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Updated: June 17, 2025
"What a narrow escape, Joeboy!" I whispered. "Um!" he said. "No good go that way. Sandho break knees." "Break his knees?" I said. "Yes, I should think he would! Can you find the way back to the track?" "Um! No. All thick; all dark. Come back little way. Sit down and wait." It was good counsel, and I sat fast rather nervously, though while Joeboy backed the horse.
Then flash after flash cut the darkness, and crack, crack, crack came the reports of the rifles, as the men fired in what they believed to be my direction; but I heard no whistling bullet, and the firing ceased as quickly as it had begun, for there was the risk of my pursuers inflicting injury upon their fellows who led, and whom I could hear thundering along behind me, while with voice and knee I urged Sandho on at his greatest speed.
I had no trouble with my well-trained steed, which obeyed every word or pressure; and with eyes so turned that I could keep the bush between us, I guided Sandho on till, as I had anticipated, the party of mounted men came gradually into view first only the men, but soon after their horses. So far, they were going only at a walk, to pass the track diagonally to my course and some distance away.
"Um!" grunted the black; and after giving Sandho a final pat on the neck, he went down on all-fours and crawled away through the darkness so silently that at the end of a few minutes I began to feel alarmed, wondering whether he had made some terrible slip and gone over. It was vain to argue with myself, for the shock I had received when the horse slipped had not passed away.
I couldn't let him lie like that; so I pulled up, leaped down, and, shouting to Sandho to stand, dashed at the fallen and wounded horse's head, caught him by the bit, and dragged at him to make him rise. The poor beast made a desperate effort, and got upon three legs; but sank back again with a piteous groan, for it had stepped into some burrow and snapped its off hind-leg right in two.
Go soft, soft. Then Sandho gallop." "And what about you?" I said, as I grasped that he meant we were to steal along softly in the darkness till we were heard, and then that I was to gallop. "What about you?" "Joeboy hold stirrup and run," he said, with a laugh. "Boer better get out o' way."
Their rush made Sandho spring to his feet with a neigh of alarm, and then, as I made an effort and rose to a sitting position, he bounded up to me, whinnying with pleasure, and thrust his muzzle over my shoulder.
He lifted me to the edge of the stream as easily as if I had been a child, and when I sat down, carefully bathed the joint for fully half-an-hour, dried it by pouring sand over it again and again, and then as tenderly as a woman replaced stocking and boot, which latter he laced very loosely. "Boss Val go one leg when off Sandho." "Yes, Joeboy," I said; "but it will soon get better."
Joeboy knew me better than I knew myself when he hobbled the horse, for as I sat there watching and thinking how solitary it all was, wondering how they were getting on at home, and whether the Boers were really in force by the pass, a pleasant feeling of restfulness came over me, and the mountains in the distance seemed to grow hazy and of a delicious blue; the coarse bushes did not look so dry, nor the sickly prickly-pears so unwholesome and like flat oval cakes of horribly unwholesome human flesh joined together at their edges; while the little patch of pasture where Sandho was feeding appeared to be of an indescribably beautiful tinge of green.
The pain I suffered was still bad enough, but it seemed to be softened by the feeling of joy which pervaded me; and soon after, Sandho having wandered off again to graze, I heard a sound which nerved me to renewed efforts the peculiar plashing made by a horse wading into a pebbly stream. That was enough.
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