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It would have been a difficult matter to recognise in the jaded man the once well-set-up individual known in certain quarters as Robert MacGregor; nor was there much resemblance between the fugitive and the German secret service agent, Ulrich von Gobendorff yet the man was none other than he whom the officers of the Haussa regiment particularly wished to lay by the heels.
A Haussa, in the act of assisting a comrade, sprang high in the air, and fell, his hands in his death-agony clutching at Wilmshurst's ankles. Without knowing what trapped him the subaltern measured his length on the ground. Probably the fall saved his life, for a corporal immediately behind him was shot through the chest.
"We thought we were strafing a mob of Huns. No damage, I trust?" "You would have heard of it before now if there had been," replied Wilmshurst. "The nearest one just dusted some of my men, that's all. We couldn't get you to see that we were a Haussa platoon, and I had a nice old job keeping my men in hand. They wanted to take pot shots at you.
After a good meal, consisting of roast goat's-flesh, millet bread and hot chocolate, the trek was resumed, the Haussa following the spoor with the sagacity and skill of a sleuth-hound until it was light enough to enable the Rhodesians to follow up the trail.
A private on a shilling a day will eat three fowls, each worth 9d. to 10d., and drink any taken amount of palm-wine. There are no means of punishment, or even of securing a criminal; the colony cannot afford irons or handcuffs; there is no prison, and a Haussa, placed under arrest in a bamboo-hut, cuts his way out as easily as a rat from a bird-cage.
Having taken its final "sighting position" the animal relied upon its momentum to achieve the destruction of its human enemy. The moment the bush-cow lowered its head Bela Moshi, with every sense on the alert, leapt sideways behind a tree. Then, as the infuriated quadruped thundered past, the Haussa brought his rifle to the shoulder and fired.
At the lines where the horses were picketed the Haussa picked out a powerful-looking brute a "salted" Cape horse which had shown considerable temper at previous times. Vaulting upon the animal Bela Moshi rode it barebacked, urging it at a gallop and finishing by taking a formidable obstacle in the shape of a cactus-bush. "How can do, sah?" he asked. "Good enough," replied Wilmshurst.
Too late the plucky Haussa attempted to avoid the impetus by springing aside. Even as he leapt to his feet the man was caught by the lowered head of the ferocious brute and tossed ten feet in the air. Across the bed of the dried-up stream the bush-cow charged, until Wilmshurst hurriedly came to the conclusion that it was quite time for him to dodge behind a tree.
They were brought from the neighborhood of Say, on the middle Niger, by the Togo Hinterland expedition. The ram has beautiful horns, and the ewe is distinguished by two strange, tassel-like pendants of skin that hang from her neck. This zoological garden also possesses a fine ram from the interior of Tunis, which is similar in shape to the Haussa ram, but has shorter horns and a heavier mane.
The Haussa chuckled audibly, and holding his rifle obliquely with the bayonet thrust into the ground, placed his ear to the butt. "Macgreg him go and go," he answered, meaning that the Rhodesian was still on the move. In vain Wilmshurst tested the sound-conducting properties of the rifle. Normally of good hearing he failed to detect what to Private Brass Pot was an accepted and irrefutable fact.
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