We were transport-riders trekking with loads from Delagoa Bay to
Lydenburg, trekking slowly through the hot, bushy, low veld, doing our
fifteen to twenty miles a day. The roads were good and the rates were
high, and we were happy.
Towards sundown two of us strolled on ahead, taking the guns in hopes of
picking up a guinea-fowl, or a stembuck, or some other small game,
leaving the waggons to follow as soon as the cattle were inspanned. We
shot nothing; in fact, we saw nothing to shoot. It was swelteringly
hot, as it always is there until the red sun goes down and all things
get a chance to cool. It was also very dusty--two or three inches of
powdery dust under our feet, which whipped up in little swirls at the
least breath of air. I was keeping an eye on the scrub on my side for
the chance of a bush pheasant, and not taking much notice of the road,
when my companion pulled up with a half-suppressed exclamation, and
stood staring hard at something on ahead.
"Dern my skin!" said he slowly and softly, as I came up to him. He was
a slow-spoken Yankee. "Say, look there! Don't it beat hell?"
In the direction indicated, partly hidden by the scant foliage of a
thorn-tree, a man was sitting on a yellow portmanteau reading a book.
The sight was unusual, and it brought the unemotional Yankee to a
standstill and set us both smiling. The man was dressed in a sort of
clerk's everyday get-up, even to the bowler hat, and as he sat there he
held overhead an old black silk umbrella to protect him from such of the
sun's rays as penetrated the thorn-bush. He must have become conscious
of the presence of life by the subtle instinct which we all know and
can't explain, for almost immediately he raised his glance and looked us
straight in the eyes. He rose and came towards us, laying aside the
umbrella, but keeping his place in the book.
The scene was too ludicrous not to provoke a smile, and the young
fellow--he could not have been above twenty-three--mistaking its import,
raised his hat politely and wished us "good-afternoon."
He spoke English, but with a strong German accent, and his dress, his
open manner, his ready smiles, and, above all, his politeness,
proclaimed him very much a stranger to those parts. Key murmured a line
from a compatriot: "Green peas has come to market, and vegetables is
riz."
"You have come mit der waggons? You make der transport? Not?" he asked
us, following up the usual formula.
We told him it was so, and that we were for the fields, and reckoned to
reach Matalha by sun-up. He too, he said, was going to the gold-fields,
and would be a prospector; he was just waiting for his "boy," who had
gone back for something he had forgotten at the last place. He was
going to walk to Moodie's, he said. He "_did_ make mit one transporter
a contract to come by waggons; but it was a woman mit two childs what
was leave behind, and dere was no more waggons, so he will walk. It was
good to walk to make him strong for de prospect. Oh yes!"
We were used to meeting all sorts on the road, and they were pretty well
all inclined to talk; but this one was so full it just bubbled out of
him, and in his broken English he got off question on question, between
times imparting scraps of information about himself and his hopes. He
was clearly in earnest about his future, and he was so utterly
unpractical, so hopelessly astray in his view of everything, that one
could not but feel kindly towards him. We chatted with him until our
waggons came up, when he again politely raised his hat as he said
good-bye to us, and offered many thanks for the information about the
road. As we moved on with the waggons, he turned to look down the road
by which we had come, and said, apparently as an afterthought:
"You haf seen my `boy' perhaps? Not? No! Soh! Good-bye--yes,
good-bye!"
It does not take long for daylight to glide through dusk into darkness
in the bush veld in South Africa, and even these few minutes spent in
conversation had seen the light begin to fade from the sky as the sun
disappeared. The road was good and clear of rocks and stumps, so we
hopped onto the most comfortable waggon, and talked while the oxen
plodded slowly along.
We had quite a large party that trip, for, besides Gowan and myself, who
owned the waggons, we had three traders from Swazie country--old friends
of ours who had come down to Delagoa to buy goods. We had all arranged
to stand in together in a big venture of running loads through
Swazieland to the gold-fields later on in the season; in fact, the trip
we were then making was more or less a trial one to see how the land
lay, and how much we could venture in the big coup.
Gowan, the other transport-rider, and I always travelled together. We
were not partners exactly, but in a country like that it was good to
have a friend, and we understood each other. There were no two ways
about him; he was a white man through and through. The two Mackays were
brothers; they had left Scotland some years before to join a farming
scheme "suitable for gentlemen's sons with a little capital," as the
circular and advertisements said. They had given it best, however, and
gone trading long before I met them. The other member of our party was
the one with whom I had been walking. He was an American, and had been
everything and everywhere, most lately a trader in Swazie country. We
generally called him the Judge.
As the waggons rumbled along Key was giving a more or less accurate
account of our conversation with the stranger.
It was very amusing, even more amusing than the original, for I am bound
to say that with him a story did not suffer in the telling. It was only
Gowan who didn't seem to see anything to laugh at in the affair. He sat
there dangling his legs over the buck-rails, chewing a long grass stalk,
and humming all out of tune. He had a habit of doing that, growling
with it. Presently, as conversation flagged, the tune got worse and his
growling took the shape of a reference to "giving a poor devil a lift."
I frankly confessed that I simply had not thought of it, and that was
all. As, however, Gowan continued growling about "beastly shame" and
"poor devil of a greenhorn," etc, Key answered dryly.
"Waal, I _did_ think of it; but, first place, they ain't my waggons--"