BUCK-SHOOTING WITH OOM CHRISTIAN 397 
of the kraal, and then, getting within four hundred yards on the 
open flat, the old sportsman offered me first shot, which I refused. 
He then fired and missed, having slightly overjudged the dis¬ 
tance, when I got a hopeless cross-running opportunity and 
refused to fire. The buck then turned, running straight away 
from us in a stripe, when Bossoff again missed, scattering the 
buck, which sprang away from the dust of the bullet. I was 
following the distance, shifting my sight as they ran along, and 
just as they bumped sides in coming together, a bullet from 
my long rifle, the last I fired out of her, reached them. We 
could not see the result, it being too far to discern a buck lying 
in the grass, but Bossoff declared he heard the bullet clap, 
and on walking over we found a dead springbok, which we took 
home with us. There was a general smile, when we approached 
the house with only one buck, from all the young people and 
children, for Bossoff, like a good Boer, had many olive branches. 
One buck for three shots looked much as if ‘Pa’ had won 
the pipe. Great, therefore, was the surprise when ‘ Pa ’ refused 
the congratulations, and, with a quiet laugh, said, ‘ The jonge 
Rooi Nek has beaten me. Put you are right, hy kan skiet.’ 
(Rooi Nek, once a term of bantering endearment, has unfor¬ 
tunately lost its charm since it has been converted into a term 
of dislike by the Boers for the foreigner.) We left the buck, 
according to custom, in the hands of the women, and sitting in 
the front of the house were enjoying a pipe and an excellent 
cup of coffee after our tramp, when one of the daughters came 
running to us, with the words, ‘ Pa, that is a spook (ghost) buck, 
it has no bullet wound. How came it to die ? ’ True enough, 
when we went to the back of the house the women were all 
looking at it askance, with the skinning knives still bright in 
their hands. ‘ Where is the wound ? ’ they all asked. With a 
peculiar smile old ‘ oom Christian,’ as we had already learned to 
call him, told the women to go away while he investigated more 
closely, but spite of the minutest examination he could not find 
the particular mark he was looking for. As the reader must 
know, I may as well say at once he was looking under the 
