The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

  Frank waited to hear why Greasy had come, what favour he wanted to bestow.

  “Sanders and Evans are worried that our camps back east are undermanned. They think the fellows who attacked here might head that way. At any rate, they’ve ordered a few groups back.”

  “He wants me?” Frank asked.

  “Not exactly. He asked me to lead a half-dozen to Aas Vogel Kranz. I had my six but Redpath pulled out on me. Today was his first battle since the rupture and he enjoyed himself. Wants to stay in case there’s another. Something about avenging Kerr.”

  Griesbach stretched his arms above his head, then massaged the back of his neck.

  “So I thought to myself, why not ask Adams? He might want a break. I figure we’ll take a little holiday on the way.”

  Greasy waited for Frank to speak, probably expecting refusal.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “That’s right. First thing. You’ll go, then?”

  The bottle was in Frank’s hands when he nodded. “Mind if I take this bottle?” he asked. “I owe some drinks to these men.” He nodded at the campies.

  Greasy stared ruefully at the brandy.

  “They’re in mourning,” said Frank, trying for a begging note.

  “Yes, yes, fine.”

  Greasy got up quickly and left before Adams could embarrass him further.

  Pan Station/Aas Vogel Kranz

  The road from Night Attack to Pan Station was deserted. Because of the battle the previous day, Griesbach’s six went carefully, expecting to be fired on at any time. It did not happen. They felt safer when they veered in the direction Greasy had chosen for their holiday. But, a half-hour later, a party of Boers spotted them and started to fire.

  Their attackers were not many, about the same number as themselves. They settled into cover and had it out. It went on for an hour, and the Boers were the ones who called it off. They left toward the east, and Greasy declared it “a fine old turkey shoot.”

  The country southwest of Pan was undulating: spans of prairie with occasional sharp kopjes. The farms close to the railway were burned. A sign of the country’s vacancy was that the wildlife had returned. Coming over a ridge, they interrupted some springbok. A lucky shot into the group felled one as they surged away. There would be a feast tonight, if they could find a place to have it.

  When they were about five miles south of the railway, they changed their heading from south to west. Soon after, they spotted an unburned farm. On three sides, blue gum trees surrounded the buildings. The farmhouse—double-gabled, north-facing veranda—was not unlike Paul Kruger’s home in Pretoria. On the two ends of the porch, white flags flew, attached to broom handles.

  The oddest feature was a little kopje that rose practically out of the farmyard on its southwest corner. It masked most of the barn, but one of the six with good eyesight said he could see part of the barn door and the hind end of a horse standing inside it. He even ventured that the horse was piebald. They studied these things from the cover of thorn trees.

  The white flags were a concern. Boers used them so often to disguise an ambush that ambush had become their meaning. They sat their horses and argued the point. About half thought it looked like a good prospect for the night. The other half said they’d prefer a deserted farm. A stalemate until Adams suddenly wheeled his horse and rode for the kopje.

  The kopje had a little skirt of brush, and Adams tied the pinto there. They saw no more of him until he was high in the rocks. It was some time before Adams trotted back to them.

  “Three horses in the barn,” he said. “The one in the door stall is a paint. There’s two mules lying in the yard. Could be crawling with Boers.”

  “Anybody see you?”

  “Not me. You, maybe.”

  Adams had been silent all day, sullen and annoying. This show of interest was encouraging, especially for Greasy whose project it was to have him along.

  “You think we should move on, then?” Greasy asked him.

  Adams shrugged.

  There was enough light left in the day. Greasy ruled that they continue.

  Later, with sunset approaching, they found a farm that showed all the signs of abandonment. The house’s front door was hanging on one hinge. The windows were broken. The gate on the sheep kraal was scraped back. Sheep and goats wandered the dome of grass on which the farm was built. No white flags.

  Still, they took their time. They ran in turns until all six were along the base of the kraal. They jumped up on signal and aimed their guns over. The kraal was deep in dry sheep dung, but bare of rebels. They addressed the house with similar manoeuvres and found it empty and methodically ransacked. Pottery shards, furniture in kindling, bayoneted mattresses. In the drawing room, some respect for music had overtaken the marauders. A piano stood dusty but whole.

  All manner of animal seemed to have been in the house. It stank like a chicken coop. They decided the dried-out kraal would be preferable for their entertainment. They loopholed the kraal and arranged piles of ammunition beside each firing station.

  Then, they went inside the house and carried the piano out to the kraal. After sharing some drinks, Alex sat on the bench and played. In civilian life he was the organist at a Presbyterian church in Edmonton, but knew many rollicking tunes.

  They made their fire and got the springbok roasting. They laughed and sang, and told funny stories—all except Adams, who had returned to his gloom and sat apart.

  Frank took as much of the liquor—brandy again—as he reasonably could. From time to time, while the piano jangled and the boys sang, he would spot Greasy looking at him. Frank pretended it made him uncomfortable. He knew without doubt that Greasy was timing his approach, deciding when Adams had consumed enough liquor but not too much. At some point Greasy gave up for the evening and looked at Frank no more.

  By evening of the second day, they had killed a sheep and had it cooking on an improvised spit. Each man took a turn revolving it over the fire. There was little liquor remaining, as they’d made pigs of themselves the night before.

  The sole rum bottle belonged to Greasy, and when he came and sat with Frank, his first action was to pour Franks mess tin half full.

  “I’d like to straighten things out between us,” he said as he sat down.

  “Why?”

  It was hard for Frank not to laugh at the instant flush on Greasy’s face. His guess was that Greasy did not like him—why should he? But the business about Ovide remained and must be dealt with. Greasy did not want the story trailing behind him; did not want Frank out in the world telling it the way he was apt to.

  The silence became leaden. Greasy flung his hands as if to cast it away.

  “Do you remember on the Pomeranian, when Morden’s horse died?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “And I bet you remember who the ass was who couldn’t get the knot to slip. The one who caused the horse to drop through the decks.”

  “I remember,” said Frank.

  “And Morden thought it was Jeff Davis, right?”

  Frank nodded.

  “What I had to do, right then,” said Griesbach, and he held a hand out to Frank as if the thing he had to do was on his palm, “was tell Morden it wasn’t Davis who’d caused his horse to fall. It was me. Do you know why I had to?”

  “Because everyone saw you do it?”

  Greasy flushed again, looked away. “Actually, no. I…”

  “I’m joking. It was because you want to think well of yourself.”

  Griesbach grimaced at this interpretation. Frank watched him decide not to argue.

  “All right, fine. What I’m getting at is that it’s the same thing now. I did a foolish thing. I regret it. I wish to acknowledge my mistake and apologize. But, until you accept that apology, it doesn’t mean anything. It will remain on my mind.”

  “It remains on mine.”

  “I’m not saying I want to forget it, Adams. I just want you and I to … to get beyond it. Between ourselves. W
hat do you say?”

  Greasy held out his hand again, ready to engulf Frank’s. Frank looked at it.

  “After you apologized to Morden, you should have talked to Davis.”

  “For God’s sake, Adams. So I’m not a saint. What are you implying? That I should try to apologize to Smith?”

  As Ovide might have done, Frank closed himself off. Made himself appear as a man who had ceased to listen. He stared at the fire, concentrating on the lacy lines of fat that ripped free and hit the flames with a sizzle. He kept staring until Greasy left.

  Aas Vogel Kranz

  By late September, the days and nights had warmed on the high veldt. The mealie fields were plowed and planted, and waiting for the spring rain.

  There was less marching these days, and while some camps like Bankfontein were left deserted, Aas Vogel Kranz was acquiring the permanence of a town. On the sloping side of its main hill, tents stood in tidy rows, while on the hill’s prominent points, stones were piled at guard posts and along systems of trench. From these places, the Mounted Rifles could see Lydenburg Road and the smoke rising from Middelburg.

  An aas vogel was a vulture and a kranz a crown of rock or precipice. The kranz part of the name was a sheer rock face on the hill’s west side. Below that cliff, the Little Oliphant River made a tight curl where a smaller creek fell in from the south. The joining of streams at the curve created a brown pool with a sand verge, that had long been a popular swimming place for Middelburgers. Now it was the Canadians’ beach and swimming hole—until the day a crocodile crawled out to sun itself. The soldiers ran for their guns and fired wildly until the poor leathery beast was riddled well beyond mortality.

  The aas vogel part of the name came from the cliff’s top, which was a favourite place for vultures to sit. From there, the birds could study the countryside for nicely ripening cases of death. The Canadians placed their main lookout there, and, on any night, sounds of wild animals in the riverside thicket rose to the piquets’ ears.

  Since Frank had returned to Aas Vogel Kranz after Griesbach’s holiday, it was like the world had forgotten the place—and him. Griesbach soon departed to assist officers in Middelburg, and his absence made the affair of Franks attack on Greasy less urgent than other things, such as that two of the Rifles from the captured outpost at Nooitgedacht had been court-martialled, a Boer defector having testified that the post was sleeping when they found it. Fotheringham had received fifty-six days of hard labour.

  Frank hoped for a visit from Jeff Davis, so he could tell him about Ovide’s death, but it did not happen. The only regular contact with the outside world was a supply wagon driven by a portly white teamster called Fat Campbell.

  A good thing for Frank was that Abraham and Nandi had returned to Aas Vogel after the Night Attack expedition. He tried a few times to ask them about Dakomi: how they were related; whether he’d had a family of his own; if all of them were angry that the medic had attended the major’s minor wound while Dakomi bled to death? But the three did not have enough language for the topic. If Dakomi’s name was mentioned and they had alcohol at their fire, they would toast him. Otherwise, the subject of Frank’s cribbage partner was let grow silent.

  Recognizing that their friend, their mild bossy, needed to drink, and recognizing as well that Griesbach’s departure had cut him back, the men of the horse camp tried to get homemade beer and spirits from the nearest African village. Understanding this was done on his behalf and at some cost, Frank was grateful.

  When Frank volunteered to ride shotgun on Fat Campbell’s supply wagon, alcohol was again at the root of it. Frank had noticed the sweet smell of Fat’s breath, no matter what time of day or night he arrived, and so began to ingratiate himself with the teamster. Fat’s main fear was that his wagon would be attacked, and he welcomed this gunman aboard.

  Often these trips took place at night, for Fat believed that invisibility was protection. Whenever he suspected the enemy might be present in the dark, he sang out with baritone authority:

  “In a bit closer there, Mr. Jones.”

  “Carlson, would you dismount your troops and line that ridge, if you please?”

  And so they drove—with Fat twitching his whip over the backs of his mule team and calling to imaginary troops in order to fool a mostly imaginary enemy. Rifle in hand, Frank sat beside him, bathed in Fat’s sweet-smelling fear. Several times during each journey, Fat would haul in the mules and grope beneath the wagon seat. He gave Frank a swallow each time he drank.

  Part of Fat’s duties, beyond bully beef, hardtack, and mail, was bringing news. He asked questions in the camps he served and gathered discarded newspapers. Another virtue of having Frank along was that he could read to Fat in the daylight hours.

  Frank read that Christiaan De Wet was still eluding would-be captors down south, and that his brother, Piet, had turned his coat and was scouting for the British. Danie Theron, the Boer scout Jeff Davis had admired, had been killed when the British surrounded him on a hill and shelled it to pieces.

  On a trip to Pan Station, Frank and Fat were told that Sam Steele’s Strathconas had run into bad luck at Badfontein. One of their officers had left a ridge above camp undefended. Steele sent a party to seize it; they got there late and six Canadians were killed.

  The scrap at Badfontein was related to the dispersal of Louis Botha’s army. When Pole-Carew’s army dropped over the Drakenberg Escarpment, Botha conceded the railway all the way to the frontier. He broke his army into small pieces and sent them north and south, each to escape on its own. It was these dispersing pieces that Buller and the Strathconas were trying to capture in the hills north toward Pilgrim’s Rest, and that General French’s cavalry was trying to block southeast toward Barberton.

  When Pole-Carew pressed through to Mozambique, his army found the Komati River full of exploded and drowned field pieces. They found wrecked railway cars and three thousand Boers awaiting capture. The British and pro-British papers made much of the number of prisoners, but to those inside the war it was obvious these were men Generals Botha and Viljeon had decided they could do without.

  Early in October, Fat and Frank found a newspaper that contained the news that Buller’s army was about to be disbanded. Buller himself, Britain’s favourite scapegoat, was going home.

  A week into October, Frank was ordered off Fat Campbell’s wagon and sent back to the horse lines with Abraham and Nandi. Lieutenant Davidson was now in charge of Aas Vogel, and he suspected (maybe even smelled) that Frank was enjoying himself too much, and so re-demoted him. Although Frank was sad at the time, the move turned out well when, three days later, Jeff Davis rode in.

  Jeff and Frank took some cold food down to the Klein Oliphant, where the strand was empty. Before they sat, Frank checked for tracks. As he hoped, there was a perfectly round, daisy-like imprint that Nandi had told him was a leopard. The pointed marks of a big antelope were nearby.

  In a sunny spot among leafing trees, they sat on the sand and ate their cold mutton and biltong. They shared a raw potato like it was an apple. Then they lay back and basked in the hot, hot sun.

  “Ovide,” said Jeff, from under the hat resting on his face. It was the first time in this visit that the name had been spoken.

  “Ya, Ovide,” Frank replied.

  Frank spent the next minutes looking at pictures of Ovide in his brain and imagined Jeff was doing the same. Frank was grateful that Jeff made no effort to share the blame. It saved Frank having to argue that his own culpability was greater.

  While they rested, Jeff told Frank about a fight near Wonderfontein. A four-man patrol of Canadian Dragoons had been looking for cattle in the Boschpoort Valley and had seen some khakis signalling from rocks a half-mile away. When the Boers in khaki climbed into the rocks and started shooting, the Dragoons were caught in a wide-open valley and had to throw themselves flat without cover.

  The Boers poured in Mauser rounds until two Dragoons were dead and another wounded. The last man, the horse-holder,
had ridden for help.

  The dead were Archie Ratcliffe, a butcher from St. Catharines, and Daniel Spence, a florist from Peterborough. Fred Thornton, the third man shot, managed to stay alive. When Casey and Jeff got there, Thornton told them the Boers had come down to look at them. The leader, a man with a droopy eyelid and wearing khaki, went through the pockets of the corpses, and through Thornton’s pockets as well. Far from showing contrition for his treachery, this Boer said his name was Villamon and he was responsible for the attack.

  Jeff talked to Thornton privately before the ambulance arrived. Thornton told him Villamon had gone in this direction when he left. West.

  During Spence and Ratcliffe’s funeral and burial, there’d been much talk of what to do with Boers in khaki. Some believed Kitchener had said in a telegram that they could be killed outright if captured. Roberts had never gone that far, but had said that rebels, khaki or not, should have their farms burned and their families turned out.

  “Is that why you’re here?” Frank asked. “To hunt Villamon?”

  “Hutton’s column is disbanded,” Jeff said. “There’s no more Hutton’s Scouts.”

  “You’re back with us, then?”

  “Yup. Me and Casey.”

  “And Charlie Ross?”

  Jeff took his hat off his face, jacked himself up on one elbow. “Charlie’s a civilian.”

  He grinned at Frank’s look of confusion. Frank did not know how you became a civilian in the middle of a war. Even the tradesmen who were out working for wages were still soldiers and could be called back. What Frank had heard, from Fat Campbell, were rumours that Charlie was rustling cattle from burned farms and grazing them on his ranch.

  “Charlie’s got something called a Transvaal Pass. Says he can buy and sell things anywhere in Transvaal.”

  “Can we get one?” Frank was only half joking.

  “Charlie got the pass because he’s not a Mounted Rifle. He tried to enlist at Lethbridge, but Sam Steele wouldn’t have him. So Charlie said fuck you and went to England. That’s how he got in Roberts’ Scouts. It’s why he’s got the pull to get a pass.”