Part 10 (1/2)

”Bought!” said Father Tiebout with a twinkle in his eyes. ”If Herrero is not willing to sell?”

”Then,” said Ormsgill dryly, ”I shall have considerable pleasure in making him.”

He stretched himself wearily with a little yawn. ”And now we will talk about other matters.”

It was an hour later when he retired to rest and, hot as it was, sank into sound sleep within ten minutes, but although he rose early and roused the little priest to somewhat unusual activity, several days had pa.s.sed before his new carriers were collected and ready to march.

They were st.u.r.dy, half-naked pagans, and appeared astonished when he gave them instructions in a few words of the bush tongue and bore with their slow comprehension instead of applying the stick to their dusky skin, which was what they had somewhat naturally expected from a white man.

He shook hands with Nares and Father Tiebout in the sloppy compound early one morning when the mists were streaming from the dripping forest, and looked at the little priest with a twinkle in his eyes.

”I haven't asked you how you got those boys,” he said. ”Still, it must have cost you something to secure the good will of whoever had the privilege of supplying them.”

He turned to Nares as if to invite his opinion, which was unhesitatingly offered him. The latter, at least, would make no compromise.

”It certainly did,” he said. ”I am glad you did not ask me to hire you the boys. The system under which he obtained them is an iniquity.”

Father Tiebout smiled. ”The object, I think, was a pious one. One has to use the means available.”

”Anyway,” said Ormsgill, ”the responsibility and the cost is mine.”

The priest shook his head. ”At least, you can take this gift from me,”

he said. ”It is not much, but one does with pleasure what he can.”

It was offered in such a fas.h.i.+on that Ormsgill could only make his grateful acknowledgments, though he had grounds for surmising that the gift would cost the giver months of stringent self-denial, and there was already very little sign of luxury at the Mission. Then he called to his carriers, who swung out of the compound with their burdens in single file, slipping and splas.h.i.+ng in the mire. The two men he had left behind stood watching them until the last strip of fluttering cotton had vanished into the misty forest when Father Tiebout looked at his companion with a little smile.

”One could consider the venture our friend has undertaken a folly, but still I think he will succeed,” he said. ”One could almost fancy that the Powers above us hold the men who attempt such follies in their special keeping.”

Nares, as it happened, had been almost uncomfortably stirred during the last ten minutes, but he was Puritan to the backbone, and usually endeavored, at least, to prevent what he felt carrying him away. He was also as a rule ready to join issue with the little priest on any point that afforded him an opportunity.

”There is a difficulty,” he said. ”I'm not sure he would admit the existence of all the Powers you believe in. There are so many of them.

One would fancy that faith was necessary.”

Father Tiebout smiled at him again. ”Ah,” he said, ”they who know everything have doubtless a wide charity.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE BONDSWOMAN

A small fire burned on the edge of the ravine, flinging out pale red flashes and an intolerable smoke, for the wood was green and wet. It had been raining heavily, and the whole forest that rolled down the slopes of the plateau was filled with a thick white steam. Filmy wisps of it drifted out of the darkness which hid the towering trunks, and streamed by the girl who crouched beside the fire cooking her white lord's evening meal. She was comely, though her face and uncovered arms were of a warm brown. A wide strip of white cotton fell from one shoulder, and half revealed the slenderness of her shapely form. It also covered certain significant discolored bruises on the soft brown skin. The look in her eyes just then, perhaps, accounted for them, for it vaguely suggested intelligence, and a protest against her fate, in place of the hopeless apathy which, after all, saves the native of that country a great deal of trouble. He has been taught drastically that any objection he might reasonably make would certainly be futile and very apt to produce unwished-for results.

A wall of dripping forest rose above the fire, but behind the girl the ground sloped sharply to the brink of a swollen river which rose in the plateaux of the interior, and a little, tattered tent was pitched on the edge of the declivity. In front of it two somewhat ragged white men lay listlessly upon a strip of waterproof ground sheeting. They were worn with travel and a long day's labor, for they had been engaged since sunrise in raft building and ferrying their equipment and trade goods across the river, and, as it happened, had lost most of their provisions in the process. They were of widely different birth and character, and cordially disliked each other, though they had both first seen the light in Africa and community of interest held them together.

Gavin was tall and lean and hard, with an expressionless bronzed face, the son of an English ostrich farmer who had married a Boer woman. He had come into that country on foot with one other survivor of the party he had started with after a difference of opinion with the Boer administration. The others had died with their oxen during their two years' wandering in the wilderness. His companion Herrero pa.s.sed for a Portuguese, though his hair would curl and his lips were a trifle thick. He was spare in form, and his face was of a muddy yellow with the stamp of sensuality and cruelty in it. He had also been drinking freely, though that is not as a rule a Latin vice, and was still very wet from his labors in the river. He had lower legs like broomsticks, and his torn, drenched trousers clung tightly about his protuberant knees.

”One could fancy that we have been bewitched,” he said. ”Trouble has followed us all the journey. There was a native woman who looked at us as we left San Roque, and she made a sign.”

Gavin laughed contemptuously. ”The loads,” he said, ”were too heavy.

It is not economical to overdrive these cattle. One must remember the trek-ox's back.”