“Noisy brutes!” grumbles the wayfarer, shading his eyes to watch them. “But for your unprincipled shindy I could have done a good hour’s more snooze with all the pleasure in life. If only I had a rifle here—even a Government Snider—it would go hard but that one or two of you would learn the golden art of silence.”
Look at him as he stands there just six foot high in his boots—well-proportioned, broad-shouldered, straight as a dart. The face is of a very uncommon type, with character and determination in its regular, clear-cut features; but a look of insouciance in the eyes—which are neither grey nor blue, but sometimes one, sometimes the other—neutralises what would otherwise be an energetic and restless expression. The mouth is nearly hidden by a drooping, golden-brown moustache. In the matter of age the man would have satisfied a census collector by the casual reply, “Rising nine-and-twenty.”
Colonial born you would certainly not pronounce him. Yet not a touch of the “rawness” of the greenhorn or “new chum” would you descry, even if the serviceable suit of tancord and the quality of the saddle and riding gear lying on the ground did not betoken a certain amount of acquaintance with colonial life on the part of their owner.
He draws a rough cherrywood pipe from his pocket, fills and lights it, sending forth vigorous blue puffs which hang upon the drowsy air. He stands for a moment looking at the sun, and decides that it is time to start.
“Now, I wonder what has become of Sticks. The old scamp is given to erring and straying afar just when wanted. When I don’t require his services he’ll fool about the camp by the hour.”
Sticks was his horse. That estimable quadruped had at one time been addicted to “sticking,” an inconvenient vice of which his present owner had thoroughly cured him.
Our wayfarer strolls leisurely to the ridge which shuts in the hollow, and looks around. Then a reddish object amid the green bush, some hundreds of yards further down, catches his eye. It is the object of his search; and, with one hand thrust carelessly into a pocket, he makes for the errant nag and returns leading his steed to the waterhole, where clouds of yellow finks scatter right and left, vociferously giving vent to their indignation at being thus invaded.
And now, having saddled up, he is on his way. Steeper and steeper grows the ascent; the bush meets here and there over the narrow path, nearly sweeping the rider from his saddle, and the horse, blinded now and then by a thick branch of spekboem flying back in his eyes, makes an approach to a stumble, for which he is not to blame, for the track is rugged enough in all conscience. At length the narrow path comes to an end, merging into a broad but stony waggon road.
But—excelsior! The bay steps out at a brisk walk, ascending ever the rough road which winds round the abrupt spurs of the hills like a ledge, mounting higher and higher above the long sweep of bush-covered slope, where, among the recesses of many a dark ravine, thickets of “wait-a-bit” thorn, and mimosa, and tangled underwood, afford retreat to the more retiring denizens of the waste—the sharp-horned bushbuck and the tusked wild pig, the hooded cobra, and the deadly puff-adder. And beneath those shades, too, in the still gloom, the spotted leopard creeps stealthily upon its prey, and the howl of the hyena and the shrill yelping bay of the jackal resound weirdly through the night.
“It’s waxing chilly. Up, old Sticks!” ejaculates the traveller, with a light tap of his riding-crop. The horse picks up his head and scrambles along with new zest. A few minutes more and he is standing on the top of the randt (the high ground or ridge overlooking the valley of a river) for a brief blow after his exertions, which his heaving flanks proclaim to have been of no mean order, while his rider is contemplating the fresh scene which opens out before his gaze. For the wooded country has been left, and now before him lies spread a panorama of broad and rolling plains, dotted capriciously here and there with clumps of bush. A lovely sweep of country stretches away in many undulations to the wooded foothills of a beautiful mountain range which forms a background to the whole view, extending, crescent-like, far as the eye can travel. The snow-cap yet resting on the lofty peak of the Great Winterberg flushes first with a delicate tinge and then blood-red; many a jutting spur and grey cliff starts forth wondrously distinct, while the forest trees upon a score of distant heights stand soft and feathery, touched with a shimmer of green and gold from the long beams of the sinking sun as he dips down and down to the purpling west.