So, in order to drive a wagon well, Shomolekae needed to be able to manage sixteen oxen all at once, and keep them walking in a straight line. He needed to know which were the bad-tempered ones and which were the good, and which pulled best in one part of the span and which in another; and how to keep them all pulling together and not lunging at one another with their horns.
Shomolekae also had to be so bold and daring that, if lions came to eat the oxen at night, he could go with the gun and either frighten them away or actually shoot them.
So you see Shomolekae was very clever, and was full of good courage.
While he was living at Kuruman a man came to him one day and said:
"John Mackenzie is alone at Shoshong, and there is no one who can drive his wagon well for him."
The man who told him this was, as it happened, going by wagon to Shoshong, where John Mackenzie lived.
"Let me go with you," said Shomolekae.
So he got up into the wagon, and away they went day after day northward on the same journey that Shomolekae had taken when he was a boy.
So Shomolekae served Mackenzie for years as wagon driver at Shoshong.
At last the time came when Mackenzie himself left the tribe at Shoshong—left Khama and all his people—and travelled southward to build at Kuruman a kind of small school where he could train young black men to be missionaries to their own people. And Shomolekae himself went to Kuruman with Mackenzie. He set to work with his own hands, and he helped to make and lay bricks, to put in the doors and windows, and to place the roof on the walls, until at last the little school was built.