pointing out a spot about three quarters of a mile
away. "Prior, you take the other side, and both of you stand about
seventy yards from the _sluit_, and keep well up on the rise till you
get to your places. Edala, you take Evelyn with you. The usual place,
you know--by the red slab. There ought to be enough to keep all hands
lively to-day, we haven't hunted this kloof for half a year. I'll drive
down, with Manamandhla and Mlamvu. Give you all twenty minutes before
we start," getting out his watch.

"Right," cried Elvesdon. "Come along, Prior."

Their way lay together up to a certain point. Then Edala and Evelyn
plunged down through a straggling, gappy opening between the thicker
recesses of the bush.

"This looks as if it was going to be exciting," said the latter, none
too much at her ease among this kind of rather rough riding.

"By Jove, and it is," returned Edala, who in moments of animation was
apt to be unconventional in her speech. "We'll leave the horses here,"
she went on, sliding from her saddle, and giving her companion--who
although a good `seat' in the Row, was not quite so ready at getting on
and off as one who scarcely remembered when she could not ride--a
helping hand to doing likewise.

"Now, come along," she said, starting downwards among the loose stones,
yet hardly disturbing one of them, "and don't make any more row than you
can help."

A very few minutes of this descent brought them to a place where the
bush forked away into a comparatively open space. Below, the dry
watercourse ran, some sixty yards distant. About half that distance a
low, broad, flat rock of a reddish tint lay like a huge table.

"You always get a shot here," whispered Edala. "The bucks always scoot
along the same track, just the other side of the red slab. I pull off
on them at five yards this side of it, then, if I miss, I get them with
the second barrel when they show up beyond it."

"Shall we--shall you--get a chance to-day?" whispered the other, who had
caught her companion's excitement.

"Rather. You'll see. But get back a little more. You're showing too
much. An old bushbuck ram is no end of a _slim_ beast. The least sight
of you, and he'll double back. Ah! Now they're starting."

"Are these bucks dangerous?" asked Evelyn, her excitement for the moment
somewhat clouded by the feminine instinct of scare. It would have been
different, of course, had she been beside one of the men--her host o