So he kept his own counsel and went to bed. Before he was up next morning the Heer Marais, suspecting neither trouble nor danger, had ridden off to a farm thirty miles or more away to pay its owner for some cattle which he had recently bought, leaving his home and his daughter quite unprotected, except by Leblanc and the few native servants, who were really slaves, that lived about the place.
Now on the Monday night I went to bed as usual, and slept, as I have always done through life, like a top, till about four in the morning, when I was awakened by someone tapping at the glass of my window.
Slipping from the bed, I felt for my pistol, as it was quite dark, crept to the window, opened it, and keeping my head below the level of the sill, fearing lest its appearance should be greeted with an assegai, asked who was there.
"Me, baas," said the voice of Hans, our Hottentot servant, who, it will be remembered, had accompanied me as after-rider when first I went to Maraisfontein. "I have bad news. Listen. The baas knows that I have been out searching for the red cow which was lost. Well, I found her, and was sleeping by her side under a tree on the veld when, about two hours ago, a woman whom I know came up to my camp fire and woke me. I asked her what she was doing at that hour of the night, and she answered that she had come to tell me something. She said that some young men of the tribe of the chief Quabie, who lives in the hills yonder, had been visiting at their kraal, and that a few hours before a messenger had arrived from the chief saying that they must return at once, as this morning at dawn he and all his men were going to attack Maraisfontein and kill everyone in it and take the cattle!"
"Good God!" I ejaculated. "Why?"
"Because, young baas," drawled the Hottentot from the other side of the window, "because someone from Maraisfontein--I think it was the Vulture" (the natives gave this name to Leblanc on account of his bald head and hooked nose)--"shot Quabie's son on Sunday when he was holding his horse."
"Good God!" I said again, "the old fool must have been drunk. When did you say the attack was to be--at dawn?" and I glanced at the stars, adding, "Why, that will be within less than an hour, and the Baas Marais is away."
"Yes," croaked Hans; "and Missie Marie--think of what the Red Kaffirs will do with Missie Marie when their blood is up."
I thrust my fist through the window and struck the Hottentot's toad-like face on which the starlight gleamed faintly.
"Dog!" I said, "saddle my mare and the roan horse and get your gun. In two minutes I come. Be swift or I kill you."
"I go," he answered, and shot out into the night like a frightened snake.
Then I began to dress, shouting as I dressed, till my father and the Kaffirs ran into the room. As I threw on my things I told them all.
"Send out messengers," I said, "to Marais--he is at Botha's farm--and to all the neighbours. Send, for your lives; gather up the friendly Kaffirs and ride like hell for Maraisfontein. Don't talk to me, father; don't talk! Go and do what I tell you. Stay! Give me two guns, fill the saddle-bags with powder tins and loopers, and tie them to my mare.
Oh! be quick, be quick!"
Now at length they understood, and flew this way and that with candles and lanterns. Two minutes later--it could scarcely have been more--I was in front of the stables just as Hans led out the bay mare, a famous beast that for two years I had saved all my money to buy. Someone strapped on the saddle-bags while I tested the girths; someone else appeared with the stout roan stallion that I knew would follow the mare to the death. There was not time to saddle him, so Hans clambered on to his back like a monkey, holding two guns under his arm, for I carried but one and my double-barrelled pistol.
"Send off the messengers," I shouted to my father. "If you would see me again send them swiftly, and follow with every man you can raise."
Then we were away with fifteen miles to do and five-and-thirty minutes before the dawn.
"Softly up the slope," I said to Hans, "till the beasts get their wind, and then ride as you never rode before."
Those first two miles of rising ground! I thought we should never come to the end of them, and yet I dared not let the mare out lest she should bucket herself. Happily she and her companion, the stallion--a most enduring horse, though not so very swift--had stood idle for the last thirty hours, and, of course, had not eaten or drunk since sunset.
Therefore being in fine fettle, they were keen for the business; also we were light weights.
I held in the mare as she spurted up the rise, and the horse kept his pace to hers. We reached its crest, and before us lay the great level plain, eleven miles of it, and then two miles down hill to Maraisfontein.
"Now," I said to Hans, shaking loose the reins, "keep up if you can!"
Away sped the mare till the keen air of the night sung past my ears, and behind her strained the good roan horse with the Hottentot monkey on its back. Oh! what a ride was that!
Further I have gone for a like cause, but never at such speed, for I knew the strength of the beasts and how long it would last them. Half an hour of it they might endure; more, and at this pace they must founder or die.
And yet such was the agony of my fear, that it seemed to me as though I only crept along the ground like a tortoise.
The roan was left behind, the sound of his foot-beats died away, and I was alone with the night and my fear. Mile added itself to mile, for now and again the starlight showed me a stone or the skeleton of some dead beast that I knew. Once I dashed into a herd of trekking game so suddenly, that a springbok, unable to stop itself, leapt right over me.
Once the mare put her foot in an ant-bear hole and nearly fell, but recovered herself--thanks be to God, unharmed--and I worked myself back into the saddle whence I had been almost shaken. If I had fallen; oh! if I had fallen!
