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Updated: May 14, 2025
Crowding the stockade inclosure full was a motley throng border men in buckskins, engagés swart as Indians, French breeds, full-blood Cheyennes and Sioux of the northern hills, all mingling with the curious emigrants who had come in from the wagon camps.
And wherever the streets ran eastwards, wherever were gaps in the houses, always there broke into view the sight of the great marshes, like to some bar of music weird and strange that haunts a melody, arising again and again, played on the violin by one musician only, who plays no other bar, and he is swart and lank about the hair and bearded about the lips, and his moustache droops long and low, and no one knows the land from which he comes.
And on the day that I tell of he galloped away from his home scattering largesse of gold, as I have said, and passed through many kingdoms, the dragon snapping at maidens as he went, but being unable to eat them because of the bit in his mouth, and earning no gentler reward than a spurthrust where he was softest. And so they came to the swart arboreal precipice of the unpassable forest.
"Swart Piet and four of his men," said Sihamba, "and by my Spirit, they have fresh horses; they must have taken them from the kraal of the half-breed which we passed at daybreak, and that is why we lost sight of them for a while." Now even as Zinti helped her to mount the schimmel Suzanne turned so faint with terror that she almost fell to the ground again.
"That is Swart Piet who has crept round to cut me off," Ralph thought to himself, and for a moment was minded to ride to the smoke to seek him. Then he remembered that he had no gun, and that that of his enemy might be loaded again before he found him, and judged it wisest to canter into the open plain and so homewards.
He began to look about for a tall straight young stem with which to make himself a bow, when Kol sprang out of the bushes and dealt Swart such a stroke with his axe that he fell dead without a word. After that Kol went back and told Hallgerda. And Hallgerda spoke cheering words, and said he need have no fear, for that she would protect him; but Kol's heart was heavy.
I had the story of his mental collapse from his mother in the early days of my sojourn in Bel-Oiseau; for it came to pass that a fitful caprice induced me to prolong my stay in the swart little village far into the gracious Swiss summer. The "story" I have called it; but it was none. He was out on the hills one moonlight night, and came home in the early morning mad. That was all.
"Nay," said the little woman smiling, "nay, Swallow, I do but repay to you one-hundredth part of my debt, and all the rest is owing still." Then she told her story in few words, and when it was done, having first looked to see that Swart Piet and his men were not coming, at the bidding of Jan we all knelt down upon the veldt and thanked the Almighty for our deliverance.
There, surrounded by the swart and grizzly bearded visages of these strange men-at-arms, who were discharging their arquebuses, as they advanced upon any bystanders likely to oppose their progress; in the very midst of this sea of helmed heads, the envoy was enabled to recognise the martial figure of the Prince of Bearne.
There was none other with woman's ways to help the men in the rock-guarded home on the windy hill. Hilltop had not been altogether unthinking all this time. He had often looked upon his daughter's friend, the jolly, swart and well-fed Moonface, and had much approved of her, but, today, as he listened to her story, he did not pay such attention as was demanded by the interest of the theme.
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