen. Man, but it’s wild there I can tell you.”
“All the better. What does the said Hesketh consist of?”
“Himself. He’s a primitive old customer, and you’ll have to rough it there. I warn you of that.”
“The shoot good?”
“It just is.”
“Hurrah then!” cried Dick. “I’m on.”
“Well, we’ll go back to the Bay, and pick up a Cape cart – it’ll always sell again when we’ve done with it – and some more ammunition. Another horse, too, won’t hurt. These two we got from Simcox are all right, but you’ve already shown a tendency to ride yours to death. A fellow who’s as keen as you are can’t go on for ever pushing the same horse over all sorts of ground from sunrise to sunset.”
“Good – and good again!” assented Dick.
The farewell he took of his entertainers was a very cordial one. Their hospitality had been as genuine as it was unceremonious. He had shared their life as one of themselves, and if the experience was totally different to any former one, why he had thoroughly enjoyed it, and said so, in no half-hearted way. Further, he had readily promised to repeat it on his way homeward.
“That’s a thoroughly nice young chap,” pronounced Simcox, decisively, as their late guests turned for a final wave of the hand before disappearing from view down the kloof. “Not an atom of ‘side,’ takes us as he finds us, and no nonsense about him. I hope he’ll look in again, on his way back.”
And Simcox’s women-kind quite enthusiastically agreed with Simcox.
Chapter Four.
The Mystery of Slaang Kloof
“But that is Slaang Kloof, Baas.”
“I never said it wasn’t. But – what if it is Slaang Kloof?”
“We cannot go in, Baas.” And the speaker’s pleasing, good-humoured face took on a dogged, not to say obstinate expression. A little more acquaintance with the country and its natives, and Dick Selmes would have known that when the countenance of one of these took on that expression, why, he might as well whisper words of sweet reasonableness into the long ears of an experienced and jibbing mule.
“Why can’t we go in, Kleinbooi?” he said shortly.
“Ou! It is a place of tagati– of witchcraft,” answered the Fingo.
“Witchcraft? Bosh!” exploded Dick. “Come now, Kleinbooi. Lay those dogs on to the spoor sharp, or my chances of getting that buck will become nothing at all, and I can’t afford to lose such a fine ram as that because of your humbugging superstitions.”
But the Fingo only shook his head.
“I can’t do it, Baas,” he said. “Oud Baas (the Old Master) would not allow it. He allows nothing living to go into Slaang Kloof.”
“But why? In Heaven’s name, why?”
