Tales from the Veld. Glanville Ernest
and a bound sideways, I was off like the deer, with the roar of the black tiger in my ears.’
“So said Bolo, and without further words he took his kerries and his bag, and he went away over the hill to the north, running. Yes, lad, he quit at a gallop.”
“And what do you think of this story, Uncle Abe?”
“I’ve done a lot of thinking about it. I thunked that there wooden shetter for the window as a protection.”
“Surely you don’t believe that Bolo was led deliberately by the honey-bird to the tiger?”
“Maybe I do. Maybe the bird led him to a sure enough bee-tree. Maybe Bolo happened on the black critter. Maybe he were skeered at a shadder. I dunno; but I tell you I see the bird laf fit to bust, and there’s more in the ways of these animiles than we can catch hold of – a jolly sight more.”
“Well, then, bring your gun along and we’ll put the dog on the tiger’s spoor.”
“Not this child! No, no, sonny! You leave me to get the blind side of that tiger; but I’ve got my own plan, and it’s not tracking him I am when he’s on the watch. Not me.”
“What plan, Uncle?”
“There’s a powerful thinking machine in a honey-bird,” said the old man slowly, so dismissing his plan from the talk; “and when you come to think of it, the first bird that led a man to a nest must ha’ been a great diskiverer – a greater diskiverer in his way than was that Columbus chap who smashed the egg. That bird must a reckoned the whole thing out, an’ if he could a reckoned way back in the years, why, it stands to reason his children, after all the experience they’ve larnt, must reckon a lot more. One day one of these birds called me, and I picked up a bucket and a chopper, and followed after him at a run, for he was in a mighty hurry, being, as I thought, hungry. It warn’t that, sonny. He was jes’ mean, and he knew it, for the bee-tree he were leading me to belonged to another bird. I found that out when that bird come along. The two of them had a argument – the new one expostulatin’, the other one jes’ ansering in a don’t-care way. The second one he flew off – yelling threats, and the other one, after bunching himself up, suddenly lit out ag’in with me after him. I found the tree, took out the honey, and gave the bird a piece of comb. Then, as I was sittin’ down with the pipe, up came a hull lot of birds, with a black-headed, white-throated fiscal – the chap with a hooked beak who sticks the grasshoppers on thorns out of sheer devilment. Well, sonny, believe me, those birds they jes’ up and tried that honey-bird, the other chap giving evidence. The jury, which were composed of a yellow oriole, a blue spreuw, and a mouse-bird, they found my bird guilty, and a old white ringed crow, who was the jedge, pronounced sentence of death. My bird didn’t say nothing. He jes’ sot there with a piece of honey in his mouth, and a set, gloomy look in his eye. After the verdict that fiscal he swooped down, fixed his claws in the prisoner’s breast, and yanked his head off his neck with a twist. It was summery justice on that bird for taking possession of the other bird’s honey-tree. Yes, the fiscal he just yanked the prisoner’s head off, and the body fell to the ground. Then the jedge he buried the bird.”
“How was that?”
“He jes’ ate it. He jes’ flopped down, give a caw, and swallowed the corpse. I went home then, thinking as how they might try me for aiding and abetting a crime.”
Chapter Nine
Uncle Abe and the Wild Dogs
There can be no denying that we were reaping a plentiful crop of misfortunes, to which farmers in South Africa are especially exposed. The cattle thieves had mysteriously come and swiftly gone, taking with them a few head of stock into the dense cover of the Fish River Bush, thence to slip them at favourable opportunities into Kaffraria. Then, one morning the news was brought in that a pack of wild dogs, issuing from the Kowie Bush on the west, had sallied out on a rush over the intervening belt of well-stocked cattle country into the Fish River Valley, and there were few farms on the route that had not suffered. At one place a heifer had been pulled down and eaten; at another, a cow had been attacked and so mauled that death from a rifle-ball was a happy release; and on my place the pack had stampeded a mob of young cattle, ran down and killed a steer, besides leaving their marks on many others. In one night they had covered fifteen miles from one wooded fastness to the other, killing as they went, and when in the morning the angry farmers fingered their guns the brutes were resting secure in the distant woods. The wild dogs hunt in packs when after game, and according to a well arranged plan. Thus, one part of the pack will head the quarry in a certain direction where other members are lying in wait, but when on a wild rush across the veld they keep together, and on coming across cattle or sheep they bite or kill out of sheer lust of blood, seldom stopping to eat. Their jaws are enormously powerful, and with a snap and a wrench they tear away mouthfuls of flesh – so that if a pack gets among a flock of sheep they do a vast deal of mischief, and though they cannot pull down an ox, they will cause the death of a cow by tearing at her udder and belly. Fortunately their raids into the comparatively open veld are not frequent, and they prefer to keep in the shelter of wide stretches of bush until game becoming scarce they shift quarters, when they may sometimes be caught in an isolated kloof and shot or poisoned.
Uncle Abe had something to say when I met him next at the monthly meeting of our Farmers’ Association – an organisation of six paying members and fifteen members who never had enough cash to pay, but who regularly attended on the chance of getting a square meal from any one of the five whose turn it was to give up his largest room to the meeting. Uncle Abe did most of the orating, and it frequently happened indeed that the formal business would be forgotten, while Abe from his usual seat on the door-step held forth on the peculiar gifts of “animiles.” His idea was that all branches of animal life acted under a stringent code of laws and regulations.
“Take these yer wild dogs,” he said, pointing the stem of his well-chewed pipe at the President, who sat at the end of the dining-room table waiting patiently for a nervous young farmer to read his painfully prepared paper on the vexed question of “Inoculation as a Cure for Lung-sickness.”
“Take these yer wild dogs. Haven’t they got a leader? They have. Of course they have, and wha’ jer think they’ve got a leader for if it isn’t to follow him or her – for more often than not the leader’s a she; and wha’ jer think they foller him or her if it ain’t because they’ve got rules and regulations which are be-known to that leader?”
“Don’t they follow the leader because he happens to be the strongest in the pack?” asked the nervous member anxiously, bent on shirking his task.
“We ain’t going to follow your lead this afternoon on that score,” said Abe caustically. “No sir, they follow the leader not because he is the strongest, but for the reason that he knows the rules and regilations.”
“Have you seen a printed copy, Abe?” asked one member shyly.
“No, sir. It’s only human beings that ain’t got sense enough to know what they are setting out to do unless they put everything in print. A human being wants to know everything, and he don’t know nothing; but a animile he calkalates to know what’s necessary for him, and when he learns his lesson he don’t want any noospaper to tell him about it – you jes’ put that in your pipe. Now take your case – ”
“Have some baccy, Uncle,” said the interrupting member eagerly.
“Don’t mind if I do. Lemme see. I were jes’ going to tell ye a yarn about some wild dogs, but I see the President’s waiting for our young friend to ’lighten us about ’noculation, which is good on his part, considerin’ there’s some here as were curing lung-sick cattle before he were born.”
“My paper can wait,” said the young farmer, hastily stuffing his notes into his pocket. “Let us have your story.”
“Drive ahead, ole man.”
“Well, if it’s the wish of the meeting, I’m at your service. If I remember, ’twere away back in the sixties, when game were pretty thick in these parts, and a pack took up lodgings in the big kloof over yonder. I was mor’n ordinarily busy building my shed, and hadn’t much time to give any heed to them,