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Balancing her basket on her head, she walked along, and directly she had left the village behind her she broke out into the song of the Rover of the Plain, and at last, at the end of the day, she came to the group of huts where her parents lived. Her friends all ran to meet her, and, weeping, she told them that the buffalo was dead.

This sad news spread like lightning through the country, and the people flocked from far and near to bewail the loss of the beast who had been their pride.

‘If you had only listened to us,’ they cried, ‘he would be alive now. But you refused all the little girls we offered you, and would have nothing but the buffalo. And remember what the medicine-man said: “If the buffalo dies you die also!”‘

So they bewailed their fate, one to the other, and for a while they did not perceive that the girl’s husband was sitting in their midst, leaning his gun against a tree. Then one man, turning, beheld him, and bowed mockingly.

‘Hail, murderer! hail! you have slain us all!’

The young man stared, not knowing what he meant, and answered, wonderingly:

‘I shot a buffalo; is that why you call me a murderer?’

‘A buffalo–yes; but the servant of your wife! It was he who carried the wood and drew the water. Did you not know it?’

‘No; I did not know it,’ replied the husband in surprise. ‘Why did no one tell me? Of course I should not have shot him!’

‘Well, he is dead,’ answered they, ‘and we must die too.’

At this the girl took a cup in which some poisonous herbs had been crushed, and holding it in her hands, she wailed: ‘O my father, Rover of the Plain!’ Then drinking a deep draught from it, fell back dead. One by one her parents, her brothers and her sisters, drank also and died, singing a dirge to the memory of the buffalo.

The girl’s husband looked on with horror; and returned sadly home across the mountains, and, entering his hut, threw himself on the ground. At first he was too tired to speak; but at length he raised his head and told all the story to his father and mother, who sat watching him. When he had finished they shook their heads and said:

‘Now you see that we spoke no idle words when we told you that ill would come of your marriage! We offered you a good and hard- working wife, and you would have none of her. And it is not only your wife you have lost, but your fortune also. For who will give you back your money if they are all dead?’

‘It is true, O my father,’ answered the young man. But in his heart he thought more of the loss of his wife than of the money he had given for her.

[From L’Etude Ethnographique sur les Baronga, par Henri Junod.]