1. FLAME OF THE LOWVELD
CHAPTER 1
Atop the high, rocky ridge of a crest that forms one slope of a deep ravine, the scraping of shoes on hard, rough rocks can be heard occasionally. If someone was nearby, they would occasionally have seen the moving head and shoulders of a girl who is making her way between loose rock blocks. In her hand, she holds the reins of a horse, a gracefully built yellow fox.
She has to jump from stone to stone here and there and laboriously leads her horse a distance through the rocks. Then she hooks the reins onto a shrub and walks a little further on her own. Crouched, as if stalking something, she now moves between the rock blocks. Finally, she carefully reaches the very top of the crest. Behind a few wild mopane trees, she creeps closer to a large flat rock, and then she lies down on it and brings a pair of binoculars to her eyes.
She keeps the binoculars focused on the wide, wooded ravine far below her. From this height, the wild trees below look like tiny bushes.
She is a well-built girl, muscular and lithe, with a bush of rich, glossy black hair. She wears a blouse of brown silk, with long sleeves, and men’s riding breeches and gaiters. To one side on the flat rock where she is lying, she has carefully placed a rifle.
It is a brand-new Portuguese rifle that her father bought for her in Delagoa Bay. It is so new that the year it was made and which is engraved on the barrel, is still this year’s date. 1885.
In this whole region, she does not believe there is anyone else who has such a beautiful new rifle. But it was precisely its beauty and its newness that made her do the wrong thing today. She only has a few cartridges left for the rifle, but when she rode into the veld, she just didn’t want to leave the rifle behind. And she knows now that if she hadn’t brought the rifle, she would have spared herself the trouble and would have gone to get her revolver and hip bandolier, which at the moment would have made her feel much safer.
She moves the binoculars from place to place. Finally, she finds what she is looking for. It is four moving figures far down in the ravine. When she directs the binoculars at them, she can see them very clearly. They are horse riders. They ride one after the other, at a slow pace, as if both they and their horses are very tired.
The dark-haired brunette takes the binoculars away from her eyes for a moment and a frown of contemplation appears between her eyebrows. These four men must be the four cattle thieves that Mr. Toerien is looking for. He thinks they have headed towards the bushveld plains, and they have been on the opposite side all this time, here in the mountains.
She found their tracks when she went riding this morning and it gave her the idea that they could be here.
These four men only spent one evening, two weeks ago, at her and her father’s house. They talked for a long time with her father and his foreman. If Mr. Toerien were to find out, what would he think of that?
The girl shakes her head slowly back and forth as if she has discovered something that surprises her.
There are silver earrings on her ears that softly jingle. Then she brings her binoculars to her eyes again and examines the ravine up and down.
Years ago, her father promised her that the things of the past were forever behind her. She still remembers it well. It was on a rainy night in the year 1879. She was then just a fourteen-year-old girl.
Suddenly, she stops the binoculars and her fingers stiffen around them. There is another surprise for her because she now notices that in this lonely, desolate wilderness there is actually a fifth person as well, besides herself.
She is completely surprised to see the other man walking a little higher up in the ravine. She expected the four horse riders because she encountered their tracks and came here with a specific purpose to be able to observe them well wit
