Flower o' the Peach

Flower o' the Peach by Perceval Gibbon. It was late in the afternoon when the sheep moved off and the west was full of the sunset. They flowed out from the cactus-ringed fold like a broadening trickle of milk with their mild idiot faces set southwards towards the sparse pastures beyond the horizon and the dust from their feet hung over them in a haze of soft bronze. Half-way along the path between the house and the dam Paul turned to watch their departure dwelling with parted lips on the picture they made as they drifted forth to join themselves with earth and sky in a single mellowness of hue.The little farmhouse with its outbuildings and the one other house that reared its steep roof within eyeshot of the farm were behind him as he stood; nothing interrupted the suave level of the miles stretching forth like a sluggish sea to the sky-line. In its sunset mood its barren brown the universal tint into which its poor scrub faded and was lost to the eye was touched to warmth and softened; it was a wilderness with a soul. The tall boy who knew it in all its aspects for a neighbor stood gazing absorbed as the sheep came to a pause with the lean smooth-coated dog at their heels and waited for the shepherd who was to drive them through the night. He was nearing seventeen years of age and the whole of those years had been spent on the Karoo in the native land of dreams. The glamour of it was on his face where the soft childish curves were not yet broken into angles and in his gaze as his steady unconscious eyes pored on the distance deep with foreknowledge of the coming of the night.Baas!Paul closed his lips and turned absently. The old black shepherd was eager to linger out a minute or two in talk before he went forth to his night-long solitude. He stood a bundle of shabby clothes with his strong old face seamed with gray lines and the corners of the eyes bunched into puckers waiting in the hope that the young baas might be tempted into conversation. He carried a little armory of smooth wire-bound sticks his equipment against all the perils of the unknown and smiled wistfully ingratiatingly up into Paul's face.