"Were you ever in the wars, Abe?" I asked the old chap on one of my
off-days, when I had called on him to go out after rhea-buck.
"Were I ever in the wars? Did I ever grow pumpkins? There's some
fellows go through life asking questions about things that's as plain as
plain--why, blow me, I've known 'em ask ef 'twdn't be a fine day when
there's bin no rain for a month and not a stir o' wind."
"So you have been in the wars?"
Grunt.
"I suppose," said I, unmoved by Abe's indignation, "you never got into a
fix--always kept with the rear column?"
"What, me! Jes' you look here," and cocking up his chin, he showed a
long scar under his beard. "Assegai!" he said.
"Must have been a close shave!"
"'Twarnt no barber held that wepin I tell you, sonny. No, sir! I jes'
seed the whites of his eyes and the gleam of his teeth, and whizz!--
whough!--the assegai darted like a serpent's tongue. He was painted
red, he were!"
"Who?"
"The Kaffir, you blind eyed calabash. It was in Blaauw krantz in '45.
You don't remember those days, 'cos you weren't born, but Blaauw krantz
were jes' where it is now, and the red Kaffirs had suddenly got back
their old idea they could drive us into the sea. Wonderful how sot they
are on getting us into the salt water; and that time they was partikler
keen on making us take to the sea without so much as a plank. Of course
we knew there was something in the wind. When Kaffirs mean to fight
they don't fire off blank cartridges in the papers; they jes' keep dark,
uncommon dark an' sulky, but for all that they can't keep down the human
nature that's in 'em, and they have a way of giving you the shoulder
when you order them about that means mischief. When a Kaffir clicks at
you with his tongue you don't want him to tell you in plain words that
he's _quaai_ and would like to belt you over the head. Well, I tell
you, you dursen't order a boy to step a yard but he'd click, an' some of
the chaps with families took the hint and shifted into Grahamstown; but,
lor' bless yer, the Government didn't take any notice. Oh no; the
Government knew the Kaffirs and it knew the whites, and it believed in
the Kaffirs. Look here, sonny, Government's a ass--alus was a ass, and
alus will be a ass. Alus so darned cock-sure, and so blamed ignorant
that any Kaffir chief could best it every time. You know, sonny, the
chief he would jes' come along--simple an' humble--and pitch in a yarn
about how he loved the `great white ox,' how he wished to herd his
cattle in peace, and how thankful he'd be if the great white chief would
send him a little white chief to keep the wicked white men from his
kraals. All he wanted was peace--since he had listened to the words of
wisdom from the Government. Then the chief would say: `That is my
speech,' and the Government would up and pat him on the back; an' when
the farmers said the Kaffirs meant to fight, Government would tell 'em
they was a passel of fools. Oh, I tell you, Government is vain as a boy
in a new weskit, an' as easily humbugged. Well, about 1845 Government
was laced up and smoothed down by the chiefs, with their tongues in
their cheeks, and on a sudden the war smoke rose on the frontier."
"The war smoke!"
"Ay, bossie; the heaven-high columns of smoke going up blue and round in
the still air, as a sign to the Kaffirs waiting silently in the bush and
the kloofs. At the sign out they came, slipping from the bush paths
stealthy as leopards on the trail, and one morning the hill-sides yonder
were red, as though the aloes had blossomed."
"What--with fire?"
"Neh! karel with red clay smeared thick over the black faces, and with
the red blankets carried by the bearers. Then there was in-spanning of
horses, hurrying of women after their children, and the trail of dust
about each flying cart. The red Kaffirs! Ay, lad! many a mother an'
wife has gone white at times of peace at the sight of a Kaffir in his
paint--squatting, maybe, like a tame dog at the back door, waiting for
his women-folk in the kitchen to hand him out a bone--for in the
smouldering eyes of him she can see the leaping flames of a burning
homestead and assegais runnin' red, and if it's so in peace what must
she feel when her roving eye, searching the veld for the little ones to
bid them to breakfast, lights on the far-off streak on the border hills,
and when her ear catches a murmur that is not from the sea--the murmur
of fighting-men singing of death? The sun was level when it shone upon
the red Kaffirs, and when the shadder was close up to my heels in the
mid-day the country was empty of whites, except maybe a solitary cuss
like me, hating to leave his home, and lurking in the bush close to his
belongings."
"And the cattle?"
"It's the horned beasts that you think of--well, why not? they're meat
and drink and a roof over your head. A few there were who saved their
herds, but the bulk were swept in the net of the robbers. There was not
a many human fish caught in that net that time, 'cept old Dave Harkins,
an' his five sons who fell all in one spot by Palmiet Fontein fighting
to the last grain o' powder, and ole Sam Parkes. Poor ole Sam. He
found religion, did ole Sam, and many the day I've a-harkened to him
holdin' forth on his stoep, where he would sit for the rheumatism kep'
him from moving. Well, ole Sam, when they told him that he must fly, he
said, `Lift my chair to the stoep. The Kaffirs will not harm me.' They
placed him there with his face to the east, and there the Kaffirs found
him. I passed the house the next day, and he was leanin' back lookin'
so peaceful that I hailed him. But he were dead, sonny, with a gash in
his heart. Ay, they struck him as he sat, but they left the house
standing and when I peeped in at the window there was the table set with
all the chiney in the house. The Kaffirs did that One on 'em had been
about a white man's house, and he showed his friends how the white man
prepared his table. A little one's vanity and the blood dropping from
the assegai."
"What were you doing all this time, Uncle Abe?"
"Shiverin' and hidin', sonny; for a party on 'em swooped down on my
place led by a thunderin' ole thief I had once lammed with a sjambok for
stealin' my sugar. There was a fine bedstead in the house and a whole
shelf o' crockery, for I had some idees then of marryin', and, blow me,
if they didn't smash the lot, besides breaking all the winders and
burning the thatched roof. Then they killed an ox, a fine _rooi bonte_,
roasted him whole, and ate him--by gosh. After that they slept with
their bellies full! Yes, they did that; slep' with me a watching 'em
from an ant bear hole. I nearly spiflicated 'em, but somehow I didn't.
Then they moved off all but three, including that ole thief, which
gathered my cows an heifers an' calves an' oxen together, and druv 'em
off. 'Twas like partin' with my heart strings, and I followed 'em up.
That evenin' I druv the lot inter the big kloof."
"You recaptured them?"
"I s'pose so, sonny!"
"And the three Kaffirs?"
"I speck they ate too much beef, sonny, I speck they did. Any way they
died. They did so--and after I had druv the cattle into the kloof I sot
off for Grahamstown, passing ole Sam Parkes on the way. I came pretty
nigh close to parties o' Kaffirs, but 'twas when I came to Blaauw krantz
that I got the shivers. I were goin' along mighty keerful, I tell you
jes' 'sif I were `still huntin'' but ne'r a sound o' a Kaffir I could
hear. Well you know one side the road there's a yellow bank with a bush
on the top. I had turned a corner on the listen, with my eyes every
way, when I caught the move of a insect, or something like that, on the
left. Blow me, sonny, there was a big Kaffir standing agin' the bank,
all naked, but red with clay. What caught my eye was the roll of his
eyes, for he were jes' like a part of the wall. He'd been walking down
the road when he must a' yeard me comin' for all I went so soft. My! I
jes' give a jerk o' my head as he launched out with his assegai. Then I
gave him a charge o' buck-shot in the stummick and jumped back inter the
bush on the lower side. I yeard a shout from other Kaffirs, and, you
b'lieve me, I dodged through the bush like a blue-bok until I got right
under the big krantz, where I crep' inter a cave. I seed then the blood
running down, and like a streak I were out o' that cave inter a pool o'
water until I got under a thick `dry-my-throat' bush where I hid. The
Kaffirs they followed on the blood-spoor right up to the cave, but they
missed me where I lay in the dark o' the pool, an' next evenin' I were
in Grahamstown, where the doctor stitched up the wound."
"A very close call, Uncle."
"Oh, I've been in many tight places, sonny--a many, an' maybe I'll tell
you about 'em."