Tales from the Veld

“The ram shook his head, and a tiny red mark went winding down the furrows of his horn nearest me. Eh! you should a seen him and I jes’ held my breath, while my legs shook so I was obliged to stand up. Back of him came the pack – silent now, and the speediest of ’em slipping along like shadders, while two of the critters stood each side of the ram watching him, and the big one standing clear of the tree, staring at the great blazing eyes with his mean little yeller peepers. Suddenly the big chap gave a few orders, sharp and snapping, and four leaders from the pack shot out, two going one side and two the other. They were surrounding the ram, and he knew it. He made a bound forward, and the same minute the two dogs nearest him sprang open-mouthed, one of ’em taking a clear mouthful outer the haunch. The ram swerved, and the big chap waiting for him went for his belly, but the ram bounded into the air, and when he came down he wheeled round with his back to the tree. The dogs they jes’ drew off and sat in a ring staring at him, one and another opening his big jaws and bringing the white teeth together with a snap, but the sight of that circle didn’t shake the nerve of the buck, for he shook his head at ’em and stamped his hoofs. One of the young critters growing impatient ran in, but got a stroke from the pointed hoof for his pains. Well, I were that ’xcited I moved towards the tree, the pack jes’ giving me one look, then closed in a step or two. Three times the circle were drawn closer, and the sight of those staring eyes from outer those ugly round heads fairly made me shudder. I up with the gun and let ’em have a charge of slugs. In the confusion the ram went off full slick this time, and the dogs, with a whimper, scattered after him; but ’twas no use, he give ’em leg bail, and believe me them critters come sneakin’ back and s’rounded me. They did that.”

“Did they think you were good to eat?”

“’Pears so, for they sat on their tails regarding me with loving looks. I shoo’d to them, but they didn’t shoo a inch. I went for ’em with the gun clubbed, but while those in front give way, those ahind came perilously near my legs. I heerd the snap of their steel jaws, but when I turned there they were sitting down with their heads on one side. Each time I tried that it were the same; and when I give up, there they sat in a ring round me. Then I jes’ swung up into the tree and snapped my fingers at em.

“If I were to tell you what them ere wild dogs did, you ’ud up and say the old man were a liar.”

“You hurt our feelings, Uncle.”

“Well, that big leader he up and made a speech – not a oration like our gifted young friend here can make, but a few yaps and growls. After he had finished they give him a cheer, and fell to scooping a big trench round the tree. Then they gnawed the roots through. Then they boosted the tree down. Yes, gentlemen, them wild dogs which you would call unthinking critters, deliberately dug up that big tree with their teeth, so’s to get hold o’ me.”

“Hum! Did they eat you, Uncle?”

“They boosted the tree down; but while they stood away off, I lit on my feet and were inside the house ’fore you could say Jack Robinson. Yes, that’s so.”

Chapter Ten

The Black Mamba

We were talking about snakes at the little roadside winkle– a composite shop, where you could buy moist black sugar, tinned butter, imported; tinned milk, also imported; cotton, prints, boots, “square face,” tobacco, dates, nails, gunpowder, cans, ribbons, tallow candles, and the “Family Herald.” We always did talk about snakes when other topics failed, and no one had been fishing for some time, and the big pumpkin season had passed.

“Man,” said Lanky John, the ostrich farmer, “I killed a snake, a ringhals, yesterday morning back of the kraal, and in the evening when I went by there was a live ringhals coiled round the dead one.”

“There’s a lot of love among snakes,” said Abe Pike, who had swapped a bush-buck hide for a pound of coffee and a roll of tobacco. “They don’t talk much, but they think a lot, and you can’t plumb the feelings of silent folk; they’re that deep.”

“Ever been in love, Uncle?” asked Lanky John, popping a big lump of black sugar into his mouth.

“I guess it won’t take more’n a foot measure to get to the bottom of your feelings, tho’ you are long enough to be a telegraft pole,” snorted Uncle Abe.

“Snakes haven’t got any brain,” said Lanky John, after an awkward pause.

“No more has a whip-stick,” said the old man, with a contemptuous glance at Lanky’s long, thin limbs.

“That’s true,” replied John, with a wink at us; “though I’ve heard of a snake that glued on to a whip-stick all for love of you, Uncle.”

“Snakes,” said Abe, “knows when to speak and when to keep shut, which is more than some folk can do. If you come unexpected on a snake in a path, and he sees your foot coming down on him, he lets you know he’s about, and that foot of yours is jest fixed in the air. Well, suppose that snake is not in the path, but jest stretched out ’longside, he don’t call out. For why? ’Cos he knows it’s safer for him and for you that he should keep quiet. I tell you there’s not a man here who hasn’t time and again passed in the dark within a few inches of a snake.”

A listener, who was seated in a dark corner, moved out into the sunshine.

“Did I ever tell you that yarn about the black mamba?”

“You never did, old man, so shove along.”

“You may thank your stars there’s no mambas down in this country, for of all critturs that crawl, or fly, or walk, there’s not one for nateral cussedness and steady hate to come up to a black mamba. Why! thunder! if there was a mamba in these parts, and he’d a grudge against me, I’d move off a hundred miles to where my sister ’Liza lives.”

“A hundred miles! That’s a good step.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be fur enough neither. You wait! Ten years ago I was riding goods to the Diamond Fields, and after one trip I was starting back with the empty wagon, there being no produce to load up with, when a chap came up and offered three guineas for his passage. Well, a man’s wagon is his home, and you don’t want to give a fellow the run of your tent for a month without knowing something about him. So I jes’ looked him all over – saw that his boots were worn out, and that he kep’ looking over his shoulder, when he climbed into the wagon and drew the blanket over him – though the sun was fierce enough to light your pipe. He gave me sich a look when he went in that I had not the heart to drag him out, and off I trekked. He didn’t join me at the fire that night, and when I climbed in, thinking he was asleep, he was shiverin’ as though he had the ague. Well, I gave him a glass of Cango and went to sleep. At sunrise I trekked again, and bymby I see him draw the canvas aside and look back over the veld, which was as flat as the palm of my hand. Thinks I, he’s expecting the police, but I let him be, and at dinner he came out, looking as skeered as a monkey with a candle. First he took a walk round the wagon, then he shaded his eyes as he glanced over the veld, then he took a bite and a look, then a sip and a look.

“‘What are you looking for?’ says I.

“He let the beaker fall out of his hands and turned white.

“‘Have you seen it?’ he whispered, with a sort of choke.

“‘Seen what?’ I said.

“‘I don’t feel well,’ he answered, with a twitch for a smile, and climbed back into the wagon.

“I tell you his looks made me feel queer, and I slept that night under the wagon. Well, I made a long skoff the next day, crossed the Modder River, and no sooner’d we get across than the river came down with a rush, brimming full with a boiling yeller flood right up to the lip of the steep banks. That coon spent the whole day on the bank watching the other side, and fixing his eyes on every tree and branch that went sailing down.

“‘It’s a grand flood,’ he said, rubbing his hands together; ‘’twould sweep a whale away like a piece of straw.’

“‘Yes, and a policeman too, eh?’ said I, looking at him hard.

“He noticed the meaning in my words, and a human smile broke over his face, chasing away the worried look that seemed carved into it. ‘Policeman,’ he said. ‘I’ve no cause to fear a policeman, or any man. Good God!’ he cried, catching me by the arm, ‘what’s that?’

“‘Where?’ said I, fit to jump out of my skin for the terror in his face.

“He stood there with his eyes glaring at the water, and a shaking finger pointing into the very heart of the yeller flood. There stood out the root of a tree, and clinging to the root the coils of a snake, with his gleaming head moving like a branch. Jest a moment it showed, then the water swirled over it again.

“‘Let go of my arm,’ I said, for his fingers were biting into me, and the look of him made me afeard, so that I talked gruffly.

“‘Did you see it?’ he said, and then he jest collapsed like a bundle of clothes. I had a good mind to leave him there, but, instead, I histed him on to my shoulders, and poured enough Cango into him to make him forget his name. He wasn’t fit to stand until a couple of days after, and then wha’ jer think he did? Cut up his clothes into shreds and laughed fit to kill himself when I found him at it. Of course, I thought he was clean daft, but he weren’t, and for the first time, with my old corduroys on him, he sat by the camp fire, sipping his coffee, and talking – talking mainly about snakes and bloodhounds, and things that made my backbone whang like a broken fiddle-string. He frightened himself, too, so that when he saw the long achter-oss sjambok quivering on the ground where the driver had thrown it, his jaw got rigid, and moved up and down without any words coming from his mouth. Then, with a sort of sob, he snatched up the axe, and I’m blowed if he didn’t cut that sjambok into a thousand bits. It was a good sjambok, too, made of rhinoceros hide, as thick as your wrist at the butt and going off to a point, and when I told the idiot what he’d done, he jes’ went off into another unnateral fit of wild laughter, after which he paid me a guinea and went to bed. Putting this, that, and the other together, with the Cango brandy, I guessed my man had got snakes in his head, and I kept the demijohn under lock. That calmed him down, and he was all right until we came to the Orange River, where we had to camp while the water went down. About fifty wagons were there waiting to cross, and there was quite a stir with all the fellows moving about visiting. When we had outspanned, I joined a group to hear about the state of the roads, the condition of the veld for grazing, and all them things that transport riders talk about, when one chap asked if I had heard the news. ‘What news?’ says I. ‘About that snake,’ says he; ‘he was seen at the Riet River drift last week.’ ‘Yes,’ says another, ‘and two days before he was at Aliwal North.’ ‘I heard from the mail coach driver,’ says a third, ‘that the snake overtook his coach, stopped the horses, and took a steady look at all the passengers, after which he went across the veld, leaving ’em all frozen with terror. It was twenty feet long, and its eyes were like black diamonds.’

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