"He’s gone back again!--What do you think of that? After doing sixty miles in his bare feet!--Gone back to get de Rivas and his wife! Our fellows, twenty of 'em were ready to go alone—​but nothing on earth or off it could stop him from going too—​not the Judge, nor the Administrator, nor an Archangel from heaven—​said they could never find 'em without him—​or might find 'em too late! His feet are all to bits-- I tell you, man, he hasn’t got feet any more—​only some black currant jelly!--They’re so bad he has to ride in a cart!--but he would go—​he would go. Whether he’ll ever come back again—​with those feet--"

But he did come back. It took longer to bring in the two refugees than it had taken Maryon Hammond to walk the distance in his bare feet, for there was fighting to be done on the return journey; but Cara de Rivas and her husband were safe and sound in Salisbury at last, none the worse for their three days' vigil.

And once more a man riding on men’s shoulders looked up at a girl in the gaol verandah and saluted her with the blue glance of his eyes; and she with her hand raised to her forehead saluted him in return, as a soldier might salute a conqueror, her eyes full of pride. For only she and he knew how great was this victory in which lay their defeat.

"Do we think Victory great?"

"And so it is."

"But now it seems to me when all is done, that Defeat is great, and Death and Dismay are great!"

Long before they came to fetch her, she had heard the news—​the bitter, tragic news. It was on all men’s lips.

"His feet are gone. Nothing can save Marie Hammond’s feet—​the fleetest feet in Africa!--gone!--done for! Nothing but amputation can save his life—​and he won’t have it done!"

It was true. He refused to have it done. He lay and laughed in the doctors' faces.

"Take my feet off? Leave me to spend the rest of my days on my back—​or crawling about the earth like a maimed rat? Oh, no, my dear fellows!-- No job for you to-day?--nothing doing! All right, I’ll be dead before morning if you say so. That’s not such bad luck either. I think a good long rest is indicated anyway. I’d like a rest, by Jove! Only I should like to be left alone now, if you don’t mind, with my pal Carr—​and—​Ah! yes, if Miss Heywood would stay too--? Leave us three alone, will you, until the end?"

Diane Heywood never left Salisbury. A grave kept her there, and you may find her there to this day, tending the sick and sad, helping all those whose burdens seem too heavy for their shoulders.

CHAPTER FOUR.

WATCHERS BY THE ROAD.

The sky-line was scarlet from east to west, and above the scarlet lay massed bronze. The rest of the world was composed of tan-coloured kopjes and rocks, and the road along which the Cape cart dolorously crawled, resembled a river of dust rising in mountainous waves through which the setting sun loomed like a blood-red heart.

It was the road from the Transvaal to Tuli, and the cart had been travelling along it for hours, but was still many miles from the wayside hotel where a night’s rest for man and beast was waiting; and the offside leader had gone dead-lame, while the other three horses appeared to have lost all enthusiasm for life. On the crest of a rise, the cart came to a standstill, and they stood with hung heads and quivering barrels panting under their lathered harness. The driver descended; a burly Cape boy, he had the thick mouth of a Hottentot and the hang-dog swagger of a low-class Boer; but as far as horses were concerned he was an angel from Heaven. When he spoke to his beasts, they lifted up their despairing heads trembling like lovers to his voice, seeming to stand together again with fresh resolution while he rubbed the nose of one, slapped another’s soapy flank, and once more examined the leader’s foot. Afterwards he emitted a kind of resigned grunt and stood chewing a bit of grass he had plucked in stooping. The two men crammed in the body of the cart with several dogs, guns, and a mass of shooting-kit looked on grimly. They were merciful men who hated to see a beast suffer, but they also hated the prospect of a night on the veld without provisions or blankets. They were weary as only a day’s travelling in a Cape cart under the hot sun can make men weary; dead beat, begrimed, and hungry. Moreover they were in a hurry to reach their destination; if they had not been they would have waited for the weekly mail-coach instead of chartering a special cart.

The significance of the driver’s grunt was not lost on one at least of them, a dark man burnt almost black, with hard blue eyes and a grim lip, who looked as though with a red handkerchief on his head instead of a slouch hat he would have made a first-class pirate. Never handsome, a broken nose, and a deep scar which began over one unflinching eye and finished somewhere in the roots of his short thick hair had not softened his appearance. Yet no woman or dog (the two have strangely similar tastes where men are concerned) would have glanced twice at the other man (a well set up, good-looking fellow of thirty), while Dark Carden was about. The latter, however, if he returned the glances of women with interest, also knew something of men and horses, and because of this he now saw very well that the leader was done for and the driver resigned to a night on the veld. Disentangling himself from the shooting-kit he threw himself out of the cart, and the dogs leaped after him barking joyously.

"This is a damned look-out, Swartz!"

"Yes, Baas," assented Swartz, not unamiably. "The leader’s leg is gone for store, and the others are done up. We can’t make Webb’s to-night."

"How far is it?"

"About thirty miles yet."

Carden looked at the man in the cart.

"Feel inclined to tramp it, Talfourd?"

"Oh, Lord!" groaned Talfourd. "Do you?"

"Not much!" said Carden smiling. "We’ll camp. After all we’ve got the buck." He gave a glance to the back of the cart where a beautiful little net buck still warm, but with the glaze of death over its eyes was suspended. Then his keen eye travelled swiftly over the surrounding country. The dust was subsiding, and it could be seen that they were in a wild place of lonely kopjes and immense patches of grey-green bush. Far off, taller, greener trees growing thick and close as moss outlined the banks of the Crocodile River. Across the midst of the scene, round kops and through bush, curved and curled the dusty white road that led to Tuli, and thence upwards and onwards through Mashonaland and Matabeleland to the North.

Swartz had begun to outspan the horses, knee-haltering each so that they would not roam too far.