Jock of the Bushveld. Fitzpatrick Percy
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’shamed to; let him know every pur-tickler sort o’ blamed fool he can make of himself; an’ then he’s fit ter teach, ’cause he’ll listen, an’ watch, an’ learn – at? say thank ye fer it! Mostly you got ter make a fool o’ yourself once or twice ter know what it feels like an’ how t’ avoid it: best do it young – it teaches a boy; but it kind o’ breaks a man up!”
I kept my eyes on Rocky, avoiding the others, fearing that a look or word might tempt some one to rub it in; and it was a relief when the old man naturally and easily picked up his original point and, turning another look on Jess, said:
“You got ter begin on the pup. It ain’t her fault; it’s yours. She’s full up o’ the right stuff, but she got no show to larn! Dawgs is all different, good an’ bad – just like men: some larns quick; some’ll never larn. But thar ain’t any too plucky!”
He tossed a chip of green wood into the heart of the fire and watched it spurtle and smoke, and after quite a long pause, added:
“Thar’s times when a dawg’s got to see it through an’ be killed. It’s his dooty – same as a man’s. I seen it done!”
The last words were added with a narrowing of his eyes and a curious softening of voice – as of personal affection or regret. Others noticed it too; and in reply to a question as to how it had happened Rocky explained in a few words that a wounded buffalo had waylaid and tossed the man over its back, and as it turned again to gore him the dog rushed in between, fighting it off for a time and eventually fastening on to the nose when the buffalo still pushed on. The check enabled the man to reach his gun and shoot the buffalo; but the dog was trampled to death.
“Were you…?” some one began – and then at the look in Rocky’s face, hesitated. Rocky, staring into the fire, answered:
“It was my dawg!”
Long after the other men were asleep I lay in my blankets watching the tricks of light and shadow played by the fire, as fitfully it flamed or died away. It showed the long prostrate figures of the others as they slept full stretch on their backs, wrapped in dark blankets; the waggons, touched with unwonted colours by the flames, and softened to ghostly shadows when they died; the oxen, sleeping contentedly at their yokes; Rocky’s two donkeys, black and grey, tethered under a thorn-tree – now and then a long ear moving slowly to some distant sound and dropping back again satisfied. I could not sleep; but Rocky was sleeping like a babe. He, gaunt and spare – 6 foot 2 he must have stood – weather-beaten and old, with the long solitary trip before him and sixty odd years of life behind, he slept when he laid his head down, and was wide awake and rested when he raised it. He, who had been through it all, slept; but I, who had only listened, was haunted, bewitched, possessed, by racing thoughts; and all on account of four words, and the way he said them, “It was my dawg.”
It was still dark, with a faint promise of saffron in the East, when I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard Rocky’s voice saying, “Comin’ along, Sonny?”
One of the drivers raised his head to look at us as we passed, and then called to his voorlooper to turn the cattle loose to graze, and dropped back to sleep. We left them so and sallied out into the pure clear morning while all the world was still, while the air, cold and subtly stimulating, put a spring into the step and an extra beat or two into the pulse, fairly rinsing lungs and eyes and brain.
What is there to tell of that day? Why! nothing, really nothing, except that it was a happy day – a day of little things that all went well, and so it came to look like the birthday of the hunting. What did it matter to me that we were soaked through in ten minutes? for the dew weighed down the heavy-topped grass with clusters of crystal drops that looked like diamond sprays. It was all too beautiful for words: and so it should be in the spring-time of youth.
Rocky was different that day. He showed me things; reading the open book of nature that I could not understand. He pointed out the spoors going to and from the drinking-place, and named the various animals; showed me one more deeply indented than the rest and, murmuring “Scared I guess,” pointed to where it had dashed off out of the regular track; picked out the big splayed pad of the hyena sneaking round under cover; stopped quietly in his stride to point where a hare was sitting up cleaning itself, not ten yards off; stopped again at the sound of a clear, almost metallic, ‘clink’ and pointed to a little sandy gully in front of us down which presently came thirty or forty guinea-fowl in single file, moving swiftly, running and walking, and all in absolute silence except for that one ‘clink.’ How did he know they were there, and which way they would go, and know it all so promptly? were questions I asked myself.
We walked with the sun – that is towards the West – so that the light would show up the game and be in their eyes, making it more difficult for them to see us. We watched a little red stembuck get up from his form, shake the dew from his coat, stretch himself, and then pick his way daintily through the wet grass, nibbling here and there as he went. Rocky did not fire; he wanted something better.
After the sun had risen, flooding the whole country with golden light, and, while the dew lasted, making it glisten like a bespangled transformation scene, we came on a patch of old long grass and, parted by some twenty yards, walked through it abreast. There was a wild rush from under my feet, a yellowish body dashed through the grass, and I got out in time to see a rietbuck ram cantering away. Then Rocky, beside me, gave a shrill whistle; the buck stopped, side on, looked back at us, and Rocky dropped it where it stood. Instantly following the shot there was another rush on our left, and before the second rietbuck had gone thirty yards Rocky toppled it over in its tracks. From the whistle to the second shot it was all done in about ten seconds. To me it looked like magic. I could only gasp.
We cleaned the bucks, and hid them in a bush. There was meat enough for the camp then, and I thought we would return at once for boys to carry it; but Rocky, after a moment’s glance round, shouldered his rifle and moved on again. I followed, asking no questions. We had been gone only a few minutes when to my great astonishment he stopped and pointing straight in front asked:
“What ’ud you put up for that stump?” I looked hard, and answered confidently, “Two hundred!”
“Step it!” was his reply. I paced the distance; it was eighty-two yards.
It was very bewildering; but he helped me out a bit with “Bush telescopes, Sonny!”
“You mean it magnifies them?” I asked in surprise. “No! Magnifies the distance, like lookin’ down an avenue! Gun barr’l looks a mile long when you put yer eye to it! Open flats brings ’em closer; and ’cross water or a gully seems like you kin put yer hand on ’em?”
“I would have missed – by feet – that time Rocky!”
“You kin take it fer a start, Halve the distance and aim low!”
“Aim low, as well?”
“Thar’s allus somethin’ low: legs, an’ ground to show what you done! But thar’s no ‘outers’ marked on the sky!”
Once, as we walked along, he paused to look at some freshly overturned ground, and dropped the one word, ‘Pig.’ We turned then to the right and presently came upon some vlei ground densely covered with tall green reeds. He slowed down as we approached; I tip-toed in sympathy; and when only a few yards off he stopped and beckoned me on, and as I came abreast he raised his hand in warning and pointed into the reeds. There was a curious subdued sort of murmur of many deep voices. It conveys no idea of the fact to say they were grunts. They were softened out of all recognition: there is only one word for it, they sounded ‘confidential.’ Then as we listened I could make out the soft silky rustling of the rich undergrowth, and presently, could follow, by the quivering and waving of odd reeds, the movements of the animals themselves. They were only a few yards from us – the nearest four or five; they were busy and contented; and it was obvious they were utterly unconscious of our presence. As we peered down to the reeds from our greater height it seemed that we could see the ground and that not so much as a rat could have passed unnoticed. Yet we saw nothing!
And then, without the slightest sign, cause or warning that I could detect, in one instant every sound ceased. I watched the reeds like a cat on the pounce: never a stir