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"Maybe, mother, they are not in the valley or out of the valley." She threw a startled look at Compton, which he was keen to notice; then, with an expression of puzzlement, she nodded her head. "Your meaning is dark, lion's cub. See, the valley is kraaled in like the goat-pen, and if the goats be not in the kraal they are outside the kraal.
Then my father rose and said: "Henri Marais, we cannot leave here to-night because the horses are kraaled, and it would be difficult to find them in this darkness, so we must ask your hospitality till dawn." "I do not ask it," I exclaimed. "I go to sleep in the cart," and I limped from the room and the house, leaving the two men together. What passed afterwards between them I do not quite know.
The next day all those thirty head were found grazing some fifteen miles westwards under the lee of hills near Reddersburg, where they had found safe shelter. Everybody's cattle were recovered which had not been kraaled, including mine.
These they were to conduct by secret paths that were known to them to where the camels were kraaled, and mounting as many as possible of them on the camels to fly whither they could. Our hope was that the victorious Black Kendah would be too exhausted to follow them across the plain to the distant mountains. It was a dreadful determination, but we had no choice. "What of my wife?"
As I passed the stables I saw that my own horse was there, for in this district horses are always shut up at night to keep them from catching sickness, but that the four beasts that had brought Heda from Natal in the Cape cart were gone, though it was evident that they had been kraaled here till within an hour or two.
"When I went down to the kloof at dawn, where your cattle and those of the Lady Swallow are kraaled, I found among them strange oxen to the number of more than a hundred.
Half a pound of it I melted in boiling water with some real sugar to make the stuff sweet, and put it into a bottle. The rest I tied with string in twelve little packets in the soft paper which is in one of the boxes, and put them in my pocket. Then I went up the hill, Baas, to the place where I saw those goats are kraaled at night behind a reed fence.
True, the hour was rather late, according to our notions of lateness in the country districts, and the sheep and cattle would have long ago been kraaled for the night; yet, even so, it was seldom that the stock settled down to rest so early, seldom that, among so many animals, there were not a few restless ones proclaiming their restlessness by bleat or bellow and on this particular night there was not a sound of any description to apprise the wayfarer that he was within a quarter of a mile of an opulent farm.
Here in hollows in this belt the cattle were kraaled in case of danger. On the further side were more fortifications and another small gateway shaped like a V, and just beyond and through it I saw the koppie we had planned to seize looming up against the line of mountains behind.
The wind did not abate till the day after, when tales kept pouring in of terrible losses of sheep and cattle killed by the cold wind; sheep in open plains had suffered most, and cattle which had been kraaled were nearly all dead, whilst the herds of cattle and horses which had been left grazing out had been driven away and were also believed to have died.
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