he road made a bend towards Krantz
Hoek. He had come straight to tell Baas Simcox.

"Well, we can't do anything to-night," declared the latter, "first thing
in the morning, I'll go round and investigate. I wonder if that's the
brute that chevied the Alexandria post cart last year? The driver
tootled his horn, but it had the opposite effect intended. The horses
bolted and upset the cart against a tree. The driver was killed--not in
the same way--gored to death. In fact this brute is suspected of having
done for half a dozen in all, and it's very likely true. He set up a
perfect scare at one time, like an Indian man-eater would."

"They must be a jolly nuisance," said Dick. "If I lived here I'd jolly
well thin them down."

"Would you? Fine of 100 pounds a head. They're strictly preserved."

"Well, it's a beastly shame."

"So it is," said Harley Greenoak. "But buffalo rank first among game
called dangerous, especially in country like this." And he told a yarn
or two to bear out his statement.

One yarn led to another, and it was rather later than usual when they
went to bed.

The story he had just heard fired Dick Selmes' imagination to such an
extent that when he got to his room he felt it was impossible to go to
sleep or even to turn in. He hung out of his open window, and in the
sombre shadow of the depths of the moonlit bush, seemed to see the whole
horrid tragedy re-enacted. The boom of night-flying beetles, the chirp
of the tree-frog, the whistle of plover, now invisible overhead, now
lighting on the ground in darting white spots, were all to him as the
poetic voices of the weirder night which could contain such tragical
possibilities: and it seemed that each ghostly sound--whether of
mysterious rustling, or the clatter of a stone--heralded the appearance
of the terrible beast, pacing forth into the open, its wicked, massive
horns still smeared with the unfortunate man's blood. Then an idea
struck him--struck him between the eyes, so to speak--for it was a
momentous one. What if he--?

He got out his double gun, slipped a Martini cartridge into the rifle
breech, a heavy charge of loepers into the smooth-bore, and two or three
spare ones into his pocket. The window was only his own height from the
ground. Out of this he dropped quietly, so as not to rouse the house.

But he reckoned without the dogs. Those faithful animals immediately
sprang up, and from all directions came for him open-mo