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English father and Portuguese mother, I suppose. But what can an Englishman be doing in a place like this? If it had been a trek-Boer I should not have been surprised." Then I began to give directions about out-spanning. We had just got the oxen out of the yokes, when a big, raw-boned, red-bearded, blue-eyed, roughly-clad man of about fifty years of age appeared from the house, yawning.
It was a meeting where old friends and comrades, cattle kings and cowboys, their wives, children and sweethearts, met and had a glorious old time. Jones some years ago went far north to secure some young musk oxen. None had ever before been captured. He and his men endured great hardships and privations, but finally, by roping, secured about a dozen yearlings.
"I think now," said Bella, "if we have to make a journey, that I shall have a steed ready to carry me. I wish, Kate, we could find an animal for you." "No fear about dat, Miss Bella," said Timbo. "If we no get horses we get oxen, and dey do better dan any other animal in dis country."
What was lately a green sward now presented the aspect of ground freshly ploughed, and trampled by droves of oxen. A number of white animals, resembling a flock of sheep, passed near me. They were wolves hanging upon the skirts of the herd. I pushed on, keeping to the southward. At length I heard voices; and, in the clear moonlight, could see several horsemen galloping in circles over the plain.
Mass over, Adone had gone home, broken his fast, taken off his velvet jacket, his long scarlet waistcoat, and his silver-studded belt, and put the oxen to the pole of the waggon. "Shall I come?" cried Nerina. "No," he answered. "Go and finish cutting the oats in the triangular field." Always obedient, she went, her sickle swinging to her girdle. She was sorry, but she never murmured.
He had not in fact been gone much more than a week, but during that week sad things had happened. Boycotting had commenced, and had already become very prevalent. To boycott a man, or a house, or a firm, or a class of men, or a trade, or a flock of sheep, or a drove of oxen, or unfortunately a county hunt, had become an exact science, and was exactly obeyed.
She pushed back her sun-bonnet and with it a mass of red-brown hair that curled damply on her forehead, and smiled disarmingly. "Buddy would be the happiest baby boy alive if I could let him drive now and then!" she added humorously. "Can't make a wagon and an extra yoke of oxen out of this cactus patch," Bob Birnie grinned good humoredly. "Not even to tickle Buddy.
It was to this place that the plowman was bending his homeward way. Eventually, as oxen always do, they arrived.
He thereupon adventured and tied his oxen to his cart rope, one to one end and the other to the other end, making the oxen surely fast as he could, tieing 3 or 4 fast knots at each end, and tying his yoke to the cartrope about the middle of the rope between the oxen; and himself went about 10 or 12 pole distant, to see if the cattle would quietly feed as in other places.
The convoy was thrown into confusion, the oxen stampeded, Cronje was entangled and bewildered, and but for the gallant exertions of some foreign officers in the service of the Boers a fatal panic might have ensued.
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