orgot to tell you, Tom," said Mr Manning, addressing Lane,
"Puff-adder Brown's about again. What's he up to just now, think you?
No good, I'll bet. Kate was out for a ride in the veldt this morning
before breakfast, and met him as she came home by the Mafeking Road.
The infernal rascal had the impudence to speak to her too, and ask after
me in a sneering way. He owes me one over that cattle-running job five
years ago, when I wiped his eye, and saved old Van Zyl's oxen for him."

"Puff-adder Brown, eh!" answered Tom Lane, with a lift of the eyebrows.
"Where can he have sprang from, and what's he after? I wonder he has
the cheek to show his face in Vryburg. I thought he was away in
Waterberg somewhere."

"I can enlighten you," broke in Joe Granton. "I heard this afternoon.
Puff-adder Brown has an extra light wagon outspanned with fourteen good
oxen at Jackal's Pan. He rode into the town late last night to see a
pal, and there's something or other in the wind. What that is, I don't
know. It can't be cattle-lifting nowadays; those Stellaland luxuries
are over. Perhaps it's a new trading trip. Waterberg's played out, I
fancy, and the Dutchmen don't much fancy Puff-adder."

Puff-adder Brown, it may be remarked, was a notorious border character,
who, as trader, cattle-stealer, horse-lifter, freebooter, and general
ruffian, was well-known. In the Bechuana troubles some years before the
man had served as volunteer alternately on either side, sometimes
throwing in his lot with the Dutch, at others siding with the natives.
In either case, cattle and land plunder had been his prime object. In
the quieter times following the British occupation he seldom showed much
in Vryburg or Mafeking, judging rightly that his presence was
objectionable to most decent men. The man was strong and unscrupulous,
a bully, and violent where he dared; and his nickname, "Puff-adder," had
been bestowed upon him from a curious swelling of the neck observable in
him in moments of anger.

In half an hour more the last good-byes were said, the farewell
stirrup-cups partaken of; the horses were at the door. The three
adventurers rode forth into the broad moonlight, and were soon at the
outspan, where their wagon stood ready. A little later the oxen were in
their yokes, and the trek began.

For the next month the expedition moved steadily north-west into the
Kalahari, trekking with infinite toil from one scant pit of water to
another. Dur