e to
start any tricks, wouldn't our friend Ben see his way to making his
little bit then?"

"I don't believe he would; and what's more to the point, I don't see how
he could. But I say--hang gun-running. Don't you get smashed upon his
daughter. She's a record of a fine girl."

"So I've heard from you chaps until I'm sick. You all seem smashed on
her."

"By Jove! She can ride and shoot with any of us," went on Meyrick,
rather enthusiastically, which caused his comrade to guffaw.

"I don't freeze on to `male' women," he said.

"You just wait until you see her," was the rejoinder. "Not much `male'
about her."

"What a chap you are on the other sex, Meyrick. What's the good of a
fellow in the force, with no chance of promotion, bothering about all
that. Much better make ourselves jolly as we are."

"Good old cynic, Frank," said the other. "Wait till you see Verna
Halse, and I'll bet you get smashed. Nice name `Verna,' isn't it?"

"Don't know it's anything out of the ordinary. But cynic or not, here
we are, a brace of superfluous and utterly impecunious sons of two
worthy country parsons, bunked out here to fish for ourselves. You'll
be made a Sub-Inspector soon, you've got it in you. I shan't, and I
haven't. So I'm not going to bother about `skirt.'"

They had reached the spot where the tongue of forest points off onto the
road edge and there ends. The ground was more open here.

"Hot as blazes!" commented Francis, swabbing his forehead. "What's
this? _Au! Gahle--gahle_!"

The latter as three native women, squatted in the grass by the roadside,
stood up to give the salute, the suddenness whereof caused the horses to
shy. In the grass beside them lay several bundles such as native women
often carry when passing from place to place, only these were unusually
large.

The two police troopers fired off a humorous expostulation--they had
both qualified in their knowledge of the Zulu for extra linguistic pay--
and passed on their way. The track grew steeper and steeper, and the
sun hotter and yet more hot. They would soon be at Ben Halse's store,
with the prospect of an excellent dinner and a welcome rest before them.
And behind them, in a contrary direction, laughing to themselves,
travelled the three women they had just passed, bending under the burden
of the loads poised upon their heads--the said loads containing each a
goodly quarter of koodoo meat, of the meat of the lordly koodoo bull,
t