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Sechele had become so obnoxious to the Boers that, though anxious to accompany me in my journey, he dared not trust himself among them. This did not arise from the crime of cattle-stealing; for that crime, so common among the Caffres, was never charged against his tribe, nor, indeed, against any Bechuana tribe. It is, in fact, unknown in the country, except during actual warfare.
"Cattle" The Spider had said "and some horses." Pete thought he knew about how that ranch had been stocked, and why it was located where it was. But then, cattle-stealing was not confined to any one locality.
Such were the reports circulated to prevent my men from accompanying me, and it was agreed that Mahommed should fix a day for our pretended start IN COMPANY, but that he should in reality start a few days before the time appointed; and that my men should mutiny, and join his party in cattle-stealing and slave-hunting. This was the substance of the plot thus carefully concocted.
So this looked like a hitch, as juries won't bring a man in guilty of cattle-stealing unless there's clear swearing that the animals he sold were the property of the prosecutor, and known by him to be such. Mr. Hood had to go all the way to Adelaide himself, and they told me we might likely have got out of it all, only for the imported bull.
Having recorded that the general habit of cattle-stealing had blinded even those of the better classes to the infamy of the practice, and that as men's property consisted entirely in herds, it was rendered in the highest degree precarious, Mr. Grahame adds
Billy Louise waited, too depressed to wonder greatly who they were. Seabeck riders, probably; and so they proved. At least one of them was a Seabeck man Floyd Carson, who had talked with her at her own gate and had told her of the suspected cattle-stealing. The other man was a stranger whom Floyd introduced as Mr. Birken.
He knew there was far more real good in him than bad, and yet there seemed no possible chance for him. He would go on as he was; he would "punch" cattle so long as he could find employment. And when chance, or some other matter, should plunge him on his beam ends, he would take to what most cowboys in those days took to when they fell upon evil days cattle-stealing.
Cattle-stealing, such as in the circumstances might have occurred in Caffraria, is here unknown; so Sekomi sent back our oxen, and a message strongly dissuading us against attempting the Desert. "Where are you going? You will be killed by the sun and thirst, and then all the white men will blame me for not saving you." This was backed by a private message from his mother. "Why do you pass me?
"What is your opinion of the Caffres, Mr S, now that you have resided so long with them?" "They are, for heathens, a fine nation, bold, frank, and, if anything is confided to them, scrupulously honest; but cattle-stealing is certainly not considered a crime among them, although it is punished as one.
Many of them had singularly bright doors of red and yellow; for the place had been lately visited by a travelling painter, 'who got along, as I was told, 'by eating his way. The criminal court was sitting, and was at that moment trying some criminals for horse-stealing: with whom it would most likely go hard: for live stock of all kinds being necessarily very much exposed in the woods, is held by the community in rather higher value than human life; and for this reason, juries generally make a point of finding all men indicted for cattle-stealing, guilty, whether or no.
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