first sniffed at me and then lain down beside me that day under the withaak was a strange thing that I couldn’t understand. I thought of the Bible, where it is written that the lion shall lie down with the lamb.
But I also wondered if I hadn’t dreamt it all. The manner in which those things had befallen me was all so unearthly. The leopard began to take up a lot of my thoughts. And there was no man to whom I could talk about it who would be able to help me in any way. Even now, as I am telling you this story, I am expecting you to wink at me, like Krisjan Lemmer did.
Still, I can only tell you the things that happened as I saw them, and what the rest was about only Africa knows.
It was some time before I again walked along the path that leads through the bush to where the withaaks are. But I didn’t lie down on the grass again. Because when I reached the place, I found that the leopard had got there before me. He was lying on the same spot, half-curled up in the withaak’s shade, and his forepaws were folded as a dog’s are, sometimes. But he lay very still. And even from the distance where I stood I could see the red splash on his breast where a Mauser bullet had gone.
The Widow
There had been no rain in the Potchefstroom District for many months, and so the ground was very hard that morning, and the picks and shovels of the kaffirs rang on the gravel, by the side of the mud hut that had been used as a courthouse.
I was a boy then. It was at the time when the Transvaal was divided into four separate republics, and Potchefstroom, which was a small village, was the capital of the southern republic.
For several days there had been much activity in the courthouse. From distant parts the farmers had come to attend the trial of Tjaart van Rensburg. Only a few could get inside the court. The rest watched at the door, crowding forward eagerly after each witness had stepped down from the stand; those inside told them what evidence had been given.
Naturally there was much excitement over these court proceedings, and in Potchefstroom people talked of little else but the Transvaal’s first murder trial.
The whole thing started when Andries Theron was found beside the borehole on his farm. He had been pumping water for his cattle. One Rossouw, a neighbour of Andries Theron’s, passing by in his ox-wagon, saw a man lying next to the pump-handle.
Thus it was that Francina Theron saw her husband arrive home in a stranger’s ox-wagon, with a piece of bucksail pulled over his body, and a Martini bullet in his heart. The landdrost’s men came from Potchefstroom and proceeded to investigate the murder, spending much of their time, as landdrosts’ men always do, in trying to frighten the wrong people into confessing.
But afterwards they got their information.
They say there was a large crowd at the funeral of Andries Theron, which took place at the foot of a koppie on the far end of his farm. They came, the women in black clothes and the men in their Sunday hats; and in that sad procession that wound slowly over the veld, following the wagon with the coffin on it, there were also two landdrost’s men.
Among the mourners was the dead man’s cousin, Tjaart van Rensburg. The minister did not take long over the funeral service. He said a few simple words about the tragic way in which Andries Theron had died, adding that no man knew when his hour was come. He then spoke a brief message of comfort to the widow, Francina, and offered up a prayer for the dead man’s soul.
The last notes of the Boer hymn had died on the veld, and the crowd had already begun to move away from the graveside, when one of the landdrost’s men put his hand on Tjaart van Rensburg’s shoulder. With an officer of the law on each side of him, the fetters on his wrists, Tjaart van Rensburg led the procession down the stony road.
The prisoner had turned very pale. But they all noticed that his head was erect and his step firm, when he walked to the bluegum trees on the other side of the hill, where the Government Cape-cart waited.
A month later the trial commenced in Potchefstroom.
Andries Theron’s widow, Francina, was a slenderly built woman, still in her early twenties. She had been very pretty at one time, with light-hearted ways and a merry laugh. But the shock of her husband’s death had changed her in an hour. She did not weep when Rossouw, who had a good heart but blunt ways, informed her that he had found her husband lying dead on the veld.
“I was lucky,” Rossouw said, “to have found him before the vultures did.”
“Where is he?” Francina asked.
“On my wagon,” Rossouw answered, “under the first bucksail you come to. Next to the sacks of potatoes.”
In some respects Rossouw did not have what you would call a real delicacy of feeling. But he possessed a sombre thing of the veld, which told him that he must not follow Francina to the wagon, because it was right that, at her first meeting with her dead husband, a wife should be alone.
Francina was at the wagon a long time.
When she came back she was sadly changed. The colour had left her cheeks and her lips. Her mouth sagged at the corners. But in her tearless eyes there was a lost and hopeless look, a dreadful desolation that frightened Rossouw when he saw it, so that he made no effort to comfort her.
It was the same with the women who came to console Francina. If a woman wanted to take Francina in her arms, so that she could weep on her bosom, there was that look in her eyes that spoke of a sorrow that must be for always.
You can’t do much, if all you have to offer a widow is human sympathy, and she looks back at you with wide eyes that seem to want nothing more from this world or the world to come. You get uneasy, then, and feel that you have no right to trespass on this sort of sorrow.
That was what happened to the women who knew Francina. They were kind to her in little ways. When the time for the murder trial came, and it seemed likely that Francina would be called as a witness, a woman accompanied her to Potchefstroom and stayed with her there. But even to this woman, in her grief, Francina remained a stranger.
In fact, this woman always said, afterwards, that during all the time she was with her, Francina spoke to her only once; and that was when they were at the Mooi River, which flows through Potchefstroom, and Francina said how pretty the yellow flowers grew on the banks of the river.
So the trial began. Every morning, at nine o’clock, Tjaart van Rensburg was led from the gaol to the courthouse with the mud walls. There were always many people standing around to see him pass. I saw him quite often. The impression I get, when I look back to that time, is that Tjaart van Rensburg was a broad-shouldered man of about thirty, taller than the guards who escorted him, and rather good-looking.
I remember the way he walked, with his head up, and his hat on a slant, and his wrists close together in front of him. On each side of him was a burgher with a bandolier and a rifle.
The landdrost looked important, as a landdrost should look at his first murder trial. The jurymen also looked very dignified. But the most pompous of all was Rossouw. Over and over again, to anyone who would listen, he told the story of how he discovered the body before the vultures did. He told everybody just what evidence he was going to give, and what theories he was going to put forward as to how the murder was committed.
He even brought his ox-wagon along to the courthouse and drew it up on the sidewalk, so that the landdrost and the jurymen had difficulty in getting in at the door. He said he was willing to demonstrate
