Doc. Wild hitched the skirt of a long China silk coat he wore, free of
a hip-pocket. He always carried a revolver. 'In case I feel obliged to
shoot a first person singular one of these hot days,' he explained once,
whereat Bushmen scratched the backs of their heads and thought feebly,
without result.

'We'd never git near enough for a shot,' said the doctor; then he
commenced to hum fragments from a Bush song about the finding of a lost
Bushman in the last stages of death by thirst,--

'"The crows kept flyin' up, boys!
The crows kept flyin' up!
The dog, he seen and whimpered, boys,
Though he was but a pup."'

'It must be something or other,' muttered Mac. 'Look at them blanky
crows!'

'"The lost was found, we brought him round,
And took him from the place,
While the ants was swarmin' on the ground,
And the crows was sayin' grace!"'

'My God! what's that?' cried Mac., who was a little in advance and rode
a tall horse.

It was Job's filly, lying saddled and bridled, with a rifle-bullet (as
they found on subsequent examination) through shoulders and chest, and
her head full of kangaroo-shot. She was feebly rocking her head against
the ground, and marking the dust with her hoof, as if trying to write
the reason of it there.

The doctor drew his revolver, took a cartridge from his waistcoat
pocket, and put the filly out of her misery in a very scientific manner;
then something--professional instinct or the something supernatural
about the doctor--led him straight to the log, hidden in the grass,
where Job lay as we left him, and about fifty yards from the dead filly,
which must have staggered off some little way after being shot. Mac.
followed the doctor, shaking violently.

'Oh, my God!' he cried, with the woman in his voice--and his face so
pale that his freckles stood out like buttons, as Doc. Wild said--'oh,
my God! he's shot himself!'

'No, he hasn't,' said the doctor, deftly turning Job into a healthier
position with his head from under the log and his mouth to the air: then
he ran his eyes and hands over him, and Job moaned. 'He's got a
broken leg,' said the doctor. Even then he couldn't resist making a
characteristic remark, half to himself: 'A man doesn't shoot himself
when he's going to be made a lawful father for the first time, unless he
can see a long way into the future.' Then he took out his whisky-flask
and said briskly to Mac., 'Leave me your water-bag