s white man, and that spells gun-runner."

"Yes? But why should he interfere with us?"

"Well, it's this way. Being in my own line himself, he knows devilish
well that no sane being--and he knows me well enough to credit me with
sanity--is going to bring a couple of trade waggons up to a remote and
almost uninhabited part of the country, that, too, where trekking with
the same is more than pain and grief, as you've seen--for trade
purposes. No. Well, then, having come to that conclusion, the first
thing he'll say to himself will be--what the devil we're up here for at
all. See?"

"Yes. But what the same devil is he doing up here himself, then, on
those terms? You don't think he has any inkling of Hlabulana's yarn?
Eh?"

"No. I don't see how he could have," answered Fleetwood. "He's cutting
timber in the Lumisana forest, and shipping it to the coast, which in
all probability spells gun-running for Hamu."

"For Hamu? Oh, this is Hamu's country, then?"

"Yes. Well, Rawson was with him before, and they know each other. But
here's where the fun comes in. Once he gets suspicious--and, of course,
he will, on the terms I told you before, he'll stick to us like our
shadows night and day, or at any rate take care that someone else does--
say, when he's too drunk to attend to business himself. Then how are we
going to set about our prospecting with the care and nicety and, above
all, freedom from interruption it requires?"

"When he's too drunk, I think you said, Joe? I read a saving clause in
that. What sort of a type--both outwardly and inwardly--is this very
attractive being?"

"Oh, outwardly he's a thick-set, shaggy, broken-nosed brute whom any
jury would hang at sight without retiring from the box. For the other
part, he hasn't a redeeming quality, unless it is that he's as plucky as
they make 'em. The only point on which no one has ever been able to
damn Bully Rawson is that of his pluck. On all others, everybody who
has ever known him is united in damning him to a lurid degree."

"H'm! Yes, it's a nuisance," mused Wyvern. "One rather reckoned on
difficulties at the hands of the noble savage, and now it seems we are
likely to find them the thickest at those of a white man and a brother.
Well, we are two to one. One or other of us must manage to be one too
many for Mr Bully Rawson."

Here Mtezani interrupted. He had been away on a private prowl of his
own, and had come back in a hurry.

"_