"Call off your dog, I tell you, or I'll shoot him and your nigger too!"
"We'll see about that! They can fight it out now," and I took the
sjambok from Jim's hand and cut it from the white man's wrist. "Now!
Stand back!" And he stood back.
The baboon was quite helpless. Powerful as the brute was, and
formidable as were the arms and gripping feet, it had no chance while
Jock could keep his feet and had strength to drag and hold the chain
tight. The collar was choking it, and the grip on the stomach--the
baboon's own favourite and most successful device--was fatal.
I set my teeth, and thought of the poor helpless dogs that had been
decoyed in and treated the same way. Jim danced about, the white seam
of froth on his lips, hoarse gusts of encouragement bursting from him as
he leant over Jock, and his whole body vibrating like an over-heated
boiler. And Jock hung on in grim earnest, the silence on his side
broken only by grunting efforts as the deadly tug--tug--tug went on.
Each pull caused his feet to slip a little on the smooth worn ground;
but each time he set them back again, and the grunting tugs went on.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was not justice to call Jock off; but I did it. The cruel brute
deserved killing, but the human look and cries and behaviour of the
baboon were too sickening; and Seedling went into his hut without even a
look at his stricken champion.
Jock stood off, with his mouth open from ear to ear and his red tongue
dangling, blood-stained and panting, but with eager feet ever on the
move shifting from spot to spot, ears going back and forward, and eyes--
now on the baboon and now on me--pleading for the sign to go in again.
Before evening the baboon was dead.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The day's excitement was too much for Jim. After singing and dancing
himself into a frenzy round Jock, after shouting the whole story of the
fight in violent and incessant gabble over and over again to those who
had witnessed it, after making every ear ring and every head swim with
his mad din, he grabbed his sticks once more and made off for one of the
kraals, there to find drink for which he thirsted body and soul.
In the afternoon the sudden scattering of the inhabitants of a small
kraal on the hillside opposite, and some lusty shouting, drew attention
that way. At distances of from two to five hundred yards from the huts
there stood figures, singly or grouped in twos and threes, up to the
highest slopes; they formed a sort of crescent above the kraal; and on
the lower side of it, hiding under the bank of the river, were a dozen
or more whose heads only were visible. They were all looking towards
the kraal like a startled herd of buck. Now and then a burly figure
would dart out from the huts with wild bounds and blood-curdling yells,
and the watchers on that side would scatter like chaff and flee for dear
life up the mountain side or duck instantly and disappear in the river.
Then he would stalk back again and disappear, to repeat the performance
on another side a little later on.
It was all painfully clear to me. Jim had broken out.
We were loaded for Lydenburg--another week's trekking through and over
the mountains--and as we intended coming back the same way a fortnight
later I decided at once to leave Jim at his kraal, which was only a
little further on, and pick him up on the return journey.
I nearly always paid him off in live stock or sheep: he had good wages,
and for many months at a time would draw no money; the boy was a
splendid worker and as true as steel; so that, in spite of all the awful
worry I had a soft spot for Jim and had taken a good deal of trouble on
his account. He got his pay at the end of the trip or the season, but
not in cash. It was invested for him--greatly to his disgust at the
time, I am bound to say--in live stock, so that he would not be able to
squander it in drink or be robbed of it while incapable.
Jim's gloomy dignity was colossal when it came to squaring up and I
invited him to state what he wished me to buy for him. To be treated
like an irresponsible child; to be chaffed and cheerfully warned by me;
to be met by the giggles and squirts of laughter of the other boys, for
whom he had the most profound contempt; to see the respectable Sam
counting out with awkward eager hands and gleaming eyes the good red
gold, while he, Makokela the Zulu, was treated like a piccanin--Ugh! It
was horrible! Intolerable!
Jim would hold aloof in injured gloomy silence, not once looking at me,
but standing sideways and staring stonily past me into the far distance,
and not relaxing for a second the expression of profound displeasure on
his weather-beaten face. No joke or chaff, no question or reason, would
move him to even look my way. All he would do was, now and again, give
a click of disgust, a quick shake of the head, and say: "Aug!
Ang-a-funa!" ("I do not desire it!")
We had the same fight over and over again, but I always won in the end.
Once, when he would not make up his mind what to buy, I offered him
instead of cash two of the worst oxen in his span at the highest
possible valuation, and the effect was excellent; but the usual lever
was to announce that if he could not make his choice and bargain for
himself I would do it for him. In the end he invariably gave way and
bargained with his kaffir friends for a deal, venting on them by his
hard driving and brow-beating some of the accumulated indignation which
ought to have gone elsewhere.
When it was all over Jim recovered rapidly, and at parting time there
was the broadest of grins and a stentorian shout of "Hlala Kahle!
Inkos!" and Jim went off with his springy walk, swinging his sticks and
jabbering his thoughts aloud, evidently about me, for every now and
again he would spring lightly into the air, twirl the stick, and shout a
deep throated "Inkos!" full of the joy of living. A boy going home for
his holiday!
This time Jim was too fully wound up to be dealt with as before, and I
simply turned him off, telling him to come to the camp in a fortnight's
time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was a day behind the waggons returning, and riding up to the camp
towards midday found Jim waiting for me. He looked ill and shrunken,
wrapped in an old coat and squatting against the wall of the little hut.
As I passed he rose slowly and gave his "Sakubona! Inkos!" with that
curious controlled air by which the kaffir manages to suggest a kind of
fatalist resignation or indifference touched with disgust. There was
something wrong; so I rode past without stopping--one learns from them
to find out how the land lies before doing anything.
It was a bad story, almost as bad as one would think possible where
civilised beings are concerned. Jim's own story lacked certain details
of which he was necessarily ignorant, it also omitted the fact that had
been drunk; but in the main it was quite true.
This is what happened, as gleaned from several sources: several days
after our departure Jim went down to the store again and raised some
liquor; he was not fighting, but he was noisy, and was the centre of a
small knot of shouting, arguing boys near the store when Seedling
returned after a two days' absence. No doubt it was unfortunate that
the very first thing he saw on his return was the boy who had defied him
and who was the cause of his humiliation; and that that boy should by
his behaviour give the slenderest excuse for interference was in the
last degree unlucky. Seedling's mind was made up from the moment he set
eyes on Jim. Throwing the reins over his horse's head he walked into
the excited gabbling knot, all unconscious of his advent, and laid about
him with the sjambok, scattering and silencing them instantly; he then
took Jim by the wrist saying, "I want you"; he called to one of his own
boys to bring a reim, and leading Jim over to the side of the store tied
him up to the horse rail with arms at full stretch. Taking out his
knife he cut the boy's clothing down the back so that it fell away in
two halves in front of him; then he took off his own coat and flogged
the boy with his sjambok.
I would like to tell all that happened for one reason: it would explain
the murderous man-hunting feeling that possessed us when we heard it!
But it was too cruel: let it be! Only one thing to show the spirit:
twice during the flogging Seedling stopped to go into the store for a
drink.
Jim crawled home to find his kraal ransacked and deserted, and his wives
and children driven off in panic. In addition to the flogging Seedling
had, in accordance with his practice, imposed fines far beyond the boy's
means in cash, so as to provide an excuse for seizing what he wanted.
The police boys had raided the kraal; and the cattle and goats--his only
property--were gone.
He told it all in a dull monotone: for the time the life and fire were
gone out of him; but he was not cowed, not broken. There was a curl of
contempt on his mouth and in his tone that whipped the white skin on my
own back and made it all a disgrace unbearable. That this should be the
reward for his courageous defence of Jock seemed too awful. We went
inside to talk it over and make our plans. The waggons should go on
next day as if nothing had happened, Jim remaining in one of the half
tents or elsewhere out of sight of passers-by. I was to ride into
Lydenburg and lodge information--for in such a case the authorities
would surely act. That was the best, or at any rate the first, course
to be tried.
There was no difficulty about the warrant, for there were many counts in
the indictment against Seedling; but even so worthless a brute as that
seemed to have one friend, or perhaps an accomplice, to give him
warning, and before we reached his quarters with the police he had
cleared on horseback for Portuguese territory, taking with him a led
horse.
We got most of Jim's cattle back for him--which he seemed to consider
the main thing--but we were sorely disgusted at the man's escape.
That was the year of the `rush.' Thousands of new-comers poured into
the country on the strength of the gold discoveries; materials and
provisions of all kinds were almost unprocurable and stood at famine
prices; and consequently we--the transport-riders--reaped a golden
harvest. Never had there been such times; waggons and spans were paid
for in single trips; and so great was the demand for supplies that some
refused transport and bought their own goods, which they re-sold on the
goldfields at prices twice as profitable as the highest rates of
transport.
Thus the days lost in the attempt to catch Seedling were valuable days.
The season was limited, and as early rains might cut us off, a few days
thrown away might mean the loss of a whole trip. We hurried down,
therefore, for the Bay, doing little hunting that time.
Near the Crocodile on our way down we heard from men coming up that
Seedling had been there some days before but that, hearing we were on
the way down and had sworn to shoot him, he had ridden on to Komati,
leaving one horse behind bad with horse-sickness. The report about
shooting him was, of course, ridiculous--probably his own imagination--
but it was some comfort to know that he was in such a state of terror
that his own fancies were hunting him down.
At Komati we learned that he had stayed three days at the store of that
Goanese murderer, Antonio--the same Antonio who on one occasion had
tried to drug and hand over to the enemy two of our men who had got into
trouble defending themselves against raiding natives; the same Antonio
who afterwards made an ill-judged attempt to stab one Mickey O'Connor in
a Barberton canteen and happily got brained with a bottle of his own
doctored spirit for his pains.
Antonio suspecting something wrong about a white man who came on
horseback and dawdled aimlessly three days at Komati Drift, going
indoors whenever a stranger appeared, wormed the secret out with liquor
and sympathy; and when he had got most of Seedling's money out of him,
by pretence of bribing the Portuguese officials and getting news, made a
bold bid for the rest by saying that a warrant was out for him in
Delagoa and he must on no account go on. The evil-looking half-caste no
doubt hoped to get the horse saddle and bridle, as well as the cash, and
was quite prepared to drug Seedling when the time came, and slip him
quietly into the Komati at night where the crocodiles would take care of
the evidence.
Antonio, however, overshot the mark; Seedling who knew all about him,
took fright, saddled up and bolted up the river meaning to make for the
Lebombo, near the Tembe Drift, where Bob McNab and his merry comrades
ran free of Governments and were a law unto themselves. It was no place
for a nervous man, but Seedling had no choice, and he went on. He had
liquor in his saddle bags and food for several days; but he was not used
to the bush, and at the end of the first day he had lost his way and was
beyond the river district where the kaffirs lived.
So much is believed, though not positively known; at any rate he left
the last kraal in those parts about noon, and was next heard of two days
later at a kraal under the Lebombo. There he learnt that the Black
Umbelusi, which it would be necessary to swim--as Snowball and Tsetse
had done--lay before him, and that it was yet a great distance to
Sebougwaans, and even then he would be only half-way to Bob's. Seedling
could not face it alone, and turned back for the nearest store.
The natives said that before leaving the kraal he bought beer from them,
but did not want food; for he looked sick; he was red and swollen in the
face; and his eyes were wild; the horse was weak and also looked sick,
being very thin and empty; but they showed him the footpath over the
hills which would take him to Tom's--a white man's store on the road to
Delagoa--and he left them! That was Tom Barnett's at Piscene, where we
always stopped; for Tom was a good friend of ours.
That was how we came to meet Seedling again. He had made a loop of a
hundred and fifty miles in four days in his efforts to avoid us; but he
was waiting for us when we arrived at Tom Barnett's. We who had hurried
on to catch him, believing that the vengeance of justice depended on us,
forgot that it has been otherwise decreed.
Tom stood in the doorway of his store as we walked up--five feet one in
his boots, but every inch of it a man--with his hands resting idly on
his hips and a queer smile on his face as he nodded welcome.
"Did a white man come here on horseback during the last few days from
the Drift?"
"No!"
"On foot?"
"No, not the whole way."
"Is he here now?" Tom nodded.
"You know about him, Tom?"
"Seedling! the chap you're after, isn't it?"
"Yes," we answered, lowering our voices. Tom looked from one to the
other with the same queer smile, and then making a move to let us into
the store said quietly: "He won't clear, boys; he's dead!" Some kaffirs
coming along the footpath from the 'Bombo had found the horse dead of
horse-sickness half a day away, and further on--only a mile or so from
the store--the rider lying on his back in the sun, dying of thirst. He
died before they got him in. He was buried under a big fig tree where
another and more honoured grave was made later on.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim sat by himself the whole evening and never spoke a word.