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Updated: July 3, 2025
"Jan," I said, "the winter is at hand; it is time that you and Ralph should take the cattle to the bush-veldt yonder, where they will lie warm and grow fat, for so large a herd cannot be trusted to the Kaffirs. Had you not better start to-morrow? If these English meddlers should come here I will talk with them. Did Suzanne save the boy for them? Did we rear him for them, although he was English?
The work that one can get out of these ponies is marvellous. There was my pony, "Mettle," who had my eleven stone to carry, to say nothing of the saddle, heavy saddle-bags, and a roll of rugs, who came in at the end of his journey as fresh as paint. We cantered easily over the great high-veldt prairies, now and then passing clumps of trees, outposts of the bush-veldt.
On the fourth day from our start we left Middelburg, and, taking a north-east course from this outpost of civilisation, overtook the waggon, and camped, after a twenty miles' trek, just on the edge of the bush-veldt. We had two young Boers to drive our waggons terrible louts.
Ten days afterwards Jan and Ralph returned safe and sound, leaving some Kaffirs in charge of the cattle in the bush-veldt. Very glad we were to see them, since, putting everything else aside, it was lonely work for two women upon the place with no neighbour at hand, and in those days to be lonely meant to be in danger.
Now I go out to see to the kraaling of the cattle, which we will drive off to the bush-veldt to-morrow at dawn, for I will have naught to do with these Scotchmen; your mother must settle with them as she wills, only I beg of her that she will tell me nothing of the bargain. Nay, do not come with me, Ralph; stop you with your dear, for to-morrow you will be parted for a while."
Was there no method of taking him with them for a month or two's shoot in the bush-veldt, and sending him back by some returning expedition before the serious part of the undertaking was entered upon? He decided to sound Hazon upon the matter, yet of this resolve he said nothing now to Holmes. The latter broke the silence. "By Jove, Stanninghame, I envy you!" he said.
Then remembering that the ostensible object of the undertaking was sport and native trade, he went on, "You see, Holmes, it's going to be a hard business. Not just three or four months up in the bush-veldt and so forth, but well, Heaven only knows where the thing will end, let alone how." "I don't care about that. Why, it's just the very thing that'll suit me down to the ground.
"I have said it once, and I will say it again. Listen, Baas, and I will tell you the story. It was a bush-veldt farm, and old Jacob used to come down there with his cattle from the High veldt in the winter when there was no grass in the High veldt, and with him came the Englishwoman, his wife, and the young Baas Frank the Baas we saw yesterday." "How long was all this ago?" asked Mr. Croft.
The granite formation prevails in all this part of the country, and individual boulders sometimes take very curious shapes; for instance, in the bush-veldt we passed a great column towering high above the trees, composed of six boulders getting smaller and smaller from the base up, and each accurately balanced on the one beneath it.
Therefore I say, husband, let our son, Ralph, say here with us and marry our daughter, Suzanne, decently and in due season, and let their children be our children, and their love our love." "And how about the Scotchmen who are coming with power to take him away?" "Do you and Ralph go to the bush-veldt with the cattle to-morrow," I answered, "and leave me to deal with the Scotchmen."
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