Chapter Eight.
Abe Pike and the Honey-Bird.
In the night we heard the loud barking of a baboon, and next morning Uncle Abe, accompanied by the witch-doctor, Bolo, started back for his solitary homestead, saying that he had received a call from his familiar. This I regarded as an excuse, and judged that the two old men were bent, like boys, on some fishing excursion. Strangely enough, however, the black tiger disappeared at the same time, leaving the live stock free from his ravages—though human thieves as mischievous were afoot, and during the week paid a visit in the night to the cattle kraal, “lifting” a fine cow with a young heifer calf.
The spoor led away towards the dense bush of the Fish River to the east, and setting a knowing old dog upon the scent, I followed on horseback. The thief I judged had probably five hours’ start, and allowing for the feeble strength of the calf, I reckoned he was from six to ten miles ahead, when, if surprised by day-light at any distance from the cover of the bush, he would probably turn into a kloof. At intervals of about a mile I came on spots which, from the numerous hoof marks, indicated that the thief had stopped to let the calf rest and take milk, then, after the third such resting, he went right ahead at a sharp pace directly towards the big kloof on Abe Pike’s farm. If the beasts had been driven in there I made sure of recovering them, but I presently noticed that the spoor led away along a ridge to the left, skirting the kloof, and descending to a wide wooded valley which ran into the bush. I followed without much hope into the valley, to find the spoor obliterated by the tracks of a troop of cattle which had been on the move since sunrise. After questioning the native herd without success, I turned back towards Pike’s house, reaching it just as he came out from his breakfast. He took a long glance at me and my horse.
“Soh,” he said, “been spooring a stock thief, eh? You’ve got to get up early to catch that sort—earlier than bedtime. I seed you go over the brow of that rand yonder with a dog nosing on in front, and I said to myself, ‘Abe Pike, there’s the young baas with the hope springing up in him that he’s got the glory of catching a cattle thief.’ The young has got all the hope and the old all the experience, and I’d swaap a whole lot of experience for a glimmer of hope.”
All this time he had been attending to the horse, rubbing its back and legs with a wisp of straw.
“Who said I had been after a cattle thief?
“What are words, sonny; words is nothing—nothing but a slower way of saying a thing you have already made plain enough by your actions. Says I, ‘Abe Pike, the young baas has lost a beast, maybe a cow and calf, and bymby he’ll be looking as black as thunder and as hungry as a mule.’”