Bertram Mitford - Harley Greenoak's Charge

“Well, why don’t you hunt him then, in fair and sportsmanlike fashion,” retorted the girl, “instead of setting an abominably cruel thing like that?”

“Hunt him? Ho – ho! Look there.”

He pointed to the upper end of the hollow, which was shut in by a wall of terraced rock and cliff. But many a dark hole and crack on the face of this showed that the towering rampart was honeycombed by caves and labyrinthine galleries.

“How are you going to get him out of these?” went on old Hesketh. “Why, all the dogs in the world wouldn’t get him out. He’d only have to skip from one hole to another. Eh, Greenoak?” The latter nodded.

“Well, it’s abominably cruel all the same,” repeated Hazel as she turned away. “Aren’t I right, Mr Selmes?”

“A trap that doesn’t kill outright always is cruel,” answered the diplomatic Dick, whose last wish in the world was to disagree with her. “I know I’ve often thought it hard luck on the rabbits at home when they got into one – poor little beggars.”

“Do you know,” she went on, jumping from one subject to another, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to have had the opportunity of meeting Mr Greenoak. What a splendid man he is! Isn’t he?”

“Rather. He’s a thundering good old chap.”

Hazel lifted an eyebrow.

“Old! But you surely don’t call him old. Why, he’s just in his prime. Oh, I see, you mean it as a term of comradeship,” she added.

“Er – yes. That was it,” agreed Dick, upon whose mind a very unwelcome qualm was beginning to force itself.

“So strong and cool and clearheaded,” she went on, “and such nerve. Why, he’s everything a man should be. Don’t you agree with me?”

“Most decidedly.”

“Ah, I like to hear a man speak well of another.”

“Why? Isn’t it usual?” said Dick.

“No. At least not within my experience. Almost invariably if I boom one man to another that other will either agree half-heartedly, or find something disparaging to say.”

“Well, even if I felt that way inclined, I should be an absolutely unspeakable cur were I to say anything of the sort about Greenoak, considering that this is the third time he has saved my life,” answered Dick.

“Is it? Oh, do tell me about the others,” cried Hazel, eagerly.

“I can’t tell you about the other because it comes into the mystery of this place, as to which, as you know, we are sworn to secrecy. But I told you the first. It was the night I shot the big buffalo.”

Looking down into the bright, sparkling eager face, Dick Selmes was conscious of that unwelcome misgiving taking even more definite hold of his mind. The eagerness with which she hung upon his words was not because they were his words. Greenoak of all people! Why, he must be old enough to be her father, concluded Dick, in his inexperience rather consoling himself with the thought.

“Yes, you told me that,” rejoined Hazel. “But you are only one of many. Harley Greenoak has the reputation of having saved countless lives and got no end of people out of difficulties of one kind or another, yet he never talks about it, they say. I can’t tell you how proud I am to have made his acquaintance.”

“Shall I tell him so, for here he comes?” said Dick, mischievously. “Now, or when you’re not there?”

“If you do I’ll never speak to you again. And yet I don’t know that I’d greatly care if you did.”

They had been waiting as directed, where the horses had been left, and now the other two were coming up.

“You’ve made a quick job of that, Greenoak,” said Dick.

“Yes. But I only took charge of the more difficult part, Kleinbooi’ll do the rest. It’s a good skin, Dick, and ought to look well in your hall, or wherever you stick up such things.”

Dick stared.

“But it’s yours,” he cried. “Why, it was your shot – and a jolly fine shot too. Don’t know where I’d have been but for it.”

“Oh, that’s all right. I’ve nowhere to keep trophies and you have. You’ll be able to hang it under the buffalo head.” And the speaker swung himself into the saddle, and resumed his conversation with old Hesketh.

“There!” exclaimed Hazel. “Isn’t that like him? And you hardly said thank you.”

“Greenoak doesn’t like much thanking. It seems to hurt him; sets him on the shrink, don’t you know.”

“I can quite believe that,” rejoined Hazel. “Now – you can help me to mount.”

The while, the subject under discussion was some way ahead, with Hesketh. They were in fact passing the scene of that other tragedy.

“Not much trace of that affair,” Hesketh was saying as he glanced keenly around. “Tell you what, though, I wonder yon tiger didn’t put an end to the ‘mystery’ long ago, and save us the trouble. Ho-ho!”

“I don’t,” rejoined Greenoak, quietly. “It’d have to be a very smart tiger indeed to get the blind side of a veteran Bushman. The ‘mystery’ was a darn sight more likely to scoff the tiger than the tiger was to scoff the ‘mystery.’”

Postal delivery at Haakdoornfontein was, as an institution, non-existent; and when old Hesketh desired communication with or from the outside world he obtained it by dispatching a boy to the nearest field-cornet’s, some sixteen or seventeen miles away. This, for obvious reasons, he did not do very often.

Harley Greenoak was seated on a stone, on the shaded side of the shearing-house, thinking. The shade was almost too cool, for there was a forecasting touch of crisp winter in the clear atmosphere and vivid blue of the cloudless sky. He could see the long, gaunt figure of his host, pottering about down at the lands, and every now and then from the kitchen at the back of the house, there came to his ears the clear tones of Hazel’s voice endeavouring to convey instruction into the opaque mind of the yellow-skinned cook. The sounds in no wise interrupted his train of thought; rather they fitted in with it, for in it the utterer of them bore her share.

From his pocket he drew forth a letter. This he spread out open before him, and began to study, not for the first time. It had arrived the previous evening, and was several days overdue, owing to Hesketh’s erratic postal provisions as set forward above. The writing was not easily decipherable, and the contents, well – they were commonplace on the surface, but beneath, to one well acquainted with the writer, meaning enough could be read. Now Harley Greenoak and the Commandant of the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police were very old friends indeed.

There was restlessness on and beyond the border. The Transkeian tribes needed watching, and some careful handling, and the Police might have work cut out for them. And, by-the-by, where was Greenoak now, and what was he doing; because if nothing in particular, added the writer, why shouldn’t he come up to the border and stay with him a bit, and have some talks over old times?

Such was the gist of the letter, but its recipient read deeper than that. Few men understood natives and their ways more thoroughly than himself, few men were as well known to and as thoroughly trusted by them, and none better. He foresaw a possibility of usefulness, of great usefulness; and when such was the case, it must be a very grave impediment indeed that Harley Greenoak would allow to stand in his way.

Hazel Brandon had not exaggerated in her estimate of his character; and time after time his natural gifts had found for him the opportunity of being of service to his friends – often to the saving of life – and that without hope or thought of reward. And here stood forth another such opportunity; but – how would it fit in with the charge he had undertaken? As it happened it would so fit in.