Action Stories, September, 1926
Like ghosts of the night, Rawlins and Simons, of the Bechuanaland Mounted, melted forever into the ominous maw of Ngami
IEUTENANT CONNELL, of the
“What is your theory, then? Who sent
Bechuanaland Mounted Police, South
that wire from Johannesburg in Rawlins’s
L Africa, frowned as Sergeant Luke name, and who sent that one from Cape Town, Evans stepped into the office of the barracks
signed Simons, telling us that he was sailing1
at Boskop.
“Read that, Evans!” He tossed
for England? What is there in the Ngami
a telegram across the table to the sergeant,
district?” he went on, without waiting for the
who picked it up and read:
sergeant’s answer to his first question.
“Sand, baboons, thorn scrub, and
Kiss Boskop good-bye for me. Not thirst.”
coming back. Johannesburg’s as fine as ever.
“You’re right, Evans. You know the
Rawlins.
district as well as it can be known. A lot of it
is included in that enormous block of land that
The sergeant raised his eyebrows.
old Duplessis holds, but it’ll never see any
“You think Rawlins has deserted the
humans except a few wandering Bushmen.
Force, too, sir, like—”
Still, it’s in our district, and—”
“Like Simons? What do you think,
He paused. “You don’t think Rawlins
Evans? You knew Simons and Rawlins and Simons quit because they didn’t want to intimately. Each of them was sent to patrol the
patrol the desert, do you, Evans? You know
Ngami district. A week or two later each of
the natives have queer stories about its being
them sends an impudent wire in turn, peopled by ghosts, and so on. Of course that announcing his desertion.”
wouldn’t have scared our men. Still, when a
“I don’t believe either of them man’s been riding week after week with only deserted, sir, or sent that wire.”
thirst for a companion...
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2
“I want you to go up there at once,”
wide streets criss-crossing each other at right
Connell finished abruptly. “Report back to me
angles, lined with one-story brick buildings
after you’ve thoroughly covered the district.
roofed with galvanized iron; stores, old
Try to get on the tracks of Simon and Rawlins,
clothes shops, and “ice-cold drinks”
that’s to say, learn whether they actually went
emporiums devoted to the native trade.
to the Ngami or not. And don’t you send me a
All about lay the half-desert country, at
wire from down country telling me that present a uniform brown, though when the you’ve deserted, because I won’t believe it.”
rains began—if they began—it would be
He grinned at Evans, who grinned transformed almost overnight into an expanse back at him. No one would believe that of
of emerald. The spruits would run water, the Sergeant Evans, with five wounds and half-a-empty dams and cisterns would be brimming,
dozen medals gained on the battlefields of
crops would be sown—if the rains came.
France.
Boskop was on the fringe of the desert.
“You’d best start right away,” Usually the four months’ downpour continued Connell. “And when you reach old
materialized in Boskop. Sometimes it did not.
Duplessis’s farm stop in and pay him your
It never rained in the Ngami country, over
respects. We’ve got to keep in with him, beyond the fringe of kopjes on the horizon, or however much he hates us.”
only enough to maintain the stunted thorn
Evans was just at the door when scrub that dotted the land like the wool fibres Connell called after him:
on a native’s head.
“I wish we could get hold of old Pete
That was Luke’s destination, a land
Flanagan. If any man knows the Ngami from
where no one lived except the wandering
end to end it’s Pete. Haven’t heard anything of
Bushman and his cousin, the baboon. A few
him of late, have you, Evans?”
had traversed it, among them Pete Flanagan,
prospector in the district. According to Pete,
for more of those diamond mines.”
the Ngami region was thickly sprinkled with
The other nodded, and Evans left the
diamond “pipes,” the volcanic outlets in which
office. His preparations were simple, and the stones were made. Pete’s volubility had occupied almost no time at all. Into his saddle-long since been discouraged, and nowadays it
bags he stuffed a few tins of bully beef, a
was only under the stimulus of a few drinks
quantity of flour, a small bottle of effervescent that he would repeat the old story for the
saline, as a substitute for yeast, and a roll of
amusement of his entertainers. For some time
sun-dried beef, biltong, of the appearance and
past nothing had been seen of the old man.
consistency of blackened sole-leather. In
Diamonds had been found near
addition he took tea, matches, sugar, salt, and
Boskop. Twenty miles away two men, Hart
a quantity of compressed vegetables. He had
and Van Reenen, had found stones two years
also a double billy, for cooking, two large
before. A rush had followed, but the supply
water-flasks, and, besides his service revolver,
had proved to be only a single pocket.
a carbine, grounded in the leather bucket that
Hart was the district money-lender,
was suspended from the off side of his saddle.
and had his hands on everything negotiable.
Three miles down-hill from the police
Van Reenen was his chief satellite, an
post lay the settlement of Boskop. It consisted
adventurer who was probably wanted under
of the usual large market square, common to
various aliases in many parts of the country.
all South African towns, and three or four
Sergeant Luke rode through Boskop,
Sand and Diamonds
3
past the line of stores, with their crowds of
The sudden impulse was killed by the
chattering natives pawing over the second-
flash of reason.
hand clothes and bargaining with the
“Maybe,” Luke answered non-
gesticulating proprietors; past the market committally. “I hear Van Reenen’s left town,”
square, with its few teams of longhorns he continued casually.
inspanned to heavy Dutch wagons, out into
Hart guffawed. “Oh, yes, after big
the land beyond. Just on the other side of the
game, sergeant. Him and old Duplessis have
town was Jacob’s Hotel
, Hart’s headquarters.
gone after a herd of springbok out in the
On
the
stoep Sergeant Luke saw Hart
Ngami.”
sitting, tilted back in his chair, his thumbs in
This speech gave Luke food for
his armholes. Though it was not yet noon he
thought. Prodigious herds of these antelopes
was already drunk. He sprawled there, a migrate periodically through the desert drunken blotch in the sun, fanned by a regions, armies of several hundred thousand Sechuana boy with a palm leaf. Upon the little
sometimes covering hundreds of miles on
table at his elbow stood a bottle of whiskey,
those strange treks that are the peculiar and a tumbler, half-full.
characteristic of this animal. Luke knew that
Seated beside him, leaning forward old Duplessis’s passion for hunting was and gesticulating, was “Baldy” Smith, one of
almost on a par with his hatred of
Hart’s crowd, and one of the hard characters
Englishmen—one of his two dominant
left stranded in Boskop after the diamond rush
passions, in fact.
had petered out and the disgruntled
Still Luke also was aware that Hart and
prospectors had removed to other haunts.
Duplessis were at odds. Hart held a mortgage
Inside the store adjacent to the hotel
Sergeant Luke saw the mean, wizened face of
hard. Three thousand morgen—six thousand
Jacobs as he bent over a roll of cloth from
acres of the old Dutchman’s holdings—were
which he was measuring a short yard for a
fair ranching land, and worth all that Hart had
colored woman.
advanced on the total, composed
“Hello, Sergeant!” called Hart from his
preponderatingly of thorn scrub. Duplessis
chair, as Luke rode up. “Looks like you’re
had acted queerly in going off hunting with
starting off on patrol somewhere. Going to
the associate of his bitterest enemy.
meet Rawlins, I suppose, and bring him back
“So?” Luke commented. “Well, so
with you?”
long, Hart.”
Luke saw the furtive glance that
He touched the reins and the stocky
“Baldy” Smith shot at the other. Hart’s gross
Basuto pony set off upon his tireless gait,
face assumed an expression of infantile known as the “triple,” which bore a close blandness.
resemblance to that of a rocking-chair.
For the first time the idea came into
Hart and Baldy watched him till he had
Luke’s brain that Hart might know something
disappeared below the dip of the road. Jacobs
about the two troopers’ disappearance. But
came out of the store and joined them. The
though the police had proved a thorn in Hart’s
three broke into guffaws.
side, notably in curbing some of the grosser
“Another of them damn policemen on
evils of frontier life in whose existence Hart
the trail,” said the hotel-keeper. “One arter
was pecuniarily interested, he could not another, like flies going into a jam-trap.”
imagine that Hart had been so mad as to set
Hart cursed volubly. “That’ll be the
himself in open opposition to the Force.
last,” he said. “We’ve got to make that clean-
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4
up and get down country in the next two
Boskop, on the very fringe of the desert, a
weeks now, or hell won’t have nothing on
goodish way, but only a day’s journey for one
Bechuanaland for hotness.”
of the hardy native horses such as he rode.
Baldy grinned at his employer. “Don’t
Here years before Jan Duplessis had built up a
worry, Hart,” he answered. “Well pick him up
flourishing ranch, with a string of dams fed by
where we landed the other two.”
a spruit in the wet season, and substantial
“How about wiring one of our agents
enough to defy the eight months of drouth that
to send another telegram?” suggested Hart,
succeeded it.
turning to Jacobs.
Of course there would be a welcome
“Give ’um time. We’ll wire the post
for him, a meal, coffee, a bed if he cared to
from Kimberley arter we git there.”
stay. No South African would deny that even
“I’ll leave that part to you, Jacobs.”
to his bitterest enemy without feeling himself
Hart leaned back in his chair, drained the glass
disgraced forever, provided he came with the
of whiskey, and cursed the boy with the fan in
necessary emblem of respectability—to wit, a
Zulu, the lingua franca of the country.
horse. The horseless white man would be
“Get on the job, Baldy,” he told his
invited to eat alone and sleep among the
henchman.
natives.
He uttered a grunt of satisfaction as he
Sergeant Luke had met pretty Emmy
saw Baldy riding back into town a few Duplessis several times. She always had a minutes later.
smile and a blush for him, which had
“Well,” he said to Jacobs, “we’ve got
sometimes made him dream of the date of his
that feller Evans, and we’ll worry along for
discharge, when, with his savings and a small
two weeks more without any more damn legacy that had come to him, he meant to take policemen mixing in.”
up land and start out for himself with a small
The hotel-keeper’s face took on a flock of sheep.
saturnine expression.
On the other hand, Jan Duplessis’s
“If Van Reenen don’t spill the beans
reception of him had been, to say the least,
by fooling with that Duplessis girl,” he devoid of warmth. The old man, who came of observed.
an old Boer family with a strain of French
“Hell!” exploded Hart. “I’ve warned
Huguenot blood, had always been an
him that this is business.”
irreconcilable enemy of the British. He had
“Well, Van Reenen ain’t the kind of
migrated to the edge of the desert after the
man who keeps his pleasure and his business
War, a generation before, and vowed that no
separate enough,” responded Jacobs.
Englishman should cross his threshold again.
If time and circumstance had forced him to
modify that vow he none the less retained his
CHAPTER II
ancient prejudices. As he had told Sergeant
INTO THE DESERT
Luke the last time he had visited the ranch-
house:
“I’ve got nothing against you as a man,
AS he rode on toward the desert through the
Sergeant. But I won’t have any verdommte
scorching sunlight Sergeant Luke was Engelsmans buzzing around my girl. When, anticipating his reception at the Duplessis she marries it will be one of our own people.”
farm with mixed feelings.
Luke had wondered if the old man was
The farm was some sixty mile
s from
thinking of Van Reenen. Adventurer as the
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5
fellow was, he had a superficial air of last outpost of civilization.
breeding, and was insinuating enough to have
Luke saw the homestead in the far
acquired a certain ascendancy over the simple-
distance set beside the series of great dams,
minded old farmer, in spite of his being Hart’s
around which the thirsty cattle crowded under
right-hand man. Besides, two almost rainless
the grateful shade of the immense eucalyptus
seasons succeeding each other had brought the
trees. Reaching the cluster of native huts two
Duplessis ranch to the verge of ruin, and miles from the house Sergeant Luke was Duplessis might have hoped to win favor with
surprised to discover that they were empty. In
Van Reenen with the idea of placating Hart,
place of the smiling, native women, eternally
who held the mortgage.
washing rags or sweeping the mud floors, was
At any rate, Van Reenen, as solitude.
Duplessis’s son-in-law, would probably avert
The sergeant pulled in sharply. He
ruin. Luke thought that Emmy had hinted as
shouted, but there came no answer.
much the last time they had met, when there
This wholesale abandonment of the
were tears in her eyes, but he had not felt
native quarters meant that something
justified in speaking to the girl then—not untoward had happened. He spurred his horse without his discharge in his pocket.
up past the dams, in which a little water still
The sergeant decided not to make the