The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

  Buck was a phenomenon, and Pete Belton, whose horse had been shot off the gangplank at Halifax, was forever mentioning that his dead gelding was the half-brother of Eddy’s indestructible one. In Pete’s mind, that constituted proof that his horse would have been the physical equal of Eddy’s, or superior. The crime of causing the death, which Pete still attached to Jeff Davis and his blue mare, was even greater now, given the pillar of strength Eddy’s Buck had proven to be.

  Far less fortunate was Ovide’s roan. She was a cutting horse, and the best of these are mares. A mare is more tenacious and will go into pain to get the job done. Being like that, Ovide’s mare would not pace herself in the Karoo’s desert heat and was growing thinner every day. Ovide had taken to walking beside her one hour in every two, telling the sergeant, when he asked, that she had a puncture from a thorn and needed time to heal.

  Oliphant River

  Van Wyk’s Vlei was barely a town at all. They had passed some Karoo boundary on one side of which towns needed to be clean and have substance and on the other they did not. It was a loose cluster of mud-brick farms, mostly deserted. Vlei meant lake, said the guide, but there was no lake. Instead, there were two shrunken bits of dam water in which the foulness was reduced and intensified. The fiat valley might have been a lake in some bygone time, but now looked like the bottom of a puddle gone dry.

  They sat in the dirt, made fires and tea, opened tins of bully beef and soaked their hardtack biscuits until they could get their teeth in. A sandstorm erupted and suddenly none of it was edible. This was only fair, since the horses again had nothing but straw.

  Frank watched new clouds boil up and lower, and expected another dribbling that would sizzle in the air. What came down was buckets, then tanks. The lake of Van Wyk’s Vlei, gone for years, was returning from the sky.

  The stony ground could not begin to absorb so much rain, and sudden raging rivers fed deepening pools until the horses stood half a leg deep. The guns squatted in it. The men’s camp, set on higher ground, was also under water by the time the wagons carrying the tents arrived. Above the gaining lake, the few cottages had been quickly taken by the officers.

  This was the last Frank saw of the disaster of Van Wyk’s Vlei. Fred Morden came over and told him and Ovide to get ready to go. Lieutenant Davidson’s troop had been switched into the flying column, and because of the rain, they must go instantly. To get to the final desert village of Kenhardt, they had to cross the Oliphant River while they still could.

  Ovide told Morden he would not go. His horse was worn down and needed rest. Likely remembering his own horse, Morden showed annoyance. Lots of men’s horses were worn out, he said. Their troop had been chosen. That was all there was to it.

  The hope was that the rain at Van Wyck’s Vlei was local and the flying column would travel out of it. But, when they came to the Oliphant’s shore, it was raining even harder. The river was already swollen and brown, and full of brush chewed from the crumbling edges. Their officers ordered them into it, for the situation could only worsen.

  One thing Frank had learned to fear was flooded rivers. He had seen stately cattle drives turn to chaos and then carnage in these kinds of muscular floods. He could too well remember being twelve and walking the wild Belly River looking for a drowned wagon driver whose Mounted Police rig and team had rolled in a flood and come back upright without him. His home country was too full of such stories.

  Frank went ahead of Ovide, and when it was his and Dunny’s turn to drop into the violent brown, they progressed alongside of quaking ox wagons with chin-deep black voorlopers trying to guide their terrified oxen. Frank could not stop imagining these giant rigs heaving into the air and twisting the yoked oxen and black teamsters over with them—their deadly bulk and mangled harness coming for him and Dunny.

  When the river’s bottom dropped away, Frank felt weightlessness, then a surge forward as Dunny swam. Her head pulsed like a pointer dog’s, and though they angled downstream, there was no longer any danger between them and shore. Dunny found bottom again and bucked and fought the rest of the way. She was angry at the whole stupid business.

  So powerful had Frank’s visions of disaster been that he did not know, when he turned back to the river, whether what he saw was nightmare or real. Behind the veils of rain, probably at the edge of the fall away to swimming depth, a dark horse was rearing. The river drove it over on its side and the rider, still in his stirrups and clinging, went with it. A brown wave, trimmed in yellow froth, rolled both of them under.

  Frank’s hair rose and his body quaked with chills. He was thinking of Ovide, who had been next in line behind him on the far shore. Frank looked around in panic, and almost overlooked his cowboy friend who was close behind him, sopping wet and squeezing water from his little mare’s mane.

  All around, soldiers were pointing and yelling at the wreck. Those whose horses still had strength plunged them back in. Another rider galloped downstream before he turned his horse into the water. This one had a rope unlimbered. He swung it and landed his loop in the water below where the drowning horse was rolling. Inside the floating loop, the horse’s head surfaced. The rider dallied, turned, and gave it a hard enough jerk to pull the animal off the trapped soldier. Two others had put their horses in farther below, and one of them caught him by his bandolier.

  Frank raced Dunny downstream and helped haul the soldier ashore. He saw that it was Lt. John McCrae, an officer from D Battery. The lieutenant was a doctor who wrote poetry. He had taken the sting out of melancholy nights on the Pomeranian with his singing. In Cape Town, he had led a pilgrimage to Rudyard Kipling’s hotel. Now, he coughed water and showed other violent signs of life, a great relief to those around him.

  Seven hours after the first riders entered the Oliphant, the last ox wagon and field gun was lifted out by thirty-two oxen. A of victory burst from the men on shore. In a generous mood, they clapped the black teamsters on their backs, for they were the ones who had been back and forth in the river and in its danger the longest.

  The rain-dark day gave way to true night. By then, they had done nothing about camp except identify a slope on the nearest kopje where they might not drown. They tied the horses between the guns, rolled themselves into their oil sheets, and slept.

  Kenhardt

  On the fourth day, the rain stopped. Frank crawled out of his and Ovide’s sopping tent. Sergeant Brindle happened to be passing and he told Frank it was March 27.

  “One month to the day since we set foot in Cape Town.”

  Watching other soldiers answer reveille, crawling out of their holes, still wet and caked in mud, gaunt from quarter-rations, it seemed remarkable to Frank that an army could be so reduced in such a short period of time. Ovide was looking like a starved tramp in his filthy oversized clothes, and even the robust Fred Morden looked down on his luck: gaunt-faced and years older. Eddy Belton had kept his weight but Pete looked ever scrawnier beside him. Jeff was one of the few who looked the same.

  Sitting by a fire and starting to dry out a little, Frank decided there was some good in this, for the immediate ordeal must soon be over. The dark hungry days of rain, while not healthy, were at least good for sunstroke. Ovide’s head had ceased to pain. And the horses, though starving, were in some way rested. When the river stopped rising and the swell passed, they would at least be able to cross back and be with their supplies again.

  Ovide came to the fire and sat, smelling like a wet dog. He pointed, and Frank saw the NCOs and sergeants pouring from the officers’ mess tent. They spread through camp, and the ones closest ordered the tents down and the wagons loaded. They would march to Kenhardt this morning. Frank asked Ovide to repeat what he had heard, because he could not believe it otherwise.

  The Karoo was not built to take water and, as from a duck’s wing, the flood kept sliding off, slow or fast according to the contour. The Oliphant was not finished rising and, because the desert between the kopjes was so fiat, the water had swallowed the first miles o
f the Kenhardt road. The flying column was forced inland, travelling where there was no road, where shoals of sand and grit were stranded and must be crossed. For the horses, every step went deep and no walking rhythm was possible. An hour or two of this and they were exhausted. The gun mules could find no traction in the greasy slop. The puny strength of men was added to bring the guns through.

  The first day toward Kenhardt was not worth the effort. After just a few miles, the men and beasts were too tired to continue. They stood the tents on the nearest high ground and woke early in the night to find that it was not high enough. The flood had travelled to them, and they had to drag themselves higher and camp again.

  Next day and the next were repetitions of the first. The flying column struggled away from the flood and the flood followed. Though they had collected rainwater in their bottles and filled every bucket, the soldiers were running out. They looked at what the storm had left pooling around them and were afraid of it. Dysentery had only stopped sucking at their bones. In some, it had not stopped yet. They feared what would happen if they drank bad water and the dysentery came for another round.

  When they saw a farm, and the scouts came back and said it had a well, Frank felt that this was justice. You could only go so long with only bad luck. Then, as the first bucket was raised and they crowded to drink, Lieutenant McCrae smelled something and knocked the bucket over. “No one drink,” he said. The rebels had poisoned the well.

  It had been hard for many, Frank included, to get a proper hatred going for the Boers. The poisoned well helped. Men who would fight you this way, invisibly, with poison. The farmhouse and barn were too wet to light from the outside, but under the barn’s roof beam, some dry straw took the match with a nice woof. When the barn was flaming, Frank went with others into the house. They smashed chairs into kindling and set fire to a rug. They cheered when the fire burst through the thatch.

  When they came to another farm and another well, also poisoned, they knew that every well from here to Kenhardt must be tainted. It went without saying that they would burn every farm.

  That night, the men sat around a fire with flood water boiling in various containers. Lieutenant McCrae was there, and the boys were after him to explain how he knew it had been poison, and how the Boers would have access to poison, way out here.

  Part of the answer was that McCrae was a doctor, newly graduated from the University of Toronto, but he said that poisons were not all that hard to make. The ingredients were often common. This was challenged, and Frank saw that the lieutenant did not like the contradiction.

  To make his point more clear, he drew attention to their medicine chest. When they had no medic, the wicker chest was their doctor. On the underside of the lid were instructions: a list of symptoms and beside them numbers. The numbers conformed to pigeonholes in the chest’s bottom where you could find a powder, a pill, or liquid in vials.

  “Did you read the warning?” asked McCrae.

  “Don’t mix medicines except those advised,” quoted a voice from the dark.

  “That’s so you don’t accidentally mix a poison.”

  The fellow who had challenged McCrae earlier scoffed at this. The army might be stupid, he said, but it wasn’t so stupid as to send soldiers out with a medicine box full of poison.

  McCrae became more visibly irritated.

  “I won’t argue with your ideas on the stupidity of the army,” he said, “but I assure you that you are simply wrong on the subject of poison.”

  Some of the other fellows laughed, and Frank saw the fellow to whom McCrae’s comment was addressed flinch. Being told you were “simply wrong” by an educated man was worse than being called a goddamn fool by one your own size.

  “If that’s so,” said the insulted man, “then you tell us how to make a poison out of that box.”

  Frank could see that McCrae was reluctant but also good and angry. When he did not speak, his challenger said to the others, “See? There’s no poison.”

  McCrae stood up, thin and straight. Frank imagined him slapping the fellow with a glove.

  “If you think I am full of hot air” said McCrae, “go to that chest and mix yourself a dose of five and two—with my compliments.” He walked away into the dark.

  The others around the fire started egging the poison expert on.

  “Go on, Mickey. Have yourself a five and two. Prove him wrong.”

  Mickey told them to shut up and went too. The fun was over for the evening, and everybody followed.

  As they proceeded toward Kenhardt, Ovide quit riding his mare. She was just a scrap of a horse now, struggling through the flood muck that lay in waves across the road. While Ovide worried about her, Frank worried about Ovide, who was wearing down as well. Each day, he would fall miles behind and not arrive in time for supper. In camp finally, in their tent, he would pour oil into a seashell to make a bitch lamp. Then, with awl, needle, and thread, he would go to work on his boots. Walking in the wet was making them rot and split, and he would sew them up again. Frank could see Ovide’s feet looking through holes in his socks. Messed blisters. Areas of red and damp purple.

  Their troop leader, Lieutenant Davidson from Pincher Creek, was also paying attention to Ovide. He would ask how Ovide’s horse was doing, how the thorn puncture was healing. When Ovide lagged behind, Davidson came and asked Frank where he was. One night, Frank lied to the lieutenant and said he was asleep inside their tent.

  On the fifth day on the Kenhardt road, Davidson confronted Ovide as they were about to pull out in the morning. He told him he was not fooled. He knew there was no thorn puncture. He knew the horse was worn out, like many horses were right now. He pointed to Ovide’s split and patched boots.

  “You will ride your horse today, private. This is a mounted infantry. You will ride until you are ordered to dismount.”

  The day proved red-hot. The water leaving the flooded country for the sky rose so fast the air looked liquid and everything visible through it was water-coloured and wavy. Frank rode close to Ovide and stuck with him as the cutting mare fell behind. Though Dunny hated walking behind and snorted and tossed her head, Frank held her and made her stay back.

  Finally, Ovide’s little mare stopped in the beaten road and sank to her knees. Ovide jumped off. The mare convulsed as if to buck, then lay over flat and died. She had burst her heart. Frank believed she was the first of their horses to die without a helping bullet. Thrifty to the end.

  Ovide’s face was hard to look at. The emotions all boiled over there, and the sunken eyes were deep and glaring.

  That afternoon, they arrived at Kenhardt, and this made things worse. Ovide could have led the mare today and got her to the dirty little town. She could have eaten and rested. She might have lived. Maybe she had died only to prove this was a mounted infantry; that you rode when you were told to.

  Captain Meech, the British officer whom Parsons had put in charge of the flying column, led it down the street to a giant tree at Kenhardt’s centre. A talkative Boer who knew English told the captain the tree was a camel thorn and five hundred years old. Asked why the town was called Kenhardt, the local said it was the tree’s name, as if the tree had named itself and then the town.

  The captain told this Boer ambassador to gather all the town’s residents, to tell them to come to the camel thorn tree at once. When the people came, a small weathered group, the captain had a private climb up the tree and affix the Union Jack to a limb. He ordered his flying column to parade past the crowd and salute the flag. Frank imagined he was in the crowd and supposed to be awed by this. He would have laughed in his sleeve.

  The officer gave a speech. The willing local translated.

  “I know that you have been recently occupied by a rebel army from the north. I know these rebels took your scarce food without payment. I want to assure you, that as representatives of the British Empire and of Queen Victoria, we will not do the same.”

  He said they would only buy what the town could spare them
.

  The people returned to their homes, and the troops split up to go house to house. Not much was gleaned, either because the rebels had taken too much or because the people were unwilling to give up more. A few sacks of mealies (corncobs), a few bags of straw for the horses. Some cans of mutton fat.

  In their camp, the soldiers heated the fat and drizzled it on the straw so the horses got something with strength in it. The hot fat was smelling pretty good. After the soldiers ground mealie kernels into flour for pancakes, they dribbled mutton fat on those as well.

  They had been on quarter-rations for ten days. The dysentery, the work of getting here along the gummy roads—all of it had starved them. And they were as hungry after their meal as before. It made no sense. With their naked eyes, they could see sheep and goats grazing the green after the two-year rain. These animals had to belong to someone, yet no Boer had offered a one to sell. Field glasses showed more sheep and goats on the distant kopjes—while they sat here hollow.

  When night came, Frank sat with Ovide in silence. They often spent evenings without speaking, but this was a thicker, heavier kind of silence. The weight was oppressive, and the arrival of Fred Morden instantly relieving. He had seen Ovide return to the column riding with Frank on Dunny. Fred knew what that meant, and he told Ovide he was sorry. He said he would do what he could to find him another mount. Ovide nodded. When Morden was gone, Frank thought what good manners he’d shown.

  Frank had also thought of saying something to Ovide about a new horse, but was happy Morden had done it instead. It sounded more valid coming from him, more like something that would happen. But Frank also knew that Ovide’s problems went beyond not having a horse. It was more that Lieutenant Davidson and the army had forced Ovide to be the means of his mare’s destruction. In Ovide’s way of thinking, there were certain things you could not forgive. Deliberately killing a horse was chief among them.