The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

They talked about it briefly and decided not to take it on themselves. They hurried to catch the cordon and find Charlie Ross.

  Charlie hated Kitchener’s Machine. After telling everyone they should not question it, he himself had cursed every hour he spent in the piston’s thrust. Everyone near him was treated to his theory that good men forced to do dullard’s work turned sour. Such a lot of business he could have done, and booty he could have found, if he had never set eyes on this machine and had remained free-roving.

  So when Frank told Charlie there might be a nest of enemy in a kloof, he cheered up. It was reason to leave this moving prison and do real work. He went to select some men.

  Frank had left Jeff and the three troopers south of the ravine’s entrance. When the expedition reached that point, Ross stopped to outline his plan.

  But first he wanted to know what had tipped Davis off.

  “Smelled them,” said Jeff.

  “Smelled what?”

  “Tobacco. On the wind coming out of the hole.”

  Charlie laughed aloud. “Fellow of your talent, Davis, you should be able to tell me pipe or cigarette. Rough cut or fine?”

  “Maybe I can.”

  “We’re here anyway, boys. Let’s search the goddamn thing.”

  Charlie divided them three ways. Frank and his troopers were to stay and guard the west opening. That was where the Boers, if they existed, were mostly likely to come out. Jeff and five more would go looking to see if the kloof had an exit on the east side. Charlie would be in the middle, leading the remaining men up the sloping rock to the split.

  The three groups approached the ravine at the same time. When Charlie neared the split, the drama of the occasion overtook him. He waved for the others to stop and he strutted forward alone. He went very close to the edge. Across the gap from where he was, the rock rose in a rugged cliff for another fifty feet. He cradled his carbine on his forearm and walked back and forth like a thespian on a big rock stage.

  “All right, you Boer bastards! I got a little bomb in my hand.”

  For the benefit of his own men, Charlie bounced the imaginary bomb on his palm.

  “I’m going to light it and drop it down there. If you don’t want to blow up, you’d better start walking out the west end of your cranny with your hands on your heads. Anybody with a gun, I’ll shoot. Get moving now.”

  They waited. When no one answered, and nothing moved, Charlie lifted his carbine and aimed at an animal hole in the rock face across from him. When he fired in the hole, the dassies around it scattered. A family of baboons who had been hiding on the cliff started leaping back and forth and screaming. Shattered rock fell into the hole.

  There was motion below. Someone yelled up, “Don’t shoot!” The accent was not Boer but from somewhere in the English-speaking world.

  Frank was watching the notch when half a dozen men came out in single file, hands on their heads as instructed. Some of the faces wore threads of blood from thorns. Three wore khaki tunics.

  After ordering half of his men to stay above and half to come with him, Charlie clambered down the rocks. He walked along the line of prisoners, studying each face at close range. He muttered things.

  “My, my, my. What have we here? Khaki, dear me God.”

  Charlie went back to the kloof entrance and leaned on an orange rock embedded in one side. He had his rifle barrel lifted by his ear.

  “Little birdie tells me there’s more of you in there. Someone special, I bet.”

  The line of prisoners turned to watch. He looked at them, then looked in the kloof and grinned. He moved as if to fire his rifle into the crack, then quickly looked back. He caught one prisoner lurching.

  Charlie laughed even more brightly. “Well, well. Someone thinks a bullet might come out of this hole. It’s true, you know,” he yelled into the notch, “if you do shoot, you won’t hit me, but you’ll hit your friends.”

  Then he called to the men above. “You fellows up there better lie down, so you don’t get any of this.”

  Then, he fired three times into the ravine, two high, and one about head height. They could hear the bullets pinging and shattered rock falling. The baboons screamed and leapt.

  “How about it? Coming out?”

  “We’re coming,” a voice called. Frank had it now. The accent was Irish.

  Two people struggled out of the notch, hands on their heads. The first was a tall man with wavy hair and a craggy face. The second was Allan Kettle.

  “That everyone?” Charlie asked.

  The tall man said it was. Charlie said, “Good.” Then he sprayed three more shots into the chasm. Dust was rising out the top. Then Charlie ordered Frank’s troopers to go in and get the weapons. After a couple of minutes, Danny and the Australians were back, heavily freighted with rifles, pistols, and bandoliers.

  “So you’re Irish,” Charlie said to the tall man and Allan Kettle. “Are you all Irish?” he added to the group. No one answered.

  “My guess is that all of you helpful folk have come from other lands to help Johnny Boer be free. I see, too, that most of you are wearing the khaki of the British and colonial armies.”

  He turned to Captain Lewis, his lead scout and confidant.

  “What shall we do with these men, captain?”

  “Make an example of them, I guess,” Lewis answered.

  A Canadian Scout, an older English one transferred from another regiment, piped up unbidden, “They’re Irish nationalists, major. Here to make war against England. If we don’t kill them in Africa, they’ll be blowing up trains in London next.”

  “I was actually talking to my captain,” said Charlie.

  Not getting the point, a nervous New Zealander asked, “But aren’t they prisoners?”

  “Now, goddamn it! Hold on, now! Get your hand down!” he yelled at the Englishman. “This here is not a debate in a goddamn public square. I’m trying to discuss strategy with my captain, and all you boys start volunteering your opinions. Now, please, if you would be so kind, shut your fucking mouths!”

  He marched back and forth, too quickly, like an overwound toy.

  “They are not my prisoners!” he said finally, defiantly. “No sir. Not unless I say they are. And I haven’t said.”

  He came close to the prisoner who had lurched while in line. The sun was beating down fiercely and the man was sweating. Charlie pushed his own face to within an inch.

  “You should not wear khaki. Do you know that, Irishman? Makes me very sour. You’ve fooled good men into getting killed by that. And now, lately, a good friend of mine looks like he’ll be shot by a firing squad in Pretoria for killing you bastards for wearing khaki. No, I don’t like the enemy wearing my uniform, at all!”

  The prisoner lurched again, fell against Charlie, who drove him back with his rifle.

  The English scout who’d already spoken and been silenced drew himself to attention and spoke again. “Lord Kitchener said by telegram that enemies in khaki were to be executed. Why are we even discussing it?”

  Charlie lifted his free hand and pointed at the Englishman. “Only reason we’re discussing it is because you won’t goddamn shut up. One more word and you can get on your fucking horse and go find Lord Kitchener. Is that clear?”

  Then he turned to the tall Irishman, the leader. “You see, sir, except that this rabble don’t understand it today, I do have the rank and the authority to deal with you any way I please.” He reached up and fingered the black feather in his hatband.

  Frank was nervous. Charlie was trapping himself. If he gave the order to shoot the prisoners, some scouts—the ones with feathers—might help him. Frank imagined the prisoners bloody and dead, Alice dead, and he and the others dragging them to the dark end of the kloof for jackals and aas vogels to find.

  “You can’t shoot them.”

  Charlie turned. A muscle was clenching on one side of his face. “That’s it! That’s one too many. On your horse and out of here, Adams. I’ve warned enough.”


  He was pointing at Frank, and Frank raised his own arm and pointed at Alice. She shook her head at him, but he kept pointing. “That one’s a woman,” he said.

  Charlie’s arm fell and whacked his side. “Oh for fuck’s holy screaming Lord! Tell me, Adams, if you wouldn’t mind, how you know that. Is it the smell thing? Something you learned from your Indian friend there? Or is it just you’ve been too long without a female and have begun to see things?”

  He turned toward Alice, approached her, and laughed. “Because, to my eyes, that’s one damn stringy woman.”

  Some of the scouts laughed.

  “She’s English. I travelled with her and another Englishman after I was hit on the head. They were reporters then. I know she’s a woman because she told me.”

  “Okay,” said Charlie. “Since this day has had every other form of diversion and nonsense, you—you two—” he pointed at two scouts, “go rip the shirt off this creature. Go on.”

  Two men approached Alice. She showed her teeth and flung her arms at them. She was very angry and started to undo her buttons. As soon as her breasts showed inside the baggy uniform, Charlie Ross held up his hands and waved.

  “Okay, okay. That’s enough. We don’t need a show.”

  He turned and stared out into open country. He was muttering to himself and finally faced them.

  “I am completely sick of this. Take these pro-Boer bastards, whatever sex or flag they are, I couldn’t give a shit, and find where the prisoners go and stick them there. Since you’re the damsel’s saviour, Adams, you and Davis can do that. You and your three troopers there. The rest of us soldiers are going back into line.”

  When Charlie and the rest were gone, Frank asked the tall Irishman if they had any horses hidden. He shook his handsome head in a way that said there were horses but he was going to preserve them as rebel horses by not saying where they were. Frank looked at the prisoners’ feet. Every one wore leather flaps like the ones the Boers had left Frank after they shot Young Sam. Alice’s feet were a mess, and Frank had noticed that she was also lame in the leg or hip. He was angry at her noble leader for choosing to make her suffer more.

  Frank offered Alice his horse, but of course she refused.

  When they moved, Frank kept watching her. She no longer had a bounding stride. With every step, she had to haul her leg past a catch in her hip.

  After an hour and a half, they came to a creek. Frank ordered them to stop, drink, and rest. Alice and the Irish leader sat together. Frank went to Alice and said he wanted to talk in private. She shook her head; would not speak or meet his eye. He went to his saddlebag and pulled out his Colt. Feeling foolish, he pointed it at her and said, “I want to talk.”

  He saw the Irishman gesture with his chin. She had been given permission—or probably an order. Alice got to her feet with difficulty. Frank walked upstream until they reached a little tree and shade. He gestured for her to sit on a black rock and he sat on a smaller one near it.

  “Did Lionel go home?”

  Frank did not care if Lionel had gone over the moon, but he had to start somewhere.

  “I left him with Whitford in Kroonstad. My understanding was that Whitford was going to look for you.”

  “He found me. What did you do after?”

  “I was a nurse in a concentration camp. I am no nurse, but I was there long enough to hate my country profoundly.”

  “So you joined the Boers.”

  “I have never joined the Boers. I tried to leave. I went to Lourenço Marques, but I had no money. While I was trying to arrange some, I met him.” She nodded at the Irishman.

  “Your boyfriend?”

  Alice’s dirty, leathery face creased in a smile.

  “I do not have a boyfriend. I don’t have boyfriends. He has a romantic partner in Ireland, an actress and a poetess who I saw perform once in London. She’s lovely and spirited. I’m much more interested in her, if you can understand that.”

  Frank laughed. Had no intention to, but did.

  Alice made one of her old movements, threw her head the way a proud horse does. She winced.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “Yes, and it’s embarrassing. When we came out of the lowlands, all the passes through the Drakenbergs were blocked by troops. I offered to lead a climb up the escarpment and fell.”

  “You’ve joined an Irish brigade, then?”

  “Stop it, Frank. If you play soldier and interrogate me, this conversation is over. I’ll go back to my friend.” She stabbed the Colt in Frank’s hand with her finger. “Or you could do as they do in dime novels. Make me dance until I divulge what you want to know.”

  “I won’t tell anything you tell me.”

  “I’ll say this much. I don’t fight for the Boers. I find them as vile as the British. I will never forget or forgive the slaughter of Young Sam. Or what they do to the blacks. Or what they do to their own families by refusing to give up when they know they are defeated. They’re bastards, like the British. I fight for myself against whom I please.”

  “Why are you mad at me? I don’t do those things.”

  She reached over and grabbed his cheek, gave it a hard, painful twist. “I’m angry because you’re a meddling idiot. If I choose to be a man, and you can see that, why tell them? It was a breach of friendship.”

  “Ross was going to kill you.”

  “Bullshit! I doubt he has the courage. Besides which, if we go to prison, Kitchener may kill us anyway. He hates the Irish. Wearing khaki will be his excuse. My point is, you had no right to choose.”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “Friends let one another decide for themselves.”

  “Do they let each other die? Do you want to die?”

  Alice went to reply, then turned away. She looked down the ribbon of water to where some prisoners had their feet in the creek.

  “What about Alma? Did you see her again?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you would. And?”

  “They burned her farm. Put her in a camp. Her mother’s dead.”

  “Where did you see her, then? In the camp?”

  “In Barberton. She’s having a baby.”

  “I see,” said Alice. “Not yours.”

  Frank did not answer.

  “Does that have to matter? She’s a prisoner. Surely you understand what that can mean for a woman.”

  “She hates me now.”

  Alice looked impatient, was about to argue. Frank grabbed her arm.

  “I don’t blame her, okay? About the baby or hating me. It just ended.”

  They were quiet. When Frank looked at her again, there were wet tracks in the dirt on her face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “When you asked me did I want to die, or however you put it, it was strange. I would have thought I knew, but it was as if there was a stone on my tongue.”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrists, looked to where the Irishman was.

  “That’s quite something. To be in the middle of a war, having chosen to fight it, and I haven’t actually made a clear decision about dying. What about you, Frank Adams? Are you willing to die?”

  Frank looked to where Jeff was. He was lying stretched out, propped on one elbow. His carbine was on the grass beside him. He was letting the troopers guard the prisoners.

  “I could have gone home twice.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “First time was Alma. Second time was too, I guess. Because she didn’t want me.”

  “So you felt you had no reason to live. You were throwing yourself away?”

  “For a while, I felt like that. Lots of soldiers do.”

  “But why do they choose war? Why don’t they just kill themselves?”

  “Because they’d rather be killed.”

  “One’s noble and one’s not?”

  “I guess.”

  “But you’re not talking about you anymore, are you?”

  Now Frank’s eyes were
wet. He squeezed them shut to hold it back. Alice took the Colt from his hand.

  With his eyes still closed, he said, “It’s empty. I don’t have any bullets for it.” He took a long breath. “I have fellows who depend on me now.”

  Frank opened his blurred eyes, looked at Jeff. Alice looked there too.

  “What a selfish thing war is,” she said. “How many more women and children will have to die because a bunch of men would rather fight than face the rest of their lives?”

  “Aren’t you like that too?”

  “Close,” she said. She dug her fingers into his shoulder. “But I believe it is possible that this war is not the world; that it’s more of a screen that hides the world. If you and I let ourselves live, we might find the real world. We might be happy.”

  Frank looked up and saw Jeff waving to him. One long arm, back and forth, then pointing north. He was telling Frank they should go while there was day left to find the prison camp.

  When they caught up to the army, night was falling. The two lines of trenches were dug and the sham line lit, the fires rising and falling with the hills. They were eighteen miles south of Vrede.

  Behind the lines, Frank and Jeff found the prison camp. It was a half-circle of wagons with a steep cliff for a back wall. Frank held Alice by the arm so she’d hear what he said to the officer in charge. He stated that Charlie Ross had sent him over with these rebels. They had been found hiding in a kloof. He was letting Alice know she was welcome to be Allan Kettle if she liked.

  He walked her a few steps into the prison, where maybe fifty Boers sat glumly in the dark. There was a half moon, but the cliff was casting a deep shadow over the prison.

  Frank hadn’t intended there to be more conversation, but Alice spoke.

  “I saw Jim Whitford. You said you’d been to Barberton. That’s where I saw him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “After I quit nursing, I was on my way to Lourenço Marques. It was when Kitchener’s army went to Swaziland.”

  “That’s not possible,” said Frank. “He and Brooke would have been gone by then.”

  “Possible or not, I saw him.”

  That night, conditions favoured the British. Half moon and no cloud, so the Boers could not creep up in concealment. But the Boers came anyway. They galloped, and because the British artillery was blasting into the dark, the men in the trenches did not hear it. What they saw was the Boers charging through the sham line. They had hit the seam between Rimington’s trenches and those of Byng, striking where only eighty New Zealanders held the crest of a hill.