Jock of the Bushveld

“What’s the best thing to do following up a wounded buffalo?” was the question. The questions sprung briskly, as only a ‘yapper’ puts them; and the answers came like reluctant drops from a filter. “Git out!”

“Yes, but if there isn’t time?”

“Say yer prayers!”

“No – seriously – what is the best way of tackling one?”

“Ef yer wawnt to know, thar’s only one way: Keep cool and shoot straight!”

“Oh! of course —if you can?”

“An’ ef you can’t,” he added in fool-killer tones, “best stay right home!”

Rocky had no fancy notions: he hunted for meat and got it as soon as possible; he was seldom out long, and rarely indeed came back empty-handed. I had already learnt not to be too ready with questions. It was better, so Rocky put it, “to keep yer eyes open and yer mouth shut”; but the results at first hardly seemed to justify the process. At the end of a week of failures and disappointments all I knew was that I knew nothing – a very notable advance it is true, but one quite difficult to appreciate! Thus it came to me in the light of a distinction when one evening, after a rueful confession of blundering made to the party in general, Rocky passed a brief but not unfriendly glance over me and said, “On’y the born fools stays fools. You’ll git ter learn bymbye; you ain’t always yappin’!”

It was not an extravagant compliment; but failure and helplessness act on conceit like water on a starched collar: mine was limp by that time, and I was grateful for little things – most grateful when next morning, as we were discussing our several ways, he turned to me and asked gently, “Comin’ along, Boy?”

Surprise and gratitude must have produced a touch of effusiveness which jarred on him; for, to the eager exclamation and thanks, he made no answer – just moved on, leaving me to follow. In his scheme of life there was ‘no call to slop over.’

There was a quiet unhesitating sureness and a definiteness of purpose about old Rocky’s movements which immediately inspired confidence. We had not been gone many minutes before I began to have visions of exciting chases and glorious endings, and as we walked silently along they took possession of me so completely that I failed to notice the difference between his methods and mine. Presently, brimful of excitement and hope, I asked cheerily what he thought we would get. The old man stopped and with a gentle graveness of look and a voice from which all trace of tartness or sarcasm was banished, said, “See, Sonny! If you been useter goin’ round like a dawg with a tin it ain’t any wonder you seen nothin’. You got ter walk soft an’ keep yer head shut!”

In reply to my apology he said that there was “no bell an’ curtain in this yere play; you got ter be thar waitin’.”

Rocky knew better than I did the extent of his good nature; he knew that in all probability it meant a wasted day; for, with the best will in the world, the beginner is almost certain to spoil sport. It looks so simple and easy when you have only read about it or heard others talk; but there are pitfalls at every step. When, in what seemed to me perfectly still air, Rocky took a pinch of dust and let it drop, and afterwards wet one finger and held it up to feel which side cooled, it was not difficult to know that he was trying the wind; but when he changed direction suddenly for no apparent reason, or when he stopped and, after a glance at the ground, slackened his frame, lost all interest in sport, wind and surroundings, and addressed a remark to me in ordinary tones, I was hopelessly at sea. His manner showed that some possibility was disposed of and some idea abandoned. Once he said “Rietbuck! Heard us I reckon,” and then turned off at a right-angle; but a little later on he pointed to other spoor and, indifferently dropping the one word ‘Koodoo,’ continued straight on. To me the two spoors seemed equally fresh; he saw hours’ – perhaps a whole day’s – difference between them. That the rietbuck, scared by us, had gone ahead and was keenly on the watch for us and therefore not worth following, and that the koodoo was on the move and had simply struck across our line and was therefore not to be overtaken, were conclusions he drew without hesitation. I only saw spoor and began to palpitate with thoughts of bagging a koodoo bull.

We had been out perhaps an hour, and by unceasing watchfulness I had learnt many things: they were about as well learnt and as useful as a sentence in a foreign tongue got off by heart; but to me they seemed the essentials and the fundamentals of hunting. I was feeling very pleased with myself and confident of the result; the stumbling over stones and stumps had ceased; and there was no more catching in thorns, crunching on bare gritty places, clinking on rocks, or crackling of dry twigs; and as we moved on in silence the visions of koodoo and other big game became very real. There was nothing to hinder them: to do as Rocky did had become mechanically easy; a glance in his direction every now and then was enough; there was time and temptation to look about and still perhaps to be the first to spot the game.

It was after taking one such casual glance around that I suddenly missed Rocky: a moment later I saw him moving forward, fast but silently, under cover of an ant-heap – stooping low and signing to me with one hand behind his back. With a horrible feeling of having failed him I made a hurried step sideways to get into line behind him and the ant-heap, and I stepped right on to a pile of dry crackly sticks. Rocky stood up quietly and waited, while I wished the earth would open and swallow me. When I got up abreast he half turned and looked me over with eyes slightly narrowed and a faint but ominous smile on one side of his mouth, and drawled out gently:

“You’d oughter brought some fire crackers!” If only he had sworn at me it would have been endurable.

We moved on again and this time I had eyes for nothing but Rocky’s back, and where to put my foot next. It was not very long before he checked in mid-stride and I stood rigid as a pointer. Peering intently over his shoulder in the direction in which he looked I could see nothing. The bush was very open, and yet, even with his raised rifle to guide me, I could not for the life of me see what he was aiming at. Then the shot rang out, and a duiker toppled over kicking in the grass not a hundred yards away.

The remembrance of certain things still makes me feel uncomfortable; the yell of delight I let out as the buck fell; the wild dash forward, which died away to a dead stop as I realised that Rocky himself had not moved; the sight of him, as I looked back, calmly reloading; and the silence. To me it was an event: to him, his work. But these things were forgotten then – lost behind the everlasting puzzle, How was it possible I had not seen the buck until it fell? Rocky must have known what was worrying me, for, after we had picked up the buck, he remarked without any preliminary, “It ain’t easy in this bush ter pick up what don’t move; an’ it ain’t hardly possible ter find what ye don’t know!”

“Game you mean?” I asked, somewhat puzzled.

“This one was feeding,” he answered, after a nod in reply. “I saw his head go up ter listen; but when they don’t move, an’ you don’t jus’ know what they look like, you kin ’most walk atop o’ them. You got ter kind o’ shape ’em in yer eye, an’ when you got that fixed you kin pick ’em up ’most anywhere!”

It cost Rocky an effort to volunteer anything. There were others always ready to talk and advise; but they were no help. It was Rocky himself who once said that “the man who’s allus offerin’ his advice fer nothin’ ’s askin’ ’bout’s much’s it’s worth.” He seemed to run dry of words – like an overdrawn well. For several days he took no further notice of me, apparently having forgotten my existence or repented his good nature. Once, when in reply to a question, I was owning up to the hopes and chances and failures of the day, I caught his attentive look turned on me and was conscious of it – and a little apprehensive – for the rest of the evening; but nothing happened.

The following evening however it came out. I had felt that that look meant something, and that sooner or later I would catch it. It was characteristic of him that he could always wait, and I never felt quite safe with him – never comfortably sure that something was not being saved up for me for some mistake perhaps days old. He was not to be hurried, nor was he to be put off, and nobody ever interrupted him or headed him off. His quiet voice was never raised, and the lazy gentleness never disturbed; he seemed to know exactly what he wanted to say, and to have opening and attention waiting for him. I suppose it was partly because he spoke so seldom: but there was something else too – the something that was just Rocky himself. Although the talk appeared the result of accident, an instinct told me from the start that it was not really so: it was Rocky’s slow and considered way.

The only dog with us was licking a cut on her shoulder – the result of an unauthorised rush at a wounded buck – and after an examination of her wound we had wandered over the account of how she had got it, and so on to discussing the dog herself. Rocky sat in silence, smoking and looking into the fire, and the little discussion was closed by some one saying, “She’s no good for a hunting dog – too plucky!” It was then I saw Rocky’s eyes turned slowly on the last speaker: he looked at him thoughtfully for a good minute, and then remarked quietly:

“Thar ain’t no sich thing as too plucky!” And with that he stopped, almost as if inviting contradiction. Whether he wanted a reply or not one cannot say; anyway, he got none. No one took Rocky on unnecessarily; and at his leisure he resumed:

“Thar’s brave men; an’ thar’s fools; an’ you kin get some that’s both. But thar’s a whole heap that ain’t! An’ it’s jus’ the same with dawgs. She’s no fool, but she ain’t been taught: that’s what’s the matter with her. Men ha’ got ter larn: dawgs too! Men ain’t born equal: no more’s dawgs! One’s born better ’n another – more brains, more heart; but I ain’t yet heard o’ the man born with knowledge or experience; that’s what they got ter learn – men an’ dawgs! The born fool’s got to do fool’s work all the time: but the others larn; and the brave man with brains ’s got a big pull. He don’t get shook up – jus’ keeps on thinkin’ out his job right along, while the other feller’s worryin’ about his hide! An’ dawgs is the same.”

Rocky’s eyes – for ever grave and thoughtful – rested on the fire; and the remarks that came from the other men passed unnoticed, but they served to keep the subject alive. Presently he went on again – opening with an observation that caused me to move uneasily before there was time to think why!

“Boys is like pups – you got ter help ’em some; but not too much, an’ not too soon. They got ter larn themselves. I reckon ef a man’s never made a mistake he’s never had a good lesson. Ef you don’t pay for a thing you don’t know what it’s worth; and mistakes is part o’ the price o’ knowledge – the other part is work! But mistakes is the part you don’t like payin’: thet’s why you remember it. You save a boy from makin’ mistakes and ef he’s got good stuff in him, most like you spoil it. He don’t know anything properly, ’cause he don’t think; and he don’t think, ’cause you saved him the trouble an’ he never learned how! He don’t know the meanin’ o’ consequences and risks, ’cause you kep’ ’em off him! An’ bymbye he gets ter believe it’s born in him ter go right, an’ knows everything, an’ can’t go wrong; an’ ef things don’t pan out in the end he reckon it’s jus’ bad luck! No! Sirree! Ef he’s got ter swim you let him know right there that the water’s deep an’ thar ain’t no one to hol’ him up, an’ ef he don’t wade in an’ larn, it’s goin’ ter be his funeral!”

My eyes were all for Rocky, but he was not looking my way, and when the next remark came, and my heart jumped and my hands and feet moved of their own accord, his face was turned quite away from me towards the man on his left.

“An’ it’s jus’ the same ’ith huntin’! It looks so blamed easy he reckons it don’t need any teachin’. Well, let him try! Leave him run on his own till his boots is walked off an’ he’s like to set down and cry, ef he wasn’t ’shamed to; let him know every pur-tickler sort o’ blamed fool he can make of himself; an’ then he’s fit ter teach, ’cause he’ll listen, an’ watch, an’ learn – at? say thank ye fer it! Mostly you got ter make a fool o’ yourself once or twice ter know what it feels like an’ how t’ avoid it: best do it young – it teaches a boy; but it kind o’ breaks a man up!”

I kept my eyes on Rocky, avoiding the others, fearing that a look or word might tempt some one to rub it in; and it was a relief when the old man naturally and easily picked up his original point and, turning another look on Jess, said:

“You got ter begin on the pup. It ain’t her fault; it’s yours. She’s full up o’ the right stuff, but she got no show to larn! Dawgs is all different, good an’ bad – just like men: some larns quick; some’ll never larn. But thar ain’t any too plucky!”

He tossed a chip of green wood into the heart of the fire and watched it spurtle and smoke, and after quite a long pause, added:

“Thar’s times when a dawg’s got to see it through an’ be killed. It’s his dooty – same as a man’s. I seen it done!”

The last words were added with a narrowing of his eyes and a curious softening of voice – as of personal affection or regret. Others noticed it too; and in reply to a question as to how it had happened Rocky explained in a few words that a wounded buffalo had waylaid and tossed the man over its back, and as it turned again to gore him the dog rushed in between, fighting it off for a time and eventually fastening on to the nose when the buffalo still pushed on. The check enabled the man to reach his gun and shoot the buffalo; but the dog was trampled to death.

“Were you…?” some one began – and then at the look in Rocky’s face, hesitated. Rocky, staring into the fire, answered:

“It was my dawg!”

Long after the other men were asleep I lay in my blankets watching the tricks of light and shadow played by the fire, as fitfully it flamed or died away. It showed the long prostrate figures of the others as they slept full stretch on their backs, wrapped in dark blankets; the waggons, touched with unwonted colours by the flames, and softened to ghostly shadows when they died; the oxen, sleeping contentedly at their yokes; Rocky’s two donkeys, black and grey, tethered under a thorn-tree – now and then a long ear moving slowly to some distant sound and dropping back again satisfied. I could not sleep; but Rocky was sleeping like a babe. He, gaunt and spare – 6 foot 2 he must have stood – weather-beaten and old, with the long solitary trip before him and sixty odd years of life behind, he slept when he laid his head down, and was wide awake and rested when he raised it. He, who had been through it all, slept; but I, who had only listened, was haunted, bewitched, possessed, by racing thoughts; and all on account of four words, and the way he said them, “It was my dawg.”

It was still dark, with a faint promise of saffron in the East, when I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard Rocky’s voice saying, “Comin’ along, Sonny?”

One of the drivers raised his head to look at us as we passed, and then called to his voorlooper to turn the cattle loose to graze, and dropped back to sleep. We left them so and sallied out into the pure clear morning while all the world was still, while the air, cold and subtly stimulating, put a spring into the step and an extra beat or two into the pulse, fairly rinsing lungs and eyes and brain.

What is there to tell of that day? Why! nothing, really nothing, except that it was a happy day – a day of little things that all went well, and so it came to look like the birthday of the hunting. What did it matter to me that we were soaked through in ten minutes? for the dew weighed down the heavy-topped grass with clusters of crystal drops that looked like diamond sprays. It was all too beautiful for words: and so it should be in the spring-time of youth.

Rocky was different that day. He showed me things; reading the open book of nature that I could not understand. He pointed out the spoors going to and from the drinking-place, and named the various animals; showed me one more deeply indented than the rest and, murmuring “Scared I guess,” pointed to where it had dashed off out of the regular track; picked out the big splayed pad of the hyena sneaking round under cover; stopped quietly in his stride to point where a hare was sitting up cleaning itself, not ten yards off; stopped again at the sound of a clear, almost metallic, ‘clink’ and pointed to a little sandy gully in front of us down which presently came thirty or forty guinea-fowl in single file, moving swiftly, running and walking, and all in absolute silence except for that one ‘clink.’ How did he know they were there, and which way they would go, and know it all so promptly? were questions I asked myself.

We walked with the sun – that is towards the West – so that the light would show up the game and be in their eyes, making it more difficult for them to see us. We watched a little red stembuck get up from his form, shake the dew from his coat, stretch himself, and then pick his way daintily through the wet grass, nibbling here and there as he went. Rocky did not fire; he wanted something better.

After the sun had risen, flooding the whole country with golden light, and, while the dew lasted, making it glisten like a bespangled transformation scene, we came on a patch of old long grass and, parted by some twenty yards, walked through it abreast. There was a wild rush from under my feet, a yellowish body dashed through the grass, and I got out in time to see a rietbuck ram cantering away. Then Rocky, beside me, gave a shrill whistle; the buck stopped, side on, looked back at us, and Rocky dropped it where it stood. Instantly following the shot there was another rush on our left, and before the second rietbuck had gone thirty yards Rocky toppled it over in its tracks. From the whistle to the second shot it was all done in about ten seconds. To me it looked like magic. I could only gasp.

We cleaned the bucks, and hid them in a bush. There was meat enough for the camp then, and I thought we would return at once for boys to carry it; but Rocky, after a moment’s glance round, shouldered his rifle and moved on again. I followed, asking no questions. We had been gone only a few minutes when to my great astonishment he stopped and pointing straight in front asked:

“What ’ud you put up for that stump?” I looked hard, and answered confidently, “Two hundred!”

“Step it!” was his reply. I paced the distance; it was eighty-two yards.

It was very bewildering; but he helped me out a bit with “Bush telescopes, Sonny!”

“You mean it magnifies them?” I asked in surprise. “No! Magnifies the distance, like lookin’ down an avenue! Gun barr’l looks a mile long when you put yer eye to it! Open flats brings ’em closer; and ’cross water or a gully seems like you kin put yer hand on ’em?”

“I would have missed – by feet – that time Rocky!”

“You kin take it fer a start, Halve the distance and aim low!”

“Aim low, as well?”

“Thar’s allus somethin’ low: legs, an’ ground to show what you done! But thar’s no ‘outers’ marked on the sky!”

Once, as we walked along, he paused to look at some freshly overturned ground, and dropped the one word, ‘Pig.’ We turned then to the right and presently came upon some vlei ground densely covered with tall green reeds. He slowed down as we approached; I tip-toed in sympathy; and when only a few yards off he stopped and beckoned me on, and as I came abreast he raised his hand in warning and pointed into the reeds. There was a curious subdued sort of murmur of many deep voices. It conveys no idea of the fact to say they were grunts. They were softened out of all recognition: there is only one word for it, they sounded ‘confidential.’ Then as we listened I could make out the soft silky rustling of the rich undergrowth, and presently, could follow, by the quivering and waving of odd reeds, the movements of the animals themselves. They were only a few yards from us – the nearest four or five; they were busy and contented; and it was obvious they were utterly unconscious of our presence. As we peered down to the reeds from our greater height it seemed that we could see the ground and that not so much as a rat could have passed unnoticed. Yet we saw nothing!

And then, without the slightest sign, cause or warning that I could detect, in one instant every sound ceased. I watched the reeds like a cat on the pounce: never a stir or sign or sound: they had vanished. I turned to Rocky: he was standing at ease, and there was the faintest look of amusement in his eyes.

“They must be there; they can’t have got away?” It was a sort of indignant protest against his evident ‘chucking it’; but it was full of doubt all the same.

“Try!” he said, and I jumped into the reeds straight away. The under-foliage, it is true, was thicker and deeper than it had looked; but for all that it was like a conjuring trick – they were not there! I waded through a hundred yards or more of the narrow belt – it was not more than twenty yards wide anywhere – but the place was deserted. It struck me then that if they could dodge us at five to ten yards while we were watching from the bank and they did not know it – Well, I ‘chucked it’ too. Rocky was standing in the same place with the same faint look of friendly amusement when I got back, wet and muddy.

“Pigs is like that,” he said, “same as elephants – jus’ disappears!”

We went on again, and a quarter of an hour later, it may be, Rocky stopped, subsided to a sitting position, beckoned to me, and pointed with his levelled rifle in front. It was a couple of minutes before he could get me to see the stembuck standing in the shade of a thorn-tree. I would never have seen it but for his whisper to look for something moving: that gave it to me; I saw the movement of the head as it cropped.

“High: right!” was Rocky’s comment, as the bullet ripped the bark off a tree and the startled stembuck raced away. In the excitement I had forgotten his advice already!

But there was no time to feel sick and disgusted; the buck, puzzled by the report on one side and the smash on the tree on the other, half circled us and stopped to look back. Rocky laid his hand on my shoulder:

“Take your time, Sonny!” he said, “Aim low; an’ don’t full! Squeeze!” And at last I got it.

We had our breakfast there – the liver roasted on the coals, and a couple of ‘dough-boys,’ with the unexpected addition of a bottle of cold tea, weak and unsweetened, produced from Rocky’s knapsack! We stayed there a couple of hours, and that is the only time he really opened out. I understood then – at last – that of his deliberate kindliness he had come out that morning meaning to make a happy day of it for a youngster; and he did it.

He had the knack of getting at the heart of things, and putting it all in the fewest words. He spoke in the same slow grave way, with habitual economy of breath and words; and yet the pictures were living and real, and each incident complete. I seemed to get from him that morning all there was to know of the hunting in two great continents – Grizzlies and other ‘bar,’ Moose and Wapiti, hunted in the snows of the North West; Elephant, Buffalo, Rhino, Lions, and scores more, in the sweltering heat of Africa!

That was a happy day!

When I woke up next morning Rocky was fitting the packs on his donkeys. I was a little puzzled, wondering at first if he was testing the saddles, for he had said nothing about moving on; but when he joined us at breakfast the donkeys stood packed ready to start. Then Robbie asked:

“Going to make a move, Rocky?”

“Yes! Reckon I’ll git!” he answered quietly.

I ate in silence, thinking of what he was to face: many hundreds of miles – perhaps a thousand or two; many, many months – may be a year or two; wild country, wild tribes, and wild beasts; floods and fever; accident, hunger, and disease; and alone!

When we had finished breakfast he rinsed out his beaker and hung it on one of the packs, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and picking up his long assegai-wood walking-stick tapped the donkeys lightly to turn them into the Kaffir footpath that led away North. They jogged on into place in single file.