Page:Traffics and Discoveries.djvu/22

10 Vrelegen, and Odendaalstroom, year in and year out. He was a fixture in that section.

' "He's a dam good man," says Van Zyl. "He's a friend of mine. He sent in a fine doctor when I was wounded and our Hollander doc. wanted to cut my leg off. Ya, I'll guess we'll stay with him." Up to date, me and my Zigler had lived in innocuous desuetude owing to little odds and ends riding out of gear. How in thunder was I to know there wasn't the ghost of any road in the country r But raw hide's cheap and lastin'. I guess I'll make my next gun a thousand pounds heavier, though.

'Well, Sir, we struck the General on his beat—Vrelegen it was—and our crowd opened with the usual compliments at two thousand yards. Van Zyl shook himself into his greasy old saddle and says, " Now we shall be quite happy, Mr. Zigler. No more trekking. Joost twelve miles a day till the apricots are ripe."

'Then we hitched on to his outposts, and vedettes, and cossack-picquets, or whatever they was called, and we wandered around the veldt arm in arm like brothers.

'The way we worked lodge was this way. The General, he had his breakfast at 8.45 to the tick. He might have been a Long Island commuter. At 8.45 I'd go down to the Thirty-fourth Street ferry to meet him—I mean I'd see the Zigler into position at two thousand (I began at three thousand, but that was cold and distant)—and blow him off to two full hoppers—eighteen rounds — just as they were bringing in