“No good givin’ you one. Mister,” he said to Carew. “You’d hang yourself with it most likely. I’ve got a rare good horse for you—old Smoked Beef. He’d moonlight cattle by himself, I believe. You’d better have a pistol, though.”
“What for?” asked Carew, as Considine produced three very heavy navy revolvers and a bag of cartridges.
“To shoot any beast that won’t stay with the mob. Some of ’em won’t be stopped. They have to go. Well, if one goes, the rest keep trying to follow, and no forty men will hold ’em. You just keep your eyes open, and if a beast breaks out in spite of the whips, you shoot him if the blacks tell you. See?”
“Where am I to shoot him?”
“Shoot him any place. In the earhole, or the shoulder, or the ribs, or the flank. Any place at all. Shoot him all over if you like. One or two bullets don’t hurt a beast. It takes a lead-mine to kill some of ’em.”
“Do the blacks shoot?” asked Charlie.
“No, I don’t never trust no blacks with firearms. One boy knifes well, though. Races alongside and knifes ’em.”
This seemed a fairly difficult performance; while the Englishman was wondering how it would be carried out, they made a start. They rode mile after mile in the yellow moonlight, until they discerned a mob of cattle feeding placidly near some big scrub. They whistled to the blacks, and all rode away down wind to a spot on the edge of the plain, a considerable distance from the cattle.
Here they dismounted and waited, Considine and Charlie talking occasionally in low tones, while the blacks sat silent, holding their horses. Carew lay down on the long dry grass and gazed away over the plain. His horse stood over him with head down, apparently sleeping. Far away under the moon, in vague patches of light and shade, the cattle were feeding. Hours seemed to pass, and Carew almost fell asleep.
Suddenly a long-drawn bellow, the angry challenge of a bull, broke the silence. A mob of wild cattle were evidently coming along the edge of the scrub, and had caught scent of the strangers. Again the bull roared; there is no animal on earth with so emphatically warlike a note as the wild bull when advancing to meet a strange mob. The quiet cattle answered with plaintive, long-drawn lowings, and the din became general as the two lots met.