Bertram Mitford - Forging the Blades - A Tale of the Zulu Rebellion

“Right-oh! It’s going to be damned hot,” loosening his uniform jacket. “Let’s push on or we shan’t get to old Halse’s by dinner-time, and he does you thundering well when you get to his shebang. Whatever they may say about old Ben, he’s the most hospitable chap you’d strike in a lifetime.”

“Isn’t he a retired gun-runner – if he has retired, that is?” said Francis, who was new to that part of the country. “At least so the yarn goes.”

“The said yarn is very likely true. There are ‘no witnesses present,’ so I don’t mind recording my private belief that it is. But there’s this to be said – that when he did anything in that line it was only when the niggers were fighting each other, and in that case he rendered humanity a service by helping to keep their numbers down. I don’t believe he’d trade them a single gas-pipe if they were going for us. I’ve a better opinion of old Ben than that.”

“Don’t know. I haven’t been up here so long as you; but I’ve heard it said, down country, that gun-running gets into the blood. ‘Once a gun-runner, always a gun-runner.’ What-oh! Suppose Dinuzulu were to start any tricks, wouldn’t our friend Ben see his way to making his little bit then?”

“I don’t believe he would; and what’s more to the point, I don’t see how he could. But I say – hang gun-running. Don’t you get smashed upon his daughter. She’s a record of a fine girl.”

“So I’ve heard from you chaps until I’m sick. You all seem smashed on her.”

“By Jove! She can ride and shoot with any of us,” went on Meyrick, rather enthusiastically, which caused his comrade to guffaw.

“I don’t freeze on to ‘male’ women,” he said.

“You just wait until you see her,” was the rejoinder. “Not much ‘male’ about her.”

“What a chap you are on the other sex, Meyrick. What’s the good of a fellow in the force, with no chance of promotion, bothering about all that. Much better make ourselves jolly as we are.”

“Good old cynic, Frank,” said the other. “Wait till you see Verna Halse, and I’ll bet you get smashed. Nice name ‘Verna,’ isn’t it?”

“Don’t know it’s anything out of the ordinary. But cynic or not, here we are, a brace of superfluous and utterly impecunious sons of two worthy country parsons, bunked out here to fish for ourselves. You’ll be made a Sub-Inspector soon, you’ve got it in you. I shan’t, and I haven’t. So I’m not going to bother about ‘skirt.’”

They had reached the spot where the tongue of forest points off onto the road edge and there ends. The ground was more open here.

“Hot as blazes!” commented Francis, swabbing his forehead. “What’s this? Au! Gahle – gahle !”

The latter as three native women, squatted in the grass by the roadside, stood up to give the salute, the suddenness whereof caused the horses to shy. In the grass beside them lay several bundles such as native women often carry when passing from place to place, only these were unusually large.

The two police troopers fired off a humorous expostulation – they had both qualified in their knowledge of the Zulu for extra linguistic pay – and passed on their way. The track grew steeper and steeper, and the sun hotter and yet more hot. They would soon be at Ben Halse’s store, with the prospect of an excellent dinner and a welcome rest before them. And behind them, in a contrary direction, laughing to themselves, travelled the three women they had just passed, bending under the burden of the loads poised upon their heads – the said loads containing each a goodly quarter of koodoo meat, of the meat of the lordly koodoo bull, the possession of which would have entailed upon them, and upon all concerned, if detected, the direst of pains and penalties. Yet there was nothing suspicious-looking about those bundles, nothing to make any reasonable being under the sun think it worthwhile investigating their contents.

“I wonder what sort of a man this Mr Denham is, father?” said Verna, as she stood, in the middle of the morning, watching the cleaning and preparation for preserving the great head, which was being effected by a native under the critical supervision of his master.

“Quite all right,” was the answer. “He pays down on the nail, or rather, by return mail; never haggles or votes the prices too long. It’s all I can do to resist the temptation to put them up.”

“Well, then, go on resisting it, dear. I’m sure it’ll pay in the long run,” said the girl decisively.

“Yes, I’ve always had an instinct that way myself. Denham gives thundering good prices as it is, and, I tell you, we’ve made a pretty good thing out of him.”

“But I wonder what he’s like personally,” went on Verna. “I wish you hadn’t lost that photo he sent you when I was away.”

“Yes, it’s a pity, but for the life of me I can’t think what the devil became of it. He was a good-looking chap, though, and I should think by the look of the portrait, a fine, well-built chap too. Well, we shall probably never meet. It’s certain I shall never go to England again, and he’s not likely to turn up here.”

“I suppose not.”

“Well, long live our trade together, anyhow. He’d give anything, by the way, for a good specimen of the indhlondhlo 1 1 A snake of the mamba species, which grows to a considerable size, very scarce, and with a proportionately bad reputation. , but they’ve become so jolly scarce, which is just as well. Anyhow, that’s a beast that isn’t affected by these cursed silly game laws. But it’s a sort of joker you don’t get a chance of killing except with a charge of buckshot, and that spoils the skin.”

“Well, then, it’s better left alone. I’ve always heard they are the most fiendish brutes to tackle. It isn’t worth throwing away one’s life for the sake of a few pounds more or less.”

“Few pounds more or less!” echoed Ben Halse. “Why where would I – where would we – have been if I had always run on that notion? Little girl, it’s for you that I want to screw out every penny I can, no matter how I do it. For you .”

“Then knock off doing it, dear, especially in some directions. That won’t bring me any good, to put it on that ground. Now that deal with Undhlawafa is off, dead off? Isn’t it?”

The last rather anxiously.

“Well, I don’t know – yes, I suppose it is,” somewhat undecidedly.

The girl shook her head.

“Of course it is,” she returned. “It’s not to be thought of for a moment. We are not in dire need, remember, though even then such a thing would be out of the question. Yes, quite off. My instinct has been right before, remember.”

“So it has. No, I shan’t touch this affair. They’ll have to get somebody else.”

“ Nkose! O’ Nongqai !” (The police.)

Both started. The interruption came from the trader’s other boy, who had slipped into the yard in a state of some consternation.

“Where, Panjani?” said his master.

“Down yonder, Nkose ,” pointing to the lower country. In a moment both were outside and in front of the dwelling.

Far below, on the plain, which looked humpy from this altitude, two mounted figures were approaching. There was no need to get out a field-glass; the native eyesight, as well as their own, was keen enough. But the two arrivals could not arrive for the best part of an hour. Ben Halse went calmly back to the yard, and further directed the preparation of the great head, with its record horns. Then, rubbing a lot of salt and pepper into it, he covered it with a waggon sail. Verna, watching this proceeding, was struck with a sudden thought.

“Father, what about the koodoo sirloin I’ve got on the roast?” she said.