by Fred Stenson
Frank agreed to be a horse-holder and horse orderly, and they broke up. Jeff took Frank to the quartermaster and got him a blanket and an oil sheet. He said he was sorry he could not give him a place in his tent, because he shared with Casey. He showed Frank where the blacks slept under wagons.
“You might as well get to know them,” he said.
Eerste Fabrieken
Frank was alone under the wagon when he woke up. Jeff was kicking his foot.
“Come on. I want to show you your horse.”
As they approached, Frank saw the horses’ hips in a line and picked out the one that reflected blue: Jeff’s indefatigable mare. As they came closer, she lunged for a clump of grass, and Frank felt an old thrill at the sight of a dun-coloured horse behind her. The Blue stepped back and eclipsed the other horse.
When Frank looked at Jeff, the scout was grinning. “Go on. Have a look.”
Frank dodged through a gap among the horses, jumped the rope, and came out in front of the line of heads. He saw The Blue, and the dun beside her was Dunny.
Frank reached for his mare’s nose. The Blue swung her head and struck his arm with the bone of her face. The dun was scrunching hay and did not stop. She grumbled a little in her throat and her eye was soft.
“What happened to her ear?” Frank asked. The right one was half gone.
“Didn’t happen since I’ve had her,” said Jeff. “A bullet does that. Boers must’ve had her in battle.”
“Where was she?”
“Before the Mounted Rifles pulled out, I was scouting for them in the Steelpoort. They were burning farms, and I saw Anandale coming with a herd of horses. Dunny was among them. I told him she belonged to a friend. He wanted to sell her to me, but I told him to go to hell and took her.”
Frank wanted to check Dunny’s legs. He started into the gap between her and The Blue, and The Blue swung her head at him again and showed her teeth.
“It’s a little different,” Jeff said. “The Blue’s buddied up with the dun. You’ve got to watch her all the time.”
Frank went to the other side, untied Dunny and drew her into the open. The Blue whinnied and stamped. Inch by inch, Frank went over his horse. She had some new marks, the most prominent being a crease in the thick of her offside hip. Probably another bullet. She was far from fat but Frank knew what the dun looked like when she was in shape, and she had that look now. One thing he couldn’t figure was why the lines in her throat latch were so deeply inscribed. Then he understood that she had aged.
“You been riding her?” he asked Jeff
“Mostly leading her. She was pretty rough when I found her. We each get three, so I took her as my second. That dirty roan on The Blue’s other side is my third. I use him to pack. You can ride Dunny when we’re out. She’s your horse. But we’d better not tell the army that right now.”
Frank hid his face against Dunny’s neck, and Jeff left him to it.
The morning was grey and damp but soon it was raining again. Man and horse, the Canadian Scouts boarded a westbound train. Frank took The Blue, Dunny, and the roan to a horse car and rode on its wall, watching Dunny among the other horses. Frank did not move for the hour it took to get to Eerste Fabrieken.
Fabrieken was the siding for a distillery owned by Sammy Marks. The siding’s name meant First Factory. The distillery also had a name, Volkshoop, which meant Hope of the People. Jeff and Frank got a kick out of that.
Other trains were arriving in the rain. The area around the station was ever more cluttered with wagons, carts, field guns, downed tents, ammunition boxes, horses, oxen, and mules. Innumerable yoked oxen were towed around by voorlopers in wet floppy hats. It took the whole day to get it sorted and lined out, and by then it was time to make camp again.
Frank started getting to know his fellow horse campies. The most amenable was Kolo, a Zulu who had some English. Frank asked Kolo if he wasn’t a long way from home. Kolo said yes, but that before the war, he had been a guide for white hunters and had worked all through the lowlands and gold rush country. He had been away from home so long it did not seem like home anymore.
The second morning of Frank’s life as a Canadian Scouts horse-holder began in darkness and wet. The Scouts were supposed to leave at first light; to go in front of the army and guard it against ambush. Frank readied The Blue and Dunny and left the roan with Kolo.
When the day was as bright as it was going to get, it was still too foggy to see what they were part of. Slumped forward on his horse, Gat Howard helped them picture it. Lord Kitchener’s drive had twenty thousand soldiers, he said. This bunch at First Factory was one of several gathered at train stations south and east of Pretoria. Everybody was supposed to start today, at the same time. The whole thing would move in a big sweep, covering the ground from here to Swaziland.
“Burn the farms,” Charlie Ross said. He was on his horse to the right of Howard.
“That’s right,” Gat continued. “Kitchener wants all the rebel farms torched, and the women and children collected and put in camps. I got no comment except that, since we’re scouts and will be on the front end, we’re likely to be searching those farms. But someone else can do the burning and transporting while we go ahead.”
Gat and Charlie did not comment on the weather, the woolly fog they were in. The Scouts were meant to scout what they could not see. Charlie and Gat divided them into patrols and gave them directions on where to go and where to return.
Falling in behind Jeff and The Blue, Frank did not bother to think much about the Boers. He let others stare into the fog while he rocked in the familiar cradle of his dun mare’s back. He felt happy in a way he hadn’t since she’d been stolen. But, as they went along, Dunny became worked up. She yanked the reins with deep bows and stared at the walls of their cottony room.
About then, Mausers started barking. Carbines answered, and a machine gun rattled briefly. Jeff kicked up The Blue and rode headlong into the murk. Dunny followed at speed, keeping her buddy in sight.
More bursts of gunfire guided them in. Finally, the wheel of a machine-gun limber showed and a Canadian appeared in the milk beside it, swinging his carbine at every motion.
Two Scouts lay in the swampy grass beyond the gun. Both had sergeant’s stripes. One was bloody. The other looked unhurt, save for being dead.
Come evening, the dead were buried at Eerste Fabrieken. So little progress had been made that they’d returned to their previous night’s camp. The blacks did most of the gravedigging, and the men who were religious said prayers and sang hymns. Gat Howard and Charlie Ross stood back with their heads bared and bowed, looking impatient.
When the funeral part was over, and they were taking turns throwing dirt into the hole, Gat screwed his hat back on and gave a speech. There was little in it about the hereafter.
“We’re scouts,” he said. “That’s a proud thing. Part of what makes it proud is that it’s dangerous. We’re out ahead, where things are not well known. In dirty weather, it’s where things aren’t seen either. These boys found that out the hard way. But I’ll tell you fellas, I’d damn sooner be a scout, even on a day like this, and actually fight this war, than herd women and sheep and burn farms.”
They shouted like they were demented. It wasn’t exactly three cheers but a constant roaring, as if they were in the middle of a fight and Gatling had told them to charge a hill rimmed with Boers, roared in fury, and it went on longer than was comfortable.
Bethel
Through the murk of the next few days, Jeff and Frank worked alone, but were never far from others. The deaths of his two Scouts must have weighed on Howard’s conscience, for his orders were that the Scouts should stay concentrated until the mists and fogs lifted. Gat went to the front with his personal machine gun. He rolled over the ridges and, if a peak divided the mist and a downs-lope was clear, he would rattle shots into the fog at the edges before he let anyone enter.
The patrols he sent were double-sized. They divided in half and stayed
within shouting distance as they rode parallel. After the crude warning of the two deaths, the men were edgy but alert. Frank felt foolish about how he’d ridden out that first day, immersed in the pleasure of his horse. That could have got them killed, had Dunny not been smarter.
Frank expected scouting with Jeff to be the same wordless business it had been north of Night Attack. This was mostly true, and Frank spent much time staring between Dunny’s ears at Jeff’s long back. His thoughts were often about Alma and how he would find his way back to her. If he left that topic, it was to wonder what Jeff did with his mind now that Ran After was dead.
Like a dream in which he was trapped, Frank replayed the time at Bankfontein: when Casey recited the death of Villamon and Frank gave Jeff General Butler’s letter and watched the hope drain from his friend’s face. Each time around, he ended with Jeff setting the bled letter into the locket of Ovide’s grave.
The fourth day dawned clear, winking blue through a fast-racing overcast. Jeff fetched Frank from under his wagon and said they would be scouting with Casey today. The Boers had been hiding in the grounded cloud, trying to pick them off. Now that the Scouts could see the Boers, they must make them pay. Casey wanted to team with his old partner for the taking of revenge.
“Casey wants to bring his second horse, that little bay he calls The Sergeant. He doesn’t want you leading him.” Jeff said it as though it contained no insult. “Is there a man in the horse camp who can ride a horse and speak English?”
Frank pointed to Kolo. Most of the horse campies did everything with horses but ride them. Kolo had told Frank that, when he used to guide white hunters, he rode every day. Kolo’s plan was to own horses after the war; to take his final wages from the army in that form.
Jeff went away and returned with Casey, who sized up Kolo and signified satisfaction by telling him to tack The Sergeant. Casey had an extra bridle. As for a saddle, he said Kolo didn’t need one.
They rode southeast for hours across swaley country. The clouds stayed high and it was windless and hot. Only once did they come upon a farm and, despite orders that all farms were to be searched and their occupants held, the four rode past as if blind.
In a long fiat that approached a kopje, one that swept up like a bell tent and exploded in a rock minaret on top, Casey tapped The General’s reins and the big buckskin halted. Casey pulled his tobacco bag from his shirt, and twisted a cigarette with real cigarette papers. He gave the first to Jeff and made another for himself. He and Jeff lit up and sat their horses, smoking quietly.
“They still there?” asked Jeff.
“Don’t look back,” Casey told Frank sharply. Then to Jeff: “Three of them still. They’re within a mile now. You want to drop off?”
“Let them come to half a mile.”
Without looking at Frank, Jeff said, “When we finish our smokes, we’ll walk up toward that kopje and stop again. Then Casey looks back and acts like he’s seen them for the first time.”
“Jesus Christ! They’re after us! That’s how I’ll look,” said Casey.
“When we start galloping,” said Jeff, “they’ll think they’ve got us on the run. They’ll be firing, so keep low. When I roll off my horse, don’t look at me and don’t slow down. The Blue’ll keep going. Just follow Casey and do what he does.”
They started up the kopje’s flank at a walk. The minaret top began to alter into fat stones. They stopped again about a hundred yards from them. This time, Casey turned his horse and scanned the country. Frank thought he could look too without changing things, and saw the three Boers, well within a half-mile. Casey mimed his surprise, raised his Lee-Enfield to his shoulder, and took a barely aimed shot. Then he kicked his horse to a gallop and raced for the top. Jeff and the others followed. A couple of shots whined overhead.
As they were passing the rocky part, Casey reined right, just enough so the Boers wouldn’t see them for a moment. In a blink, Jeff’s saddle was empty. The Blue kept running straight, her reins knotted and looped on the horn.
They kept galloping. Frank would have liked to look back, to see whether the Boers had made it to the rocks. Then came three quick shots. Casey took a look over this shoulder and skidded The General to a halt. Up by the rocks, the Boer horses had already turned and were racing away. The crest of the hill swallowed them.
Frank took The Blue’s reins and led her. They jogged the horses back and as they neared the top Jeff came out of the rocks and walked toward what they saw was a body in the grass. They arrived at the same time he did. They could see the Boers again, below in the distance, still running.
The body lay face down, long and slender. The slouch hat had come off and the back of the head was curly blond. The Boer was hit in the shoulder. It was hard to know how much damage was done.
Casey knelt, grabbed him with both hands, and rolled him over. When Frank first saw blond and a sparse beard, he felt a wave of dread. He thought it was Denny Straytor. But now, with the face showing, he could see the young fellow had coarser features and his hands, flopped palms up, were rough and hard-working. He was not conscious but was breathing.
“Hit anything else?” Casey asked.
“Nicked one’s arm, I think.” Jeff was still looking at the one on the ground. “Shit. I thought he was the leader.”
“What do we do with him?” Frank asked.
“Just leave him,” Jeff said.
Casey reached with his boot and touched one homemade flap on the boy’s foot. The fellow’s trousers were made of scabby hometanned leather. Casey roughly yanked off the khaki tunic, bloody down one side. It belonged to a Tommy regiment. Frank did not know which one. It seemed rough justice to leave him here.
“Boers’ll come back,” Jeff said. “He’ll be more trouble to them than good to us.”
Casey had twisted another cigarette for himself. He climbed back on The General, and reached the cigarette out wide so the cinders would not land on the gelding. The others remounted too. Jeff opened his saddlebag and took out his water bottle. He drank big swallows, and some got past his lips onto his chin. Frank saw that the fluid was blackish before Jeff’s wrist came up to wipe it off.
“Don’t think us cruel,” Casey told Frank, “Jeff and me. There’s others would shoot him dead right now.” He had the khaki tunic over his horse’s withers and stabbed the bloody cloth with one finger. “The Boers have put a price on Captain Ross’s head for killing Boers in khaki.”
Casey took a few more sucks of smoke, and savoured them in his lungs. Jeff drank more from his bottle, and Frank could smell the rum. Then Casey blew the last smoky gust out his nose and flipped the stub away.
“Let’s go. They’re probably sneaking back by now.”
As the army swept east, the weather remained poor. A hard wind drove the rain into their faces so it stung like pins. The Scouts worked defensively, hanging on to the column. It meant seeing more of Kitchener’s farm work, and taking part.
The farms were hard to light in the falling weather. When thatch roofs were dry, they would go off like bombs, but these days they had to work from the inside: newspapers lit under cushioned chairs; torches held to sitting-room wallpaper.
An old, bonneted woman, weeping, took hold of Frank’s arm and gripped him tight as the torchmen worked their way through her family’s buildings.
“Please,” she said, her sour breath against his cheek.
Out of all of them, she had chosen him, and he felt at once guilty and miserable. A bedraggled mother lifted her child to the high step of a wagon. A black servant astraddle the wagon wall swung him over. The boy’s head twisted, his giant eyes never leaving the flames that devoured his world.
Frank patted the old hand on his tunic sleeve and it ripped away. The woman’s look turned from supplication to hatred, as if it had been whispered in her ear that this khaki—this burner of farms—was after a daughter of her people.
Knobkerries were handed out. The order was to cudgel a field of sheep. Two wagons were alread
y loaded with bleeding carcasses for their dinner. They had enough to eat and no team of drovers was present. The cudgels were about saving ammunition, about preventing waste.
Charlie Ross saw the reluctance on some of the faces. He gathered them together and fixed them with his wild black eyes.
“You’ll be goddamn glad when the rebel who owns this farm comes home and can’t get a rest or food or a fresh horse—those of you still interested in winning this war.”
They went and beat in the heads of the sheep.
Later that day, a view opened and Frank and Jeff saw a Boer cart with a bonneted woman driving. The cart was loaded with chattels and covered in children; pulled by a hard-whipped running ox. Jeff let it go—even though they had been warned these fugitive women were forming laagers as they went east, well armed and every bit as dangerous as their menfolk.
Frank was grateful to Jeff for not chasing the woman; for not making Frank beg for it.
Ermelo/Chrissie Lake, February 1901
The whole drive was commanded by Gen. John French. The way it was constructed, General Smith-Dorrien’s column was east of Alderson’s: the one to which the Scouts belonged. Like a great fat snake, Smith-Dorrien’s three thousand slid south down the eastern frontier, ready to swallow any Boers that escaped the front and broke in that direction.
In early February, Louis Botha did just that. With an army that also numbered three thousand, he started north, approaching the British in the vicinity of Chrissie Lake.
In the late afternoon of February 5, Casey came looking for Jeff. He found him with Adams, watching Frank put a new shoe on The Blue. She had lost it during an attack and chase the previous night. While Alderson’s column was guarding the northern approaches to Ermelo, a Boer commando had risen up and stung them, killing one and wounding three. Jeff and Casey had been part of the subsequent chase—hopeless in the dark. The Boers had come and gone like wasps, their retreat as well prepared as their attack.