Running Wild

by Bristow, David;

  That year did indeed turn out to be a good one for Lucy Raeburn, even though she and her friends did not get to go horse trekking in west Texas. For the people of the lone star state things turned out even less well when Hurricane Katrina came a-callin’. Although the devastation in Texas was not as bad as it was in neighbouring Louisiana, it was more than enough to see that Lucy’s riding trip was cancelled with no chance of a refund: “An Act of God” the fine print in the contract put it.

  20

  Veld School

  THE INK HAD HARDLY DRIED on the stamp in Ruff’s passport, clearing customs at Rhodes Drift en route to Johannesburg International Airport and the UK, when Karl was on the phone to Rhodes Heights. The deal would be done by the time Ruff got back from his overseas marketing trip.

  “Hi, Sean.”

  “I want my horse back.”

  “That’s not how I understood it …”

  “Just have him ready for me tomorrow, I should be there around midday,” and Karl put down the phone.

  That meant Karl would have to get to Rhodes Drift before four that afternoon in order to clear customs on both sides of the Limpopo, then drive the old Cruiser pick-up with horse trailer attached, cat napping along the road. He would cross several hundred kilometres of bushveld before the land rose in natural terraces, skipping up the Highveld grasslands towards the Great Escarpment.

  The escarpment ran in a huge arc all around southern Africa, parallel to the coastline, and separated the coastal apron from the interior plains. Ratty Michaels’ trout fishing getaway, Rhodes Heights, was situated on the top edge of this continental divide.

  When Karl arrived he went straight to the paddock to greet Zulu and there was an instant recognition of their bond.

  “I’ve come to take you home boy.”

  Sean came over, coffee mug in his hand. “Here, you’ll need this if you’re planning on heading straight back.”

  Karl took the steaming drink with gratitude. “I am, thanks.”

  When Ruff got back to Mashatu there was a palpable sense of trepidation.

  “What’s up?” he asked Harvey.

  “Go check the paddocks.”

  Ruff walked over to where the horses were corralled, now separated into a smaller one for his remaining show horse Arkle, and a larger one for all the other horses. And there, lording over his pitse companions, was a familiar-looking black horse with one white sock.

  When Ruff found Karl, tacking up fly-screening around the open spaces under the eaves of the barn, he didn’t say anything. He just stood and stared.

  “Juliette reckons this will keep the miggies out. We’ve also installed fans inside, to help with them and the mozzies in summer.”

  “She does? You have? Well that’s just sweet!” Ruff raised his eyebrows. “Just so long as there’s no more trouble. There’ll be no third chances.”

  From the moment of his recapture Zulu would spend much of his time looking out for zebras, calling whenever he spotted any. He knew they liked to hang out around the fringes of Nel’s Vlei where there was usually green stubble well into the dry season. When out on safari he would whinny, beckoning them, and then urge his rider to go after them.

  Whenever he detected a female zebra in oestrus Zulu would seem to double in size. Ruff warned the guides never to take Zulu anywhere near the vet fence. He feared the horse would try to run away, ever in search of his harem. It was probably true because Zulu was continually searching for his old herd.

  Karl would allow the excited horse to have a good gallop after them. You could tell that after running with the zebras he was filled with testosterone and he felt like a fully primed stallion again. For safari guests, this game of running with the zebras became one of the favourite experiences of their stay at Mashatu, so much so that many would request it on arrival. If the guests were happy, the guides were happy. They kept it up and through successive generations they could still induce wild zebras, which had no sense of the origins of the game, to run with them.

  While the legend about the amazing “reborn” Zulu circulated around the Tuli block, among all his deeds and escapades one thing intrigued the people back at stables: how he had not contracted African horse sickness during four years without any human supervision? In the seven years since the horse safari business had been going they had lost around 30 horses to the scourge.

  “Dumb luck,” reckoned Ruff.

  “For a horse man, losing a horse, every single horse, it breaks your heart every time,” Ruff had once admitted in a rare moment of compassion. Fewer succumbed after Juliette took over their care, from the beginning rubbing them every morning with paraffin, later with a khakibos lotion and eventually her own secret concoctions, taking their temperatures twice daily and keeping them inside the insect-proofed stables throughout summer. Still, there was the occasional fatality.

  While farmers in South Africa used khakibos as an insect repellent, Juliette learned the people of the Tuli used wild sage (Pecheul-loeschea), an aromatic herb that was the perfume of the arid savanna. They would rub their horses with fresh leaves and in mid-summer when flies, miggies and mosquitoes abounded they burned the dry plants in the horse kraals. She replaced khakibos with wild sage and found it worked much better.

  Karl had noticed that Zulu would roll in wild sage whenever he could. One day they encountered wild African foxglove (Ceratotheca triloba) growing into the lower branches of a jackalberry tree. Zulu rushed over to rub up against it. The next time they saw the plant Karl did an experiment: he dismounted, took off the saddle and Zulu immediately rubbed against it, rolled in it and even nibbled on the leaf tips.

  The African foxglove is a drought-resistant member of the sesame family and although not common is widespread across the sandy Limpopo Valley. The white to lavender blooms resemble the European foxglove and attract honey and carpenter bees as well as sunbirds. In literature, it is noted as being highly poisonous but clearly the zebras of Mashatu were using it as veld muti and they had passed this knowledge on to the pitse interloper.

  Over dinner, Karl mentioned it to Juliette in an off-hand “what did you do at work today, honey?” kind of way. She coughed, nearly choked and spat a mouthful of lamb chop and mash onto the table. She insisted that the next morning they ride out together to see if Zulu would repeat the experiment. Which he did. Juliette was so excited she could hardly stand still.

  “I’ll race you back,” she yelled back at Karl, 20 paces behind her. On her own horse, Mercury, there was no chance Zulu was going to keep pace. Juliette was already assembling the stable staff when Karl and Zulu arrived panting.

  She drove them to where they had seen the foxglove and showed the grooms which plant (they all knew it) she wanted them to pick whenever they saw it – the fresh parts only, taking care not to pick too much from any one plant. With it she concocted her own solution and from then on sprayed with only that, reducing the incidence of AHS in “her” stables to next to nothing. If Zulu could be said to have left a legacy at Mashatu that would be the most valuable.

  Another thing Zulu picked up from the zebras probably came down to them from the elephants. In wintertime grasses withdraw their nutrients underground and store them in their roots, ready to sprout again as soon as rain falls. Elephants much prefer eating soft grass to gnarly branches, but in winter the good stuff is hidden underground.

  The problem for them is that with the roots comes lots of gravel, which grinds down their precious teeth. Excepting for their tusks, which are modified canine teeth, elephants have only molar teeth, each one weighing around five kilograms. They chew on only the front set and when those wear down, they fall out and are replaced by the next set. Their six sets have to last their whole lives, so the age when an elephant dies usually depends on how long its teeth last.

  In sandy areas like Mashatu, elephants use a neat skill: they will grab a tuft of grass in their prehensile trunk tip and with their fist-sized toenails they kick it out of the ground, roots and all. Then, inst
ead of simply tossing it down the chute, they will tap it repeatedly against a foot, knocking off as much grit as they can.

  Horses have evolved those extra-long teeth to cope with their close-cropping of grass. But what do you do when you have nibbled the grass down to the ground and there is nothing left to eat? You do what the zebras of Mashatu had learned to do from the elephants: you kick out the rhizomes with a hoof, give them a good shake and munch your way through the drought while other grazers are starving to death.

  On safari, a guide will listen to and watch everything. They will listen intently to the common sounds of guineafowls, francolins, tree squirrels, impala or baboons barking – every game guide learns to pick up their alarm calls, so they know when a snake is sneaking or maybe a leopard is lurking.

  That’s why guides ask their guests to keep the chatter down: it distracts them from their task of being the eyes and ears of the group. Each guide will have his or her own signalling system of whistles or finger clicks to be passed down the line in order to alert the group. A lead horse that has exceptionally good senses and stays alert, even on a hot summer afternoon when other horses and riders are just plodding, is invaluable. Such a horse was the reborn Zulu.

  In his day, Moyeni had been a first-class lead horse, especially when it came to approaching elephants – until the day he made a miscalculation and paid the price. Pongola was an imposing horse and had he not met with such a fretful end, infected with rabies and having to be put down, might well have become a “horse of the line”.

  Chewbakka had had a keen bush sense but he had also had a wild streak, which proved to be his eventual undoing. Then there was Rascal, a real African horse that looked like an oversize, four-legged scrawny village chicken. He was the equine equivalent of Moany: full of insight but unpredictable. From his days as a cattle-herding horse out in the Kalahari he knew how to conduct himself around wild animals. You just could not rely on his being there on a given day due to his predilection for running away. However, he was such a loafer he would always come back for the fully catered and serviced accommodation of Limpopo Valley Horse Safaris.

  But none of them had Zulu’s uncanny alertness for picking up the nuances of the bush, nor his adaptability to each new rider. You could say the other horses had horse sense, whereas Zulu had added wild zebra sense to his skill set. He taught Karl to really listen to things as he did and to understand what he was hearing until eventually the guide was able to see what the horse was seeing.

  Something that made Karl the envy of all the other guides at Mashatu was that his horse had an uncanny knack of locating cats. Finding leopards was his particular forte. Karl quickly learned to allow Zulu to take the lead, knowing more often than not they would find spotted cats, sometimes with cubs or an impala kill staked up in a tree.

  “I knew I had inherited an exceptional horse, but what I found amazing was that he knew that I wanted to see them. Even against his better judgement sometimes,” Karl recalled. “He never questioned me, in long grass or along game paths. Excepting for one day.”

  They were riding along a game path and Zulu did not want to walk between two raisin bushes that were well over head height. Karl urged him, thrusting his hips forward, but Zulu stood firm. Karl asked again but again the horse refused him. Perplexed, the rider took a wide loop around one side – and on the far side was a pride of lions feeding on an eland carcass.

  In all the time Zulu was Karl’s lead horse, there was seldom a ride on which they did not see big cats.

  “That was something you just could not get to see on horseback anywhere else,” noted Harvey with admiration during the time he briefly ran the business after Ruff’s sudden departure.

  One survival ploy Zulu learned during his wild years became something of a feature on safaris. Unlike Moyeni who would simply stand his ground, Zulu would rear up when an elephant charged. It had the effect of making him look much bigger and more formidable. If an elephant charges a vehicle, some guides know to open the front doors of their 4x4s and hoot in a threat display that defuses the elephant’s rush – usually.

  Once when cantering along a game path, an elephant cow came charging out of thick bush without the trumpeted warning you would expect (she obviously thought they were charging her!). Zulu reared up like Zorro’s horse Phantom, causing the massive pachyderm to veer around them and crash through the bush on the other side of the track.

  “On any other horse I would have been done for,” Karl remembered.

  But his favourite story about Zulu was about the day when, as he put it, he graduated from Zulu’s veld school. Although all the horse guides rode with rifles, at Mashatu Ruff insisted they learn to use a bullwhip as their first line of defence. The big movement and rifle-shot crack when one is flicked expertly will stop just about any animal, including a lion coming at full throttle.

  “Because if you shoot one of Mr Michaels’ animals you’re going to have a heck of a lot of homework,” Ruff half joked.

  “I was still a novice with big game,” Karl recounted. “Juliette and I used to guide together in those days. I was just learning to use a whip and had been practising near the lunch spot, but it sounded more like a sheep whip than a bullwhip.”

  After lunch, it was getting really hot and they hadn’t seen much game that day. Karl incautiously rode into dense riverine forest without being fully alert. As he made for the shade of a massive mashatu tree, suddenly Zulu reared up. “But I’m not pulling the reins back,” thought Karl.

  Then he saw the charging elephant closing in. They had trapped it on the edge of the riverbank and blocked any escape. So it charged. Zulu reared up, ears back, teeth bared, hooves flashing. The huge grey animal halted and Karl managed to get his riders to back off a bit. Then it charged again and again; Zulu reared up and caused the elephant to break its stride. The riders backed off a bit more but it charged a third time.

  “All this time I was trying to use my whip but with the fright and trying to hold on, all I managed was a pathetic flap-flap,” he gestured lamely with one hand.

  Again, Zulu reared up and checked the elephant’s charge, lashing the air with his front hooves and giving the riders just enough space to turn round and skedaddle to the safety of open ground.

  “Undoubtedly Zulu saved my life then. Had I been riding any other horse I would have died, we both would have.”

  When Karl got back to where Juliette had gathered the rest of the group, an Italian lady, who appeared not to be shaken at all, noted dryly:

  “Zo, you are still learning to crack thee wheep, no?”

  “I learned two things that day: to pay attention at all times and that when the heat was on I could rely on Zulu to do the right thing.” An added bonus was that riding Zulu was like riding a rocking chair.

  The derring-do of guides and horses made up the bulk of campfire stories. Another sure crowd-pleaser was telling how the various horses had been named: Zulu, Pale Face and Albany for their respective colours; Geronimo because he had been an Indian’s horse (sometimes an explanation was needed); the chestnut, Rascal, who had been bought from a cattle station and kept on running back.

  But by far the best story, whenever he was being ridden on safari, was how Billy Boy came to be. It was a story closest to Ruff’s heart, so the other guides would defer to him when the time came.

  “He was named after one of the interns, William, who worked here a while back,” the Cowboy would begin with the wayward grin that spread across his face whenever he recounted war stories.

  They were chasing zebras one day when Goulash, ridden by William, stepped into a hole. Down it went with a crack – its leg snapped in two – sending William flying. (The liver chestnut had got its name from the butcher where Ruff saved its bacon: “Throw in some chopped onion and a dash of paprika and you’ve got yourself some nice goulash,” joked the butcher.)

  Ruff found William sitting on the ground, head in hands, his hat hanging in a thorn bush. Ruff let out a guffaw.

&n
bsp; “Well, Billy boy, settling into safari life I see,” he laughed down from his saddle. Then, dismounting, more seriously: “While you pull yourself towards yourself I am going to give you your first real lesson in running a horse safari business in Africa.”

  He walked over to where Goulash lay. The horse was trying to stir but was still groggy and Ruff could see the leg was a goner. He drew his revolver and dispatched the horse with a shot between ear and eye for a direct brain shot.

  William limped the two kilometres back to camp. An X-ray later revealed a cracked right tibia. (The experience stood him in good stead afterwards when he joined the Queen’s Household Cavalry and did three tours of duty in Afghanistan.)

  But Ruff would not let him off easily. While still recuperating, William was sent off with truck and trailer and 500 pula to find a replacement horse. “And don’t come back until you’ve found a good one.”

  William returned with one that was as good a horse as any and better than most they’d ever had. He was found behind a workshop in Bobonong village where the young man had stopped to have a puncture fixed.

  “Costing me a fortune to feed,” complained the mechanic. Someone had left it there after their vehicle had broken down, apparently on its way to a horse show in South Africa. “That was a year ago.”

  “I offered him 300 pula,” William smiled to the appreciative crowd. “The man said five, so I said 350, he said four. So I gave him 400 pula.” William reached into his shirt pocket and handed 100 pula back to Ruff. Harvey named him and Billy Boy turned out to be a fantastic horse, a rare Nooitgedacht. In the 1950s, a project was initiated at Onderstepoort to fortify the Basotho pony with Boereperd blood. The result was the Nooitgedacht, pretty much re-inventing the original Cape Horse of the 17th century.

  With Karl now riding Zulu exclusively, Ruff did not need any more commotion by riding Arkle on the same safari. But by then Arkle had taken a back seat in the power play. The very next time they went out riding together, Ruff, riding a new horse Albany, noticed that Zulu shied every time he came close.