Part 85 (1/2)
Why had she been so bent upon hiding the trail? Why had she distrusted him?
He bent upon one knee in the gra.s.s beside the slender, shrinking figure, woman's and yet child's, and held out the little slate to her, and said, with the smile that even backward children could not resist:
”Did you draw this?”
She nodded, with great wistful eyes, looking shyly up at him from under their sweeping black lashes. He went on, pointing with a slender gra.s.s-blade to each object as he named it:
”It is a house, and these are sheds and stables, and this is an orchard, and here the Kaffirs live. But who lives in the house?”
She whispered, with a look of secret fear:
”The man lives there. And the woman.”
”Tell me the man's name.”
She breathed, after a hesitation that was full of troubled apprehension:
”Bough.”
A red flush mounted in his thin cheek, and he drew his breath in sharply.
He asked:
”Does anyone else live in the house?”
She reflected with a knitted brow. He helped her.
”I do not mean the travellers--the men and women who come driving up in Cape-carts and transport-waggons, and drive away again, but someone who lives with Bough and the woman. She has been at the tavern a long, long time, though she is so young and so little. Try to remember her name.”
The knitted brow relaxed, and the beautiful dim eyes had almost a smile in them.
”It is 'the Kid.'”
”Try and think. Has she no other name?”
She shook her head. He gave up that trail as lost, and moved the gra.s.s-blade to another part of the drawing on the slate.
”Tell me what this is?”
She answered at once:
”It is the Little Kopje. The English traveller made it when he put the dead woman in the ground.”
His heart beat heavily, and the hand that pointed with the gra.s.s-blade shook a little.
”Where is the man who buried the dead woman and built the Little Kopje?”
She pointed to the rude oblong that was meant for a grave.
”There.” The slender finger climbed the heap of boulders. ”And there is where the Kid sits when she is a bad girl and runs away.” She peeped up in his face almost slyly. ”Then they call her: 'You Kid, come here! Dirty little s.l.u.t, take the broom and sweep out the bar! Idle little devil, fetch water for the kitchen!'” Her smile was peaked and elfish. She laid a cunning finger beside her pursed-up lips. ”But though they scold and call bad names, they never come and fetch her down off the Little Kopje. Beat her when she comes in, and serve her right, the impudent little sc.u.m! But never come near the Little Kopje, because of the spook the Barala boy saw there one night when the moon was big and s.h.i.+ning.”