Five minutes later, Weldon passed out of the tent door.At his quarters, he dismounted and went in search of a blanket.Muffled in the thick folds, the horses' feet would make no sound on the hard-baked earth.Kruger Bobs, meanwhile, went out to reconnoitre in order to discover a possible gap in the line of Boer pickets.
The pickets once passed, Weldon mounted once more and, with Kruger Bobs following close behind, rode carefully away into the inky, drizzling night.For the first hour, he rode steadily and with comparative comfort.The excitement of the battle was still in his blood, its noises ringing in his head, its sights dancing like will-o'-the-wisps before his eyes.Later, the inevitable reaction would follow, and the inevitable weariness.Now, refreshed by their supper, both he and the broncho had come to their second wind, and they faced the storm pluckily and with unbowed heads.Beside him, The Nig, fresh and fit as a horse could be, galloped onward steadily under the weight of Kruger Bobs.It had been at Weldon's own command that Kruger Bobs had abandoned his raw-boned steed and placed himself astride the sacred body of the thoroughbred Nig.On such a night and after such a battle, a horse abandoned was a horse forever lost.Neither The Nig nor Piggie could be left to any chance ownership, but neither could Piggie, fresh from a two-day fight, be left to the mercies of an inexperienced rider.Three inches shorter than his master, Kruger Bobs weighed fifty pounds the more, and he rode with the resilient lightness of a feather bed.
Weldon's hour of rest had been divided in strict ratio between himself, his friend and his horse.For fully half that period, he and Kruger Bobs had rubbed the sturdy gray legs and anointed the scratched neck with supplies taken from the portable veterinary hospital always to be found in the recesses of the Kaffirs scanty garments.Then, snatching a hasty meal, with the last of it still in his hands, Weldon strode away to look for Carew.He found him, bandaged but jovial, a shattered bone in his foot and his pipe in his shut teeth.Fortunately the pain bore no relation to the seriousness of the case, and Weldon left him to his pipe, cheered by the doctor's assurance that two or three weeks would bring him back into fighting trim.Carew's own disrespectful comments on the injured foot were still in his ears, as he entered the tent of the General.
By degrees, the night grew dark and darker.Riding eastward with their backs to the southerly storm, nevertheless now and again the wind swirled about fiercely, to send the lashing rain against their faces.Under their feet, the dusty veldt turned to mire, from mire to a pasty glue, and from glue to the consistency of cream.Bottom there was none; the bottomlessness of it only became more apparent when one or other of the horses stumbled into the hole of an ant-bear.Twice the gray broncho was on her knees; once The Nig came down so sharply that Kruger Bobs rolled forward out of his saddle, to land on his back, nose to nose with his astonished mount.Worst of all, the fever of the fight was dying out from Weldon's veins.
His pulses were slowing down, and the ceaseless jar of the gray broncho's gallop waked his wounded leg to a pain which fast became intolerable.
Kruger Bobs edged closer to his side.
"Boss sick?" he asked.
"Not altogether content, Kruger Bobs."
"Leg?" the boy questioned anxiously.
"Yes; that--and some other things."
"Me help Boss?"
"No, thank you.I'd better let the mess alone.""Boss ride Nig?" Kruger Bobs suggested, in the hushed tone in which all their talk had been carried on.
"It is better not to change."
The silence broadened, broken only by the splashing of eight hoofs in the ever-deepening mire, and by the sighing squeak of wet strap rubbing on wet strap.Then Kruger Bobs spoke again.