CHAPTER X

THE MOUNTAIN TRACK

THE shifty-eyed passenger's words were infectious. At the mere suggestion that the two lads were accomplices, Colin and Tiny were objects of thinly-veiled hostility and suspicion.

Too astounded to say a word, they stood confronting their angry fellow-passengers, until a tanned-featured man--the man who had made the practical suggestion of showing a light on the front of the engineless train--demanded abruptly:

"What have you two to say to this?"

"It is a deliberate lie," replied Tiny.

"That's an easy thing to say," snarled Londray.

"Silence!" exclaimed the other man peremptorily. "I'm taking on this business. If you wish to know, my name is Wynyard, assistant commissioner and magistrate for Nyaruma District. Got that? Right-o!"

With the utmost self-confidence, yet without any suggestion of bombast, Wynyard took command of the situation.

"Now," he continued, addressing Desmond, "I hope you won't object to my asking you a few questions. Have you met or spoken to any of that gang before?"

"Not to my knowledge," replied Tiny, after giving the names of himself and his chum.

"Now, tell me, what were your movements during, say, the last three months?"

"We were both at school in England."

"What school?"

"Stockmere."

A faint smile appeared upon Wynyard's bronzed features.

"That's Colbury Monkton, isn't it?" he inquired.

"Oh, it was," replied Tiny, "but it was shifted about a twelvemonth ago."

"H'm, that's news," observed the inquisitor. "What's the name of the Head?"

Desmond told him.

"In fact," he added, "we are both going to join the Head's brother, Colonel Narfield, at Kilembonga."

"Really," exclaimed Wynyard in surprise. "Well, gentlemen," he added, addressing the other passengers, "I feel certain that this accusation is utterly unfounded, and I am willing to take all responsibility of being answerable for the correctness of Sinclair's and Desmond's answers. If you wish to know the reasons on which I base my assumptions, they are that I am an old boy of Stockmere. All I can suggest as to why these two gentlemen were not plundered like the rest of us was on account of their youth. Apparently the chief bandit was a bit of a sentimentalist. Palaver ended."

Colin and Tiny felt greatly relieved at escaping from what might have been an awkward predicament. They knew--especially the former--that suspicion is "like tar." It sticks, and takes drastic measures to remove it.

Whether the rest of the passengers saw eye to eye with Wynyard did not much matter. They had found a new friend under difficult conditions as strangers in a strange land, and more, there was a strong bond drawing them together--the fact that all three were Old Stockmerians.

No one thought of going to sleep. The passengers, while awaiting the return of the engine, beguiled themselves with talking.

Wynyard eagerly plied the two chums with questions concerning the old school. He had left it fifteen years ago to take up a Civil Service appointment. Dr. Narfield he knew well, but the names of the assistant masters--Collier, Bowser, Blake, and Bridger--were new to him.

"I must make Colonel Herbert Narfield's acquaintance," he observed. "From all accounts, he's a rattling good sort. I'm at Nyaruma. It's only one hundred and fifty miles from Kilembonga, and one hundred and fifty miles in this country is a very small distance, when one's nearest neighbour--not counting the natives--might be twenty or thirty miles away. So when you've a chance, look me up. I may be able to get you some shooting. We've still a few elephants and lions knocking around."

Just as the African dawn was breaking with the rapidity common to the tropics the engine returned. It was running backwards, pushing a couple of large trucks crowded with armed men and horses for the pursuit of the train bandits.

"Don't suppose we stand much chance of following their spoor," remarked one of the armed volunteers. "But we'll try our level best to collar them. You say there were ten? H'm, a big party to make themselves scarce. This is the first occasion we've had an affair like this since we downed Fritz out there at any rate, we'll make the beggars shift. It won't be healthy for them anywhere within a hundred miles of the railway."

At length the tedious, enforced wait came to an end, and the engine, puffing laboriously, resumed its stiff climb into the East African hinterland.

Although the air was still very hot, and the sun glared pitilessly upon the baked earth, Colin and Tiny, tired with excitement, slept heavily.

They did not wake until the train slowed down and came to a standstill at Tabora Station. Wynyard was no longer there; while the chums were sleeping soundly he had alighted at a place ninety miles away. Of Londray they saw no sign. He had discreetly betaken himself off to another compartment.

Colonel Narfield was waiting for them. He greeted them warm-heartedly and with unconcealed pleasure.

"We'll have grub before we start," he said, after he had superintended the efforts of four muscular blacks to carry the new arrivals' trunks and packing-cases from the train.

"Bring your suit-cases. They'll go in the car. The heavier stuff will have to go up by the bullock waggon. Well, how's everybody at Stockmere?"

The meal over, Herbert Narfield, having given final instructions to the black servants in charge of the bullock waggon, brought round the car, which, Colin noticed, was of an American make similar to those he had seen in Dar-es-Salaam.

"Hop in," said the Colonel. "Colin, you can sit alongside me; you, Desmond, in the back with McFrazer. That rifle's loaded, but the safety-catch is set."

With a gentle reminder that one has to be prepared for such slight occasions when a lion or a leopard puts in an appearance, Colonel Narfield set the car in motion.

McFrazer was the colonel's former batman, an alert soldier of the old school, who had come through the Great War with the Mons Medal and Star, the Military Medal, three wound stripes, and an inexhaustible fund of dry humour. Like most Scots, he was a born engineer, and on that account was indispensable during the numerous encounters between Colonel Narfield and the Yankee motor-car.

There was no mistaking the fact, Herbert Narfield could drive. He was somewhat inclined to be reckless, and he did not spare the engine. The latter he regarded as a mere automatic machine, that, once started, ran on "for ever" or until it "konked out." Sometimes the "konking-out" function was postponed by the well-meant action of McFrazer, who, leaning forward, would prod his master in the back and roar:

"Eh, mon; you'm daen' fine. But jist a wee bit back on the ignition. Weel, let her bide a' that."

Then, his sensitive ears confirming the fact that the engine was no longer "knocking," he would lean back and gaze vacantly at an imaginary object yards in front, between the heads of the two occupants of the front seat, until symptoms of another mechanical eruption roused him into activity.

For several miles the road was fair, as far as African roads went. It had been constructed by forced labour under Hun supervision, and as such was made thoroughly and scientifically. But presently the road deteriorated into a mere track, rutted and impeded with stones and boulders. By a series of terrific gradients it climbed into what appeared to be impassable mountain fastnesses.

Sometimes it plunged through a rock-strewn kloof, then it swung dizzily round the shoulder of a precipitous rock. Sometimes it vanished under a sea of wind-ridged sand, to reappear in the guise of the bed of a long-dried-up mountain torrent.

"We're a good way from Kilembonga yet," observed Narfield. "It's a different type of country from this. I'm rather anxious to get into more civilised parts before nightfall."

Colin tried to make a suitable reply, but his teeth were chattering like castinets owing to the terrific bumping of the car. In spite of the cushions, he was feeling bruised all over.

Rather vaguely he wondered why men drove motor-cars in East Africa. Had the differential suddenly decided to part company and lie down in the road for a rest, Colin would not have been unduly surprised. It seemed marvellous that the swaying, jolting car held together.

"It's down hill for the next five miles," continued Colonel Narfield. "Look on your left; isn't that a fine bit?"

Colin did so. The road, slightly on the down grade, was working round the edge of an immense mass of rock, that rose almost sheer from the valley, a thousand feet below. The broad terrace--it was about twenty yards wide--in which the road ran, was the only track of any size on the face of the cliff, and, being partially overhung by the mass of rock beyond it and the summit, appeared narrower than it actually was. Beyond the valley, dense with sub-tropical foliage, and already shaded from the rays of the setting sun, were range upon range of rugged mountains.

Even as Sinclair was drinking in the magnificent grandeur of the panoramic view, there was a terrific report. For the moment Colin thought that one of the occupants of the back seat had discharged a rifle; but the next instant, as the car slithered and swung round at right angles to its original direction, he realised that a tyre had burst.

Then, with the almost instantaneous working of his brain, he was conscious of something to which the matter of a burst tyre was a mere nothing, for, with the engine still working and the clutch in, the car was heading straight for the brink of the precipice.