Of course I gave him the required a.s.surance, and as we reached the gate the buggy pulled up, and there got out a strongly-built man of about fifty-five. He had a quiet-looking but determined face, which reminded me more of Beryl than of Brian, and a thick, full, brown beard, somewhat streaked with grey, and as Brian speedily introduced us his welcome of me was all that could be desired in the way of frank cordiality.
"I hope you will be able to make some stay with us, Mr Holt," he said.
"You have spent the night here, and, I take it, have seen what we have to offer you; but such as it is, you are very welcome."
So this was Brian"s father! I confess he inspired in me more than a feeling of cordiality--for it was one of admiration. I knew men pretty well by that time, and was a bit of a cynic on the subject; but now I saw before me one whom I read as rather a unique specimen--a man who would say what he meant, and who would act as his judgment dictated, no matter what the whole world might think--a man whose word would be as his bond, even though it were to his own detriment; in short, in this frontier stock-farmer I saw a man who, no matter where he might be put down, or under what circ.u.mstances, would be a very tower of reliability: cool, intrepid, sound of judgment, come good, come ill. And in all my subsequent friendship with Septimus Matterson, I never had cause to swerve one hair"s breadth from my first impression--save in one instance only.
Now as two Kafirs came up to stand at the horses" heads, somebody else jumped out of the buggy--a boy to wit, whom Mr Matterson promptly introduced as his youngest son. He was a boy of about fourteen, a good-looking boy, but with a roving mischievous look in his face; a boy, in short, to whom I did not take one bit. Equally readily I could see that he did not take to me.
"Just out from England, hey?" said this hopeful. "Man, but you"ll find it different here."
Now this was hardly the form of address to be looked for from a youngster of his tender age to a man very considerably his senior; moreover, there was something patronising about it which prejudiced me against the speaker; in fact, I set him down at once as an unlicked cub.
But of course I showed no sign of what I was thinking, and the work Brian had been superintending being at an end, we all went round to count the flocks--I don"t mean I bore any part in that operation, not then--and adjourned to the house for breakfast.
CHAPTER NINE.
MAINLY VENATORIAL.
Beryl looked wholly fresh and delightful as she welcomed us, and it was hard to believe she had been up nearly three hours "seeing to things,"
as Brian put it. There was a good deal of talk, of wholly local interest, with regard to the expeditions of both father and son, and the results thereof, but even it was by no means without interest to me, for, after all, it let me into so much of the inner life of these strange new surroundings. Presently the young hopeful, looking up from a large plateful of oatmeal porridge and milk, observed--
"I say, Brian, let"s go down to Zwaart Kloof this morning and try for a bushbuck ram."
"Well, I don"t know. Yes. Perhaps Mr Holt would like to try his luck.
What do you say, Holt?"
I said I"d like nothing better, but for the trifling drawback that I had no gun--being only a shipwrecked mariner who had come away with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. But this was speedily over-ruled.
There were plenty of guns in the house. No difficulty about that.
"Can you shoot, Mr Holt?" said the youngster, planting both elbows on the table, and eyeing me with rather disdainful incredulity.
"Well, yes, I can shoot," I said. "Moderately, that is."
"But you"re out from England," went on the cub, as though that settled the matter.
"George, you little a.s.s, shut up, and go and tell them to saddle up Bles and Punch for us," said Brian. "You can ride Jack."
A volume of expostulation in favour of some other steed having been silenced by Brian in quiet and peremptory fashion, the hopeful went out.
"I"m afraid you"ll find George rather a spoilt boy, Mr Holt," said Beryl. "He and Iris seem to get their own way more than they ought.
They are the little ones, you see."
Of course I rejoined that it was quite natural--reserving my own opinion. In the case of the little girl it was candid: in the other-- well "boy" to me is apt to spell horror; but a spoilt boy, and just a boy of George Matterson"s age, well--to fit him, my vocabulary has never yet been able to invent an adequate superlative.
"You"d better have a shot gun, Holt," said Brian, as we started. "I always use one in thick bush; it"s all close shooting."
He handed me a double Number Twelve bore, of first-rate make and poise, and kept in first-rate order too, and some treble A cartridges.
"You won"t use all those. You"ll be lucky if you get two fair and square shots," he remarked.
"Good luck, Mr Holt," called out Beryl after us.
I began to feel nervous. I was only an ordinary shot, and of this form of sport was, of course, utterly without experience--and said as much.
"You only shoot tame pheasants in England, don"t you, Mr Holt?" said George, in a tone that made me wish I could turn him into one of the fowl aforesaid. Could it really be that this impudent young pup was Beryl"s brother--or Brian"s too, for the matter of that?
We cantered down the valley, then struck up a lateral spur, and rounding it came upon a deep kloof running far up into the hillside--its side black with dense bush, the _boerboen_ and plumed euphorbia, and half a dozen other varieties whose names I didn"t know then.
"Here, Tiger, Ratels, get to heel!" cried Brian, apostrophising the rough-haired dogs which had followed, all excited, at our horses" heels.
"George, take Mr Holt on to the opening above the little krantz. You know where to post him. If he doesn"t get a shot there he won"t get one anywhere. Then come back to me."
We made a bit of a circuit, and some twenty minutes later found ourselves in a little open s.p.a.ce, surrounded on three sides by dense bush, while the fourth seemed to be the brink of a precipitous fall in the ground. Here I was carefully posted in the combined cover of an ant-heap and a small mimosa.
"That"s where they always break cover," whispered George. "Man, but you mustn"t make a sound. Don"t move--don"t cough, even. So long."
Left alone, my nerves were all athrill with excitement, and I believe my hand shook. A couple of spreuws perched upon an adjoining bush, melodiously whistling, then, become mysteriously aware of my presence, flashed off--a pair of green-blue streaks, their note changed to one of alarm. Would they scare the game and turn it back? I thought agonisingly. Heavens! what if I should shoot badly, and miss? What a fool I should look--and this was, in a way, my _debut_!
The s.p.a.ce the quarry would have to cross was about twenty yards. Could I stop it in that distance? No, I was sure I could not. I was feeling far too shaky, far too eager--a nervous condition invariably fatal, at any rate in my own case, to effective execution.
The silence settled down around me, broken only by the occasional note of a bird. Then I started. What was that? The yapping of a dog, then another, then a chorus of excited yelps; and as it drew rapidly nearer I realised that they were on the track of something.
Exactly from the direction George had indicated, it came--a quick bounding rush. A n.o.ble antelope leapt out into the open. Its pointed, slightly spiral horns and dilated eye, the almost black hide with the white belly stripe, seemed photographed in my brain as I pressed the trigger, and--missed. Like a streak of dark lightning it shot across the open, and my left barrel spoke, a fraction of a second before it disappeared over the declivity. But in that fraction of a second I had seen the convulsive start, the unmistakable squirm, and could have hurrahed aloud.
I remained still, however, slipping in a couple of fresh cartridges.
Another might come out. But it did not; instead, the dogs appeared hot foot on the scent, and close behind them George.
"Hallo, Mr Holt. Where"s the buck?" cried that youth, with a derisive grin. "Man, but we drove him right over you."
"And I"ve driven him right over there," pointing to the brow of the declivity.
"So it seems. Man! but you won"t get such a chance again in a hurry."
"Well, Holt? No luck, eh?" said Brian, appearing on the scene.
"Well, it depends on whether you look at it from my point of view or the buck"s," I said with designed coolness. "If the latter, you"re right."
"Eh? Why--"
Something of a clamour beneath interrupted him: the fierce worrying of dogs, and the half bellow, half scream, of a bush-buck ram in the last fight for his life. We did not pause a moment then. Flinging themselves from their horses--mine had been left much higher up--they plunged down, I following, leaping from rock to rock. There lay my quarry, unable to rise save on his forelegs, yet savagely menacing with his pointed horns the three dogs which were leaping and snarling frantically around him.
"He"s done for--hit rather far back, though," said Brian, calling off the dogs. "Put another shot into him, Holt--forward this time."
I did, and the animal at once stiffened out, lifeless.
"_Maagtig_! but he"s a fine ram," cried George, while congenially amusing himself by cutting the beast"s throat. "You didn"t hit him by accident, Mr Holt, hey?"
"Bad accident for the buck, anyway," said Brian with a dry laugh. "Well done, Holt. I congratulate you. Thirteen-inch horns! We"ll have them done up for you as a trophy of your first bushbuck."