There is a rustling in the cover, faint at first, but drawing nearer.
As it does so, the man with the gun, who has been squatting half
concealed by a shrub in one corner of the little glade, picks himself up
stealthily, noiselessly, and now widely on the alert. A fine bushbuck
ram leaps lightly into the open, and as its large protruding eye lights
on this unusual object, its easy, graceful bound becomes a wild rush.
Then the gun speaks. The beautiful animal sinks in his stride and
falls, a frantic, kicking heap, carried forward some six or eight yards
by the impetus of his pace. Twirling, twisting, now attempting to rise,
and almost succeeding, then rolling back, but still fighting desperately
for life--the blood welling forth over his black hide where the deadly
_loepers_ have penetrated--the stricken buck emits loud raucous
bellowings of rage and fear and agony. But the man with the gun knows
better than to approach too near, knows well the power of those long,
needle-pointed horns, and the tenacity of life contained within the
brain beneath them; knows well that a stricken bushbuck ram, with all
that life still in him, can become a terribly dangerous and formidable
antagonist, and this is a very large and powerful unit of the species.
The crash of the shot reverberates, roaring from the overhanging
krantz--dislodging a cloud of spreuws from its rocky ledges. These dart
hither and thither, whistling and chattering, their shrill din mingling
with the bellowings of the wounded buck. But upon this arises another
din and it is that of canine throats. Two great rough-haired dogs leap
forth into the glade, following upon the line taken by the buck. Then
ensues a desperate game. The stricken animal, summoning all his
remaining strength to meet these new foes, staggers to his feet, and,
with head lowered and menacing, it seems that no power on earth can stay
the foremost of the dogs from receiving the full length of these
fourteen-inch horns in his onward rush. These, however, are no puppies,
but old, well-seasoned dogs, thoroughly accustomed to bush-hunting.
Wonderfully quick are they in their movements as, just avoiding each
deadly thrust, they leap, snapping and snarling, round their quarry--
until one, seeing his chance, seizes the latter just below the haunch in
such fashion as promptly to hamstring him. The game antelope is done
for now. Weakened, too, by the jets of blood spurting from his wounds,
he totters and falls. The fight is over.
With it the man with the gun has deemed it sound policy not to
interfere. To encourage the dogs would render them too eager--at the
expense of their judgment--and to fire a second shot would be seriously
to imperil them. Besides, he is interested in this not so very
ill-matched combat. Now, however, it is time to call them off.
To call is one thing, but to be obeyed is quite another. The two great
dogs, excited and savage, are snarling and worrying at the carcase of
their now vanquished enemy--and the first attempt to enforce the order
is met with a very menacing and determined growl, for this man is not
their master. Wisely he desists.
"Confound it, they'll tear that fine skin to ribbons!" he soliloquises
disgustedly. Then--"Oh, there you are, Bayfield. Man, call those
brutes off. They don't care a damn for me."
A horseman has dashed into the glade. He, too, carries a gun, but in a
trice he has torn a _reim_ from the D. of his saddle, and is lashing and
cursing with a will among the excited hounds. These draw off, still
snarling savagely, for he is their master.
"_Magtig_! Blachland, but you're in luck's way!" he exclaimed. "That's
the finest ram that's been shot here for the last five years. Well
done! I believe it's the same one I drove right over that Britisher
last month, and he missed it clean with both barrels. That young fellow
stopping with Earle."
"Who's he? A jackaroo?"
"No. A visitor. I don't know who he is. By the way, I must take you
over to Earle's one of these days. He's got a good bit of shoot. Look
here, Jafta," turning to a yellow-skinned Hottentot, also mounted, who
had just arrived on the scene, "Baas Blachland has shot our biggest
bushbuck ram at last."
"Ja. That is true, Baas," grinned the fellow, who was Bayfield's
after-rider, inspecting the edge of his knife preparatory to the
necessary disembowelling and loading up of the quarry.
"We may as well be getting along," said Bayfield. "Jafta, go and fetch
Baas Blachland's horse."
"I thought an up-country man like you would turn up his nose at our
hunting, Blachland," said Bayfield as they rode along. "But what you
can't turn up your nose at is our air--eh? Why, you're looking twice
the man you were a fortnight ago even. I suppose that infernal fever's
not easily shaken off."
"It's the very devil to shake off, but if anything will do it, this
will." And the speaker glanced around with a feeling of complete and
restful enjoyment.
The kloof they were threading afforded in itself a noble and romantic
scene. Great krantzes soaring up to the unclouded blue, walls of red
ironstone gleaming like bronze in the sun-rays--or, in tier upon tier,
peeping forth from festoons of creeper and anchored tree and spiky aloe.
Yonder a sweep of spur on the one hand, like a combing wave of tossing
tumbling foliage, on the other a mighty cliff, forming a portal beyond
which was glimpsed a round, rolling summit, high above in the distance--
but everywhere foliage, its many shades of green relieved here and there
by the scarlet and pink of the wild geranium, the light blue of the
plumbago, and half a dozen other splashes of colour, bright and
harmonising; aglow, too, with the glancing of brilliant-winged birds,
tuneful with their melodious piping and the murmuring hum of bees. And
the air--strong, clear, exhilarating, such as never could be mistaken
for the enervating steaminess of up-country heat--for the place was at a
good elevation, and in one of the settled parts of the Cape Colony.
Gazing around upon all this, Hilary Blachland seemed to be drinking in
new draughts of life. The bout of fever, in the throes of which we last
saw him lying, helpless and alone, had proved to be an exceptionally
sharp one; indeed, but for the accident of Sybrandt happening along
almost immediately after the Matabele raid, the tidings of which had
reached England, as we have seen--it is probable that a fatal
termination might have ensued. But Sybrandt had tended him with devoted
and loyal _camaraderie_, and when sufficiently restored, he had decided
to sell off everything and clear out. "You'll come back again,
Blachland," Sybrandt had said. "Mark my words, you'll come back again.
We all do." And he had answered that perhaps he would, but not just yet
awhile.
He had gone down country to the seaside, but the heat at Durban was so
great at the time of year as to counteract the beneficial effect of the
sea air. Then he had bethought himself of George Bayfield, a man he had
known previously and liked, and who had more than once pressed him to
pay him a visit at his farm in the Eastern Province. And now, here he
was.
A great feeling of restfulness and self-gratulation was upon him. He
was free once more, free for a fresh clean start. The sequence of his
foolishness, which had hung around his neck like a millstone, for years,
had been removed, had suddenly fallen off like a load. For he had come
to see things clearer now. His character had changed and hardened
during that interval, and he had come to realise that hitherto, his
views of life, and his way of treating its conditions, had been very
much those of a fool.
George Bayfield had received him with a very warm welcome. He was a
colonial man, and had never been out of his native land, yet contrasting
them as they stood together it was Blachland who looked the harder and
more weather-beaten of the two, so thorough an acclimatising process had
his up-country wanderings proved. Bayfield was a man just the wrong
side of fifty, and a widower. Two of his boys were away from home, and
at that time his household consisted of a small son of eleven, and a
daughter--of whom more anon.
The kloof opened out into a wide open valley, covered mainly with
rhenoster brush and a sprinkling of larger shrubs in clumps. From this
valley on either side, opened lateral kloofs, similar to the one from
which they had just emerged, kloofs dark with forest and tangled
thickets, very nurseries for tiger and wild-dogs, Bayfield declared--but
they had the compensating element of affording good sport whenever he
wanted to go out and shoot a bushbuck or two--as in the present case.
His boundary lines ran right along the high _rand_ which shut in the
broad valley on either side, and the farm was an excellent one for sheep
and ostriches. In fact the valley portion of it was a perfect network
of wire fencing, and in their respective "camps" the great black bipeds
stalked to and fro, uttering their truculent boom, or lazily picking at
the aromatic grasses, which constituted their natural and aboriginal
food. And the name of the place was Lannercost.
"These confounded ostriches spoil half the shooting on the place, and,
for the matter of that, anywhere," remarked Bayfield, as they ambled
along through one of the large camps, where one exceptionally fierce
bird hung about their flank, only kept from a nearer approach by the
presence of the two dogs. "You flush a covey of partridges or a big
troop of guinea-fowl, and away they go and squat in complete security
under the wing of some particularly `kwai' bird in the next camp. It's
beastly tantalising. Ever shot any wild ostriches up-country,
Blachland?"
"Yes, on two occasions--and I enjoyed it for that very reason. I was
held up once on top of a rail for nearly two hours besieged on each side
by an infuriated tame one. Had to wait until dark to get down. So you
see it was a kind of poetic justice to turn the tables on the wild
ones."
"Rather. These are good game preservers though, in that they keep the
niggers from killing the small bucks in the camps. Look at those few
springbuck I'm trying to preserve. They'd all have been killed off if
it wasn't for the `kwai' birds in the camp. By George! the sun'll be
down before we get home. That isn't good for a man with fever still in
his system at this time of year."
"Oh, that's no matter. I'm a good deal too tough."
"Don't you be so sure about that. We'd better push the nags on a bit."
The house stood at the head of the valley, and had been growing larger
and larger as they drew near. The sun was dropping, and that wondrously
beautiful glow which heralds his departure from the vivid, clear South
African day was upon the surroundings, softening, toning everything.
Hundreds of doves cooed melodiously from the sprays, and as they passed
through a gateway, ascending a winding path between high quince hedges,
clouds of twittering finks and long-tailed mouse-birds scattered with a
whirr on either side of the way. Spreuws, too, whistling among the tall
fig-trees in the orchard, helped to swell the chorus of Nature's
evensong.
"There are a sight too many of these small birds," observed Bayfield.
"They want keeping down. Sonny's getting lazy with that air-gun of his.
They'll play the mischief with the garden if he gives them much more
rope. There he is, the _schepsel_. Hi! Sonny!" he called out, as a
good-looking boy came down the path to meet them. "Why don't you thin
off some of these birds? Look at 'em all. No one would think you'd got
an air-gun and half a dozen catapults."
"The gun's out of order, father," answered the boy.
"It's always getting out of order. Those air-guns are frauds. Where's
Lyn?"
"She was about just now. We watched you from beyond the third gate.
There she is."
Following his gaze they descried a white-clad feminine form in front of
the house, which they were now very near.