MANAMANDHLA’S BEEF.

“Yes, it’s a feminine hand,” he echoed, gazing critically on the envelope. “There’s character in it too. Now I wonder who the deuce it can be from.”

“Father, will you open it? Can’t you see I am dying with curiosity?”

“Now, I’m not not one little bit,” he answered, delighted to tease her. “In fact I wouldn’t mind postponing the further investigation of this mysterious missive for at least a week. Letters in unknown hands are generally of that character. For the matter of that, only too often so are those in known ones.”

For answer she suddenly snatched the letter from his hand and tore it open. “There now. Will you read it?” she said, giving it back.

“Certainly.” Then as the name at the end caught his eyes, a whistle of surprise escaped him. His fun sobered down while he read:

“The Royal Hotel,

“Durban.

“My dear distant Relative,

“We are related, but I believe distantly, at any rate poor mother always gave me to understand so, and latterly she talked a great deal of you. You may or may not have heard that we lost her between five or six months ago; but towards the last, when she was talking about you so often, she made me promise that I would find you out, and renew our acquaintance; though I don’t know about the `renewing’ part of it, for I was much too small in those days to remember anything of you now. However she gave me your address, and though it is an address of ever so many years ago it may still hold good, or at any rate be the means of finding you out eventually.”

Thornhill paused in his reading, and frowned. The reference to an address of `ever so many years ago’ awoke unpleasant memories. His address at that time was fairly public property, and it was the same one that he owned now.

“I have not been many days here,” the letter went on, “but it seems a delightful country, and I should like to see more of it. Can you take me in for a little while, and if so, please write or wire how I can get to you, and when. I have always heard that colonial ways are unconventional, and colonial houses `elastic,’ which sounds perfectly delightful, and emboldens me to sink ceremony. Hoping this will find you,

“Yours very truly,

“Evelyn Carden.”

“Read that, and tell me what you think of it, Edala,” said Thornhill, handing over the letter.

The girl took it eagerly.

“I don’t know,” she said, when she was through with it. “It sounds as if she might be nice. I see she writes from the Royal in Durban. But when? She gives no date.”

“Of course not being a female. Nor does the postmark help any, as I said before.”

“Well, the postmark is neither designed nor executed by `females’,” retorted Edala.

“True, O Queen. You have me there. Well? What do you think of it?”

“Wire her to come, by all means. I like her free and easy style. She ought to be nice. But what’s she like, and who is she, when all’s said and done?”

“First for the wire. Gomfu is waiting as it is. Then we can enter into explanations.”

He got out a telegraph form and wrote:

“Miss Carden Royal Hotel Durban Train to Telani will meet you there
only give a day or two for reply wire very welcome address Care of
Elvesdon Kwabulazi: Thornhill.”

“Wa Gomfu!” he hailed.

“Nkose!”

The boy was round in a moment.

“Here. See that this goes directly you get back. Have they given you coffee in the kitchen, for the night is cold?”

“Nkose is my father. Ramasam is a very induna of the fire. Never have I met such coffee as his.”

“Well, here is gwai,” handing him a span of Boer tobacco. “Now go and here is yet a letter to take.”

“Nkose!”

The boy disappeared and soon the retreating hoofs of his undersized pony could be heard splashing through the sludgy surface of the saturated veldt. The dogs growled again, presumably because having seen the same postboy appear regularly twice a week and go away again those sagacious animals must needs sustain their world-wide reputation for sagacity by doing something, though quite unnecessary or possibly to vary the monotony of a wet and very dismal day. Anyhow they growled.

“You wanted to know about this new and distant relative,” said Thornhill, coming back into the room. “Well, I can’t tell you anything about her personally, because, as she says, she was too much of a kid to remember me, and I, for my part, just remember her as an ordinary kid, usually smeared with jam or some other sticky form of nastiness. Just that and nothing more.”

“But this mother she talks about who was she?” went on Edala.

“Poor Mary Carden. Oh, we got rather friendly. She was a bit older than me though. I had something to do with the settling up of her affairs when she was left a widow not that there was much to settle up, poor thing. By the bye, and yet this girl writes in rather an independent way, and dates from the Royal at Durban. Well, you know, hotels in this country aren’t cheap, and the Royal isn’t one of the cheapest by any means, although it’s good. They may have had a windfall since I knew them; probably have, since she seems to be out here for fun.”

“How old would she be, father?”

“Let me think now. Let me think back. She must be some years older than you, child. But it’ll be a good thing for you to have a companion for a time, who isn’t an old fogey. Of course we are both talking round our hats, as neither of us have the ghost of a notion what she’s like, and won’t have till we see her.”

“Well, we’ll chance it,” said Edala.

“That’s the best way. And now I think I’ll get on a horse and take a turn round. Old Patolo may be letting his cattle stray in this mist.”

Manamandhla the Zulu strode over the sopping veldt quite indifferent to the rain which beat down upon his bare head, and strove to permeate the thick folds of his green blanket, and while he walked he was thinking out a plan.

The subject of his thoughts was not tragical, not even weighty except as regarded his own immediate wants. He was tired of goat, he wanted beef and plenty of it. How should he get it? He thought he knew.

He could not expect Thornhill to kill a full grown beast, or any kind, even for him. But beef he hankered for, and have it he must. So now he held straight on over the veldt to where he knew he should find the cattle.

The mist was all in his favour, in fact it had suggested his plan, which was an ingenious one. He ascended the nearest ridge of the Sipazi mountain, his ears open. Presently both sound and scent told him he had come upon the object of his quest. In a moment more the forms of grazing cattle all round him, told that he was in the middle of the herd.

Some of the beasts snuffed and started, showing a tendency to canter away; others merely raised their heads and went on grazing as though nothing had happened. But this was not how he proposed to obtain beef. He had a broad assegai beneath his blanket, but he would not use it not yet.

He crooned a milking song in a low tone as he went through the herd This had the effect of keeping quiet any of the wilder animals which might have been disposed to panic and stampede at the suddenness of his appearance in their midst. But he kept on edging more and more to the left; with the result that the animals on that side gave way more and more in the same direction, as he intended they should.

The cloud wreaths on this side took the form of spiral twirls, and a fresh, cold draught struck Manamandhla on the left ear. This was as it should be. Here the ground ended and the cliff began.

It was not the great overhanging cliff at the summit of the mountain, but the beginning of the same, and might have meant a sixty or seventy feet drop. But between the apparent brow of the krantz and the actual one was about ten feet of grass slope a slope so steep as to be well-nigh precipitous, and in weather like this, deadly slippery. Now, as Manamandhla uttered a quick bark, at the same time flapping his blanket, the suddenly terrified animals between him and the brow, started at a run, plunging wildly, some this way, some that, to gallop off in wild panic. Not all though all save one and that a nearly full grown call It, he saw disappear over the brow, instinctively seeking safety upon the precipitous slope.

The Zulu chuckled. Crouching low, he was upon the brink in a moment, and peering over. There stood the poor stupid beast a white one its head down, and with difficulty keeping its footing. Manamandhla sprang up suddenly, again uttering a bark and flapping his blanket downwards. The poor animal, frenzied now with panic, made a wild frantic plunge, lost its footing and slid over the brink of the sheer cliff. Manamandhla had obtained his beef.

He emitted a chuckle of glee as the dull thud of the fallen carcase came up from below, then turned to find himself face to face with Thornhill.

The latter was standing some twelve or fifteen yards away, his right hand in his right pocket. Ever quick of perception, the Zulu grasped this fact and its significance. Instinctively he dropped into a half crouching attitude the attitude of a wild beast preparing for its spring and the grip of the broad assegai beneath his blanket tightened.

“No use, Manamandhla. You would be dead before you had taken five steps.”

The Zulu knew this. Even were it otherwise he had no wish for the other’s death not just yet, at any rate. It was more profitable to himself to keep him alive. But for the moment he felt like a cornered animal, quick, desperate, dangerous.

“One of the beasts has gone over, Inqoto,” he said. “I would have prevented it, but when I tried to drive it back I drove it over instead. It is a pity.”

“It is. You were in want of beef, I think, Manamandhla,” was the answer, faintly mocking.

“Whau! Inqoto has not a very open hand, and I was tired of goat. There are `mouths’ on this mountain that do not return that which those whom they swallow. But there is one which can be got into by men with long lines. And what would they find? Ah ah! What would they find?”

The Zulu felt secure now, and yet, had he only known it, he had never stood in more deadly peril in his life. Thornhill had been waiting for some such chance as this and now it had come. For, from the moment he had arrived unobserved upon the scene all its opportunities had flashed upon his mind. The Zulu had deliberately driven one of his cattle over the krantz, and on being detected in the act had rushed upon him with an assegai; for he could pretty shrewdly guess what the other held concealed beneath the blanket. He had shot his assailant dead, in self defence, as he had no other alternative than to do. Thus he would be rid of this incubus, this blackmailer, and once more would be at peace. The time and opportunity had come.

Manamandhla must have read his thoughts. Hard and desperately, yet with the quickness of lightning, he was calculating his chances. A sudden zig-zagging spring might cause his enemy to miss, and he would be upon him before he had time to fire again. The two the white man and the dark man thus stood fronting each other in the spectral wreaths of the drear mist, each resolved that one or other of them should not leave that spot alive. Thornhill spoke again.

“I am tired of you, Manamandhla. You can leave this place, do you hear? and it will not be well for you to come near it again. You are of no further use to me. So you may go. Hamba gahle.”

But these last words of farewell, which the speaker intended should signal Manamandhla’s departure in a very different sense, were scarcely uttered. A dark form, the form of a man, immediately behind the Zulu, and in a direct line with him, loomed through the mist; and the voice of old Patolo, the cattle-herd, was raised in greeting to his master. The latter knew that his opportunity had passed. He could not shoot Manamandhla in the presence of a witness, and of course the could not shoot old Patolo at all.

“Nkose,” said the latter. “I fear that the cattle will be difficult to collect in the thickness of this cloud. But those that remain out will not stray far, and we can collect them in the morning.”

“One has fallen over this cliff, Patolo,” said Manamandhla, as calmly as though no deadly tragedy had been averted by a mere moment of time. Then to Thornhill: “Nkose, had I not better go over to the location and collect some boys to skin and cut up the beef? It may be that there is some of it yet uninjured and good enough for the Great House.”

“That you had better do, Manamandhla,” answered Thornhill, with equal sang-froid. “And lose no time, before it grows dark.”

And, turning, he left them, to go back to where he had left his horse.

This was how Manamandhla obtained the beef he hankered after and plenty of it.