I had been busy all day `branding' the young cattle, and returning hot,
dusty, and tired to the house, found Abe Pike comfortably seated in the
cane chair, with the veldschoens of his outspread feet resting on the
top bar of the verandah rail, and his lined face looking up at the
thatched roof, whence came the loud zing of a bluebottle fly caught in
the meshes of a spider web. A jar of my Transvaal tobacco was on the
ground by his side, and a large jug of buttermilk near it.
"Don't disturb yourself, Uncle!"
"I'm not agoing to. Mind how you step, else you'll obset that
buttermilk--not that it would matter much, for it ain't been rightly
made. Should ha' been kep' in a calabash with a drop of old milk in the
bottom, to flavour it with a taste of biled leather and smoke that
belongs to the proper article. But all the old arts is dying out, and
insects and beasts is the only critturs that keep up the old customs.
Conservatism is a law of nature--among men who have broken away from
nature it's a blind, unreasonin' protest against change. Conservatism
is the preserving wisdom of the aged, the salt of experience, and change
is born of the rashness of youth. I'm a Conservative--I'm old. I
should be presarved for the edification and guidance of the young. Give
me the buttermilk."
As he would not move, I tilted his chair over by kicking the legs away,
and passed over his recumbent body to the bedroom. After a wash down I
found him still outspread on the ground, his long legs hooked over the
chair, and his head resting on his arm, while the glow of his pipe
showed that he was still calmly smoking.
"What's brought you over here, Uncle?"
"Well, I 'spect I walked. Have you ever observed, sonny, that the human
body is so built that it will fit itself to any position? This is
comfortable and the tobacco is fair to middlin', fair to middlin', with
a touch of sulphur in it."
I sat down on the stone steps to listen to the most delightful of all
sounds--those made by the domestic animals and birds settling to rest;
while from the deep black of the sky the stars shot out with a sudden
blaze, and the cool night wind came softly whispering through the
acacias.
Uncle Abe gathered himself up, and bunched upon the rail, his back bent
like a sickle to keep his balance. "What's acrost over yonder?" he
said.
"My boundary ridge."
"Your boundary ridge! An' a euphorby tree, and a sprinkling of white
thorn acacias, with the gum drops glistenin' on the rough bark, and a
few grey stones all covered with moss and a stretch of grey veld. Go
'long; there's more than that under the curtain of the dark, for if
there weren't why would you an' me sit here and look away off, an' look
an' look, as ef behind the curtain was all the mysteries of the unknown
world. The dark makes a wonderful difference."
"So it does--when you're five miles from home and hear the `gurr' of a
tiger."
"Sonny, I've downed that black tiger."
"You have!"
"That's so. Ole Abe Pike has come out on top--and soon's I skinned him
I lit out to tell you the news. You see it was my wits against his.
Traps was no good, so I determined to set my skin against his and trust
to the ole gun. I calculated to tackle him right close up to his lair."
"In the kloof?"
"Eweh! in the dark of the big kloof, where it's that still you can hear
the sap moving in the trees. You see that crittur was more'n ordinary
cunning, and he'd seen how he was feared, so he'd settle it down to a
certainty that no man would ever dare tempt death near his sleepin'
place. Therefore, though deadly risky, the best plan would be to go to
that very spot. Next thing was to give him a good feed far away--and
yet not too far. Ef the kill was too far he wouldn't come back to his
roost, and ef it was too near he wouldn't eat before returning. So I
built a little bush kraal near the kloof an got a brandzickt goat from
Ned Amos to turn in."
"Why not have tied the goat up in the kloof?"
"No good, sonny, with an 'xper'enced tiger. He'd a suspected a plant,
'cos his understanding 'ud tell him that goats don't grow in kloofs.
The kraal he would take as a piece of man's foolishness. Before this I
filed down a whole sixpence, and the filings I melted into a good round
bullet, with some clean lead. Two charges I put in behind that bullet,
and seed that the powder was well up in the nipple with the shiniest cap
well pressed down. Then I killed a stink-cat--I'll tell you why
afterwards. I got the goat down to the kraal an hour before sun-down,
and then I slipped into the kloof, treading like a shadder, with the
bleat of the old billy buck calling loud. I pulled up, an' waited till
that ole man baboon, who had watched all proceedings, gave me the sign
that the Black Sam was on the move. I felt my way on up to his lair
under a shelving rock at the foot of the precipice that hems in the
kloof on the top side. It was that dark I couldn't see my hand, and I
knew at once my plan would land me with a split throttle if I waited for
his coming back. I was that skeered, too, with the whisperin' in the
trees, that I was just making ready to run when I see a firefly dodging
around."
"And you thought it was the tiger's eye?"
"You wait. I seed a firefly making circles of flame against the
blackness--and I cotched him gently--so's not to spoil his lantern. I
fixed him in the bark of a tree that stood near the den--and two others
I fixed in line--one above, one below. The top was three feet above the
ground, the middle was two and a half, and the bottom one a foot high.
Next thing I threw that stink-cat in the den, and the smell of him came
out thick, covering up all taint of a man. Then I settled down opposite
the tree with the gun fixed on the little spark where I'd fixed the
middle fly. I reckoned when the ole chap came home and smelt that cat
he'd stand in disgust--and as the smell would strike him just by the
tree his body would blot out the flies and give me a mark."
"And he didn't come back that way?"
"He did that, as it was the easiest way; but before he came the feeling
grew in me that he was just behind watching me where I lay. I tell you,
sonny, that long watch in the stillness of the dark, with a drop of
water minute by minute falling into a little pool, and a sort of queer
stirring noise among the trees, gave me the ague. But he came at last.
It may have been three, or two o'clock; but without a sound he was there
before me. My eyes had grown tired of watching those three dots of
fire, and I'd been shutting them tight for a spell every now and again,
and when I opened them the last time I saw the light was there, but
altered. I looked away a second, then back, and there was three lights;
but two of 'em were close together, and bigger. Jimminy! it was the ole
man himself looking at me. I pulled the trigger, and the gun flew outer
my hands. Then I rolled over and over, with a roaring, scuffling, and
screaming in my ears as ef the gun had woke a whole crowd of devils and
brought them howling outer the rocks. I rolled against a tree, and I
was up it before I knew where I was, an' all the time there was that
scuffling an' growlin' and awful screamin' going on down below. Bymby
it got weaker and weaker, until it died off in gurglings and deep
breathing, and by the grey light of the morning there was the two of 'em
dead, the black tiger and the ole man baboon. The baboon had got his
two long teeth in the big throat, and there he had held while the tiger
with his hind claws raked the stomach clean out of him."
"And where did your bullet strike?"
"It struck the tree, and smashed the top firefly to smithereens. The
other two had dropped off."
"Then you didn't kill the tiger?"
"I reckon I did; at any rate, I've got his skin and the skull of the ole
baboon. He was the biggest tiger you ever see, and old as the hills,
with his teeth worn down. I'm sorry for the baboon, but I'm glad he was
there."
I have reason to believe that Uncle Abe maligned himself for the sake of
the yarn. On examining the tiger's skin subsequently, I found no traces
of the baboon's teeth, but exactly between the eyes was a bullet-hole.
The old man had held his gun straight in the dark kloof.