Beside them, the nearer hills rose in brick-red patches against the sky.Farther away, the brick color changed to gray and, still beyond, to misty purple.Before them rolled the open, khaki-colored veldt dotted in one direction by a ragged spot of black that flowed over the crest of each ridge and vanished from sight for a moment before rising from the hollow to flow over the crest of the ridge beyond.And towards the ragged spot of black there rushed onward, at an ever-lessening distance, the khaki-colored streak of the foremost rank of C Squadron, led for the moment by a little gray broncho whose hoofs touched the ground only to spurn it backwards.
The chase was long and hot; but the end was in sight.Directly across the path of the quarry stretched a low line of willows showing the course of the stream beneath, and, a few hundred feet this side of the willows, scattered clumps of green marked as many scattered dwellings.By the largest clump, the quarry halted and turned to bay, and the pursuers, unable to check their speed, rode down upon it and crashed through its ranks, regardless of the pitiless.fire, then, sweeping around on the arc of a mammoth circle, took up their position in the shelter of a walled kraal, only a few hundred yards away.Then for a moment they halted, face to face and in absolute silence.
Even after her mad race, the little gray broncho was breathing deeply and easily; but Weldon could feel his own breath come short.
Banged in open order before him were a full half-hundred of the enemy, bearded, black-coated, bandoliered, grim and stolid and ripe of years.Beside him were the new captain of the troop and seven men.They were and alert; but there were only nine of them in all.
And the rest of the troop, it seemed to him, were half the veldt-length away.Vaguely he wondered whether their distant khaki coats would look as purple as did the distant khaki-colored hills.Then, quite inconsequently, as he raised his rifle, he noticed that one of the Boers had a button hanging loosely on its threads from the front of his coat.He was rather surprised, the next instant, to see the Boer pitch forward headlong in the dust.It was some time afterward that he thought to connect the falling with the crack of his own rifle.
Piggie bounded sidewise, as the mount of the trooper next Weldon dropped and lay whimpering like a hurt child.Then she steadied to the touch of Weldon's hand upon her neck.It was not the first time he had guided her, unscathed, through a leaden shower.She would trust him yet once again.As he raised his rifle, her wiry legs were as steady as four iron rods.He saw another Boer fall and yet another and a third; but one khaki-colored figure lay stiffly beside him, and another was dragging itself away to a corner of the kraal, to give greater space to its unwounded comrades.And still the bullets whizzed about them, thick and ever thicker.
