LOST HORSES.
A month or so after the traitor Maritz had made his flamboyant proclamation in German South-West Africa, a small body of mounted Union troops was operating in a district which may be described as ‘somewhere near Upington.’ Probably such secrecy of places and names is not at all necessary, but it lends an appropriate military flavour to the small events I describe. I may go so far as to say that the setting I have provided is fictitious, though similar events did, no doubt, occur in the operations against Maritz and Kemp and their heroes. The characters of the roan horse and of the boy Frikkie are true to life, and the small adventures did occur much as described, but in another country in South Africa and upon a different occasion. Accept the story as fiction, not as history; it will at any rate serve to throw a light upon one of the aspects of the fighting in that dry land, and it illustrates the close relationship between horse and man in that country of long distances and sparse population and infrequent water-holes. The conditions are the absolute antithesis of those in Flanders and the trenches.
The risk of losing his riding or pack animals is constantly present to the veld traveller. Fortunately it is seldom the cause of anything more troublesome than a temporary inconvenience, but there are occasions when serious hardships result, the loss of valuable time or of your animals, or risk to your own life. In most cases the loss of your beasts is due merely to the fact that they have strayed. They have, as a rule, either followed the lead of some restless animal who is making back for his stable, or else they have wandered away in search of grass or water.
A horse is less hardy than his hybrid half-brother, and more the slave of his belly. Thirst and hunger pinch him at once, and he is quick in search of comfort; he is therefore more likely to stop and suffer capture at the first patch of good grass he comes to. His superficial character, moreover, generally affords some indication both of the reason he has strayed and the direction he has taken. There are, however, a few horses who are inveterate and troublesome wanderers; they are generally old animals whose accumulated experience has developed a cunning foreign to their normal character. Such animals often possess an irritating facilityfor choosing the most inconvenient time to stray and the most unlikely direction to go.
If horses are the most frequent offenders, their sins in this respect are seldom serious. In my own experience mules are more liable to travel back along the road they have come than horses; they are more creatures of habit, their memory is more retentive, and they have greater natural intelligence. When a mule has acquired the habit of absenting himself from duty he is a perpetual trouble. The most malignant form of this disease occurs when the beast has developed an insatiable longing for one particular place, a definite goal from which nothing will turn him. This haven of his constant desire is generally the place where he was born, or where he passed the pleasant days of his absurd youth.
There are traits in most horses which, in conjunction with this foundation of congenital simplicity, go to make ‘character.’ Men who have dealt with horses in the less frequented parts of the earth know this well. They will remember one animal who had in a highly developed degree that instinctive correctness of demeanour which can best be described as good manners; a second had a heart like a lion and checked at nothing; another was a prey to an incurable nervousness; while yet another was just simply mean. These mean horses are a perpetual menace; you never know when they will let you down. Sometimes they are clearly actuated by malice; sometimes, however, there is a subtle quality and timeliness in their apparent stupidity which gives you a horrid suspicion that you’ve been had, and that your horse is more of a rogue than a fool. Such an animal is always an old horse, never a young one.
I am not quite clear as to what a scout should look like. The typical scout of the North American Indian days, as exemplified in the person of Natty Bumpo, wore fringed buckskin and moccasins and coon-skin cap, while Texas Bill and his vivid companions had a more picturesque costume still, in which great silver-studded saddles and jingling spurs and monstrous revolvers bore a conspicuous part. I must confess that my own nine sportsmen were scrubby-looking fellows compared to their picturesque predecessors at the game. (The khaki trousers issued by an administration which was always more practical than picturesque do not lend themselves, in this generation at any rate, to romance.) But they were a hard and useful lot, much sunburnt, and with gnarled, scarred hands. Deerslayer himself probably could not have taught them muchabout their own veld craft. Every one was South African born; three of them were younger sons of loyal Boer farmers. One was a coloured boy, a quiet, capable fellow. He was with us nominally as a sort of groom, but his civil manners and extraordinary capacity soon won him an accepted place in the scouts; though he rode and ate with us, he always sat a little apart in camp. He had spent three or four years up country, where I had first come across him in fact, and had shot some amount of big game; he was excellent on spoor and had a wonderful eye for country, and I really think he was the quickest man on and off a horse, and the quickest and most brilliant shot I ever saw. He stood on the roster as Frederick Collins, but was never known by any other name than Frikkie.
The commandant of the rather nondescript commando, which was officially described, I believe, as a composite regiment, had a sound idea of the value of a few competent and well-mounted scouts, and had done us very well in the matter of horse. We had been ‘on commando’ now for nearly five weeks, and had got to know our animals pretty well. During the confusion and changes of the first fortnight I had got rid of a dozen horses I saw would be of no use for our work, though suitable, no doubt, for slower troop duty, and by a cunning process of selection had got together a very serviceable lot, with four spare animals to carry kit and water on the longer trips away from the main body. Your spirited young things, though well enough to go courting on, are apt to get leg-weary and drop condition too soon on steady work, and all my mob were aged and as hard as nails. I will describe one or two of them presently.
Things were getting a little exciting about that time. Three rebel commandos, or rather bands, were known to be in the neighbourhood, and it was essential to find out what their strength was and who their leaders were. There was not much reason to fear attack, for they were not well found in either guns or ammunition, and their ragamuffin cavalry were concerned to avoid and not invite a stand-up engagement. Rapidity of action was essential to the loyal troops, for the longer the rebellion dragged on the more risk there was of it spreading. It was necessary to find out at once the actual movements of these bands, and the best way of doing so was to keep tally of the water-holes. Men can, if necessary, carry water for themselves, but horses, especially those from the moist high veld of the Transvaal, must have water regularly orthey go to pieces very quickly in that dry, hot land. And so the remote and forgotten pit at Ramib had suddenly become of importance, and I had been told to send two men to examine it at once.
It lay within the rocky belt which came down south of the Orange River somewhat to our right; it was supposed to be twenty miles away, but it might prove five miles less or ten miles more. It was known to have held water fifteen months before, and our business was to find out if it still held water, how long that water would be likely to last, and if any of the rebels had been to it recently. No one in the column was aware of its exact location, but I myself knew enough of those parts to guess roughly where it must lie. I decided to take one man and a pack-horse, and to take the patrol myself. No native guide was available, and the Colonel did not, for obvious reasons, care to make use of any of the few local Boers who carried on a wretched existence as farmers in that barren country.
My own horse was a big bay, an uncomfortable beast, but capable of covering much ground; like many big men, he had little mental elasticity and no vices. Frikkie had an unassuming bay of ordinary manners and capacity, and with a natural aptitude for routine and a military life. The third horse was a king of his class. He did not belong to the scouts, but I had borrowed him to carry the pack on that patrol. He was mean all through; in colour a sort of skewbald roan, and in character an irreclaimable criminal. He had a narrow chest, weedy white legs, and a pale shifty eye; he was very free with his heels, and an inveterate malingerer. He had never carried a pack before and we were prepared for trouble, for his malevolent spirit had already acquired a wide reputation.
The patrol left the column a little before sunset, after a windless, baking day. The horses were in excellent fettle. The roan had given some trouble with the pack, but before he could throw himself down or buck through the lines he was hustled out of camp to an accompaniment of oaths and cheers in two languages. Once away and alone he went quietly, but doubtless with hate in his heart, for his beastly eye was full of gall.
Dawn found us hidden on the top of a low stony kopje, the horses tied together among the brown boulders below. It was bitter cold as the light grew, and the sun came up into an empty world. I waited there for half an hour, partly to find any signs of white men, and partly to work out the lay of the land and theprobable direction of the pit. Nothing was moving in the whole world. It was clear where the water must be. On the right was the usual barren desert country we had come through during the night, low ridges of stone and shale, and a thin low scrub of milk bush and cactus. On the left the land grew much rougher towards the river; the rocky valleys stretched for miles in that direction. Presently we led the horses down off the kopje, and an hour later saw us looking down at the chain of small holes, still full of good water. I stayed with the hidden horses while Frikkie cut a circle round the pools. There was no sign of life, he reported, only the old sandal spoor of some natives; no horse had been down to the water for weeks, probably for months. We off-saddled in a hidden corner some way from the water, and got a small fire going of thin dry sticks. The horses were given a drink and turned loose. It was criminal foolishness not to have hobbled or knee-haltered the roan, for ten minutes after they were let go Frikkie called out that the horses had completely disappeared.
One realised at once that there was no time to be lost. It was probable that the roan had led them away, and that he meant business. The saddles and pack were hurriedly hidden among some rocks with the billy of half-cooked rice, the fire was put out, and we took up the spoor.
It was soon evident that the animals were travelling, and were not straying aimlessly in search of feed. The spoor of the discoloured strawberry beast was always in front—his footprints were like his character, narrow and close. Above his tracks came those of Ruby, the police horse, round ordinary hoof-marks, and well shod; my own horse’s immense prints were always last, solid and unmistakable. Mile after mile the tracks led into a rockier and more barren country. What little stunted and thorny scrub there was had not yet come into leaf, and there was no shade and no sign of green anywhere. Ridges of sharp gravel and small kopjes of brown stone alternated with narrow valleys without sign of green or water. In the softer ground of these valleys the spoor was plain and could be followed without any trouble, but on the rocky ridges the tracks became difficult to hold where the horses had separated and wandered about. The trail led eastwards, into a rocky, waterless, and uninhabited country. There was no reason for the roan’s choice but just native malice, for he had come from the west the previous day. Doubtless the main camp would be his ultimate destination, but it seemed apparent that he intendedto inflict as deep an injury as he could before he set his sour face again to the west.
It was within half an hour of sundown before I came up with the horses, and then only the two bays; the roan’s spoor showed that he had gone on about an hour before. They were standing under a bunch of thorn trees, the only shade they had passed since they were let go that morning. For the last mile or two the tracks, which had become more aimless as the hot afternoon wore on, had turned a little to the north. Probably, as the allegiance of his small following had weakened, the leader’s thoughts had turned to the companionship of the camp, and when they had finally refused to follow him any further he had abandoned the rest of his revenge and had turned frankly for home.
We rounded up the two horses and thought of our camp, probably eight miles away in a direct line. Though they were tired and empty they would not be caught, and it was soon evident that they would not be driven either. I will not ask you to follow the dreadful hour which ensued. This crowning flicker of rebellion at the end of a disastrous day nearly broke our hearts. It was well after dark when we finally abandoned the horses in an area of steep rocky ridges and narrow valleys covered with cactus; it was quite impossible to cope with them in the dark in such a country. We reached camp about ten, but were too tired and disappointed to make a fire. A tin of bully-beef, and the mass of opaque jelly which had once been good Patna rice, were the first pleasant incidents of a baking, hungry day.
The second day began before dawn with as large a breakfast as we could compass: black coffee, the little bread that was left, and a large quantity of rice. I have seldom eaten a more cheerless meal. Three or four pounds of rice, some coffee, a tin or two of bully, and a little sugar were all that remained to us, and there was no chance of getting more. I must confess that at this stage a tactical error was committed which cost us the long day’s work for nothing. A golden rule where lost animals are concerned is to stick to the spoor, but as I thought it very probable that the horses would turn north and west again during the night and make for their last place of sojourn, I tried to save half a dozen hours by cutting the spoor ahead. It was nearly noon, and a mile or two beyond where the roan had left the others, before it became a certainty that the horses had done the unlikely thing, and had gone either south or further east into the broken country. At thatmoment they were probably ten miles away. I then did what one should have done at first, and went to the point where we had last seen them. That afternoon was hotter and emptier than the last, and sunset found us on a cold spoor going north. We had wisely brought rice and coffee and water-bags with us that morning, and Frikkie had shot a klipspringer—baboons and klipspringer were the only animals we had seen the last two days. If you suppose that we had used any of the water for washing you are making a mistake, though Heaven knows that we both would have been the better for a bath. We slept on the spoor, and bitter cold it was without blankets; there was not scrub enough for a decent fire.
Matters were getting serious. We were then twelve miles from the saddlery and, so far as we knew, the nearest water, and twenty more from the camp. If the horses were not found and caught that day they would have to be abandoned, and we would have to pad the hoof homeviathe disastrous pools at Ramib.
But fortune does not frown for ever; it is a long worm that has no turning. Within an hour of sunrise we came into the quite fresh tracks of the horses crossing their own spoor. Frikkie exclaimed that there were three horses, and an examination showed the narrow tracks of the red horse with the other two; they had not found water and were evidently on their way back to Ramib. We came on to the animals a few minutes afterwards. Except that they were hollow from want of water they were none the worse, and apparently they were not sorry to see us. By the time the sun was in the north they had had a good drink and were finishing the little grain in the pack. Midnight saw us riding into the main camp—only to find it deserted, for the column had marched. The camp was apparently completely empty, and it felt very desolate under a small moon. I expected I would discover a message of some sort for me at sunrise; in the meantime the obvious thing was to keep out of the way, so I went half a mile off into the veld, and the boy and I kept watch by turn until dawn.
Nothing moved in or round the camp till near sunrise, when three men rode out of some shale ridges about a mile away on the opposite side, and came down to the water. By the white bands round the left arm—the sign of loyal troops—I knew them for our own men; indeed we had recognised the horse one of them was riding. They gave me the message they had stayed behind to deliver. We were to stay and watch the camp site for three orfour days, and to patrol daily some distance to the south-east. The water was important, for it was quite probable that one or other of the rebel commandos would come to it. The men had hidden provisions for us and some grain for the horses; they themselves were to hurry on to the column with our report of the Ramib pits. We rode a few miles along the column spoor with them, and then turned off on some gravelly ground and fetched a compass round back to the place in the shale ridges where the men had slept and where the provisions were. We took no more chances with the strawberry horse; he was closely hobbled.
The loss of the animals had been a serious thing, and we were extremely fortunate to have got out of it so easily. It did not lessen the annoyance to realise that it was my own fault for not hobbling the roan, but only a rogue by constitution and habit would have carried his hostility to so dangerous a length. But within a week he was to provide another taste of his quality. This time nothing more serious was involved than the risk of his own loss, for we were never led far from water in so menacing and barren a country as that beyond Ramib.
Most of that day was spent in the stony krantz, from which a view could be obtained over the whole dry, grey landscape, and the pools a mile away. In normal times the laagte was frequently used for sheep grazing, but in these days of mobile and ever-hungry commandos the few farmers in the vicinity were grazing their meagre flocks nearer their homesteads. Except for a few wandering Griquas, and possibly a band of ragged rebels on tired horses, it was not likely that our watch would be interrupted. A rough shelter made of the stunted spiny scrub served as a sentry box; the saddles were hidden in a narrow cleft on the lee side of the ridge, and the horses were kept down in the valleys.
In the afternoon we saddled up and rode south and east, keeping for the most part to the rough ridges, and overlooking the level country along which our column had come, and which was the natural approach from that side for any body of men having wheeled transport with them. We did not ride for more than an hour, but my glasses showed an empty, treeless world for miles beyond. If the commandos did come our way they would probably trek by night; we should hear them arrive and laager about dawn, and sunrise would have seen us well on our way to our own men.
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 spoorof 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 firstnight 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.
The second solution I offer is that his action was prompted by roguery; for even a very limited intelligence would have warned him that he would be captured if he ventured near either the water or the camp. It may be that when his reins hooked up he was on his way to the free water at Ramib. The third explanation is that he was a little daft. In a long and varied experience of horses I cannot really remember one so afflicted, though I had a pack-mule once that I am certain was a harmless lunatic. You may take your choice of these alternatives; for my part I incline to the second.
John Ridd’s rustic wisdom led him to express the opinion, upon the memorable occasion when John Fry was bringing him home from Blundell’s School at Tiverton, that ‘a horse (like a woman) lacks, and is better without, self-reliance.’
R. T. Coryndon.