Jock of the Bushveld

by Percy Fitzpatrick

  I heard his panting breath before it was possible to see anything. It was half past one o’clock when he returned.

  As we had missed the night trek to wait for Jock I decided to stay on where we were until the next evening and have another try for the wounded kudu, with the chance of coming across the troop again.

  By daybreak Jock did not seem much the worse for his night’s adventures – whatever they were. There were no marks of blood on him this time; there were some scratches which might have been caused by thorns during the chase, and odd looking grazes on both hindquarters near the hip bones, as though he had been roughly gravelled there. He seemed a little stiff, and flinched when I pressed his sides and muscles, but he was as game as ever when he saw the rifle taken down.

  The kudu had been shot through the body and, even without being run to death by Jock, must have died in the night, or have laid down and become too cold and stiff to move. If not discovered by wild animals there was a good chance of finding it untouched in the early morning; but after sunrise every minute’s delay meant fresh risk from the aasvoëls. There is very little which, if left uncovered, will escape their eyes. You may leave your buck for help to bring the meat in, certain from the most careful scrutiny that there is not one of these creatures in sight, and return in half an hour to find nothing but a few bones, the horns and hoofs, a rag of skin and a group of disgusting gorged vultures squatting on a patch of ground all smeared, torn and feather strewn from their voracious struggles.

  In the winter sky unrelieved by the least fleck of cloud – a dome of spotless polished steel – nothing, you would think, can move unseen. Yet they are there. In the early morning, from their white splashed eyries on some distant mountain they slide off like a launching ship into their sea of blue and, striking the currents of the upper air, sweep round and upwards in immense circles, their huge motionless wings carrying them higher and higher until they are lost to human sight. Lie on your back in some dense shade where no sidelights strike in, but where an opening above forms a sort of natural telescope to the sky, and you may see tiny specks where nothing could be seen before. Take your field glasses: the specks are vultures circling up on high! Look again, and far, far above you will see still other specks; and for aught you know there may be others still beyond. How high are they? And what can they see from there? Who knows? But this is sure, that within a few minutes scores will come swooping down in great spiral rushes where not one was visible before. My own belief is that they watch each other, tier above tier, away into the limitless heavens – watching jealously, as hungry dogs do, for the least suspicious sign – to swoop down and share the spoil.

  In the dewy cool of the morning we soon reached the place where Jock had left me behind the evening before; and from there on he led the way. It was much slower work then; as far as I was concerned, there was nothing to guide me, and it was impossible to know what he was after. Did he understand that it was not fresh game but the wounded kudu that I wanted? And, if so, was he following the scent of the old chase or merely what he might remember of the way he had gone? It seemed impossible that scent could lie in that dry country for twelve hours; yet it was clearly nose more than eyes that guided him. He went ahead soberly and steadily, and once when he stopped completely to sniff at a particular tuft of grass, I found out what was helping him. The grass was well streaked with blood: quite dry, it is true; still it was blood.

  A mile or so on we checked again where the grass was trampled and the ground scored with spoor. The heavy spoor was all in a ring four or five yards in diameter; outside this the grass was also flattened, and there I found a dog’s footprints. But it had no further interest for Jock; while I was examining it he picked up the trail and trotted on. We came upon four or five other rings where they had fought. The last of these was curiously divided by a fallen tree, and it puzzled me to guess how they could have made a circle with a good-sized trunk some two feet high intersecting it. I examined the dead tree and found a big smear of blood and a lot of coarse greyish hair on it. Evidently the kudu had backed against it whilst facing Jock and had fallen over it, renewing the fight on the other side. There were also some golden hairs sticking on the stumpy end of a broken branch, which may have had something to do with Jock’s scraped sides.

  Then for a matter of a hundred yards or more it looked as if they had fought and tumbled all the way. Jock was some distance ahead of me, trotting along quietly, when I saw him look up, give that rare growling bark of his – one of suppressed but real fury – lower his head and charge. Then came heavy flapping and scrambling and the wind of huge wings, as twenty or thirty great lumbering aasvoëls flopped along the ground with Jock dashing furiously about among them – taking flying leaps at them as they rose, and his jaws snapping like rat traps as he missed them.

  On a little open flat of hard-baked sand lay the stripped frame of the kudu: the head and leg bones were missing: meat-stripped fragments were scattered all about; fifty yards away among some bushes Jock found the head; and still further afield were remains of skin and thigh bones crushed almost beyond recognition.

  No aasvoël had done this: it was hyenas’ work. The high-shouldered slinking brute, with jaws like a stonecrusher, alone cracks bones like those and bigger ones which even the lion cannot tackle. I walked back a little way and found the scene of the last stand, all harrowed bare; but there was no spoor of kudu or of Jock to be seen there – only prints innumerable of wild dogs, hyenas and jackals, and some traces of where the carcass, no doubt already half-eaten, had been dragged by them in the effort to tear it asunder.

  Jock had several times shown that he strongly objected to any interference with his quarry; other dogs, kaffirs and even white men, had suffered or been badly scared for rashly laying hands on what he had pulled down. Without any doubt he had expected to find the kudu there and had dealt with the aasvoëls as trespassers; otherwise he would not have tackled them without word from me. It was also sure that until past midnight he had been there with the kudu, watching or fighting. Then when had the hyenas and wild dogs come? That was a question I would have given much to have had answered. But only Jock knew that!

  I looked at him. The mane on his back and shoulders which had risen at the sight of the vultures was not flat yet; he was sniffing about slowly and carefully on the spoor of the hyenas and wild dogs; and he looked ‘fight’ all over. But what it all meant was beyond me; I could only guess – just as you will – what had happened out in the silent ghostly bush that night.

  The Kudu Bull

  Jock had learned one very clever trick in pulling down wounded animals. It often happens when you come unexpectedly upon game that they are off before you see them, and the only chance you have of getting anything is with a running shot. If they go straight from you the shot is not a very difficult one, although you can see nothing but the lifting and falling hindquarters as they canter away; and a common result of such a shot is the breaking of one of the hindlegs between the hip and the hock. Jock made his discovery while following a rietbuck which I had wounded in this way. He had made several tries at its nose and throat, but the buck was going too strongly and was out of reach; moreover it would not stop or turn when he headed it, but charged straight on, bounding over him. In trying once more for the throat he cannoned against the buck’s shoulder and was sent rolling yards away. This seemed to madden him: racing up behind, he flew at the dangling leg, caught it at the shin and, thrusting his feet well out, simply dragged until the buck slowed down, and then began furiously tugging sideways. The crossing of the legs brought the wounded animal down immediately and Jock had it by the throat before it could rise again.

  Everyone who is good at anything had some favourite method or device of his own: that was Jock’s. It may have come to him, as it comes to many, by accident; but having once got it, he perfected it and used it whenever it was possible. Only once he made a mistake; and he paid for it – very nearly with his life.

  He had already used this d
evice successfully several times, but so far only with the smaller buck. This day he did what I should have thought to be impossible for a dog of three or four times his size. I left the scene of torn carcass and crunched bones, consumed by regrets and disappointment; each fresh detail only added to my feeling of disgust, but Jock did not seem to mind; he jumped out briskly as soon as I started walking in earnest, as though he recognised that we were making a fresh start and he began to look forward immediately.

  The little bare flat where the kudu had fallen for the last time was at the head of one of those depressions which collect the waters of the summer floods and, changing gradually into shallow valleys, are eventually scoured out and become the dongas – dry in winter but full charged with muddy flood in summer – which drain the Bushveld to its rivers. Here and there where an impermeable rock formation crosses these channels there are deep pools which, except in years of drought, last all through the winter; and these are the drinking places of the game. I followed this one down for a couple of miles without any definite purpose until the sight of some greener and denser wild figs suggested that there might be water, and perhaps a rietbuck or a duiker nearby. As we reached the trees Jock showed unmistakable signs of interest in something, and with the utmost caution I moved from tree to tree in the shady grove towards where it seemed the waterhole might be.

  There were bushy wild plums flanking the grove and beyond them the ordinary scattered thorns. As I reached this point, and stopped to look out between the bushes on to the more open ground, a kudu cow walked quietly up the slope from the water, but before there was time to raise the rifle her easy stride had carried her behind a small mimosa tree. I took one quick step out to follow her up and found myself face to face at less than a dozen yards with a grand kudu bull. It is impossible to convey in words any real idea of the scene and how things happened. Of course it was only for a fraction of a second that we looked straight into each other’s eyes; then, as if by magic, he was round and going from me with the overwhelming rush of speed and strength and weight combined. Yet it is the first sight that remains with me: the proud head, the huge spiral horns and the wide soft staring eyes – before the wildness of panic had stricken them. The picture seems photographed on eye and brain, never to be forgotten. A whirlwind of dust and leaves marked his course, and through it I fired, unsteadied by excitement and hardly able to see. Then the right hindleg swung out and the great creature sank for a moment, almost to the ground; and the sense of triumph, the longed for and unexpected success, ‘went to my head’ like a rush of blood.

  There had been no time to aim, and the shot – a real snap shot – was not at all a bad one. It was after that that the natural effect of such a meeting and such a chance began to tell. Thinking it all out beforehand does not help much, for things never happen as they are expected to; and even months of practice among the smaller kinds will not ensure a steady nerve when you just come face to face with big game – there seems to be too much at stake.

  I fired again as the kudu recovered himself, but he was then seventy or eighty yards away and partly hidden at times by trees and scrub. He struck up the slope, following the line of the troop through the scattered thorns and there, running hard and dropping quickly to my knee for steadier aim, I fired again and again – but each time a longer shot and more obscured by the intervening bush; and no telltale thud came back to cheer me on.

  Forgetting the last night’s experience, forgetting everything except how we had twice chased and twice lost them, seeing only another and the grandest prize slipping away, I sent Jock on and followed as fast as I could. Once more the kudu came in sight – just a chance at four hundred yards as he reached an open space on rising ground. Jock was already closing up, but still unseen, and the noble old fellow turned full broadside to me as he stopped to look back. Once more I knelt, gripping hard and holding my breath to snatch a moment’s steadiness, and fired; but I missed again, and as the bullet struck under him he plunged forward and disappeared over the rise at the moment that Jock, dashing out from the scrub, reached his heels.

  The old Martini carbine had one bad fault; even I could not deny that; years of rough and careless treatment in all sorts of weather – for it was only a discarded old Mounted Police weapon – had told on it, and both in barrel and breech it was well pitted with rust scars. One result of this was that it was always jamming, and unless the cartridges were kept well greased the empty shells would stick and the ejector fail to work; and this was almost sure to happen when the carbine became hot from quick firing. It jammed now, and fearing to lose sight of the chase I dared not stop a second, but ran on, struggling from time to time to wrench the breech open.

  Reaching the place where they had disappeared, I saw with intense relief and excitement Jock and the kudu having it out less than a hundred yards away. The kudu’s leg was broken right up in the ham, and it was a terrible handicap for an animal so big and heavy, but his nimbleness and quickness were astonishing. Using the sound hindleg as a pivot he swung round, always facing his enemy; Jock was in and out, here, there and everywhere, as a buzzing fly torments one on a hot day; and indeed, to the kudu just then he was the fly and nothing more; he could only annoy his big enemy and was playing with his life to do it. Sometimes he tried to get round; sometimes pretended to charge straight in, stopping himself with all four feet spread – just out of reach; then like a red streak he would fly through the air with a snap for the kudu’s nose. It was a fight for life and a grand sight; for the kudu, in spite of his wound, easily held his own. No doubt he had fought out many a life and death struggle to win and hold his place as lord of the herd and knew every trick of attack and defence. Maybe too he was blazing with anger and contempt for this persistent little gadfly that worried him so and kept out of reach. Sometimes he snorted and feinted to charge; at other times backed slowly, giving way to draw the enemy on; then with a sudden lunge the great horns swished like a scythe with a tremendous reach out, easily covering the spot where Jock had been a fraction of a second before. There were pauses too in which he watched his tormentor steadily, with occasional impatient shakes of the head or, raising it to full height, towered up a monument of splendid and contemptuous indifference, looking about with big angry but unfrightened eyes for the herd – his herd – that had deserted him; or with a slight toss of his head he would walk limpingly forward, forcing the ignored Jock before him; then, interrupted and annoyed by a flying snap at his nose, he would spring forward and strike with the sharp cloven forefoot – zip-zip-zip – at Jock as he landed. Any one of the vicious flashing stabs would have pinned him to the earth and flattened him; but Jock was never there.

  Keeping what cover there was I came up slowly behind them, struggling and using all the force I dared, short of smashing the lever, to get the empty cartridge out. At last one of the turns in the fight brought me into view, and the kudu dashed off again. For a little way the pace seemed as great as ever, but it soon died away; the driving power was gone; the strain and weight on the one sound leg and the tripping of the broken one were telling; and from that on I was close enough to see it all. In the first rush the kudu seemed to dash right over Jock – the swirl of dust and leaves and the bulk of the kudu hiding him; then I saw him close abreast looking up at it and making furious jumps for its nose, alternately from one side and the other, as they raced along together. The kudu, holding its nose high and well forward, as they do when on the move, with the horns thrown back almost horizontally, was out of his reach and galloped heavily on, completely ignoring his attacks.

  There is a suggestion of grace and poise in the movement of the kudu bull’s head as he gallops through the bush, which is one of his distinctions above the other antelopes. The same supple balancing movement that one notes in the native girls bearing their calabashes of water upon their heads is seen in the neck of the kudu, and for the same reason: the movements of the body are softened into mere undulations, and the head with its immense spiral horns seems to sail alo
ng in voluntary company – indeed almost as though it were bearing the body below.

  At the fourth or fifth attempt by Jock a spurt from the kudu brought him cannoning against its shoulder, and he was sent rolling unnoticed yards away. He scrambled instantly to his feet, but found himself again behind: it may have been this fact that inspired the next attempt, or perhaps he realised that attack in front was useless; for this time he went determinedly for the broken leg. It swung about in wild eccentric curves, but at the third or fourth attempt he got it and hung on; and with all fours spread he dragged along the ground. The first startled spring of the kudu jerked him into the air; but there was no let go now, and although dragged along the rough ground and dashed about among the scrub, sometimes swinging in the air, and sometimes sliding on his back, he pulled from side to side in futile attempts to throw the big animal. Ineffectual and even hopeless as it looked at first, Jock’s attacks soon began to tell; the kudu made wild efforts to get at him, but with every turn he turned too, and did it so vigorously that the staggering animal swayed over and had to plunge violently to recover its balance. So they turned this way and that, until a wilder plunge swung Jock off his feet, throwing the broken leg across the other one; then, with feet firmly planted, Jock tugged again, and the kudu trying to regain its footing was tripped by the crossed legs and came down with a crash.

  As it fell Jock was round and fastened on the nose; but it was no duiker, impala or rietbuck that he had to deal with this time. The kudu gave a snort of indignation and shook its head: as a terrier shakes a rat, so it shook Jock, whipping the ground with his swinging body, and with another indignant snort and toss of the head flung him off, sending him skidding along the ground on his back. The kudu had fallen on the wounded leg and failed to rise with the first effort; Jock while still slithering along the ground on his back was tearing at the air with his feet in his mad haste to get back to the attack, and as he scrambled up, he raced in again with head down and the little eyes black with fury. He was too mad to be wary and my heart stood still as the long horns went round him with a swish; one black point seemed to pierce him through and through, showing a foot out the other side, and a jerky twist of the great head sent him twirling like a tip-cat eight or ten feet up in the air. It had just missed him, passing under his stomach next to the hindlegs; but, until he dropped with a thud and, tearing and scrambling to his feet, he raced in again, I felt certain he had been gored through.