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Of all the lovely scenes through which I have wandered, the landscapes along the Olifant and the Letaba dwell in my memory as the loveliest. In those one-time almost inviolate retreats were to be found everything best calculated to delight the heart of the hunter or the lover of nature.
Sure enough I seemed to catch a jingle of bridles as if from some company of men riding in haste. We lay still for a little till the scouts came back and reported the coast clear. Then we made a dart for the road, crossed it, and got into cover on the other side, where the ground sloped down to the Letaba glen.
But the road was picketed, not held; for Arcoll's patrols were only a branch of his Intelligence Department. It was perfectly easy, as I had found myself, to slip across in a gap of the pickets. Laputa would be in a hurry, and therefore he would try to cross at the nearest point. Hence it was Arcoll's first business to hold the line between the defile of the Letaba and the camp at Bruderstroom.
East of Main Drift, where the police were fewer, he succeeded; but he had not gone far till he was discovered by the Basuto scouts. The find was reported to Arcoll, who guessed at once who this traveller was. He dared not send out any of his white men, but he bade a party of the scouts follow the Portugoose's trail. They shadowed him to Dupree's Drift, where he crossed the Letaba.
'Where are the patriots in your following? They are all red Kaffirs crying for blood and plunder. Supposing you were Oliver Cromwell you could make nothing out of such a crew. 'They are my people, he said simply. By this time we had forded the Great Letaba, and were making our way through the clumps of forest to the crown of the plateau.
I cast my eyes back on the road we had come, and I thought I saw some figures a mile back, on the edge of the Letaba gorge. He was making sure of my return. By this time it was about four in the afternoon, and as heavenly weather as the heart of man could wish. The meadows were full of aromatic herbs, which, as we crushed them, sent up a delicate odour.
I read 'Henricus de Letaba transeunda apud Duprei vada jam nos certiores fecit. I had guessed rightly. Henriques was a traitor to the cause he had espoused. Arcoll's message had given me new heart, but Wardlaw's gave me information of tremendous value. I repented that I had ever underrated the schoolmaster's sense. He did not come out of Aberdeen for nothing.
Sixty miles away to the north-east, but clearly visible in the rarefied mountain air, towered the mighty gates through which the Olifant River roared down to meet the Letaba. On their left the great ranges rolled away to the infinite north-west. What direction first to explore in? That was a difficult question to decide, seeing that the field for adventure was equally enticing in every direction.
Somebody brought me a cup of thick coffee, which I could not drink, and helped me into the saddle. The Schimmel was fresh, and kicked freely as I cantered off the grass into the dust of the highroad. The whole world, I remember, was still and golden in the sunset. It was dark before I got into the gorge of the Letaba. I passed many patrols, but few spoke to me, and none tried to stop me.
I have been knocked down by a wounded bush-buck ram, and but for Colin might have been badly damaged. Once, in a kloof not far from the Letaba, I killed a fine leopard, bringing him down with a single shot from a rocky shelf almost on the top of Colin. His skin lies by my fireside as I write this tale.