ion of adventure hold out anything more alluring? But--he said
nothing more on the subject then. Harley Greenoak was sometimes away
from camp--on mysterious absences.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

THE EXPRESS-RIDERS.

Corporal Sandgate and Trooper Stokes rode forth from the Police camp on
express duty.

They were entrusted with very important despatches indeed; to the effect
that, owing to the accidental explosion of an ammunition waggon, the
large force of Frontier Armed and Mounted Police in camp at the Kangala
might, at any moment, find itself alarmingly short of that essential
article; and containing urgent injunctions to the authorities in charge
of the border post--where an ample supply was stored--to send on a
sufficiency of the same, under escort, without a moment's delay.

The two men had been specially selected for this duty. Sandgate was a
young Englishman of good family, who, like many a superfluous or younger
son at that time, had emigrated as a recruit for the frontier corps,
beginning at the bottom. He was a fine, sportsmanlike, athletic fellow,
who could ride anything and anywhere, and had soon got his first hoist
on the steps of the ladder of promotion. The other man, Stokes, was a
wiry, hard-bitten Colonial, no longer quite young, who had been some
years in the Police, but had twice lost his step as corporal owing to an
inconvenient hankering after the bottle. When away from its
temptations, as in the present case, he was one of the most useful men
in the Force. Each, we have said, had been specially picked for this
duty; Sandgate for his pluck and dash, and a reputation for readiness of
resource which he had managed to set up, Stokes for his knowledge of
veldt-craft.

The two express-riders started from the Kangala Camp at moon-rise, which
took place early in the evening. It was calculated that, by riding all
night, they should reach their objective, Fort Isiwa, not much later
than the following midday. They could, by no means, cover the distance
in anything like a straight line, nor was there, in many places,
anything that could be called a track, which was where Stokes's
veldt-craft was to come in: even then their route skirted the turbulent
Gudhluka Reserve, whose swarming inhabitants were just then in a
particularly dangerous state of simmering unrest, and would as likely as
not make short work of a couple of members of a body whom they loved not
at all, given an opportunity. Once beyo