by Fred Stenson
“You can imagine. Noise, explosions, dust. Big lyddite cloud swallowing up the ridge. After half an hour, the officer ordered the barrage stopped, and some privates were sent to see to the fate of the goats. These lads were gone a long time, and when they came back, they appeared shame-faced.
“‘So, tell me. How many did you find?’ asked the officer.
“‘Well, sir, we counted twenty-two.’
“‘Twenty-two? Nonsense! We sent twenty.’
“Begging your pardon, sir, but the commotion caused a nanny to have twins.’”
General Butler laughed. So did his two staffers—maybe a little dutifully, a little forcedly.
Butler arrived back at his office having made a decision. It concerned Red Crow and his nephew Jefferson. Things had changed since he’d received the request to act on the nephew’s behalf. The move to Aldershot, while not much of a promotion, still conferred power. Butler had sidestepped much of the public’s fickle rage. Officers now in Africa, who had served with Butler in older days, were not so likely to ignore a request from him.
Butler cleared his blotter and set a clean page, unscrewed the top off the ink bottle, and dipped his pen. Jefferson Davis was likely with the Canadian Mounted Rifles. Butler wrote two letters asking that he be made a scout.
Cape Town
Near the end of February, the Pomeranian slid around the headland and entered Table Bay. It was an hour before dawn, and the massive block of Table Mountain was flooded pink. The colour of wild roses.
Like every other man on board, Frank was desperate to get off, to be delivered from the rotting stink of decks and holds; to see the horses liberated from their foul cave. The skipper cut the ship’s engine and let it glide through the quiet water of the vessel-choked bay. Their anchor was lowering with a rattle of chains, and they felt it bite. Soon, the officers were among them telling them they would not get off today, as if that were obvious. They must wait their turn at the dock. They must get the holds above the horses emptied first. Tomorrow, maybe.
In moments like this one, Frank had begun to see a pattern. Whatever soldiers craved most, the army would not give them. Army logic.
They bobbed at anchor, surrounded by ships, none as scabby as their own, and they watched the mountain change, a different colour for every hour. Two small boats came to serve them, and at every level of the ship’s insides, soldiers were loading pallets or raising them. Outside, more men were lowering cargo to the upturned faces of black navvies.
The day’s consolation was the breaking open of the crates that held their Stetsons, crowns inside one another to make comical spires. The western hats were what would set them apart from Tommy Atkins, the British soldier in his metal head bucket. More crates were cracked, and they saw for the first time their Colt .45s, still slippery with factory oil.
Between trips of the cargo boats, they donned their hats and faced off like dime-novel heroes, practising their draw and trying to coax bystanders to rule on who was fastest. A crackling that sounded like pistol fire came from another ship and brought their officers running.
Finally, the profiles of Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak filled with black, and the Mounted Rifles’ last night on the ocean began. Frank, Ovide, and Jeff sat together on deck, on piles of coiled rope. They stared at the mountains until their shapes dissolved into the dark of sky. Then they turned their attention to the stars above.
Frank’s father had told him he would be looking at a different sky down here, but only during the clear nights of the past two weeks had Frank understood this was not just a difference of perspective but a wholly different sky. How would Frank navigate if he were lost in this country? With no knowledge of the landmarks and, when light expired, no knowledge of the map of the sky.
Jeff, Ovide, and Frank, all three, craned their necks and stared at the stars, trying to see and remember patterns in those sparks and washes of light.
Next morning, Cape Town went mad. Cannons boomed from the hilltops and from the north flat where the city’s ancient fort stood. Ships yanked their whistles open and screamed reply. It was deafening and went on and on, as the Pomeranian crept forward and was roped to the dock, as the disgorging of horses began. The coincidental timing made the Mounted Rifles feel like the commotion was for them.
They streamed down the plank onto the pier—stood on legs like uncooked hams. To feel that the solid world was in motion was an experience that made no sense even though they’d been told to expect it. The horses also staggered when they came to the pier, either sea wobbly or simply lame from the state of their yellow hooves.
But there was a lesson in how the horses took it, how they thrilled and preened to be ashore, despite their pain. The soldiers’ whines (Where’s the damn food? Why are we standing in the sun?) disappeared at the sight of the joyful horses. They remembered that they were on the far side of a great ocean, taking their first cold drinks of water in a month, alive and more or less healthy. In Africa.
Because the cannons kept blasting, and the steam whistles yelling, the officers could not be heard and the crowd off the ship quickly lost form and cohesion.
Frank let his horse pull him the length of the skinny pier, past the piles of cork and net, and the crowds of ugly cormorants standing on them. When the pier was only a few feet higher than the sand, Dunny jumped down and promptly rolled. She dusted herself thoroughly as she must have wanted to do for a month. Then spying green where the pier met the shore, she rolled up onto her feet and went after the grass with a wrapping tongue.
A black youth sat watching Frank and his horse, the boy’s bare legs dangling below the pier. When Frank yelled, “What’s the noise about?” the young fellow grinned but did not understand. Frank pointed at a cannon on the hill. Clapped his hands tight over his ears and winced in mock pain. Then he held out his arms imploringly. Why?
The fellow laughed at his display.
“Big battle,” the youth said and mimed shooting a rifle.
“Who won?” Frank yelled.
The boy thumped himself on the chest.
Everybody higher than private was running around trying to get the Mounted Rifles together again, in formation by the ship. A corporal looked over the pier’s edge and saw Frank; yelled for him to come. Dunny was hard to pull away from the sand and grass, and even harder to move along the pier in the direction of the ship. Frank knew he would never get her up the plank and into the ship again. She’d kill him first.
During the journey, each troop had been divided into fours. The number three in each four was the horse-holder. Already Jeff Davis had moved a bit away and was part of Casey Callaghan’s four. Frank and Ovide were with two other cowboys, and the youngest, Gil Snaddon, was the horse-holder. They gave Gil their horses now and went to stand in line.
The battalion formed like they’d been taught to in Regina, facing Lieutenant-Colonel Herchmer and two British officers they had never seen before. An old duffer with flourishing white moustaches, a feathered hat, and a plaster of chest decoration spoke first. His voice when it came was surprisingly strong and shrill, enough to split the din. He welcomed them to Cape Colony and thanked them in advance for their sacrifice.
The old officer seemed to forget the rest, and a younger captain beside him leaned close and whispered.
“Oh, yes,” the older one said. “This day, February 27, is what the Boers call Majuba Day. That was back in the first Boer War, when they attacked us on Majuba Hill. Terrific fight and we took a dusting. That was 1881. General Colley was a wonderful soldier. Boers shot him, right in the forehead.”
As the old duffer pointed at his own forehead with a white-gloved finger, the younger officer cleared his throat and whispered some more.
“That’s the thing, you see,” said the old officer. “This very day, Majuba Day, there has been a great surrender of Boers up north. Place called Paardeburg. They surrendered to Lord Kitchener, I believe. Paardeburg means…”
He leaned toward the younger officer, an
d the younger one said, “Horse Hill.”
This time the younger officer whispered longer at the old officer’s ear, and more strenuously, until the older one threw up his white-gloved hands. “Captain Smithers here will tell you the rest.”
Smithers raced through a description of how, nine days earlier, the British had chased down the Boer general Cronje on the Modder River, causing him to draw his wagons into a defensive circle. Lord Kitchener, having taken command of the fight, ordered several assaults. After the first attacks, Cronje was softened up for a few days with artillery, then attacked again. Finally, the Boer general could stand no more and, as of this day, had surrendered with more than three thousand of his men. It was Britain’s greatest victory of the war to date. A definite turning point.
Colonel Herchmer, who had been uncharacteristically quiet so far, seemed to get angry during this last part. He made a strangled noise and asked to speak. The captain gestured for him to go ahead.
“The Royal Canadian Regiment took part in the battle of Paardeburg,” Herchmer roared. “They were in the final fight that produced the surrender.”
The young captain looked embarrassed. “Yes. The Canadians fought very valiantly, we are told.”
The Mounted Rifles gave three cheers for the victory and another three for the Royal Canadian Regiment. Then the British officers left, and the Rifles cheered the back of them. After that, Herchmer took his hat off and put it under his arm. The Royal Canadian Regiment’s contribution had not been without cost, he said. He asked for a moment of silence for the dead.
When Herchmer put his hat back on, he issued a flurry of orders. They would march through town, which, as they could hear, was in an uproar of celebration. The horses would be left on the outskirts in some shade if any could be found. He apologized to the horse-holders, who would miss the parade, but that was the nature of horse-holding.
Frank felt a rising excitement as they marched into Cape Town. It was surprisingly far and maybe an hour later they turned into Adderley Street, a main road and the centre of celebration.
The street was clogged solid for blocks with people but also with islands of tram cars, buggies, and wagons. The horses hooked to these vehicles were frustrated, dancing and jumping in their traces.
Several buildings that framed the street had covered balconies, each one lined solid with celebrants. Besides cheering, some were holding banners and waving Union Jacks, beating little tom-toms and rattling sticks on the rails. That is, they had been more or less quiet when the Mounted Rifles entered the street, but upon seeing more uniforms they roused and made noise again, as if the actual victors of Paardeburg had arrived.
Frank loved the look of the people around him, all the colours of skin and cloth. The sergeant-major marching at the head had convinced the sea to part for the Canadians, and the line of troops made a khaki rivulet through the mass. Brown children danced along beside them. Flower sellers offered the soldiers their wares for free. Frank took a couple of pink blooms that he poked in his hatband, and a couple of longer stems that he trapped crossways inside his bandolier.
Everyone in Adderley Street wore a costume, according to Frank’s innocent eye: women with their heads wrapped in blue, pink, and orange cloth, knotted behind; men in puffy pantaloons; men in pillbox hats, top hats, tall cone hats with no brim; people with tattooed faces and gold rings through their ears.
When they had gone a few blocks up, turned and walked back, it was time to start for the horses.
As soon as the soldiers were no longer among the cheering crowd, Frank felt a plummet in his chest, a weight dragging, and had no clue why. He looked around him, and none of the others looked chipper either. It finally came to him that the core of this bad feeling was Paardeburg, the victory they had tried all day to celebrate, with Cape Town’s eyes upon them.
Now that they were alone, except for some black children trotting alongside hoping for a penny, the truth was on display: that Paardeburg meant nothing much except a fear that the war would be over before they got there.
On the ocean, Frank had spent many hours staring at the line that divided water from sky. In his head, he was watching himself in battle. Across the sweeps of imaginary landscape, he and Dunny galloped. They scared up fantastic birds. A herd of giraffes tall as storefronts raced away. Dunny had never been keener, braver, or more sure-footed. Neither of them so much as flinched when Boer bullets floated by.
“A definite turning point,” the English captain had said, and Frank, as he walked, turned that phrase around and around. Turning from what to what? From getting beat to winning something? From uncertain outcome to certain victory?
What if, in this big country on whose toe they stood, a bunch of Boer generals were sitting in the dust praying to their Dutch God for guidance. Maybe they were already in some farmhouse kitchen drafting terms of surrender.
The soldiers came to the little park where the horses stood in shade. Some murmured annoyance at having been left in such a strange place. First thing this morning, two lieutenants had left to arrange transport. A short train of high-wheeled wagons and ox carts was the result. This wagon train was already loaded high with Canadian gear, and the black drivers and bullwhackers stood ready for the order to leave for Green Point, their camp.
The soldiers arriving from downtown felt funny that there was now this layer of society beneath them: men who would shift their bale while they were off grinning at Cape Town ladies. To console this need to work, the packs they hoisted weighed like lead. With their backs to the afternoon sun, the heat came through their khaki like an iron brand.
The ocean to the right was a shade of yellow and green most had never seen. Patches of white sand showed between frothing water and black rocks. A knowledgeable type proclaimed that the Cape of Good Hope, southern end of Africa, lay beyond the cliffs ahead. He said too that the tide was coming in. A wave bigger than the rest slammed a loaf of rock and shot up spray as if to prove it.
Unique to their lives as this walk was, Paardeburg kept interrupting. The idea of being sent home without having fired their Lee-Enfields or Colt pistols in battle was humiliating even in the abstract. Frank kept imagining himself in the Fort Macleod Hotel, sipping beer. He was old, and a smart aleck from a younger generation switched a chew of tobacco into his cheek and called, “Hey, Frank Adams, tell us the one about how the turd flew through the ship’s window and landed in your soup.”
Would it all come down to that? An old man’s protest that he had crossed the equator both ways—so don’t tell me I’ve never been anywhere.
Green Point, March 1900
Green Point camp would be the Mounted Rifles’ home until their horses were fit. It was a hot and filthy place. The point was built of sand and nary a tree. The thousands of horses and soldiers who had bivouacked here had already worn off every sprig of grass. Scrawny dogs roved the sand and fought over discarded beef tins. Pedlars came with chunks of wood carved into African animals.
The ocean tides made wind, sometimes strong wind, and the sand with nothing to hold it lifted and travelled so that no meal at Green Point lacked a sandy condiment. It was in Frank’s socks and boots when he drew them on in the morning; chafed in his underwear all day. When he shook his bedroll and laid it down fresh in the tent, the sand was still there. Some days the wind blew so full of sand that goggles were issued. But somehow the flies that blackened the outsides of their tents were never scoured away.
There were other hazards. You could not walk ten yards in bare feet without cutting yourself on the rim of a drifted beef tin or sinking where a latrine crew had thrown a skim of sand over a mess. It stank too, that particular brand Frank thought he’d left on the Pomeranian.
The horses hated Green Point as much as the men did. The ground would not hold a picket pin, and every night in the dark, they tried to escape. The sentries roused the men to run after the horses, who were dragging their lines across the shit-mined landscape.
The horses’ feet remained a
problem. No one was going anywhere until a horse per man could take a nail in its hooves, so said Sergeant Tracey. Tracey decided the best course of action involved the sea—a way to exercise the horses and heal them too. He wanted volunteers to walk the horses on the beach—low tide would be best. Not only would they not hurt themselves walking and running on the sand, but the salt water would toughen the horn of their hooves and heal the tender underside, the frog.
Most fellows, when they heard the word beach—more sand—were determined to duck this assignment. Boer prisoners were arriving by train from up north, and most Mounted Rifles wanted to be picked to escort the enemy from the trains to the prison camp: a chance to dress up and brandish their guns.
But Frank had seen the prisoners. He and Jeff had gone over to the Boer camp one evening and stared at them through the barbed wire. Men with beards; towheaded boys. They looked defeated and depressed, and the sight of them only added to Franks fear that the war was disintegrating. He volunteered for the beach detail.
With six horses in his grasp, Frank set out in the blooming lavender morning. The tide was out and there was a lot of beach to walk on. He led his six in front of the black rock chambers until he found a place where the stone and water made a bay. On the bay’s near side, a little creek had scored a track to the sea. On the bay’s far side was a protruding jut, like the foot of a stone giant. The toes were in the water even now.
At the creek’s crumbling edge, every horse balked. Frank urged them through, but once past the creek there was no chance of their going back on their own. That and the rock foot made a pen in which he could give them liberty. He looped their lead ropes onto their halters and let them go.
They walked in a cluster at first, afraid of everything, but gradually began to jack around. They shied at the froth on the shallow waves, at the black rocks, at everything that rolled and scuttled. Eventually, all six were brave enough to stand where the water curled around their legs.