style="font-size:15px;"> Dick Selmes stamped his foot, and mildly – very mildly – swore. He looked at his companion, who seemed most abominably in earnest, otherwise he was inclined to suspect that the Fingo was amusing himself at the expense of a new-comer. But, plainly, he could not go against the wishes of his host, and if the latter chose to give way to the absurd superstitions of mere savages, he supposed his weakness must be respected, but it was precious annoying all the same.
The dogs, some half-dozen great rough-haired mongrels, lay panting on the ground. One or two were restless, and showed a desire to start off upon the yet warm spoor which led into the forbidden place, but a stern mandate from the Fingo promptly checked this, and they lay down again.
These two, the white man and the black, were standing in a wide amphitheatre of bush, walled by rocky heights, now split asunder in gigantic, castellated crags, or frowning down in straight, smooth krantzes, the nesting-places of innumerable aasvogels; as the long vertical streaks down their red, ironstone faces could testify. In front of them, opening out, as it were, through an immense natural portal formed by two jutting spurs of rock, was a lateral valley, covered with dense forest and sloping up to a loftier pile of mountain beyond, the slope ending in a line of broken cliff abounding in holes and caves. This much was visible from where they stood. But not a step nearer would the Fingo advance. Dick Selmes looked wistful.
“It was just there he went in, Kleinbooi,” pointing to the slope under one of the jutting rock portals. “I glimpsed him for a minute, just under the krantz on that bare patch. By Jove, it’s a pity to lose a fine bush-buck ram, and he was hit hard, too. If only you had been nearer with the dogs!”
“It is time to go home now, Baas,” said the Fingo, with a glance at the sun, which was now dipping low to the skyline, causing the great rock faces to glow red gold in the slanting beams. The scene was one of wild rugged grandeur and beauty, softened by the cooing of hundreds of doves, the cheery piping whistle of spreeuws echoing from among the krantzes, and other mellow and varying bird-voices in the recesses of the brake.
“Has anybody ever met his death in there, Kleinbooi?” resumed Dick.
“Several, Baas.”
“What kills them?”
“That is what nobody knows.” And the speaker was so obviously unwilling to pursue the subject that Dick said nothing further upon it, but he made up his mind to question Harley Greenoak thereon without loss of time.
When the two came to where they had left their horses, it was evident that the hunt had not been altogether unsuccessful, for behind Dick’s saddle was strapped a fine duiker ram, while from that of the Fingo hung several guinea-fowl and three or four dik-kop. Still, Selmes would not altogether feel comforted over the quarry he had lost.
This Kleinbooi was his host’s right-hand man. He was a capital hunter, and was sent out with Dick what time no one else felt inclined to go, and in this capacity it was an advantage that he was able to speak excellent English. Harley Greenoak was not sorry, for his part; for such was his young charge’s “keenness” that he would have dragged him out all day and every day in quest of some form of sport, and half the night, too, very frequently.
That evening, after supper, as they were seated indoors, for the farm was of considerable altitude and the nights were fresh, Dick Selmes was wondering how he should broach the subject to their host. Old Ephraim Hesketh was one of the early settlers of 1820. He was a widower, and lived alone on his vast farm in the wildest recesses of the Rooi Ruggensbergen. He was a tall, lank old man, of the simplest of habits, who went to bed with the sun and got up with the same, chewed biltong when he was hungry, and drank calabash milk when he was thirsty, and, owing to his solitary life, was laconic and scanty of speech. This being so, it may be credited that his domestic arrangements were primitive in the extreme; and even adaptable Dick Selmes had looked a trifle blank when he first saw his room, with its battered tin wash-basin, empty-bottle candlestick, bare thatch, and gaping wainscottings, into which latter a remarkably large centipede was at that moment disappearing. In short, Simcox’s place, though rough, was a palace compared with Haakdoornfontein, as old Hesketh’s place was called.
“Well, young buffalo hunter,” said the latter, as they sat down to an exceedingly frugal repast, “and how many of my bush-bucks have you accounted for to-day? We can’t provide record buffaloes for you here, you see. You must get back to the Addo or trek right up-country for that.”
Dick Selmes laughed; then, judging the moment opportune, he launched out into an account of Kleinbooi’s point-blank refusal to enter the forbidden kloof.
“He was quite right,” said the old man, decisively, and his face seemed to grow serious. “Yes, quite right. In fact, I told him not even to take you near it if possible, but I suppose he didn’t know he was doing so in the excitement of the hunt.”
Dick Selmes’ face lit up with eagerness. If this hardened old settler, who believed in little else, believed in this weird mystery, why, it would be worth hearing about. “Would you mind – er – spinning the yarn, Mr Hesketh?” he blurted out eagerly.
“Well, it’s a fact that for some years past not a man Jack who has gone into that kloof from this end – and you can’t get into it from anywhere else – has come out alive,” answered the old man. “When searched for and spoored down, they were found quite near the entrance, stone dead.”
“What killed them?”
“That’s what many of us would like to know. There was a mark, just where the neck joins the shoulder at the back, a tiny mark hardly bigger than a pin-point, a mere discoloration, and the bodies wore every appearance of death by snake-bite. That’s how the place got its name – Slaang – or Snake Kloof.”
“By Jove! And what sort of a snake was it?” said Dick.
“There was no snake. The most careful search revealed no trace of the spoor of anything of the kind. Besides, a snake-bite invariably contains two punctures. This was only one. Another strange thing is that the mark was always the same, and in the same place, where the neck joins the shoulder; and yet another – that the people, when found, had, in each case, fallen when facing the way out of the kloof, as if they’d been running away from something. What? How many have come to grief? Seven in all – one Hottentot and six Kafirs. They had gone in after strayed stock, or to take out a bees’ nest, or something of the kind. The Hottentot was the only one who was still conscious, and he knew absolutely nothing of what had happened to him or when it had. I nearly pulled him through by treating him for snake-bite, but it was too long after, and he kicked the bucket, like the rest. Have I been in since? No. I’m too old.”
“But what on earth is your theory of it, Mr Hesketh?” asked Dick Selmes, who was very much impressed by the story, and the old man’s way of telling it. “Is there some kind of tree snake that drops down and swings itself up again after biting them? That would account for lack of spoor, you know.”
“Quite right, young buffalo hunter,” nodded old Hesketh. “But we’ve got no snakes that do that. All the tree sorts are harmless. The thing stumps me but – there it is.”
“By Jingo, but I’d like to – ” And Dick stopped short. Old Hesketh turned on him a lack-lustre eye.
“To try and solve the mystery yourself?” he supplied. “M’yes. You’d better let it alone, young fellow. Keep your energies for another destroying buffalo, and you may come out of that with a whole skin. Eh, Greenoak?”
The latter, who had been a silent listener, nodded assent. Old Hesketh had – for him – taken an immense fancy to Dick since hearing of his shooting the buffalo bull in the Addo Bush,
