For at water,
and in his wisdom keeps any "water" he can a secret from the white folk,
an unknown "water" making a safe hiding-place when it suits a black
fellow to obliterate himself for a while.
Eventually we found our hole, after long wanderings and futile excursions
up gullies and by-ways, riding always in single file, with the men in
front to break down a track through scrub and grass, and the missus
behind on old Roper.
"Like a cow's tail," Dan said, mentally reviewing the order of the
procession, as, after dismounting, we walked round our find - a
wide-spreading sheet of deep, clay - coloured water, snugly hidden behind
scrubby banks.
As we clambered on, two bushmen all in white, a dog or two, and a woman
in a holland riding-dress, the Maluka pointed out the inaptness of the
simile.
"A cow's tail," he said, "is wanting in expression and takes no interest
in its owner's hopes and fears," and suggested a dog's tail as a more
happy comparison. "Has she not wagged along behind her owner all
afternoon?" he asked, "drooping in sympathy whenever his hopes came to
nothing; stiffening expectantly at other times, and is even now vibrating
with pleasure in this his hour of triumph."
Bush-folk being old fashioned, no one raised any objection to the term
"owner," as Dan chuckled over the amendment.
