Chapter Twenty Eight.
Abe and the Eagles.
I had not seen old Abe Pike for some weeks, having been on rinderpest guard on the Orange River, but on my return to the coast I rode over to Gum Tree Farm, where the lone blue-gum threw its pillar of cloud, in the blazing afternoon, across the doorway. Uncle Abe was lounging, as usual, by the doorway, looking listlessly at the sea.
“Well, oud baas! How goes it?”
“Is there no more cattle to kill?” he said, straightening his back and propping himself against the wall. “Think you’d be ashamed to look a beefsteak in the face after the way you been shooting them pore animiles!”
“The plague must be stamped out, Abe.”
“Oh, yes! I yeard that story before! It’s a good way to save a crittur’s life by shooting him! What beats me is why you don’t up and shoot all children sick with tyfust and grown people ailing with influenza! My gum! I’m ashamed of you!”
“Well, so long!”
“You ain’t goin’?”
“I think so; the work of shooting cattle is not pleasant, but it is less pleasant to be reminded of it.”
“Oh, go along! Put your horse in the shed and come right in. The place ain’t been the same since you’ve been away, sonny; ’sides, there’s been no one along for weeks, and I’m jes’ bu’sting with talk. You wouldn’t like to see old Abe die of untold yarns.”
So I off-saddled and knee-haltered the horse, for there was no oat-hay in the shed for him, and he had to get what picking he could from the old lands, yellow with charlock.
Abe made up the fire, and put on the kettle to boil, while from the larder he produced a slab of pork and a half-loaf—very black on the outside and very soft within.
“The last batch of baking,” he said, “was not up to the mark. The yeast gave out, and I were obliged to get a rise out of a handful of rub-rub berries. As for the pork, that came from a pig that was catched.”
“What sort of pig?”
“Well, sonny, it was this way. You know the eagles’ nest on the old yellow-wood in the big kloof? I got the pig out of there.”
“Oh, you did, did you? As far as I remember, the tree is a hundred feet high, and the nest quite sixty feet up. The pig climbed up, I presume?”
“You presoom morn’s good for you, sonny. Don’t suppose ’cos you bin to the Orange River you know everything. The pig didn’t climb up; he jes’ dropped in on passin’; paid a sort of flying visit. That nest’s as big as a cart wheel, and if you stand below and look up the trunk it shuts out the sky, while down below there’s bones enough, and of sorts, to build up the skelingtons of a entire museum. That pair of eagles used that nest going on for fifteen years, and each year when the young hatch out they kill off more dassies and cats and blue-boks than you could eat in a year.”
“You are welcome to the cats, Abe.”
“Yes, sir. Them eagles have buried, I reckon, as many as two thousand animiles in that leaf-mould cemingtary below the big tree. Well! Grub being skerce, I had a fancy to bury them young squabs of eagles, by way of satisfying my own yearning for food, and giving the ole hook-beaked pirates a hint that they hadn’t the sole right over the earth and air. Sonny, that’s a big tree, and it took me a fortnight to climb up.”
“That was quick!”
“I’ve seen quicker climbin’, but taking the size of the tree and the height of it—maybe, five hundred feet!”
“I thought the height to the nest was about sixty feet?”
“Have you clomb that tree?”
“No, Abe.”
“Well, I have; and if it’s not a mile high, it’s high enuf when you’re up aloft, with nothing to keep you from adding your bones to the pile below but an iron spike no bigger’n a nail. I camped out one day at the bottom of the tree, and it was mighty lonesome, when the wind came whisperin’ round the trees, and dark shadows peeped from behin’ the rocks, while up above the she-eagle would hiss at her mate. For about two days they took no heed of me, but the fifth day, when I was sprawling half-way up, with a looped rheim round the tree, the ole she-bird took a squint at me over the nest, and flopped down to the lowest bough, where she watched me under her brows drive in a three-inch nail. Two inches I druv it in, and when I lowered myself for another, she jes’ dropped down, clawing to the tree with her long hooked toes, and yanked that nail out.”
“Abe Pike!”
“Yes, sir; she jes’ grabbed hole of it, give it a wrench, and out it come. Then she fetched a yell loud enough almost to split the tree, and went off. Nex’ mornin’, believe me, there was that nail, and five others, outside the door! Them eagles had fetched them up to give notice it was no good. They’re mighty strong in the beak, is eagles,” said Abe, pouring out the coffee.
“But truth is stronger, eh?”
“That’s so, sonny; you take hole o’ that, and it’ll do you a heap of good. That day I druv in them nails deeper, and they held good, by reason that the ole she-bird had got lockjaw, and sot up there nursin’ her beak, with her red eyes glowing like coals. About the fifth day I were near up, when the ole man dropped a coney’s head, and by luck it took me over the head. Well, you’d hardly believe me when I tell you, that no sooner the ole girl seen this than she gave a hiss, and began scraping out of the nest all the rubbish, bones, and skin, and feathers, and sich. Whew! I tell you I had to scuttle and leave off. Well, next day she were looking out for me, and soon’s I got up dropped a full-grown blue-bok—ker-blung—and if I had not been prepared, would ha’ sent me tumbling. I climbed down, an’ roasted that there bit of venison while the two of them watched. Of course, after that meal I went home, and next mornin’, when I opened the door, blow me! if there weren’t a rock rabbit, fat as butter, jes’ outside. I ate him and stopped at home. Next mornin’ there was a brace of partridges, so I ate ’em, and stayed quiet. Next morning a big hare, an’ I ate him and stayed at home. So on till the eleventh mornin’, when there was only a black cat, with the musk of him smellin’ most awful. Of course, I wasn’t eating any such vermin, but I thought the eagles meant well, and I wasn’t blaming them. I buried that crittur two feet deep, and went hungry to bed. Next mornin’ I was outer the door before I was awake, expecting to fin’ a plump lamb, or maybe a kid or a turkey, but there was nothing, sir, but the smell of that stink eat hanging around most dreadful. Sonny, the feelings of them two eagles had been hurt. They took it as a slight that I hadn’t eaten that skunk, so I sot off to the kloof to explain matters. When I got there the ole he was sailing above the tree, with his claws tucked up, and his head on one side. When he seed me he jes’ fetched a screech like a railway engine divin’ into a tunnel, and then he settled on the tree, where, bymby, he were joined by the ole she. They jest sot there and looked, making no sign to drop anything, so I begun to climb; but they took no notice, and bymby I come to the end of the nails, and the nearest bough was six feet away. I had to give it up that day, leaving them two birds all ruffled up and mighty cold and standoffish. It was hard next mornin’ to find nothing outside the door, and I seed there was nothing left but to finish the job, and catch them young squabs. I went off to the kloof, bitter against the ingratitood of them stingy birds, which were ready to let a human bein’ starve when they had a larder jes’ stuffed with hares and things—and my hares, too! Them birds was waiting for me—throwing their beaks back and screaming like mad, while the squabs in the nest squealed till my head split. They had sense enuf to see I were angry, and they sot up that racket to starve me off; but a hungry man don’t stop to listen to speeches when his dinner is callin’ out loud for him, so I went up with my mouth full of nails. Very soon I were over the bough, and the screeching and squealing were terrible to listen to.”
“Didn’t the eagles attack you?”
“No, sonny! They were jest helpless with laughing!”
“Laughing?”
“When I threw my leg over the bough, I got the hammer ready to strike, but I seed them shakin’ all over, till some of the wing feathers dropped out, and tears were running down their beaks and droppin’ off the sharp point of the hook. It was not fear—you never seed a eagle afraid—he couldn’t be if he tried—an’ I seed at once they were laughin’ fit to die. I sot there in a tremble at the unnatural circumstance, and then began to climb till I could look into the nest. Sonny, d’you know what they were laughing at.”
“The pig in the nest.”
“Who told you?”
“Oh, I just guessed.”
“Well, I’m blessed! Ghoisters! You never seed a pig in a nest up a tree seven hundred feet high?”
“Not that I remember, Abe.”
“Gum! Yes, sir; there were a pig in that nest. Them birds, sonny, had kept me off till their squabs could fly, and then they played that joke on me. I chucked the pig out, and when I got down he were as dead as bacon. Come to think of it, sonny, it were a kind thought of them eagles to put it up there, and it makes me smile every time to think of the way them birds laughed till they shook their feathers out.”
The old man fixed his abstracted gaze on a cloud of tobacco smoke.
“I hope to train ’em next year,” he said, “to keep me in venison and lard. Going? Well, so long!”
“So long, Abe!”