Tales from the Veld Part 12

"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 s.h.i.+niest 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.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

WHERE THE QUAILS CAME FROM.

In the spring the quails come in from the west, and one September morning I went out into the standing oat-crops with two other guns, each one of us attended by a little Kaffir lad to retrieve the birds. By noon we had traversed and re-traversed in line the upper lands and low lands, bagging 98 brace, and then in the glare of the mid-day we took shelter in the shade of a yellow-wood tree. There we argued the ever-recurring theme of the coming of the quail.

In August there is not a quail to all seeming in the land, but suddenly, as the spring advances, there comes from every thicket of gra.s.s and square of growing corn on the coast the whistling call of the male bird--'phee--phe--yew' calling in bird language, 'where are you?--where are you?' and the answering cry of the modest mate--'phee-- phee'--"here--here." Whence do they come--these thousands of birds that throng along the coast? On that point regularly as September came round, as the 12-bore gun was taken down, and the cartridges filled with Number 6, we talked greatly, setting forth many theories. Silas Topper was of opinion that the quails spent their time in travelling round the continent of Africa in four huge armies, covering 500 miles from front to rear, and that while one was pa.s.sing along the southern coast, the second army would be going north somewhere above the Zambesi, while the third would be traversing the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, and the fourth skirting of Gold Coast. We all agreed that was a very good theory, and one deserving more credence than the crude, but positive, a.s.sertion of Amos Topper that the quail was originally a frog.

"It stands to reason," Amos would say, "that a quail is developed from a frog. If 'tain't so, what becomes of all the frogs?--tell me that.

Take a caterpillar. A caterpillar comes from an egg, and a coc.o.o.n comes from a caterpillar, and a b.u.t.terfly from a coc.o.o.n."

"But a quail isn't a b.u.t.terfly."

"Chuts! A tadpole comes from an egg, doesn't it? Well, a frog comes from a tadpole, and a quail comes from a frog. That's clear enough, ain't it?"

Then, of course, the argument would start, and this particular September morning we had got well into the frog theory when old Abe Pike came along.

"I don't mind if I do," he said, as he sat down and selected a plump bird that Amos had carefully prepared for his own eating. He had opened it out by a cut down the breast bone, laid the broad bare back on the wood coals, and in the cup-like cavities of the breast had placed a pat of b.u.t.ter, with pepper and salt. The juices of the bird had gathered in these cavities, and Amos had just cut off a slice of bread to serve as a plate when old Pike forestalled him.

"That's my bird," said Topper, fiercely.

"Just yeard you say 'twas a frog," grunted Abe, as he dug his knife into the earth to clean it.

"I said it was a frog, but it's a sure enough bird now--blow you!"

"Go slow, sonny, go slow," said Abe, between the mouthfuls. "Stick to one thing at a time. Once a frog always a frog."

"Humph," said Amos, as he picked out another bird from the heap. "I s'pose you never heard frogs whistling of a night?"

"Well, of course."

"What do they whistle for, eh, if they're not fitting themselves for the bird life--tell me that?" And Amos looked at us triumphantly.

"They whistle for the rain, you donderkop."

"P'raps, then, you can tell us where these birds come from, as you're so mighty clever."

"To be sure, sonny, to be sure; they come from the clouds."

"Oh, thunder!"

"Yes; from the clouds, or maybe higher. I s'pose you yeard of the people of Israel and how they were fed in the wilderness with manna and quail. Where d'you expect those birds came from? Frogs! No; they just dropped from the sky, and they've kep' on droppin' ever since in the spring."

"Go along! There's no people wandering in the wilderness in these days."

"I seed 'em."

"The Israelites?"

"No; the quail a-falling out the roof of the world. I'll tell you how it came about that I diskivered this secret that's been kep' locked up all these hundreds of years. I'd been a-fis.h.i.+n' off the great rock that stands out of the breakers over there yonder by the Kasouga, an' the spring tide, rolling in with a great heave, made a boilin' foam 'twixt me an' the beach. I were fixed there for the night, sure enough; an' I tell you what, sonny, when a man is brought face to face in the black of the night with the leaping sea, he don't forget the time. Noise! by gum! You know what it is to be waked all of a sudden out of a sleep a full mile from the sea by the smacking crash of a great wave, and there I was in the very thick of the thunderation, with the big black breakers swis.h.i.+ng out of the dark like a movin' wall, and jus' leapin' agin the rock as though they were bent on sweeping it away. The white foam went flying above, drenching me through and through--and it grew so slippery up above on that table size top, that I was obliged to lay full stretched on my back with my heels agin a crack, and my arms outstretched--and my eyes fixed on the stars above whenever I could see them through the flying scud. Even a spring tide turns--and in the darkness before the early morning I could feel the rock under me growing firmer. I was just thinking o' getting to the sh.o.r.e to dry myself in the white sand when I yeard a queer sound from the sky. There's just one thing wanting to this yer quail."

"What's that?"