It was afterwards found that the lady was subject to delusions, and had imagined the whole thing, but the detectives had arrived at the same conclusion through examining the fingermarks and signs.
When out in the country you must keep your eyes about you and not merely notice small signs close to you, but other signs far away as well—such as dust flying, birds startled, unnatural movements of bush or grass, and also keep your ears open for sounds such as cracking of a twig, dogs suddenly barking and so on.
The battle of Boomplatz, fought by the British against the Boers, was successful for us partly because Sir Harry Smith, the Commander, noticed some buck in the distance suddenly startled and running for no apparent reason, but his suspicions being aroused he sent scouts to investigate, and they found a Boer force trying to form an ambush for him, and he was able to defeat their aims in consequence.
By night of course you must use your ears instead of your eyes and practice at this helps to make perfect.
A trained Scout will see little signs and tracks, she puts them together in her mind, and quickly reads a meaning from them such as an untrained woman would never arrive at.
And from frequent practice she gets to read the meaning at a glance, just as you do a book, without the delay of spelling out each word, letter by letter.
I was one day, during the Matabele War [show on map] with a native out scouting near to the Matopo Hills over a wide grassy plain. Suddenly we crossed a track freshly made in grass, where the blades of grass were still green and damp, though pressed down; all were bending one way, which showed the direction in which the people had been travelling. Following up the track for a bit it got on to a patch of sand, and we then saw that it was the spoor of several women (small feet with straight edge, and short steps) and boys (small feet, curved edge, and longer strides), walking, not running, towards the hills, about five miles away, where we believed the enemy to be hiding.
Then we saw a leaf lying about ten yards off the track. There were no trees for miles, but we knew that trees having this kind of leaf grew at a village fifteen miles away, in the direction from which the footmarks were coming. It seemed likely therefore that the women had come from that village, bringing the leaf with them, and had gone to the hills.
On picking up the leaf we found it was damp, and smelled of native beer. The short steps showed that the women were carrying loads. So we guessed that according to the custom they had been carrying pots of native beer on their heads, the mouths of the pots being stopped up with bunches of leaves. One of these leaves had fallen out; but we found it ten yards off the track, which showed that at the time it fell a wind was blowing. There was no wind now, i. e., seven o’clock, but there had been some about five o’clock.
So we guessed from all these little signs that a party of women and boys had brought beer during the night from the village 15 miles away, and had taken it to the enemy on the hills, arriving there soon after six o’clock.