“All right; I’ll stay,” said Venning.

“Each in his turn,” said the hunter.  “Come along, Compton;” and they went off, as Venning turned up his shirt-sleeves.

It was hard work, this cutting up, but Muata was a master at the job, and Venning learnt his lesson thoroughly.

The great hide was taken off in one piece without a slit; then long strips of meat were cut off and hung over the branches of a tree.  When the rest of the meat had been stripped off, they packed it all away in the hide, slung the bundle to a sapling, and, with each end of the pole on a shoulder, they slowly carried the whole to the camp.  Venning hoped that his labours were over; but they had only completed one task.  They had now to build a scaffolding on which to hang the strips, after each had been well peppered to keep off the flies, for the drying and smoking.  This took another slice out of the day; and when Venning had washed in the river, and cooked and eaten his buffalo-steak, he resigned himself to the study of insects in place of the pursuit of game, while Muata, who had melted down the fat from the kidneys, sat and rubbed the oil into his limbs till his skin shone.

“Have you seen many buffalo?” asked Venning, with a keen eye on a bit of crooked stick that had seemed to move.

“Many.”

“And you understand their ways?”

“I have watched as you watch the stick that is not a stick.”

Venning picked up an insect—­a strange creature which had adapted itself to its surroundings by pretending to be a dried twig.

“Tell me what you saw.”

“I saw the twin bulls when they were calves, and I saw them when they led the herd, and when they lost the leadership.  I watched them.  Ow aye, I knew their ways.  Sometime, when I was yet a boy, I could understand what they said.”

“What they said, chief?”

“See, the creatures are like men in their ways, and men are like animals—­each man like to one kind of animal.  Haw!  So I judged what the buffalo would say if he could talk like men.”

“And what was the talk?  Tell it me; for I also have given speech to animals when I have watched alone.”

“I will tell you what I thought when I was young, and watched the things of the forest.  The wisest among the people I have met is a woman; and among the things of the forest, the wisest were even a buffalo cow who never had calf, and the mother of the yellow pack, who had white eyes in her long head.  Haw!

“Now, the pack hunted on the same veld where a troop of buffalo grazed, but the bull who led the troop was wise.  He took counsel with the old cow that was calf-less, and the pack could never find the fat heifers or the younger calves unguarded.  In the troop were two young bulls—­brothers; and these I had watched grow—­watched from my hiding.  They were strong and fierce, and they eyed the old bull full.  Scarcely would they turn