Red Dog

by Willem Anker

  The camp is just over the next rise when a large dappled stallion thunders past me. See, it bolted after its rider was shot. The Bastaard in the saddle is lying on his back with his feet still anchored in the stirrups, the flies a sticky black mass around the corpse and the horse. The stallion is crazed; the dead weight on its back won’t let go. I chase after it; try to corner it; it shakes its withers, rears up on its hind legs, tries to rid itself of its directionless rider. The eyes are empty, the mouth is foaming. It has seen too much of people ever to allow one on its back again. The horse runs off, comes to a halt some distance away. I grab hold of my powder horn; a large female leopard appears from the undergrowth, close to the dappled horse. I bridle in my horse’s fright, I load my gun. The leopard is not here for me. The rider dances furiously on the horse’s back. From how far away did she smell the horse’s weakness on the wind? The horse’s eyes show white, it leaps away. I shoot at the leopard and miss. The stallion’s frenzy lends it a last spark under the arse. When the leopard brings it down presently, the delirium will enclose him against the pain.

  The Hartenaars remain sheep of my flock as long as I feed them guns. I am their contact with the Colony for whatever they want to barter. I am their missionary. They plunder with me and I with Danster. Our tents cover the plain like the pestilential sand.

  Twenty months after I arrived in Griqualand their visits become less frequent. I am no longer accorded quite as warm a welcome to the Bastaard camps. They are damnwell managing without me. I ask a few wretches on their way to Griquatown to buy me munitions from the Reverend Anderson. The focking missionary laughs in their faces. The Hendrikses and the Goeymans, two families who cherish grudges against the missionaries like pearls, threaten – with a prod or two from me – the station itself, but that doesn’t put bullets into our barrels either. The news that De Kooker is on his way back was of course hogwash. For a while I hope that the message was wrong, that the misbegotten afterbirth Opperman is on his way; I’ll stuff that two-faced typhus-tool’s greased head up his fart-hole. Grietjie, De Kooker’s wife, needs to be consoled vigorously when the road remains empty. She is white as a porcelain saucer, with the body of a voluptuous young Caffre woman. She wets my shoulder with tears and I touch her bum. A week later news arrives that De Kooker has moved in with the field cornet. He waits until I’m out hunting and comes to snaffle Grietjie and her brood. So, too, that bum and that bastard disappear from my life. I send the two English deserters to the Colony for powder and bullets. We soon learn that all they achieved was to be transmuted into turds in the innards of a few hungry lions.

  I myself trek to the Colony with a whole lot of cattle and looted Bushmen and barter them all along the border. By the end of June I’m back with a wagonload of guns and lead and powder. Early in July Danster and I trek to the Hartenaars. We clamber on the back of the wagon, I tear down the tent. Danster and I stand amidst the chests of munitions; we harangue them vigorously. We are on our way to the Barolong on the other side of Dithakong, we bellow. We are going to strip them bare. Every man who comes along gets a gun and ammunition. We all share in the loot. The lot of them mutter and mumble and meet. In the evenings Danster and I sit by our own fire. I take the wagon further up the Hart, to Makoon, the chief of a group of Koranas. They’re not yet as settled and staid as the slothful Hartenaars. Their shelters are temporary, their blades sharp. Their horses are better fed than their women. Robbers to the depth of their beings, especially in the pitch-black beads of their eyes. Makoon’s Koranas say they’re going along with me. When I ride into the Hartenaar camp with this lot, all of a sudden any number of Hartenaars want to come along. Perhaps. Perchance. Possibly. When by the end of August at long last all the talking runs dry and everybody is satisfied with how many heads of cattle he will possibly be able to loot, there is a feasting to be done first. A week later we hit the road with conviction, having drunk ourselves into valour and screwed ourselves into oblivion and all set for blood and riches. Three gangs are trekking together: Makoon’s Koranas and I, Danster and his Redcaffres and the Hartenaar heretics. Every single one with a Buys gun over the shoulder.

  In the veldt the bones bloom lily white. I shoot the most beautiful gemsbok that’s ever walked God’s earth in the neck. It collapses gracefully. We ride on. I shoot two quaggas and a few springbok to keep my barrel warm. I shoot at the rock piles of the Hottentots and think of the baby that died. I shoot an ostrich, a duiker and four wildebeest because there’s nothing else to shoot.

  We come across a small Korana settlement and ride on. We want to get to the little company of Barolong west of Dithakong. Rumours are rife that their cattle have doubled in number in this last year. But see, a few miles on the other side of the Korana huts stands a sea of cattle. This we can’t pass by. One of Danster’s men goes to scout. There are two cattle-herds. Both on horseback, both armed. The one a Korana, the other a huge Caffre. It can’t be that easy.

  We – the horde of hundreds that we are – spread out and surround the cattle. The bald-headed Caffre charges his horse through our spread-out line and bridles it the moment he is behind us. There he sits, motionless. His head is shaven and long, too long. I keep an eye on him and more particularly on the distance from his hands to his gun. I’m itching to shoot. My toe is giving me all sorts of hell. My hands take turns cramping up. The Korana herdsman’s horse staggers in the middle of the congested herd. The Korana’s finger tenses around the trigger, the bullet slams into a rock and ricochets into the heavens somewhere. Next to me somebody returns fire. The herdsman’s head gushes roses. Our horses trot up closer, tighten the noose around the cattle until they calm down. In the distance the people of the settlement stand and watch us rounding up their cattle. They stand for a while contemplating our numbers and our guns and then turn round and return to their huts. The Caffre on horseback is still sitting where he was sitting. His gun is resting across his neck and shoulders, his arms draped over the weapon on either side, as if crucified into judgement. Conceited scumbag.

  I wave at a few of Makoon’s warriors and we trot nearer, each with a gun aimed at the Caffre. He is big, mid-thirties. His head looks so long and bare because where his ears should be there are only two little holes, like on either side of a bird’s head. I tell him in Xhosa to throw down his gun.

  Speak Dutch, Whiteman.

  Throw down your gun.

  Don’t you have any respect for a firearm? he asks.

  He tosses his gun at the nearest Korana, who catches it mid-air. I tell him to get the hell off his horse. He dismounts, walks towards me with the reins in his hand. Danster wants to know why I haven’t yet shot this piece of ooze.

  My name is Arend, says the Dutch Caffre. Joseph Arend.

  I am Coenraad de Buys.

  Your name travels far and wide.

  Believe me, everything you’ve heard is true.

  He looks me up and down, an Eagle by name and nature, then at the Koranas on horseback with us, then at my army that has already started driving off the cattle.

  Is it always so easy? he asks.

  Is what always so easy?

  Looting cattle.

  You say no only once to a gun.

  Is that all you do?

  Is what all I do?

  Rustling cattle.

  I hunt elephants.

  I’m coming along, says Arend.

  He ignores all the guns aimed at him, turns around and jumps onto his horse. He starts cantering away. When we don’t move, flabbergasted at this scoundrel who seems so eager to get shot, he turns around in the saddle:

  Come on! Before those miserable Koranas see us jabbering here! It’s their gun and their horse that I’m damnwell carting off here!

  Arend kicks his horse where it hurts and the creature speeds off.

  We can’t have a cattle-herd running away from us, says Danster and takes off after him.

  I swing my rifle back over my shoulder and unlace my boot so that the toe can breathe more easily and f
ollow my henchmen on horseback.

  At the outspan I choke Arend’s story out of him. We celebrate our windfall-herd and slaughter a few of the Korana cattle. He drinks along with us and laughs loudly, but when I question him, he clams shut like a mule refusing to take the bit. Danster and Arend share a joke. Danster grabs him behind the neck and they bump heads in a friendly sort of way. Arend gets up and goes for a piss. I open my breeches next to him, wait for the rivulet, which nowadays flows in its own time, drop by drop and painfully. He gazes in front of him, speaks softly as if I weren’t there.

  That misbegotten Boer took my ears because I wouldn’t listen. He wanted to take my nose as well because it was too high up in the air. So I ran away from his farm to the Great River. It was the beginning of this very year. It’s far from the Sneeuberg. Seventeen days I walked and chewed the bark of thorn trees. On the seventeenth day I caught a guinea fowl and devoured the thing – bones, feathers. A guinea-fowl beak you have to chew here towards the back, otherwise it jabs you in the cheek.

  The rivulet stutters from my yard, doesn’t even wet the sand.

  After two months of mucking along like that, one day I stumbled into a Korana kraal next to the Gariep and fell over and got up eleven days later from the reed mat on which I’d passed out. I trekked along with them to this place. I herd their cattle and they hide me from the Griquas.

  Why would you want to hide from the Griquas?

  I’m told they catch slaves and send them back to the Colony.

  Back next to the fire he’s all affability again. Laughs and swears and talks about the weather and women. He is, after me, the biggest man here. His skull-like head and scarred body and eyes that don’t let go keep everyone on their toes. Danster’s little slits observe him every now and again, but he dishes up a second and a third helping of meat for the new friend. Arend knows when to tell a dirty joke, before caution turns into distrust.

  It’s only Arend and I left by the glowing ash. Too lazy and drunk to get up out of the fire-warmed sand. I take off my shoe and press my foot into the cool sand. The thing is once again so swollen that it’s peeling. If I keep my hands over the coals and the brandy to hand, they’re less inclined to cramp. I try again.

  What was the son-of-a-bitch’s name?

  Master Burger. Andries Burger.

  He spits.

  Were you with him for a long time?

  I’m told I came into the world in the Cape, but ever since I can remember I’ve been part of his household. He apprenticed me. I’m a thatcher and a builder. If I’d been free I could have gone and started a home in the Cape or Stellenbosch and rounded up a little Malay girl. Burger even rented me out one year to Reverend Campbell, a man of God …

  I am familiar with him, yes.

  I had to show the Reverend Campbell around those years when he came to tour all his mission stations.

  Sounds as if Burger left you to follow your own head.

  A man hits harder when a possession starts leading his own life. If you want to start behaving like a free human being, your boss must make you less than human.

  Then he takes up the knife.

  Then he skins you.

  Two days later we plunder the Barolong and shoot three and wound one and take all their cattle. We trek east for a while and go and barter some of the cattle with the Briquas of Dithakong for knives and tobacco and beads. Beyond the Gariep beads are money. Danster looks all too fetching in his Sunday best with the dried blood on the collar. I use the opportunity to warn the Dithakong people against the focking missionaries, the agents of the government, the robbers of spirits and customs. The brother of the Briqua chief, Mothibi, is all ears for my heretical tirade. We ride past the ruins on the kopjes and enquire from the people and nobody knows who used to live here. Now I read as Omni-Buys that it was their own ancestors who split and carted and stacked those rocks. But how, after a few generations, is anybody to recognise himself?

  The return journey is slow with all the cattle that have to be driven. One night the Bushmen try to get to the herds. We catch a few of the creatures to go and sell in the Cape. Arend says nothing and stands watching the business. When he walks over to where they are sitting roped together, nobody breathes a word. When he cuts their throats one by one, one and all are silent.

  Back next to the Harts River the cattle are divided up. The Hartenaars claim their due. Shortly afterwards they crawl back to Griquatown tail between the legs. Quite a few of the Hartenaar gang come and join me. Most of them Bastaards, but also a few Koranas and even Bushmen – Bushmen prepared to trade their own people. Anderson receives the prodigal sons and blesses them and what do I know. Peek into the old books and smirk with me at the way the authorities take Anderson to task for our little outing to the Barolong: These atrocious murders had been anticipated from collecting so many indolent and ill-disposed people together where there was no sort of social compact to restrain them.

  The Briquas must have taken my heresy to heart, because when the missionary Evans turns up among the Dithakong with his red neck and glad tidings, the captains kick his arse. Mothibi’s brother was apparently on his way to my camp with this welcome news when Bushman arrows turned him into a watering can.

  In the mission letters I am of course the one to blame for all these events – I, a Colonist long known for his rebellious Disposition and bad habits, who has for many years been a very Distinguished Character among the Disaffected on the frontiers. Well I never. Such flattering words should surely be embroidered and displayed in the hallway.

  Danster treks on to loot as no man has ever looted. Alliances with people like him never last long. He dances through the world to his own tune. While you’re dancing along, you share the force of the whirlwind, and then the dance is over. He bids farewell with an exuberant string of blessings and filth. The last you see is his gang like a dust storm on the horizon. With him gone, the days drag more slowly; even my gun’s firing under my ear sounds distant. Most of the Hartenaars desert me to return to their vegetable patches. They are brought to their knees by guilt and pray voraciously. The looted cattle are returned to the Barolong. Their worthless souls, those they return to focking Anderson.

  3

  The Hartenaars who wanted to clear out have cleared out. I am told that Danster is keeping up the good work under the mission stations with his guns. I and my boys feed our horses and oil our guns and then it’s back to Dithakong. We hunt elephants in the territory of Mothibi’s Briquas. Coenraad Wilhelm and Johannes shoot a fair number. Windvogel the younger and Piet are also dab hands at hunting, but it’s son-in-law Jan who surprises everybody with his shooting skill. Ever since we trekked across the border he’s been all too eager to learn to hunt properly. He asked questions ad nauseam, but he took the advice to heart. He remains the calmest of men, but the moment his cheek feels the butt of a gun his eyes harden and he ordains what will live and what will die in the world in front of his barrel. Every day in the bush he picks up a shiny stone or mottled leaf. Back in the camp he gives Bettie a treasure for every day he’s been gone.

  We trek for three weeks to Thabeng in pursuit of the depleted herds and Elizabeth gives birth to a son and the Lord knows I’ve run out of names for my offspring and we baptise him Baba. At Thabeng, along with Sefunelo’s Rolong-Seleka, we pile our wagons high with tusks. I mediate a short-lived alliance between Mothibi and the Seleka for an expedition against the Bakwena. I, my guns, my horses, my sons, Arend and a few of the most battle-ready men in my retinue join up with Mothibi’s three regiments.

  We wake up in the veldt where the spring of 1817 bleeds over everything like a ruptured artery. We trek into the triangle of mountains between Paardeplaats, Hartebeesfontein and Schoonspruit. The bush is too quiet.

  The attack starts from on high. Assegais drop from nowhere into soft rumps. Man in front of me is too slow. Arrows. Blood in my face. Arrow in my shoulder. In front of me he disappears under a rock; his legs jerk as if he’s dancing. Now the rocks rain
down. The Bakwena are sitting high up and behind the rocks and they roll the gigantic boulders down on us. We retreat, flee. They pursue us. In front of me warriors are tripping over corpses. My people and I get away. The Seleka soon vanish into the mountains. The Briquas don’t know the mountain defiles and kloofs and are decimated. The Bakwena trap them in a steep ravine and carry out a major massacre.

  On the return Mothibi first calls in at Thabeng to plunder the Seleka as a token of his disgust at the defeat. Sefunelo’s Seleka wreak havoc under the Briquas. I had told Sefunelo of Mothibi’s plans. Mothibi slinks back to Dithakong and undergoes an excessive conversion.

  Sometimes you cling to memories, but to no avail. They crumble like sandstone if you touch them, then just the dust in your hand. Sometimes Omni-I reads a scene in a book and it feels as if I remember it from my own, erstwhile life. As if other people’s lives capture something of my life, moments of which I can recall – the content of a conversation, the fly on the brim of my hat, but not the words.

  I remember that Arend and I had been waiting under a tree on the banks of the Gariep since sunrise that morning. See, the river stretches out in front of us for ever and always. See, we’re waiting for a farmer from the Colony. He wants to have a talk. He has guns and I have ivory. Even though it’s open and empty as far as you can see, there are many eyes on the river. With us are six extra horses with saddlebags for the flints and gunpowder that he’s offered as appetiser. Here you don’t want to get caught with a clumsy wagon. I’ve stood the elephant tusk we lugged along against a tree.