“Uncle Abe, you know something about this robbery. It is true I have lost a cow and calf. Have you seen them?”
“What! me? Where is they? You know well if Abe Pike had seen them they’d a been right here waiting for you. No, lad; but I saw you follering straight on the spoor, and if there’d been several beasts some on ’em would have broke from the track, making the spooring bend and twist. So I reckoned there were only one beast, maybe a cow and calf. There’s a dough cookie under the coals and some good honey, with a couple of fresh aigs and a roast mealie, not to say a cup of as good coffee as you can get. Help yourself, lad; help yourself.”
I sat down to this simple fare—after raking the “cookie” from the fire-place, whence it came baking hot with wood cinders embedded in its steaming crust; while Abe leant against the door-post, pulling reflectively at his pipe.
“What has become of Bolo?” I asked.
“He quitted last night. No, he ain’t gone off with your cow. He was skeered.”
I nodded an inquiry, being engaged with the mealie cob, the eating of which occupies the mouth too fully for speech.
“Old Bolo were skeered. Try some of that honey—it’s real good. None of your euphorbia juice in it to burn your mouth out, but just ripe sweetness from the hill flowers and sugar bushes.”
The old man held his pipe away, and his lips were drawn in as I placed a piece of gleaming yellow comb on my plate.
“Yes,” he chuckled, “old Bolo were skeered, and he lit out for home. You see, him and me were sitting away yonder, under the tree in the shade, talking about things, when up comes a honey-bird. ‘Chet-chet-chet-chee!’ he said, sitting up there in the branches, with his head on one side and then the other as he fussed about with his news. ‘Chet-chet-chet-chee!’ he said—which is his way of saying as how he’d found a honey-tree and wanted someone to go shares with him.
“‘Shall we foller him!’ says I.