The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

  All of them should have been thinking about the men who had died of enteric fever and dysentery, for this was a much bigger number than those killed in action. But it was hard to think of those boys and always had been. They faded from memory as you moved on, and they were not coming back to mind easily here on the lip of going home.

  There were just two men missing in action. Oswald Weaver, an English-born rancher, had disappeared during an ambush in October. And Frank Adams was nowhere to be found after his Cossack post on Aas Vogel Kranz had been shelled in November. Living or dead, those men were staying in Africa.

  No one even mentioned Pete and Eddy Belton, or the two Dragoons who had sold Boers back their guns. They had lost their right to be remembered.

  When Canada’s mounted infantry got back to Cape Town, they worked all day at the docks loading their ship. The Mounted Rifles stayed on board while the Dragoons returned to a camp called Maitland. The officers went for a dinner in their honour, and left orders that the men were denied leave in town.

  The Dragoons were sharing Maitland with five hundred Australians, also denied leave. A thousand strong, they barged their way out. On the ship, the Mounted Rifles heard and decided to join the ruckus.

  The bar owners on Adderley Street had army orders not to sell drink to the colonial soldiers. After a few refusals, the Canadians started jerking barmen from behind the mahogany and dispensing drink themselves. In the style of dime-store novels, some used their Colt revolvers to disintegrate chandeliers and mirrors.

  Seeing what was coming, the manager of the Grand Hotel chose to give away what he could not sell. Free drinks for the Empire’s soldiers! Instantly, the Grand’s bar was packed. To show their gratitude, the soldiers passed the hat and gave the manager three Stetsons full of gold sovereigns.

  Next morning, the Canadian soldiers were told to dress for a parade and final inspection. They walked downtown, and crowds of Cape Towners cheered them along. Governor Milner and the mayor of Cape Town told them what fine brave fellows they were, and thanked them on behalf of Britain and South Africa.

  They marched to the dock and boarded their ship. At 4 P.M., December 13, 1900, the Roslin Castle glided out of Table Bay.

  Part Six

  MISSING

  Aldershot, December 1900

  General Butler could not remember when he had last seen the sun or taken a proper walk. He always seemed to be in this gloomy Aldershot office, or in his study at home, trying to read or write by the yellow light of a lamp.

  No matter how often he had travelled to the southern half of the world, it was still hard to believe that South Africa was in the height of summer right now: a time when it often rained but when, on clear days, the close, bellicose sun would blind you. You hid from the weather there as well, but for quite different reasons.

  If Butler was grateful for anything, it was that the disappointing year of 1900 would soon be over, its final knell being General Lord Roberts’ thunderous homecoming. For having failed to defeat an enemy he outnumbered a hundred to one, Bobs was worshipped by the nation. For his extremes of waste and disorganization, and for his foggy generalship, he was elevated to the highest post in the War Office, general of generals, shoving half-blind Wolseley forever into the wings.

  Meanwhile, with Kitchener of Khartoum in charge, the war in Africa staggered on like a bad London play, one with no idea how to end.

  South Africa was very much on Butler’s mind today. It had come calling in the unlikely form of a note from Red Crow’s nephew, Jefferson. Butler had often wondered if his string-pulling had done the young man any good, and it seemed it had. Davis gave his present unit as the Canadian Scouts and his rank as regimental sergeant-major.

  The Canadian Scouts was a new unit led by American machine-gun expert Arthur Howard. Howard was the sort one hears about. He had made the London papers in the first year of the war, for making desperate rushes at the enemy with his machine gun. In Butler’s experience, such heroics were usually done against orders. And now Howard was a major in the British army. Good grief.

  Still, Jefferson Davis had wanted to be a scout and was one. The fact that he was a regimental sergeant-major was remarkable. As a Halfbreed in a white man’s war, Butler would have assumed him stuck at private. It suggested Jefferson was something special, as Red Crow had always said.

  Jefferson wrote that he had chosen to sign up with the Canadian Scouts after his original outfit returned to Canada. Regardless of the promotion to sergeant, this struck Butler as unwise. To Roberts’ policy of farm-burning, Kitchener had added the gathering of homeless women and children into camps; had contributed to the English language by saying he was “concentrating them” in “concentration camps.” The remainder of the war would not be pretty.

  The camp idea illuminated one of Kitchener’s greatest flaws. For all his campaigns, K of K did not understand hatred. He instilled it constantly but was always surprised to encounter it. Why do they hate me so? he would ask, and the chilling part was that he did not know the answer.

  Jefferson Davis had not written to Butler to tell him about his progress in the war. His purpose was to thank Butler for the letter he had sent in October, to inform Jefferson that his uncle, Red Crow, had died in August.

  Butler had found out about the death by letter from Canada. It was a curious piece of correspondence, for there was a single page and a smaller sealed envelope inside a larger envelope. One look at the loose sheet and Butler knew it had been written by Jean L’Heureux, Red Crow’s secretary, for he had often cursed the man’s lacy, difficult script. But the tone and language of this letter was very different than anything previous, for the secretary was writing as himself. Freed of the curbs of dictation and translation, L’Heureux was a pompous windbag—like a Catholic priest of the sort who dedicates himself to Church bureaucracy.

  In his opening paragraph, L’Heureux identified himself with the titles Personal Secretary to Red Crow, Chief of the Blood Tribe of the Blackfoot Confederacy of Indians, and Assistant to the Reverend Albert Lacombe, O.M.I. Then he imparted the news of the death and gave his opinion that Red Crow’s passing was an event of significance “far beyond the prairie confines where the Chief lived his life and met his death.”

  John Happy listed others who would be receiving notification: Queen Victoria; Pope Leo XIII; the Marquess of Salisbury, Prime Minister of England; Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada; William McKinley, President of the United States.

  Butler felt puny in the company.

  Looking back, it was easy to mock L’Heureux’s letter, but the truth was Butler had wept while he read it. He had identified closely with Red Crow’s complaints and concerns, and, reading the letter, had felt like he was grieving his own life.

  Aging together, Red Crow and Butler had gone from fellow warriors to fellow diplomats. When their fires cooled, they had discovered that most warfare was wasteful and futile. Rather than protecting survival, war usually imperiled it. The letters of recent years had been commiserations about how their wisdom went ignored—though Butler felt his own star had dimmed more than Red Crow’s. In one letter, Red Crow told how his young men had ridden south to take revenge on Crow horse thieves. Red Crow mounted his best horse and chased them to the border. He stopped the young warriors, turned them around, and brought them home. Contrast that with Butler’s letter campaign to end the Boer War before it started: his conspicuous lack of success.

  The second letter, the sealed one, was from Red Crow himself: dictated to L’Heureux and not yet mailed when Red Crow died. In that letter was nothing to suggest that Red Crow saw his death coming, except perhaps some talk about the deaths of others. The people of his tribe were dying steadily, taken off by “the blood-spitting sickness.” Even Jefferson’s girlfriend, Ran After, had succumbed in July. Red Crow said that he was beginning to believe the white doomsayers who said the Bloods must die out, just like the buffalo. “Maybe it is true,” wrote Red Crow, “that we will live only in the Sand Hil
ls.”

  The atmosphere of Red Crow’s final letter was full of guilt at his inability to lead his people away from the source of their death. There was a more specific guilt for his not having informed Jefferson that his girlfriend was dying. Red Crow had kept the news from Jefferson because he feared the young man might throw his life away because of it.

  There was one more detail in L’Heureux’s letter that Butler would forever be grateful for. After all the tub-thumping, L’Heureux described in detail how Red Crow had died. The chief had been out riding in the valley of the Belly River, gathering his horses. When he was found dead, the rope to the mouth of his horse was still in his hand. His mount was beside him, calmly eating grass.

  Butler could imagine the rest. August day. The brilliant heat. Locusts buzzing in the blond grass. Rich hot berry smell beside a river running green-clear to its cobble bottom. Through his blear of tears, Butler had made a note to go to Ireland whenever he felt his own death coming. He must try to be out among the birds.

  Having read both letters, having wept, Butler saw what he must do. He had a strong feeling that he should write to Jefferson and tell him of his uncle’s death. He could too easily imagine John L’Heureux not having done so, being too busy writing prime ministers and the Queen. The letter Butler penned was nothing flowery, just a few sentences giving the date and the circumstances of Red Crow’s death—plus his condolences.

  But Butler did not post the letter. He felt prevented.

  That night he was snappish with Elizabeth and they argued about nothing. He slept badly. In a dream, Red Crow was on horseback coming at Butler with a lance. The Indian’s face was painted and hideous. His teeth were bared in a snarl. The scene was theatrical, like the worst of Elizabeth’s paintings. Butler woke with a jerk, sweating, pawing the air.

  “Are you chasing rabbits?” Elizabeth asked dryly from beside him.

  Two more days and nights of this and Butler began to equate his disturbance of mind with the unmailed letter. This was the spirit world at work, and not the benign one depicted at Sunday Mass. This was a message from the darker realm of ghosts and demons known to the Irish, and evidently to the Indians. From the haunted dark, the ‘tween-world that is neither living nor dead, Red Crow was grasping at him.

  For one more night, Red Crow sat on Butler’s chest. The following day, Butler sat down at his desk and threw the first letter away. He wrote a second letter in which he added the death of Jefferson’s girlfriend, Ran After, to the news of Red Crow’s passing. He sealed the envelope and sent it to Jefferson, care of the Canadian Mounted Rifles in South Africa.

  Abruptly, exhaustion entered and overcame him. He lay down on the couch in his office, drew up the blanket, and was instantly asleep.

  That was the letter to which Jefferson Davis had replied, and replied only to say that he was grateful to know.

  Kleff’s Farm

  The kopje was about a hundred and fifty feet above the flat. The black rocks on top showed orange where nature had cracked them. Tall plumes of last year’s grass waved in the breeze.

  Frank had been on this kopje and overlooked this farm before, during Griesbach’s “holiday.” Frank had told Greasy it looked like a place of ambush and they had moved on.

  The white flags were still on the veranda corners, fluttering. The two mules lay flat in the yard, to receive the dawning sun on their bellies. The tall hip of a painted horse showed in the barn door. The barn was built for smaller animals, and the stall in the doorway was the only one in which the stallion would fit.

  The horse’s hip was chocolate brown with a casting of fist-sized pearls. Lionel Brooke’s stallion Century, born of a Nez Perce stallion and a running thoroughbred mare. Whenever Frank’s parents had visited Jughandle and Marie Rose Smith, he had asked if he could go down the road to Brooke’s and look at this horse. He was unlikely to mistake it for another.

  Except for occasional movements of these animals, the farm had remained still since Frank climbed the kopje in moonlight. Now, he heard a door and saw water burst on the ground beyond the house’s back corner; a bucket of slops pitched into the morning that made the chickens run. One of the mules briefly reared its head, then let it flop.

  Frank continued to wait, and Lionel Brooke came out on the veranda. He walked to the northeast corner, unbuttoned his flies, and pissed a healthy rope off the edge. He rocked while he urinated and stared into the prairie. After he replaced himself and buttoned up, he continued to study the north horizon. That was when Frank began to climb down. Halfway to the bottom, he started shouting: his own name, Brooke’s name, those of Jim Whitford, Young Sam, Pincher Creek, Remi Beauvais, Jughandle, and Marie Rose Smith. Everything he could think of that only someone from Brooke’s home locale would know.

  Brooke turned and peered through his monocle. He stared at the kopje without alarm and Frank kept coming until he stood before him.

  “Morning, Mr. Brooke.”

  “Frank. I’ll be damned.”

  Lionel led the way inside.

  The house was wider and roomier than it appeared from above. One side contained a dining room and sitting room with windows looking west. The other side held the kitchen and bedrooms.

  Lionel had guided Frank into a chair at the end of the dining table, a big varnished plank with carved flanks and legs. Lionel sat at the far end, while Young Sam and Jim Whitford were to Frank’s left, and Brooke’s English friend was to his right.

  “Well, well,” said Brooke, still squinting at Frank as though at an apparition. “You look like hell, I must say.”

  “I was in an explosion.”

  “Good. I mean, good you survived.”

  Brooke had his fingers knit and was twiddling his long thumbs.

  “You know Young Sam and Jimmy. Did I introduce you to Allan Kettle, my school friend?”

  “In Pretoria. By Paul Kruger’s house.”

  “I’ll introduce our hosts when they’re finished making our coffee and breakfast. It’s not in our interests to disturb them now.”

  He tilted his head to the kitchen, from which came sounds of scraping and pouring. Wood thunked into an iron stove.

  Frank thought Lionel would want more explanation of his presence and his injuries, and was trying to think how to say it all. But the questions, when they came, were different.

  “How’s young Fred? Young Morden? Has he been promoted? He told me in Pretoria that he hoped to be.”

  “Fred’s dead.”

  Brooke slammed back in his chair. His monocle fell. He stared at Frank as if waiting for him to retract the statement.

  “Well, that… that is a damn shame. His family will be devastated. The whole town will be. How did he die?”

  “In battle at Katbosch, north of Kroonstad. They said he was a hero.”

  “Is there more bad news, then?”

  “Robert Kerr died in the same fight. Henry and Tom Miles were in it too. They were wounded. And Ovide Smith …”

  “Christ, now, you’re not going to tell me that Smith’s hurt.”

  “Ovide’s dead.”

  “My God. Same battle?”

  “Something different. Not a battle.”

  “Well, goddamn it.”

  “That’s all.”

  “All what?”

  “All the ones from home who are dead. Reg Redpath had a rupture and was left behind. He got a truss and came back.”

  Brooke massaged his forehead. He became lost in the activity, then awoke to some other consideration.

  “Coffee!” he yelled at the kitchen. “Where the hell is the coffee?”

  A Boer woman came in with a heavy pottery jug. Her face was hidden by a bonnet and her dress fit big. When she hoisted the jug to pour into Franks cup, he briefly saw her arms below the balloon sleeves. They were younger and more slender than he expected. Another woman followed with the cream jar and spoons. When she offered cream to Frank, he saw into her bonnet. She was younger than he was, with large blue eyes and lashes that
were almost white. There was nothing kindly in her look.

  “This is Mrs. Kleff and her daughter, Alma. Mrs. and Alma? Our visitor’s name is Frank.”

  They paid no attention, and Brooke did not seem to expect them to. To Frank, he added, “They are not prisoners. I pay for the food we eat, and more for their work.”

  Brooke snapped a look at Allan Kettle, expecting contradiction.

  “Allan, here,” Brooke gestured a long hand at his friend, “begs to differ.”

  Allan Kettle turned his dark eyes on Frank. The look was fierce, though he was smiling.

  “He does pay them, but that’s somewhat different from their being free. We weren’t exactly invited. I daresay they will be pleased to see us leave.”

  Kettle had a smooth voice. Creamy.

  “Matter of opinion,” said Brooke. “I think the money we give them is a boon. Many Boer women in this war would envy them. I mean, a woman in Mrs. Kleff’s situation? Husband dead in the war? However handy she and Alma may be in the garden and fields, they can certainly use the cash.”

  “But we won’t ask them if they consider us a boon, will we?”

  “I would if I could.”

  Brooke had been looking at Kettle. Now he returned his attention to Frank.

  “We speak to the Kleffs through Allan. His schoolboy German.”

  “I’ve climbed mountains in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, with German-speaking teams and guides. My German is not that schoolboy.”

  “But it’s not Boer either, is it? Point is, Frank, there’s not much chit-chat goes on between us. That’s enough about the Kleffs. You are here for some reason. Sounds like your war’s gone bad. Tell us more.”

  Frank mumbled that he had found the farm and seen Lionel’s stallion in the barn during a patrol. But he could not stop. He said he came back, not knowing if they would still be around, but hoping so.

  Brooke was staring at Kettle again, as if some satirical remark had been directed at him. Frank took the opportunity to stare at Kettle himself. Brooke’s friend was a fine-looking man. Lean-faced, clean-jawed. He looked a bit like an Indian or a Mexican. The eyes had fine age and weather lines all around them.