Percy Fitzpatrick - Jock of the Bushveld

One evening as we were lounging round the camp fire, Robbie, failing to find a soft spot for his head on a thorn log, got up reluctantly to fetch his blankets, exclaiming with a mock tragic air:

“The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right.”

We knew Robbie’s way. There were times when he would spout heroics, suggested by some passing trifle, his own face a marvel of solemnity the whole time, and only the amused expression in his spectacled grey eyes to show he was poking fun at himself. An indulgent smile, a chuckle, and the genial comment “Silly ass!” came from different quarters; for Robbie was a favourite. Only old Rocky maintained his usual gravity.

As Robbie settled down again in comfort, the old man remarked in level thoughtful tones: “I reckon the feller as said that was a waster, he chucked it!” There was a short pause in which I, in my ignorance, began to wonder if it was possible that Rocky did not know the source; or did he take the quotation seriously? Then Robbie answered in mild protest: “It was a gentleman of the name of Hamlet who said it.”

“Well, you can bet he was no good, anyhow,” Rocky drawled out. “‘Jus’ my luck!’ is the waster’s motto!”

“They do say he was mad,” Robbie replied, as his face twitched with a pull-your-leg expression, “but he got off a lot of first-class things all the same – some of the best things ever said.”

“I da’ say; they mostly can. But a man as sets down and blames his luck is no good anyhow. He’s got no sand, and got no sense, and got no honesty! It ain’t the time’s wrong: it’s the man! It ain’t the job’s too big: it’s the man’s too little!”

“You don’t believe in luck at all, Rocky?” I ventured to put in.

“I don’t say thar’s no such thing as luck – good and bad; but it ain’t the explanation o’ success an’ failure – not by a long way. No, sirree, luck’s just the thing any man’d like ter believe is the reason for his failure and another feller’s success. But it ain’t so. When another man pulls off what you don’t, the first thing you got ter believe is it’s your own fault; and the last, it’s his luck. And you jus’ got ter wade in an’ find out whar you went wrong, an’ put it right, ’thout any excuses an’ explanations.”

“But, Rocky, explanations aren’t always excuses, and sometimes you really have to give them!”

“Sonny, you kin reckon it dead sure thar’s something wrong ’bout a thing that don’t explain itself; an’ one explanation’s as bad as two mistakes – it don’t fool anybody worth speaking of, ’cept yerself. You find the remedy; you can leave other folks put up the excuses.”

I was beaten. It was no use going on, for I knew he was right. I suppose the other fellows also knew whom he was getting at, but they said nothing; and the subject seemed to have dropped, when Rocky, harking back to Robbie’s quotation, said, with a ghost of a smile: “I reckon ef that sharp o’ your’n hed ter keep the camp in meat we’d go pretty nigh hungry.”

But it seemed a good deal to give up all at once – the bad luck, the excuses and explanations, and the comfort they afforded; and I could not help thinking of that wretched wrong-headed stembuck that had actually allowed me to pass it, and then cantered away behind me.

Rocky, known, liked and respected by all, yet intimate with none, was ‘going North’ – even to the Zambesi, it was whispered – but no one knew where or why. He was going off alone, with two pack-donkeys and not even a boy for company, on a trip of many hundreds of miles and indefinite duration. No doubt he had an idea to work out; perhaps a report of some trader or hunter or even native was his pole-star: most certainly he had a plan, but what it was no living soul would know. That was the way of his kind. With them there was no limit in time or distance, no hint of purpose or direction, no home, no address, no ‘people’; perhaps a partner somewhere or a chum, as silent as themselves, who would hear some day – if there was anything to tell.

Rocky had worked near our camp on the Berg. I had known him to nod to, and when we met again at one of the early outspans in the Bush and offered a lift for him and his packs he accepted and joined us, it being still a bit early to attempt crossing the rivers with pack-donkeys. It may be that the ‘lift’ saved his donkeys something on the roughest roads and in the early stages; or it may be that we served as a useful screen for his movements, making it difficult for any one else to follow his line and watch him. Anyway, he joined us in the way of those days: that is, we travelled together and as a rule we grubbed together; yet each cooked for himself and used his own stores, and in principle we maintained our separate establishments. The bag alone was common; each man brought what game he got and threw it into the common stock.

The secret of agreement in the veld is – complete independence! Points of contact are points of friction – nowhere more so; and the safest plan is, each man his own outfit and each free to feed or sleep or trek as and when he chooses. I have known partners and friends who would from time to time move a trek apart, or a day apart, and always camp apart when they rejoined; and so remain friends.

Rocky – in full, Rocky Mountain Jack – had another name, but it was known to few besides the Mining Commissioner’s clerk who registered his licences from time to time. “In the Rockies whar I was raised” is about the only remark having deliberate reference to his personal history which he was known to have made; but it was enough on which to found the name by which we knew him.

What struck me first about him was the long Colt’s revolver, carried on his hip; and for two days this ‘gun,’ as he called it, conjured up visions of Poker Flat and Roaring Camp, Jack Hamlin and Yuba Bill of cherished memory; and then the inevitable question got itself asked:

“Did you ever shoot a man, Rocky?”

“No, Sonny,” he drawled gently, “never hed ter use it yet!”

“It looks very old. Have you had it long?”

“Jus’ ’bout thirty years, I reckon!”

“Oh! Seems a long time to carry a thing without using it!”

“Waal,” he answered half absently, “thet’s so. It’s a thing you don’t want orfen – but when you do, you want it derned bad!”

Rocky seemed to me to have stepped into our life out of the pages of Bret Harte. For me the glamour of romance was cast by the Master’s spell over all that world, and no doubt helped to make old Rocky something of a hero in the eyes of youth; but such help was of small account, for the cardinal fact was Rocky himself. He was a man.

There did not seem to be any known region of the earth where prospectors roam that he had not sampled, and yet whilst gleaning something from every land, his native flavour clung to him unchanged. He was silent by habit and impossible to draw; not helpful to those who looked for short cuts, yet kindly and patient with those who meant to try; he was not to be exploited, and had an illuminating instinct for what was not genuine. He had ‘no use for short weight’ – and showed it!

I used to watch him in the circle round the fire at nights, his face grave, weather-stained and wrinkled, with clear grey eyes and long brown beard, slightly grizzled then – watch and wonder why Rocky, experienced, wise and steadfast, should – at sixty – be seeking still. Were the prizes so few in the prospector’s life? or was there something wanting in him too? Why had he not achieved success?

It was not so clear then that ideals differ. Rocky’s ideal was the life – not the escape from it. There was something – sentiment, imagination, poetry, call it what you will – that could make common success seem to him common indeed and cheap! To follow in a new rush, to reap where another had sown, had no charm for him. It may be that an inborn pride disliked it; but it seems more likely that it simply did not attract him. And if – as in the end I thought – Rocky had taken the world as it is and backed himself against it – living up to his ideal, playing a ‘lone hand’ and playing it fair in all conditions, treading the unbeaten tracks, finding his triumph in his work, always moving on and contented so to end: the crown, “He was a man!” – then surely Rocky’s had achieved success!