Chapter Nine.
Belated on the Veldt.
For that day Piet Van Dorn’s hunting was at at an end, but with a finale far from satisfactory to him. True, he had succeeded in killing the buffalo, and would not have to return to camp trophyless. But how about his horse? The latter might be there before him—in all likelihood was there already—if not lost on the veldt. If lost, it would be no slight misfortune; his mount being of the best ever ridden by a Vee-Boer, and one that could not well be replaced. Still he had not yet come to contemplating the matter in so serious a light; trusting to the animal’s instinct to guide it back to its companions. But even this would have sinister consequences. That anything could have parted him and his pet steed, above all a tumble, and its becoming known to the fair fräulein, his ladye love, was aught but pleasant to contemplate. And the horse returning riderless would naturally create alarm in the camp, where, besides a sweetheart, he had an affectionate mother and sisters who would be in an agony of apprehension about him, he knew.
Furthermore, the thought of having to trudge it back afoot, wounded as he was—in fact a good deal disabled—was of itself sufficiently disagreeable. But just on this account was it necessary for him to start off at once.
The sun was now little more than the breadth of its own disc above the horizon; and, if night caught him upon the veldt, he might have to stay in it till morning, almost certainly would.
Thus reflecting, he made no longer delay than the occasion called for. Bleeding wounds were to be bound up; ugly scratches got in the attempt at climbing the doorn-boom, and a thorn or two that still stuck in his flesh had to be extracted. Then there was the reloading of his gun, which it was not prudent to have empty in such a place. Finally he cut off the buffalo’s tail, to be taken along, less by way of trophy, than as evidence that, despite so many other mischances, he had not failed as a hunter. He would have preferred taking the horns, as he had never before seen so grand a pair; besides, it was to them he owed the life left him. But for their getting entangled in the tree, instead of his now, in cold blood, cutting off the buffalo’s tail, the brute might have been standing over his lifeless body, trampling it into a mash. But, notwithstanding the service the horns had done him, and tempting as a trophy, it would take some time to detach them from the head, more than he had to spare, and in his disabled state they would be too much of a burden. So, shouldering his gun, with the bull’s tail tied to its muzzle, he strode away from a spot so replete with incident, and what, but a short while before, seemed mystery incomprehensible.
Though comprehending it now, his perplexities were not over nor his troubles at an end. Scarce had he commenced moving off when the hitherto unthought of question occurred to him—
“What direction am I to take?”
It may seem strange his not thinking of this before; but men in his situation rarely do. The traveller on African plain or American prairie only becomes conscious of being lost when he is lost. Just such tardy consciousness now came to Piet Van Dorn, but with so keen a sense of it as to bring him to an abrupt stop before he had made half-a-dozen steps.
For a time he stood scanning the horizon around, but saw nothing there to give him guidance. He had hoped to descry a dark line along it; the timber skirting the stream by which they had encamped; but nothing of this was in sight. Even the great mowana, with several others of its kind he knew to be near it, were below the level of the plain. (Note 1). This added to his uneasiness, telling of the long distance he would have to tramp it, even with direction known. But the last was his present trouble, and he bent himself, with all the energies of his mind, to determine it. What assistance could he get from the sun? Nothing else seemed to promise any, so he turned his gaze upon that. He remembered its having been before his face while he was pursuing the buffalo; well remembered this, as it had been in his eyes, and so dazzled them as to interfere with his aim. Indeed, he blamed it, more than aught else, for his having failed to bring the animal down. But the sun had since changed place in the sky; true, not much, still enough to make it a blind guide, notwithstanding its brightness.