She was young enough to be keen for excitement in any shape or form and would not have objected to making coffee ten times a day for passing strangers. Anything that broke the monotony of life at Jackalsfontein was welcome to her. She put her hand across her eyes, blue as forget-me-nots, and looked into the distance, hoping for the sight of an approaching Cape cart. The roundness of her upraised arm strained the seams of her cotton sleeve, and a pretty curve from bust to waist and waist to heel was visible if there had been any eye to admire it. Her print dress was badly cut and the pattern faded from much banging on river stones. But there is nothing so difficult to hide as a good figure. Chrissie had got hers from riding astride, bareback, on young fillies and calves, and swimming in the river. The physical-culture mistress at Paarl had put a finishing touch by teaching her the value of poise and controlled muscles. Small wonder that the solitude of Jackalsfontein did not appeal to her as much as to her father. She was still in the romping, young-animal stage when she needed other young creatures to romp with. It was a dull life for the girl.
“I see something, Pa! There is something coming,” she cried suddenly, and gave a skip of excitement.
“Ach!” The old man spat scornfully, took from his pocket a stumpy bit of rolled tobacco, pitch-black in colour, and began to cut it into shreds using the palm of his hand for the operation. The stoep table was dark with tobacco juice and roughened by innumerable tiny cuts from this very business of tobacco cutting; but he always used his hand when he was preoccupied.
His vague eyes had long ago, at three miles’ distance, distinguished that which Chrissie now descried crawling up the sloping land in clouds of red dust.
“A flock of sheep,” she reported, “about fifty.—Some goats—Eight cows, two little calves, three mules—”
“A herd of rubbish belonging to that pat-looper (Road-footer) Carol Uys, sure as a gun,” grunted old man Retief.
“It looks like his Kaffir Jim driving them,” Chrissie agreed. “And there is a man on horseback coming up behind.”
“The pat-looper himself no doubt. Coming to try and sell his broken-down beasts to me.”
“Ach! Pa, you know you got the red heifer from him, and that pair of mules Farnie Roos offered you 30 pounds for last week.”
“Maar! They were not worth 30 pounds when I took them from Carol Uys.”