“distant hills are always green,” and the best gold further on. that is a law of nature—human nature—which is quite superior to facts; and thus the world moves on.
so from the lydenburg goldfields prospectors ‘humping their swags’ or driving their small pack-donkeys spread afield, and transport-riders with their long spans and rumbling waggons followed, cutting a wider track where traders with winding strings of carriers had already ventured on. but the hunters had gone first. there were great hunters whose names are known; and others as great who missed the accident of fame; and after them hunters who traded, and traders who hunted. and so too with prospectors, diggers, transport-riders and all.
between the goldfields and the nearest port lay the bushveld, and game enough for all to live on.
thus, all were hunters of a sort, but the great hunters—the hunters of big game—were apart; we were the smaller fry, there to admire and to imitate.
trophies, carried back with pride or by force of habit, lay scattered about, neglected and forgotten, round the outspans, the tents of lone prospectors, the cabins of the diggers, and the grass wayside shanties of the traders. how many a ‘record’ head must have gone then, when none had thought of time or means to save them! horns and skins lay in jumbled heaps in the yards or sheds of the big trading stores. the splendid horns of the koodoo and sable, and a score of others only less beautiful, could be seen nailed up in crude adornment of the roughest walls; nailed up, and then unnoticed and forgotten! and yet not quite! for although to the older hands they were of no further interest, to the new-comer they spoke of something yet to see, and something to be done; and the sight set him dreaming of the time when he too would go a-hunting and bring his trophies home.
perched on the edge of the berg, we overlooked the wonder-world of the bushveld, where the big game roamed in thousands and the “wildest tales were true.” living on the fringe of a hunter’s paradise, most of us were drawn into it from time to time, for shorter or longer spells, as opportunity and our circumstances allowed; and little by little one got to know the names, appearances, and habits of the many kinds of game below. long talks in the quiet nights up there under waggons, in grass shelters in the woods, or in the wattle-and-daub shanties of the diggers, where men passed to and fro and swapped lies, as the polite phrase went, were our ‘night’s entertainments,’ when younger hands might learn much that was useful and true, and more that was neither.
it was a school of grown-up schoolboys; no doubt a hard one, but it had its playground side, and it was the habit of the school to ‘drop on to’ any breach of the unwritten laws, to ‘rub in’ with remorseless good humour the mistakes that were made, and to play upon credulity with a shamelessness and nerve quite paralysing to the judgment of the inexperienced. yet, with it all, there was a kindliness and quick instinct of ‘fair doos’ which tempered the wind and, in the main, gave no one more than was good for him.
there the new boy had to run the gauntlet, and, if without a watchful instinct or a friendly hint, there was nothing to warn him of it. when faulkner—dragged to the piano—protested that he remembered nothing but a mere ‘morceau,’ he was not conscious of transgression, but a delighted audience caught up the word, and thenceforth he was known only as ‘ankore’—harry the sailor having explained that ‘more so’ was a recognised variant.
“johnny-come-lately’s got to learn” was held to be adequate reason for letting many a beginner buy his experience, while those who had been through it all watched him stumble into the well-known pitfalls. it would no doubt have been a much more comfortable arrangement all round had there been a polite ignoring of each other’s blunders and absurdities. but that is not the way of schools where the spirit of fun plays its useful part; and, after all, the lesson well ‘rubbed in’ is well remembered.
the new assayer, primed by us with tales of sable antelope round macmac camp, shot old jim hill’s only goat, and had to leave the carcase with a note of explanation—jim being out when he called. what he heard from us when he returned, all prickly with remorse and shame, was a liberal education; but what he remembers best is jim’s note addressed that evening to our camp:
“boys! jim hill requests your company to dinner to-morrow, sunday!”
“mutton!”
as the summer spent itself, and whispers spread around of new strikes further on, a spirit of restlessness—a touch of trek fever—came upon us, and each cast about which way to try his luck. our camp was the summer headquarters of two transport-riders, and when many months of hard work, timber-cutting on the berg, contracting for the companies, pole-slipping in the bush, and other things, gave us at last a ‘rise,’ it seemed the natural thing to put it all into waggons and oxen, and go transport-riding too.
the charm of a life of freedom and complete independence—a life in which a man goes as and where he lists, and carries his home with him—is great indeed; but great too was the fact that hunting would go with it.
how the little things that mark a new departure stamp themselves indelibly on the memory! a flower in the hedgerow where the roads divide will mark the spot in one’s mind for ever; and yet a million more, before and after, and all as beautiful, are passed unseen. in memory, it is all as fresh, bright and glorious as ever: only the years have gone. the start, the trek along the plateau, the crystal streams, the ferns and trees, the cool pure air; and, through and over all, the quite intoxicating sense of freedom! then came the long slow climb to spitzkop where the berg is highest and where our ascent began. for there, with africa’s contrariness, the highest parts banked up and buttressed by gigantic spurs are most accessible from below, while the lower edges of the plateau are cut off sheer like the walls of some great fortress. there, near spitzkop, we looked down upon the promised land; there, stood upon the outmost edge, as a diver on his board, and paused and looked and breathed before we took the plunge.
it is well to pitch one’s expectations low, and so stave off disappointments. but counsels of perfection are wasted on the young, and when accident combines with the hopefulness of youth to lay the colours on in all their gorgeousness, what chance has wisdom?
“see here, young feller!” said wisdom, “don’t go fill yourself up with tomfool notions ’bout lions and tigers waitin’ behind every bush. you won’t see one in a twelvemonth! most like you won’t see a buck for a week! you don’t know what to do, what to wear, how to walk, how to look, or what to look for; and you’ll make as much noise as a traction engine. this ain’t open country: it’s bush; they can see and hear, and you can’t. an’ as for big game, you won’t see any for a long while yet, so don’t go fool yourself!”
excellent! but fortune in a sportive mood ordained that the very first thing we saw as we outspanned at saunderson’s on the very first day in the bushveld, was the fresh skin of a lion stretched out to dry. what would the counsels of solomon himself have weighed against that wet skin?
wisdom scratched its head and stared: “well, i am completely sugared!”
of course it was a fluke. no lions had been seen in the locality for several years; but the beginner, filled with all the wildest expectations, took no heed of that. if the wish be father to the thought, then surely fact may well beget conviction. it was so in this case, at any rate, and thus not all the cold assurances of wisdom could banish visions of big game as plentiful as partridges.
a party had set out upon a tiger hunt to clear out one of those marauders who used to haunt the kloofs of the berg and make descents upon the kaffir herds of goats and sheep; but there was a special interest in this particular tiger, for he had killed one of the white hunters in the last attempt to get at him a few weeks before. starting from the store, the party of men and boys worked their way towards the kloof, and the possibility of coming across a lion never entered their heads. no notice was taken of smaller game put up from time to time as they moved carelessly along; a rustle on the left of the line was ignored, and bill saunderson was as surprised as bill ever could be to see a lion facing him at something like six or seven yards. the lion, with head laid level and tail flicking ominously, half crouched for its spring. bill’s bullet glanced along the skull, peeling off the skin. “it was a bad shot,” he said afterwards, in answer to the beginner’s breathless questions. “he wasn’t hurt: just sank a little like a pointer when you check him; but before he steadied up again i took for the nose and got him. you see,” he added thoughtfully, “a lion’s got no forehead: it is all hair.”
that was about all he had to say; but, little store as he may have set on it, the tip was never forgotten and proved of much value to at least one of our party years afterwards. to this day the picture of a lion brings up that scene—the crouching beast, faced by a man with a long brown beard, solemn face, and clear unfaltering eyes; the swift yet quiet action of reloading; and the second shot an inch or so lower, because “a lion’s got no forehead: it’s all hair.”
the shooting of a lion, fair and square, and face to face, was the blue riband of the bush, and no detail would have seemed superfluous; but bill, whose eye nothing could escape, had, like many great hunters, a laggard tongue. only now and then a look of grave amusement lighted up his face to show he recognised the hungry enthusiasm and his own inability to satisfy it. the skin with the grazed stripe along the nose, and the broken skull, were handled and looked at many times, and the story was pumped from every kaffir—all voluble and eager, but none eye-witnesses. bob, the sociable and more communicative, who had been nearest his brother, was asked a hundred questions, but all he had to say was that the grass was too long for him to see what happened: he reckoned that it was “a pretty near thing after the first shot; but bill’s all right!”
to me it was an absurd and tiresome affectation to show interest in any other topic, and when, during that evening, conversation strayed to other subjects, it seemed waste of time and priceless opportunity. bob responded good-naturedly to many crude attempts to head them back to the entrancing theme, but the professional interest in rates, loads, rivers, roads, disease, drought, and ‘fly,’ was strong in the older transport-riders, as it should have been, but, for the time at least, was not, in me. if diplomacy failed, however, luck was not all out; for when all the pet subjects of the road had been thrashed out, and it was about time to turn in, a stray question brought the reward of patience.
“have you heard if jim reached durban all right?”
“yes! safely shipped.”
“you got some one to take him right through?”
“no! a dutchman took him to lydenburg, and i got tom hardy, going back empty, to take him along from there.”
“what about feeding?”
“i sent some goats,” said bob, smiling for a moment at some passing thought, and then went on: “tom said he had an old span that wouldn’t mind it. we loaded him up at parker’s, and i cleared out before he got the cattle up. but they tell me there was a gay jamboree when it came to inspanning; and as soon as they got up to the other waggons and the young bullocks winded jim, they started off with their tails up—a regular stampede, voorloopers and drivers yelling like mad, all the loose things shaking out of the waggons, and tom nearly in a fit from running, shouting and swearing.”
judging by the laughter, there was only one person present who did not understand the joke, and i had to ask—with some misgiving—who was this jim who needed so much care and feeding, and caused such a scare.
there was another burst of laughter as they guessed my thoughts, and it was bob who answered me: “only a lion, lad—not a wild man or a lunatic! only a young lion! sold him to the zoo, and had to deliver him in durban.”
“well, you fairly took me in with the name!”
“oh! jim? well that’s his pet name. his real name is dabulamanzi. jim, my hunting boy, caught him, so we call him jim out of compliment,” he added with a grin. “but jim called him dabulamanzi, also out of compliment, and i think that was pretty good for a nigger.”
“you see,” said bob, for the benefit of those who were not up in local history, “dabulamanzi, the big fighting general in the zulu war, was jim’s own chief and leader; and the name means ‘the one who conquers the waters.’”
then one of the others exclaimed: “oh! of course, that’s how you got him, isn’t it: caught him in a river? tell us what did happen, bob. what’s the truth of it? it seemed a bit steep as i heard it.”
“well, it’s really simple enough. we came right on to the lioness waiting for us, and i got her; and then there were shouts from the boys, and i saw a couple of cubs, pretty well grown, making off in the grass. this boy jim legged it after one of them, a cub about as big as a newfoundland dog—not so high, but longer. i followed as fast as i could, but he was a big zulu and went like a buck, yelling like mad all the time. we were in the bend of one of the long pools down near the komati, and when i got through the reeds the cub was at the water’s edge facing jim, and jim was dancing around heading it off with only one light stick. as soon as it saw us coming on, the cub took to the water, and jim after it. it was as good as a play. jim swam up behind, and putting his hand on its head ducked it right under: the cub turned as it came up and struck out at him viciously, but he was back out of reach: when it turned again to go jim ducked it again, and it went on like that six or eight times, till the thing was half drowned and had no more fight in it. then jim got hold of it by the tail and swam back to us, still shouting and quite mad with excitement.
“of course,” added bob with a wag of his head, “you can say it was only a cub; but it takes a good man to go up naked and tackle a thing like that, with teeth and claws to cut you into ribbons.”
“was jim here to-day?” i asked, as soon as there was an opening. bob shook his head with a kindly regretful smile. “no, sonny, not here; you’d ’a’ heard him. jim’s gone. i had to sack him. a real fine nigger, but a terror to drink, and always in trouble. he fairly wore me right out.”
we were generally a party of half a dozen—the owners of the four waggons, a couple of friends trading with delagoa, a man from swaziland, and—just then—an old yankee hunter-prospector. it was our holiday time, before the hard work with loads would commence, and we dawdled along feeding up the cattle and taking it easy ourselves.
it was too early for loads in the bay, so we moved slowly and hunted on the way, sometimes camping for several days in places where grass and water were good; and that lion skin was the cause of many disappointments to me. never a bush or ant-heap, never a donga or a patch of reeds, did i pass for many days after that without the conviction that something was lurking there. game there was in plenty, no doubt, but it did not come my way. days went by with, once or twice, the sight of some small buck just as it disappeared, and many times, the noise of something in the bush or the sound of galloping feet. others brought their contributions to the pot daily, and there seemed to be no reason in the world why i alone should fail—no reason except sheer bad luck! it is difficult to believe you have made mistakes when you do not know enough to recognise them, and have no extent your own ignorance; and then bad luck is such an easy and such a flattering explanation! if i did not go so far on the easy road of excuse-making as to put all the failures down to bad luck, perhaps some one else deserves the credit.
one evening as we were lounging round the camp fire, robbie, failing to find a soft spot for his head on a thorn log, got up reluctantly to fetch his blankets, exclaiming with a mock tragic air:
“the time is out of joint; o cursed spite, that ever i was born to set it right.”
we knew robbie’s way. there were times when he would spout heroics, suggested by some passing trifle, his own face a marvel of solemnity the whole time, and only the amused expression in his spectacled grey eyes to show he was poking fun at himself. an indulgent smile, a chuckle, and the genial comment “silly ass!” came from different quarters; for robbie was a favourite. only old rocky maintained his usual gravity.
as robbie settled down again in comfort, the old man remarked in level thoughtful tones: “i reckon the feller as said that was a waster, he chucked it!” there was a short pause in which i, in my ignorance, began to wonder if it was possible that rocky did not know the source; or did he take the quotation seriously? then robbie answered in mild protest: “it was a gentleman of the name of hamlet who said it.”
“well, you can bet he was no good, anyhow,” rocky drawled out. “‘jus’ my luck!’ is the waster’s motto!”
“they do say he was mad,” robbie replied, as his face twitched with a pull-your-leg expression, “but he got off a lot of first-class things all the same—some of the best things ever said.”
“i da’ say; they mostly can. but a man as sets down and blames his luck is no good anyhow. he’s got no sand, and got no sense, and got no honesty! it ain’t the time’s wrong: it’s the man! it ain’t the job’s too big: it’s the man’s too little!”
“you don’t believe in luck at all, rocky?” i ventured to put in.
“i don’t say thar’s no such thing as luck—good and bad; but it ain’t the explanation o’ success an’ failure—not by a long way. no, sirree, luck’s just the thing any man’d like ter believe is the reason for his failure and another feller’s success. but it ain’t so. when another man pulls off what you don’t, the first thing you got ter believe is it’s your own fault; and the last, it’s his luck. and you jus’ got ter wade in an’ find out whar you went wrong, an’ put it right, ’thout any excuses an’ explanations.”
“but, rocky, explanations aren’t always excuses, and sometimes you really have to give them!”
“sonny, you kin reckon it dead sure thar’s something wrong ’bout a thing that don’t explain itself; an’ one explanation’s as bad as two mistakes—it don’t fool anybody worth speaking of, ’cept yerself. you find the remedy; you can leave other folks put up the excuses.”
i was beaten. it was no use going on, for i knew he was right. i suppose the other fellows also knew whom he was getting at, but they said nothing; and the subject seemed to have dropped, when rocky, harking back to robbie’s quotation, said, with a ghost of a smile: “i reckon ef that sharp o’ your’n hed ter keep the camp in meat we’d go pretty nigh hungry.”
but it seemed a good deal to give up all at once—the bad luck, the excuses and explanations, and the comfort they afforded; and i could not help thinking of that wretched wrong-headed stembuck that had actually allowed me to pass it, and then cantered away behind me.
rocky, known, liked and respected by all, yet intimate with none, was ‘going north’—even to the zambesi, it was whispered—but no one knew where or why. he was going off alone, with two pack-donkeys and not even a boy for company, on a trip of many hundreds of miles and indefinite duration. no doubt he had an idea to work out; perhaps a report of some trader or hunter or even native was his pole-star: most certainly he had a plan, but what it was no living soul would know. that was the way of his kind. with them there was no limit in time or distance, no hint of purpose or direction, no home, no address, no ‘people’; perhaps a partner somewhere or a chum, as silent as themselves, who would hear some day—if there was anything to tell.
rocky had worked near our camp on the berg. i had known him to nod to, and when we met again at one of the early outspans in the bush and offered a lift for him and his packs he accepted and joined us, it being still a bit early to attempt crossing the rivers with pack-donkeys. it may be that the ‘lift’ saved his donkeys something on the roughest roads and in the early stages; or it may be that we served as a useful screen for his movements, making it difficult for any one else to follow his line and watch him. anyway, he joined us in the way of those days: that is, we travelled together and as a rule we grubbed together; yet each cooked for himself and used his own stores, and in principle we maintained our separate establishments. the bag alone was common; each man brought what game he got and threw it into the common stock.
the secret of agreement in the veld is—complete independence! points of contact are points of friction—nowhere more so; and the safest plan is, each man his own outfit and each free to feed or sleep or trek as and when he chooses. i have known partners and friends who would from time to time move a trek apart, or a day apart, and always camp apart when they rejoined; and so remain friends.
rocky—in full, rocky mountain jack—had another name, but it was known to few besides the mining commissioner’s clerk who registered his licences from time to time. “in the rockies whar i was raised” is about the only remark having deliberate reference to his personal history which he was known to have made; but it was enough on which to found the name by which we knew him.
what struck me first about him was the long colt’s revolver, carried on his hip; and for two days this ‘gun,’ as he called it, conjured up visions of poker flat and roaring camp, jack hamlin and yuba bill of cherished memory; and then the inevitable question got itself asked:
“did you ever shoot a man, rocky?”
“no, sonny,” he drawled gently, “never hed ter use it yet!”
“it looks very old. have you had it long?”
“jus’ ’bout thirty years, i reckon!”
“oh! seems a long time to carry a thing without using it!”
“waal,” he answered half absently, “thet’s so. it’s a thing you don’t want orfen—but when you do, you want it derned bad!”
rocky seemed to me to have stepped into our life out of the pages of bret harte. for me the glamour of romance was cast by the master’s spell over all that world, and no doubt helped to make old rocky something of a hero in the eyes of youth; but such help was of small account, for the cardinal fact was rocky himself. he was a man.
there did not seem to be any known region of the earth where prospectors roam that he had not sampled, and yet whilst gleaning something from every land, his native flavour clung to him unchanged. he was silent by habit and impossible to draw; not helpful to those who looked for short cuts, yet kindly and patient with those who meant to try; he was not to be exploited, and had an illuminating instinct for what was not genuine. he had ‘no use for short weight’—and showed it!
i used to watch him in the circle round the fire at nights, his face grave, weather-stained and wrinkled, with clear grey eyes and long brown beard, slightly grizzled then—watch and wonder why rocky, experienced, wise and steadfast, should—at sixty—be seeking still. were the prizes so few in the prospector’s life? or was there something wanting in him too? why had he not achieved success?
it was not so clear then that ideals differ. rocky’s ideal was the life—not the escape from it. there was something—sentiment, imagination, poetry, call it what you will—that could make common success seem to him common indeed and cheap! to follow in a new rush, to reap where another had sown, had no charm for him. it may be that an inborn pride disliked it; but it seems more likely that it simply did not attract him. and if—as in the end i thought—rocky had taken the world as it is and backed himself against it—living up to his ideal, playing a ‘lone hand’ and playing it fair in all conditions, treading the unbeaten tracks, finding his triumph in his work, always moving on and contented so to end: the crown, “he was a man!”—then surely rocky’s had achieved success!
that is rocky, as remembered now! a bit idealised? perhaps so: but who can say! in truth he had his sides and the defects of his qualities, like every one else; and it was not every one who made a hero of him. many left him respectfully alone; and something of their feeling came to me the first time i was with him, when a stupid chatterer talked and asked too much. he was not surly or taciturn, but i felt frozen through by a calm deadly unresponsiveness which anything with blood and brain should have shrunk under. the dull monotone, the ominous drawl, the steady something in his clear calm eyes which i cannot define, gave an almost corrosive effect to innocent words and a voice of lazy gentleness.
“what’s the best thing to do following up a wounded buffalo?” was the question. the questions sprung briskly, as only a ‘yapper’ puts them; and the answers came like reluctant drops from a filter. “git out!”
“yes, but if there isn’t time?”
“say yer prayers!”
“no—seriously—what is the best way of tackling one?”
“ef yer wawnt to know, thar’s only one way: keep cool and shoot straight!”
“oh! of course—if you can?”
“an’ ef you can’t,” he added in fool-killer tones, “best stay right home!”
rocky had no fancy notions: he hunted for meat and got it as soon as possible; he was seldom out long, and rarely indeed came back empty-handed. i had already learnt not to be too ready with questions. it was better, so rocky put it, “to keep yer eyes open and yer mouth shut”; but the results at first hardly seemed to justify the process. at the end of a week of failures and disappointments all i knew was that i knew nothing—a very notable advance it is true, but one quite difficult to appreciate! thus it came to me in the light of a distinction when one evening, after a rueful confession of blundering made to the party in general, rocky passed a brief but not unfriendly glance over me and said, “on’y the born fools stays fools. you’ll git ter learn bymbye; you ain’t always yappin’!”
it was not an extravagant compliment; but failure and helplessness act on conceit like water on a starched collar: mine was limp by that time, and i was grateful for little things—most grateful when next morning, as we were discussing our several ways, he turned to me and asked gently, “comin’ along, boy?”
surprise and gratitude must have produced a touch of effusiveness which jarred on him; for, to the eager exclamation and thanks, he made no answer—just moved on, leaving me to follow. in his scheme of life there was ‘no call to slop over.’
there was a quiet unhesitating sureness and a definiteness of purpose about old rocky’s movements which immediately inspired confidence. we had not been gone many minutes before i began to have visions of exciting chases and glorious endings, and as we walked silently along they took possession of me so completely that i failed to notice the difference between his methods and mine. presently, brimful of excitement and hope, i asked cheerily what he thought we would get. the old man stopped and with a gentle graveness of look and a voice from which all trace of tartness or sarcasm was banished, said, “see, sonny! if you been useter goin’ round like a dawg with a tin it ain’t any wonder you seen nothin’. you got ter walk soft an’ keep yer head shut!”
in reply to my apology he said that there was “no bell an’ curtain in this yere play; you got ter be thar waitin’.”
rocky knew better than i did the extent of his good nature; he knew that in all probability it meant a wasted day; for, with the best will in the world, the beginner is almost certain to spoil sport. it looks so simple and easy when you have only read about it or heard others talk; but there are pitfalls at every step. when, in what seemed to me perfectly still air, rocky took a pinch of dust and let it drop, and afterwards wet one finger and held it up to feel which side cooled, it was not difficult to know that he was trying the wind; but when he changed direction suddenly for no apparent reason, or when he stopped and, after a glance at the ground, slackened his frame, lost all interest in sport, wind and surroundings, and addressed a remark to me in ordinary tones, i was hopelessly at sea. his manner showed that some possibility was disposed of and some idea abandoned. once he said “rietbuck! heard us i reckon,” and then turned off at a right-angle; but a little later on he pointed to other spoor and, indifferently dropping the one word ‘koodoo,’ continued straight on. to me the two spoors seemed equally fresh; he saw hours’—perhaps a whole day’s—difference between them. that the rietbuck, scared by us, had gone ahead and was keenly on the watch for us and therefore not worth following, and that the koodoo was on the move and had simply struck across our line and was therefore not to be overtaken, were conclusions he drew without hesitation. i only saw spoor and began to palpitate with thoughts of bagging a koodoo bull.
we had been out perhaps an hour, and by unceasing watchfulness i had learnt many things: they were about as well learnt and as useful as a sentence in a foreign tongue got off by heart; but to me they seemed the essentials and the fundamentals of hunting. i was feeling very pleased with myself and confident of the result; the stumbling over stones and stumps had ceased; and there was no more catching in thorns, crunching on bare gritty places, clinking on rocks, or crackling of dry twigs; and as we moved on in silence the visions of koodoo and other big game became very real. there was nothing to hinder them: to do as rocky did had become mechanically easy; a glance in his direction every now and then was enough; there was time and temptation to look about and still perhaps to be the first to spot the game.
it was after taking one such casual glance around that i suddenly missed rocky: a moment later i saw him moving forward, fast but silently, under cover of an ant-heap—stooping low and signing to me with one hand behind his back. with a horrible feeling of having failed him i made a hurried step sideways to get into line behind him and the ant-heap, and i stepped right on to a pile of dry crackly sticks. rocky stood up quietly and waited, while i wished the earth would open and swallow me. when i got up abreast he half turned and looked me over with eyes slightly narrowed and a faint but ominous smile on one side of his mouth, and drawled out gently:
“you’d oughter brought some fire crackers!” if only he had sworn at me it would have been endurable.
we moved on again and this time i had eyes for nothing but rocky’s back, and where to put my foot next. it was not very long before he checked in mid-stride and i stood rigid as a pointer. peering intently over his shoulder in the direction in which he looked i could see nothing. the bush was very open, and yet, even with his raised rifle to guide me, i could not for the life of me see what he was aiming at. then the shot rang out, and a duiker toppled over kicking in the grass not a hundred yards away.
the remembrance of certain things still makes me feel uncomfortable; the yell of delight i let out as the buck fell; the wild dash forward, which died away to a dead stop as i realised that rocky himself had not moved; the sight of him, as i looked back, calmly reloading; and the silence. to me it was an event: to him, his work. but these things were forgotten then—lost behind the everlasting puzzle, how was it possible i had not seen the buck until it fell? rocky must have known what was worrying me, for, after we had picked up the buck, he remarked without any preliminary, “it ain’t easy in this bush ter pick up what don’t move; an’ it ain’t hardly possible ter find what ye don’t know!”
“game you mean?” i asked, somewhat puzzled.
“this one was feeding,” he answered, after a nod in reply. “i saw his head go up ter listen; but when they don’t move, an’ you don’t jus’ know what they look like, you kin ’most walk atop o’ them. you got ter kind o’ shape ’em in yer eye, an’ when you got that fixed you kin pick ’em up ’most anywhere!”
it cost rocky an effort to volunteer anything. there were others always ready to talk and advise; but they were no help. it was rocky himself who once said that “the man who’s allus offerin’ his advice fer nothin’ ’s askin’ ’bout’s much’s it’s worth.” he seemed to run dry of words—like an overdrawn well. for several days he took no further notice of me, apparently having forgotten my existence or repented his good nature. once, when in reply to a question, i was owning up to the hopes and chances and failures of the day, i caught his attentive look turned on me and was conscious of it—and a little apprehensive—for the rest of the evening; but nothing happened.
the following evening however it came out. i had felt that that look meant something, and that sooner or later i would catch it. it was characteristic of him that he could always wait, and i never felt quite safe with him—never comfortably sure that something was not being saved up for me for some mistake perhaps days old. he was not to be hurried, nor was he to be put off, and nobody ever interrupted him or headed him off. his quiet voice was never raised, and the lazy gentleness never disturbed; he seemed to know exactly what he wanted to say, and to have opening and attention waiting for him. i suppose it was partly because he spoke so seldom: but there was something else too—the something that was just rocky himself. although the talk appeared the result of accident, an instinct told me from the start that it was not really so: it was rocky’s slow and considered way.
the only dog with us was licking a cut on her shoulder—the result of an unauthorised rush at a wounded buck—and after an examination of her wound we had wandered over the account of how she had got it, and so on to discussing the dog herself. rocky sat in silence, smoking and looking into the fire, and the little discussion was closed by some one saying, “she’s no good for a hunting dog—too plucky!” it was then i saw rocky’s eyes turned slowly on the last speaker: he looked at him thoughtfully for a good minute, and then remarked quietly:
“thar ain’t no sich thing as too plucky!” and with that he stopped, almost as if inviting contradiction. whether he wanted a reply or not one cannot say; anyway, he got none. no one took rocky on unnecessarily; and at his leisure he resumed:
“thar’s brave men; an’ thar’s fools; an’ you kin get some that’s both. but thar’s a whole heap that ain’t! an’ it’s jus’ the same with dawgs. she’s no fool, but she ain’t been taught: that’s what’s the matter with her. men ha’ got ter larn: dawgs too! men ain’t born equal: no more’s dawgs! one’s born better ’n another—more brains, more heart; but i ain’t yet heard o’ the man born with knowledge or experience; that’s what they got ter learn—men an’ dawgs! the born fool’s got to do fool’s work all the time: but the others larn; and the brave man with brains ’s got a big pull. he don’t get shook up—jus’ keeps on thinkin’ out his job right along, while the other feller’s worryin’ about his hide! an’ dawgs is the same.”
rocky’s eyes—for ever grave and thoughtful—rested on the fire; and the remarks that came from the other men passed unnoticed, but they served to keep the subject alive. presently he went on again—opening with an observation that caused me to move uneasily before there was time to think why!
“boys is like pups—you got ter help ’em some; but not too much, an’ not too soon. they got ter larn themselves. i reckon ef a man’s never made a mistake he’s never had a good lesson. ef you don’t pay for a thing you don’t know what it’s worth; and mistakes is part o’ the price o’ knowledge—the other part is work! but mistakes is the part you don’t like payin’: thet’s why you remember it. you save a boy from makin’ mistakes and ef he’s got good stuff in him, most like you spoil it. he don’t know anything properly, ’cause he don’t think; and he don’t think, ’cause you saved him the trouble an’ he never learned how! he don’t know the meanin’ o’ consequences and risks, ’cause you kep’ ’em off him! an’ bymbye he gets ter believe it’s born in him ter go right, an’ knows everything, an’ can’t go wrong; an’ ef things don’t pan out in the end he reckon it’s jus’ bad luck! no! sirree! ef he’s got ter swim you let him know right there that the water’s deep an’ thar ain’t no one to hol’ him up, an’ ef he don’t wade in an’ larn, it’s goin’ ter be his funeral!”
my eyes were all for rocky, but he was not looking my way, and when the next remark came, and my heart jumped and my hands and feet moved of their own accord, his face was turned quite away from me towards the man on his left.
“an’ it’s jus’ the same ’ith huntin’! it looks so blamed easy he reckons it don’t need any teachin’. well, let him try! leave him run on his own till his boots is walked off an’ he’s like to set down and cry, ef he wasn’t ’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 or sign or sound: they had vanished. i turned to rocky: he was standing at ease, and there was the faintest look of amusement in his eyes.
“they must be there; they can’t have got away?” it was a sort of indignant protest against his evident ‘chucking it’; but it was full of doubt all the same.
“try!” he said, and i jumped into the reeds straight away. the under-foliage, it is true, was thicker and deeper than it had looked; but for all that it was like a conjuring trick—they were not there! i waded through a hundred yards or more of the narrow belt—it was not more than twenty yards wide anywhere—but the place was deserted. it struck me then that if they could dodge us at five to ten yards while we were watching from the bank and they did not know it—well, i ‘chucked it’ too. rocky was standing in the same place with the same faint look of friendly amusement when i got back, wet and muddy.
“pigs is like that,” he said, “same as elephants—jus’ disappears!”
we went on again, and a quarter of an hour later, it may be, rocky stopped, subsided to a sitting position, beckoned to me, and pointed with his levelled rifle in front. it was a couple of minutes before he could get me to see the stembuck standing in the shade of a thorn-tree. i would never have seen it but for his whisper to look for something moving: that gave it to me; i saw the movement of the head as it cropped.
“high: right!” was rocky’s comment, as the bullet ripped the bark off a tree and the startled stembuck raced away. in the excitement i had forgotten his advice already!
but there was no time to feel sick and disgusted; the buck, puzzled by the report on one side and the smash on the tree on the other, half circled us and stopped to look back. rocky laid his hand on my shoulder:
“take your time, sonny!” he said, “aim low; an’ don’t full! squeeze!” and at last i got it.
we had our breakfast there—the liver roasted on the coals, and a couple of ‘dough-boys,’ with the unexpected addition of a bottle of cold tea, weak and unsweetened, produced from rocky’s knapsack! we stayed there a couple of hours, and that is the only time he really opened out. i understood then—at last—that of his deliberate kindliness he had come out that morning meaning to make a happy day of it for a youngster; and he did it.
he had the knack of getting at the heart of things, and putting it all in the fewest words. he spoke in the same slow grave way, with habitual economy of breath and words; and yet the pictures were living and real, and each incident complete. i seemed to get from him that morning all there was to know of the hunting in two great continents—grizzlies and other ‘bar,’ moose and wapiti, hunted in the snows of the north west; elephant, buffalo, rhino, lions, and scores more, in the sweltering heat of africa!
that was a happy day!
when i woke up next morning rocky was fitting the packs on his donkeys. i was a little puzzled, wondering at first if he was testing the saddles, for he had said nothing about moving on; but when he joined us at breakfast the donkeys stood packed ready to start. then robbie asked:
“going to make a move, rocky?”
“yes! reckon i’ll git!” he answered quietly.
i ate in silence, thinking of what he was to face: many hundreds of miles—perhaps a thousand or two; many, many months—may be a year or two; wild country, wild tribes, and wild beasts; floods and fever; accident, hunger, and disease; and alone!
when we had finished breakfast he rinsed out his beaker and hung it on one of the packs, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and picking up his long assegai-wood walking-stick tapped the donkeys lightly to turn them into the kaffir footpath that led away north. they jogged on into place in single file.
rocky paused a second before following, turned one brief grave glance on us, and said!
“well. so long!”
he never came back!
