“By the Lord he would,” cried Rawson. “Man alive, but you’ve had a narrow squeak! Well I’m blasted sorry if I’ve given you a shaking up—and I can’t say more.”
“Oh, that’ll be all right,” said Wyvern, forgetting his own narrow escape in his intense relief. “But look here, Joe. Are you dead sure it wasn’t one?”
“Dead cert. Look. Here’s the thorn,” picking one up.
“Haw-haw-haw!” bellowed Rawson. “Well, Wyvern, I suppose you and I are the only two cusses in the world who can say they’ve ever seen Joe Fleetwood in a funk. You were in one, weren’t you, Joe?”
“Rather,” was the answer, drily given.
“Well, I am a clumsy fellow,” said Rawson, in his breezy way. “Come along now, and I’ll show you my amabele and mealie lands.”
He led the way by a narrow game path in the bush and soon they came to a high hedge made of mimosa thorn boughs tightly interlaced. Beyond this some three acres of green crops were visible.
“That’s to keep out the bucks,” said Rawson over his shoulder, for he was leading. “They’d scoff the lot in a night or two if there wasn’t something of the kind. Fond of hunting, Wyvern?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you come up here on a moonlight night you’ll get plenty of chances. There’s an odd koodoo or so comes sniffing around after that stuff, but the thorn fence humbugs them.”