By Veldt and Kopje

by W. C. Scully

The sound of a violin in one of the gorges of the Olifant’s River valley seemed very incongruous indeed. The source of the music was hidden behind some large trees. Beyond these stood a tent-wagon. On the box sat a tall, dark, bearded man plying the bow industriously, the music being a reel played in very quick time. His clothing was of brayed skin; his muscular arms were bare to the elbow. An immense lion-skin lay drying, the fleshy side being uppermost, upon the “tent” of the wagon. The black hair of the mane was protruding over the back of the tent, and the tufted tail dangled close to the face of the musician. At the side of the wagon was a small “lean-to” of coarse calico. Meat, in various stages of the process of drying, hung festooned among the trees.

The musician laid down his instrument, leaped lightly from the wagon and advanced with outstretched hand.

“Welcome, welcome,” he said, speaking in Dutch; “put down your bundles and rest. Look what your uncle has shot.” Here he pointed to the lion-skin. “You fellows are after gold, I suppose; but what has a hunter to do with gold? Come and drink coffee. Anna, is there any coffee ready?”

The concluding words were addressed to a girl who, followed shyly by a small boy, emerged from the lean-to and silently shook hands with the strangers. She appeared to be about eighteen years old. Her oval, slightly freckled face had beauty of a distinctive type. Her eyes were dark and had an expression of sadness. Health glowed through and enriched her skin. But the glory of this girl was her hair; its wealth of bronzed auburn, thick and waved, was full of changing lights. She was dressed partly in male attire.

Somehow this did not seem incongruous to the boy. He was by disposition unconventional to a degree. His eyes appraised the girl admiringly; the shapely figure was almost too sturdy for grace, but it had the strength his lacked. Nature, who always schemes for the mating of contrasts, made these two goodly and desirable in each other’s eyes.

The boy’s appraising glances followed the girl as she went to the tail-board of the wagon and busied herself with the coffee arrangements. The play of her strong, full arm was good to watch; the inartistic veldschoen could not hide the symmetry of her feet. A loose, blouse-like garment of linen permitted glimpses of a neck strong and fine, and dazzlingly white below the area of sunburn.

The coffee was a pleasant variant from tea—the prospector’s only prepared beverage. They sat on the sward and talked. The Reefer had no Dutch, so the boy acted as interpreter. The owner of the wagon was a Boer named Dirk Fourie. He had a farm in the Lydenburg district, but spent most of his time in the hunting-field. Fourie was a widower with three children. Accompanied by these and an old Hottentot he had undertaken this trip, intending to reach the low country in the vicinity of the nether reaches of the Letaba River. But he found that the rains had there fallen late, so, dreading fever, decided to remain for a time in the valley of the Olifant. To avoid risk of “bush-sickness” he had sent the oxen back to the farm in charge of his elder son and the Hottentot, with orders that they were to be brought back after six weeks had passed.

Fourie’s manner was characterised by a kind of yearning friendliness; the advent of the strangers seemed to afford him very sincere pleasure. He neither knew nor cared anything about gold, so the Reefer soon found the conversation irksome and wandered off to examine the formation. The boy just then cared for nothing so much as hunting, so he and Fourie sat and discussed game and the slaying thereof. The lion-skin was pulled down and admired. A graphic account of the downfall of the great marauder was given. It appeared that Fourie’s father had been killed by a lion, so the Boer carried on a lifelong vendetta against the whole lion species. The death had been amply revenged, for twenty-two of these animals had fallen to the long-barrelled roer which hung in the wagon, and nine to a more modern rifle—a Westley-Richards musket—just then standing against the wheel.

Fourie went back to his violin. His repertoire seemed to consist solely of reels, all of the very liveliest kind. The boy and the girl gravitated towards each other. But conversation was difficult; they were full of embarrassment. They wandered together for a short distance along the hillside. He told her of his life on the gold and diamond fields and of those far-off towns she had heard rumours of. The ocean and the great ships were to her the most wonderful of all things. Had such not been mentioned in the Bible, she would not have believed their existence possible. She had been taught to read, but the Bible was her only book. With her large, lustrous eyes fixed on the boy’s face she listened, gravely interested, to all he told her.

Of herself and her experiences the girl could hardly be induced to say a word. Her ignorance of the world beyond the farm and the scenes of her father’s different hunting trips was almost fathomless. They returned to the wagon, and soon afterwards the Reefer arrived, carrying a haversack full of quartz.