If McCann thought he was going to frighten his employer he was destined to be disappointed. Oscar took a step forward, and there was a look in his eye that McCann had never seen there before.

"Don't try my patience too severely," said he. "If you do you will be a different-looking man when I get through with you. There's no surgeon in this country, and I don't know whether the Boers could patch you up or not."

The threat implied in these words took all desire for a fight out of McCann. He sank back on the dissel-boom, rested his elbows on his knees, and fastened his eyes on the ground.

"Now," continued Oscar, throwing all the emphasis he could into his words, "I tell you once for all, and I want you to bear in mind that I mean just what I say, neither more nor less, that I have put up with your cowardice and treachery long enough, and just as surely as I detect you in the attempt to throw so much as a straw in my path, just so surely will I turn you adrift on the plain, to find your way back to Zurnst as best you can. If you had one of your own countrymen to deal with he would wear a rawhide out over your back, and he would serve you right, too."

So saying, Oscar climbed into the wagon, and proceeded to secure everything in it that could be put under lock and key. But first he took out of one of his chests a large envelope, like the one McCann had destroyed, and drew from it a map which was an exact counterpart of the one Mr. Lawrence had given him.

"That was rather a bright idea of mine," said he after he had made sure that the contents of the chest had not been tampered with. "It is well, in this country, to have duplicates of everything. McCann didn't do me as much injury as he thought he did, but it was a contemptible trick, all the same."

"What is the meaning of that move, I wonder?" thought McCann, who was making his employer's tea at his own fire. "Two weeks ago I should have been sorry to see him do that, but now I don't care. The Boers will take me, for they told me so."

Having put all his books and papers where he thought they would be safe from McCann's prying eyes, Oscar got out of the wagon, walked up to his own fire, and took possession of his camp-chair.

"Now, McCann," said he, "I want a plain understanding with you, and after I have had it I shall never again refer to this matter. Not being blind, I have seen for a long time that you are not contented here, and if you want to leave me and go with those Boers I am quite willing that you should do so. All I ask is that you will leave openly and aboveboard, like a man."

"Oh, I don't want to go!" answered McCann with more haste and emphasis than the occasion seemed to require. "I don't deny that I should like to see Leichtberg again; but those transport-riders are not going that way. They are bound for the desert, and if I should go with them I should not see home again for eighteen months at least. You'll be going back yourself in less time than that."

"I certainly hope so. Then you think you had better stay with me, do you?"

"Of course I do. That was the bargain I made."

"We'll not say anything about that," replied Oscar with some impatience. "You bargained to act as my after-rider, too, and you have never done it. If you want to stay, all right. You can keep yourself employed about the camp, since you are afraid to go out of it; but mind you, now, no more treachery. Is my tea ready?"

Oscar worked late over the leopard that night, and when his task was finished lay down in his cot and went to sleep, lulled by the roaring of the lions and the laughing of the hyenas.

He smiled whenever he thought how terrified he was when he first heard those sounds. Now he paid no more attention to the lions than he did to the prairie wolves that howled about his camp when he was journeying to and from the foot-hills.

When he awoke the next morning the Dutchmen were in motion. They did not like such a neighbor as Oscar had shown himself to be, and were going off to hunt up another fountain, at which they could rest their cattle and fill their water-butts in peace.

"Good riddance," thought Oscar while he performed his ablutions in the bucket which he always found waiting for him, filled with fresh water. "I know now that I did just right last night. If they had found that I was afraid of them they would have taken full control of that pool, and I could have taken my choice between seeing my cattle perish of thirst and inspanning and hunting up another water-hole. Now what shall I do to-day?"

This question and the discussion of the breakfast that McCann had served up for him occupied Oscar's attention during the next twenty minutes, and the coffee was finished and a decision reached at about the same moment.

To begin with, there was no earthly use in hunting in the direction in which the Boers had gone, for they would scare all the game along their route.

He would spend the day on the other side of the water-course and try to shoot another of that herd of koodoos (he had already forgotten the firm resolution he had made that he would never again try stalking under an African sun), for he wanted to secure two of each variety of the fauna whenever he could get them.

So he gave the necessary orders, and in a quarter of an hour more he and Thompson were ready for the hunt. This time they each carried a canteen filled with water, and all the dogs went with them.

This was another fatiguing day for Oscar, but, on the whole, it was an exciting and glorious one. He succeeded in shooting another fine specimen of the antelope tribe, and was the involuntary spectator of a scene he would not have missed for a good deal, but which he would not willingly have witnessed again at so close quarters under any consideration.

Such a sight as Oscar saw that day is never seen anywhere out of Africa. There was "game, game, nothing but game," all around him, but it was very wild, and would not permit him to come within range.

As fast as he advanced immense herds of wilde-beests, elands, quaggas, and zebras would scamper away to the right and left, and wheeling about like bodies of trained cavalry that were about to harass an enemy's flank, they would halt and begin feeding on the very ground the hunters had just passed over.

Having looked in vain for the koodoos among the hills and rocks, Oscar and his after-rider dismounted, under the friendly branches of a mimosa tree, to rest and eat their lunch.

"It would never do for us to go back to the wagon empty-handed, would it, Thompson?" said Oscar as he sipped the warm water from his canteen and looked with longing eyes toward the large bodies of antelopes that seemed to be gathering in the lower end of a little valley about a mile away. "And since the game will not let me go within gunshot of it, don't you suppose you could make it come to me? Couldn't you go around to leeward of it and make the dogs drive it this way?"

The Kaffir said he could.

"Of course I shouldn't stay near this tree, for there is no place to hide. I think that rock out there"—here Oscar pointed to a little boulder that lay on the plain about a quarter of a mile away—"would be a good place of concealment, don't you? Very well. Take the dogs out and see what you can do for me."

Oscar added such suggestions and instructions as he thought necessary, and when the Kaffir had finished his lunch he mounted his horse, called to the dogs, and rode away, leaving the boy to his meditations.

When he had been gone an hour Oscar picked up his rifle, and began the laborious task of creeping a quarter of a mile on his hands and knees to reach the boulder of which he had spoken.

He had timed the Kaffir's movements with tolerable accuracy, and he had not been in his place of concealment more than ten minutes before a cloud of dust arose in the distance, telling him that the game was in motion.

The cloud extended a long distance on each side of the boulder, and from it there issued a rumbling noise that sounded like the roar of an approaching express train. Then it occurred to Oscar, for the first time, that he had been just a little foolhardy. He looked anxiously to the right and left of him, but there was no place of refuge nearer than the tree under which he and Thompson had eaten their lunch. There was no time to run back to it, for that "heavy brigade" was charging down upon him with the speed of the wind.

"Good gracious!" soliloquized Oscar. "What if they should run over me and trample me to death?"

His heart beat rapidly at the thought, and it required the exercise of all the nerve he possessed to enable him to stand his ground.