Just at dusk that evening we rode along the lee of the ridge upon which our poor home was. Frikkie was riding the roan. He was leading his own animal, for a single horse could not be left grazing alone, to be picked up, perhaps, by any wandering rebel, or to stray off in search of companionship. When we passed under the highest point of the ridge I stopped and sent Frikkie to the top, for he could spy in both directions from there. I took the led horse from him, and he threw the roan’s reins over the neck to trail on the ground—the accepted instruction to every trained veld horse to stand still. I watched the boy’s slim figure against the sunset sky in the west as he turned about, searching the veld through his binoculars, though it was really getting too dark for prism glasses. He called out that nothing was moving, and presently came lightly down the steep slope in the gathering dusk. As he reached his horse the beast turned his quarters to him and walked away; the boy walked round, but again the horse turned away; and when I put my horse across to check him he lifted his head and trotted off. We knew that we couldn’t catch the beast if his views on the matter did not coincide with ours, so we walked on the half-mile to where the skerm was, thinking the horse would follow up his mates at his leisure.
This was a new, but not unexpected, trait in an already depraved character. Some horses, though they are inveterate strayers, are easy to catch when you do come up with them; others are very difficult to catch, though they seldom go more than a mile from the camp; this hectic degenerate apparently combined both these bad habits.
An hour after dark the horse had not turned up, though our own reliable animals were knee-haltered and turned loose for a time with their nosebags on as decoys. At dawn he was not visible in any of the shallow valleys we could see to the east of the ridge; and to our surprise and concern he was not in the valley where the water was and where the camp had been.
Our own horses were knee-haltered short and let go, and we spent a careful hour examining the margin of the pool, but there was no narrow spoor to show that the roan had been down to drink during the night. I spent the morning with our horses and on the look-out, while the boy cut a wide semicircle round to the south and west of the water. He came in at mid-day, certain that the truant had not gone out in those directions. Then Frikkie took over the sentry work, and I set out to cover the remainder of the circle. I worked methodically along the soft ground of the valleys outside the range of the area already fouled by the spoor of our own animals, and where I would find the roan’s tracks at once. From time to time I climbed one of the low ridges, for the boy was to spread a light-coloured saddle blanket over a prominent rock on the side away from the water as a signal if he saw either the lost horse or anyone approaching from the south, or in case of other danger. Nothing occurred during the long, hot afternoon.
That evening, when I got back to camp, I found two Griquas sitting over the coals with Frikkie. They said they were shepherds, and they may have done a little of that congenial work recently, but they looked to me more like sheep-stealers. They were wild people from the Orange River, and I was sure they had never been any sort of farm labourers. However, they were friendly enough and promised help in the morning. The horse had then been without water since the morning of the previous day. He had not strayed away, for at sunset he must have been still within four or five miles of the camp; if he had intended business we would have cut his outgoing spoor during the day. Horses were too valuable in that country and at that time for the loss of even such a three-cornered abomination as the pink horse to be taken lightly.
Morning showed that the horse had not been to the water during the night. He had then been forty-eight hours without water. The only thing was to take up the spoor where the animal had last been seen, and so stick to it till he was found. The Kalahari bushmen have the reputation of being the finest trackers in South Africa, but these two cross-bred Griqua bushmen gave us an incomparable exhibition of skill. I have had some experience of that game, and Frikkie was a master, but these savages astonished us.
Inch by inch the spoor was picked out from that of the other animals. No proved mark was abandoned until the next was certified, often only an inch or two away. The only slight help they had was the rare and very faint mark where the trailing reins had touched the ground. The first hundred yards took probably an hour to cover, but when the spoor reached comparatively clean ground the work was easier. At this point Frikkie got the water-bags and some food and joined the bushmen, for it was possible that the horse, driven by thirst, had taken it into his head to travel far during the previous night.
Late that evening the trackers returned with the horse. He was emaciated and weak, but otherwise quite well, though for some days his back was tender from the continual ‘sweating’ of the saddle blanket. His spoor showed that he had spent the first night and day wandering about the low ridges and hollows not far from our camp, and that the night before he had commenced to journey away into the empty country to the east. Somewhere about dawn of that third day his trailing reins had hooked up on one of the few bushes in that country strong enough to hold him, and there he was found by the bushmen, the picture of a natural misery, and too dejected to take much notice of his rescuers. Nothing but his own gloomy thoughts had prevented him from going down to the water at any time, or to the companionship of our camp.
Thirty-six hours after this we were back with the main column. It is not necessary to add that we were glad to get a bath and a generous meal, and that I took the first opportunity of handing over the parti-coloured strawberry to troop duty.
In the first of these two offences it is clear that the white-legged roan was animated by spite. Such malevolence is rare enough, but his second performance is much more remarkable. I offer three alternative explanations. The first is that it was just stupidity. I have the poorest opinion of the intelligence of the horse, as distinct from instinct. It is Professor Lloyd Morgan, I think, who defines instinct as ‘the sum of inherited habits,’ and this may be accepted as a sound definition. Elementary necessity, to say nothing of instinct or intelligence, should have driven him to the water soon after he had obtained his freedom. He could not have forgotten where the water was. If his normal mental process was so dislocated by the fact of the saddle on his back without the presence of the masterful human in it, then he was a fool of the first class.