Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick ( Chapter 17 )( Page 1 ) Buffalo Bushfire and Wild dogs

The summer slipped away--the full-pulsed ripeness; of the year; beauty and passion; sunshine and storm; long spells of peace and gentleness, of springing life and radiant glory; short intervals of reckless tempest and destructive storm!  Among the massed evergreens of the woods there stood out here and there bright spots of colour, the careless dabs from Nature's artist hand; yellow and brown, orange and crimson, all vividly distinct, yet all in perfect harmony.  The rivers, fed from the replenished mountains' stores, ran full but clear; the days were bright; the nights were cold; the grass was rank and seeding; and it was time to go. Once more the Bushveld beckoned us away. We picked a spot where grass and water were good, and waited for the rivers to fall; and it was while loitering there that a small hunting party from the fields making for the Sabi came across us and camped for the night.  In the morning two of our party joined them for a few days to try for something big. It was too early in the season for really good sport.  The rank tropical grass--six to eight feet high in most places, twelve to fourteen in some--was too green to burn yet, and the stout stems and heavy seed heads made walking as difficult as in a field of tangled sugar cane; for long stretches it was not possible to see five yards, and the dew in the early mornings was so heavy that after a hundred yards of such going one was drenched to the skin. We were forced into the more open parts--the higher, stonier, more barren ground where just then the bigger game was by no means plentiful. On the third day two of us started out to try a new quarter in the hilly country rising towards the Berg.  My companion, Francis, was an experienced hunter and his idea was that we should find the big game, not on the hot humid flats or the stony rises, but still higher up on the breezy hill tops or in the cool shady kloofs running towards the mountains.  We passed a quantity of smaller game that morning, and several times heard the stampede of big animals--wildebeeste and waterbuck, as we found by the spoor--but it was absolutely impossible to see them.  The dew was so heavy that even our hats were soaking wet, and times out of number we had to stop to wipe the water out of our eyes in order to see our way; a complete ducking would not have made the least difference. Jock fared better than we did, finding openings and game tracks at his own level, which were of no use to us; he also knew better than we did what was going on ahead, and it was tantalising in the extreme to see him slow down and stand with his nose thrown up, giving quick soft sniffs and ranging his head from side to side, when he knew there was something quite close, and knew too that a few more toiling steps in that rank grass would be followed by a rush of something which we would never see. Once we heard a foot stamp not twenty yards off, and stood for a couple of minutes on tip-toe trying to pierce the screen of grass in front, absolutely certain that eyes and ears were turned on us in death-like silence waiting for the last little proof of the intruder that would satisfy their owners and start them off before we could get a glimpse. The silence must have made them suspicious, for at some signal unknown to us the troop broke away and we had the mortification to see something, which we had ignored as a branch, tilt slowly back and disappear: there was no mistaking the koodoo bull's horns once they moved! After two hours of this we struck a stream, and there we made somewhat better pace and less noise, often taking to the bed of the creek for easier going.  There, too, we found plenty of drinking-places and plenty of fresh spoor of the bigger game, and as the hills began to rise in view above the bush and trees, we found what Francis was looking for. Something caught his eye on the far side of the stream, and he waded in. I followed and when half-way through; saw the contented look on his face and caught his words: "Buffalo!  I thought so!" We sat down then to think it out.  The spoor told of a troop of a dozen to sixteen animals--bulls, cows, and calves; and it was that morning's spoor: even in the soft moist ground at the stream's edge the water had not yet oozed into most of the prints.  Fortunately there was a light breeze from the hills, and as it seemed probable that in any case they would make that way for the hot part of the day we decided to follow for some distance on the track and then make for the likeliest poort in the hills. The buffalo had come up from the low country in the night on a course striking the creek diagonally in the drinking-place; their departing spoor went off at a slight tangent from the stream--the two trails making a very wide angle at the drinking-place and confirming the idea that after their night's feed in the rich grass lower down they were making for the hills again in the morning and had touched at the stream to drink. Jock seemed to gather from our whispered conversation and silent movements that there was work to hand, and his eyes moved from one face to the other as we talked, much as a child watches the faces in a conversation it cannot quite follow.  When we got up and began to move along the trail, he gave one of his little sideways bounds, as if he half thought of throwing a somersault and restrained himself; and then with several approving waggings of his tail settled down at once to business.