We reached camp to find the long shadows of the setting sun dropping across the Valley of Heaven. Buno bade Tuys an affectionate farewell and the impis gave us the royal salute as they started up the hill for Lebombo.
This was the first time I saw King Buno, and he left me memories that nothing can ever efface. I saw him again next year and was in Lebombo when he died and Queen Labotsibeni was appointed regent.
Nothing much happened on our return journey to the Valley of Reeds, except that Oom Tuys showed me how he could shoot. During the second day's trek we ran up on the high veldt for a space and jumped some springbok. They sprang up suddenly out of the brown grass, as they always do, and went off like a streak of light.
After one or two had escaped, Tuys told me to kill the next.
"Let's see if you can shoot like a Boer," he said, bantering me. "Let's see if you would starve to death if you were lost on the veldt!"
A few moments later I had my chance. My Mauser rested across my saddle when the antelope jumped, and a second later I blazed away. I made three perfectly clean misses. Looking back, I realize that the heavy military rifle was too much for me—it was too weighty.
Tuys said: "Poor Mzaan Bakoor, you will die hungry. Now watch me get the next!"
And he did. His rifle was in its sheath, barrel under his leg and stock alongside the pommel of the saddle. I never saw quicker action. The unlucky springbok seemed to rise with the motion of Tuys's arm as he snapped his Mauser out of its case to his shoulder, all in one motion. On its fourth or fifth jump the antelope met the dum-dum bullet and dropped. Its back was broken and the knife did the rest.
"That is the way a Boer shoots!" Tuys boasted. "If you miss your meat, you go hungry. Your rifle must follow the springbok when he jumps, and you get him at the top of his leap. He cannot change direction in the air and you pull your trigger softly so that your aim is not broken. If you jerk, as you did a minute ago, you miss. Remember that, lad!"
As we rode into Rietvlei on the last day Tuys gave me a serious talking to. He was worried over what I had seen at Lebombo.