The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

  “Don’t run off or something,” Frank said.

  Ovide’s ragged lips parted. “Where would I go?”

  For a fatal few seconds, Frank hovered on the edge of asking again why the hell the old cowboy had ever enlisted in the war. Given his nature (solitary, passive, fond of the familiar), what possible thing had appealed? When the fit of wanting to ask had passed, Frank was glad not to have spoken.

  Here in the Great Karoo, he had been considering how the same question applied to himself. He had concluded that it had been a desire to ride a big and fenceless prairie. Further, it had been brought on by Jim’s and Doc’s endless stories about how fine Alberta used to be when it was wide open and innocent of the plow—when you could cut a fence if you found one and felt it was in your way, but they seldom were. Frank had wanted to ride on Dunny in such a place, so he could talk about it when he was old.

  By now, Frank knew he had outfoxed himself. Like a moose to a horse, the Great Karoo was wide open all right, but was nothing like Alberta would have been in that condition. Thinking that it would be like home, but a purer version, had been a dangerous mistake. Except for Dunny’s freakish vitality, Frank could have been the one dealing with his grief tonight.

  Captain Meech decided overnight that his troops and their horses could have one more day and night of rest in Kenhardt. Then they would start back for Van Wyck’s Vlei and, after that, Carnarvon. The duties of the Carnarvon Field Force were all but complete.

  Breakfast was more mealie-flour pancakes. The mutton fat was gone and they ate them dry. Meech watched them choking the food down, and the way they stared out into the desert while they endlessly chewed made him decide another speech was needed.

  “We are not an unruly mob,” he began to the soldiers seated under the camel thorn tree. “As an army of the Empire, our job is to show these people that we hold to a standard higher than the rebels. The rebels invaded this town, gave brave speeches about the virtues of their rebellion, and left the citizenry hungrier and poorer than before. We must do the opposite.”

  Frank and the others knew in their hollow bellies what was coming.

  “We have taken from these people only what they would sell. We will not coerce them to give us more. There will be no looting, and anyone thinking of such a course of action should stop now. I will not tolerate looters. If we have to suffer, we will, with dignity and discipline, because that is the Empire way.”

  At the end of their hungry day of rest, after the officers had retired to an abandoned mud-brick house they had commandeered, two from D Squadron and one from D Battery went among the Mounted Rifles to announce a meeting. On the side of camp closest to where the Mounted Rifles slept, the men on piquet duty were Rifles too, and the deal was they would turn a blind eye when the men went into the desert and when they came back again.

  When the knock came on the tent wall, Frank sat up and Ovide rolled over. Frank had decided to go. He knew it was about food, and he was hungry. He also did not want to miss anything interesting.

  On his way to the picket lines, he checked the tent Jeff Davis shared with Casey Callaghan. It was empty. Frank supposed they were out night-patrolling for rebels again. Then Frank decided he was glad they weren’t here. Jeff was enjoying his scouting, and the meeting could only jeopardize that. It was a matter of Jeff having something to lose now, and Frank not.

  In single file, the soldiers headed for the meeting led their horses between the sentry posts. They mounted after they were clear and aimed for the nearest kopje; stopped when the flank of it lifted them out of the scrub. There was a piece of moon in a clear sky and, by it, they could see sheep and goats.

  They dismounted and let their horses graze to the length of their reins. Some sat on their heels and some on the damp ground. Frank recognized quite a few. Pete Belton, without Eddy. The Wilson brothers. Gil Snaddon. Andy Skinner. Fred Morden—which was a surprise. Morden was the only corporal, and none of his usual friends were with him. Except for Morden, those meeting were mainly cowboys.

  On the ride out, someone had trotted up beside Frank and asked if the North Fork cowboy, Waldron Hank, could speak for him—meaning for the D Squadron looters. Hank was older and not given to speaking nonsense, so that was fine with Frank. Now that they were all in the circle, Frank saw Pete Belton kneeling beside Waldron Hank, acting like his assistant. Pete did not have the sense to let Hank, or whoever was going to speak for D Battery, go first.

  “We’re going to get some fresh meat, simple as that,” Pete said belligerently, as if someone was already arguing against him. “No English captain’s got the right to say we starve when the Boers don’t. You can damn well bet Meech didn’t go to bed hungry tonight.”

  Frank looked in his lap in embarrassment. He wished Pete Belton was from some other part of Canada. The Waldron cowboy asked Pete to be quiet a minute.

  “This ain’t a mutiny,” said Waldron Hank. “It ain’t about Meech or Parsons or Herchmer. All I think is that, if we play our cards right, we can rope a couple of sheep, butcher them, eat them, and be back in camp with a full belly before anybody’s the wiser.”

  The D Battery spokesman, a gunner from Guelph, said, “I wasn’t planning to eat mine raw.”

  It was a good point. Though the only rebels they’d seen were two old men captured at Carnarvon, some could still be out here. If the Mounted Rifles made a fire to cook their mutton, and Boer rebels saw that fire and came—if there was a fracas and the camp was attacked—it would be court martial for sure. A court martial for something that serious could mean a firing squad.

  Everyone fell silent, and the Karoo’s night sounds poured in. The chant-chant of insects pulled each man’s strings tighter. If someone had said, “Quick! Let’s go back!” he would not have left alone. But no one spoke or moved.

  Out of this silence, Waldron Hank said, “We should go to the other side of the hill to cook the meat. I brought a Warren spade so we can dig a pit. Maybe build a wall. Sling sand on the stones so no light shows through.”

  “Still show above,” D Battery said.

  Waldron Hank continued. “Thing is, I can see a sheep from here, and I’m hungry. Anyone who wants to go back, go ahead. Password for the sentries is Rule Britannia”

  Pete Belton said, “I don’t think anyone should be let go back. Otherwise somebody’ll tell, sure as hell.” Frank looked at Pete and saw he was staring poisonously at Fred Morden.

  Waldron Hank saw this as well. “There’s no one of that low kind among us. I’ll go hungry before I keep a man hostage.”

  Fred Morden was wearing his Stetson, the flat brim pulled tight over his eyes. The whole of his face was deep in shadow. When he spoke, the tone of voice made Frank think he was smiling.

  “I’ll admit I came out here to talk you out of looting. I don’t think it’s right to kill these farmers’ sheep at the same time we’re asking for their loyalty. I don’t think Colonel Parsons would execute men for what you’re planning to do, but he could send us home to Canada.”

  There was a slice of insect noise, then a different cowboy said, “Sounds good to me.” They laughed. Morden did too.

  “You going back to camp then, Fred?” Hank asked. They would have known each other from North Fork roundups.

  “No,” said Morden.

  They mounted up again and discussed briefly the merits of killing a sheep here and taking it around the other side, or going to the other side and looking for a sheep there.

  “The night won’t last forever,” said Hank. “The sheep are here.”

  Four ropers pulled their loops long so they hung to the ground. They walked slowly around the sheep, which only dodged a few feet before starting to graze again. Gradually, the ropers pushed them together and a few boys held the bunch while the ropers entered. There was no wild swinging of loops. They treated it like a branding, flipping the toe of the loop where a sheep would step. They dragged two out and men on foot flipped and pinned them. When the first sheep yelled, the hold
ers on both sheep pulled their knives and cut the throats.

  They hung the dead sheep over the fronts of their saddles and rode around the kopje at a trot, so the motion bled the meat.

  On the far side, where a gully split the hill, they found a deep spot to work in. It was muddy in the pocket and they dug their pit on the moon-shady side. While some took turns with the shovel, others built a wall. A few gathered driftwood or feathered kindling sticks. The cowboys were busy skinning the sheep and butchering them on the clean side of the hides.

  It was done quickly and, once the fire was lit, they picked lumps of meat, put some on rocks and held more on branches into the hottest part of the flame. Soon the meat was sizzling and drizzling fat. The smell might have sickened them at home but made their mouths run like rivers here.

  The first meat came off very rare. Pete Belton noticed that Morden’s lap was bare and he speared a piece with his bayonet and carried it over, let it drip its juice just beyond Morden’s boot. Frank had been watching too, to see if Morden would eat. Morden reached behind himself, felt around, and came back with a flat-sided stone. He brushed it off, opened his own knife, and stabbed the meat off Belton’s bayonet. He placed it on his stone, carved off a bloody corner, and put it in his cheek.

  Several more were watching this, and there was a feeling like Morden might give a speech. But the eating was the speech.

  Frank was thinking how turned around things were. Cowboys, who were always bragging at home how they would hang a rustler if they ever found one, were at this moment righteously eating rustled meat. The greater crime was not taking part.

  When all the best cuts on the two sheep were eaten, Waldron Hank suddenly threw the works, skins and bones, into the firepit, causing a plume of sparks to rise. He took his shovel and started throwing mud. Others pushed the rock wall over the killed fire.

  They were thinking it was a job well done when a fellow threw himself flat and put his ear to the ground. “Goddamn it. Horses coming.”

  A few ran for their Lee-Enfields. A couple crawled into the scrub with their pistols drawn. The horses were coming from the same direction they had.

  “Don’t nobody shoot,” said Waldron Hank.

  The horsemen did not come all the way. As they’d been taught in Regina, they dismounted and gave their horses to horse-holders, then started advancing a few at a time on foot.

  Hank said, and not in a whisper, “I’m betting these are ours.” He stood, raised his hands, and sang out that he surrendered.

  A Derbyshire sergeant yelled at them to throw their guns aside. They were to walk in the sergeant’s direction with their hands on their heads. It continued like that. They were made to walk all the way back to camp, while riders led their horses, just as though they were captured Boers. Two of the riders herding them were Jeff and Casey. One of the looters got a snake bite while walking and had to be carried across Casey’s horse. Back in camp, Captain Meech told them they were under arrest for looting. Their court martial would proceed tomorrow.

  The jail selected was the town’s library. They sat on the floor among not very many books, just enough that the room stank of old paper. Guards were posted outside. When the officers had gone, the guards looked in and said they were sorry to have to keep the boys jailed but that was the way it was. They would have to shoot them too, if anyone tried to sneak off.

  Frank waited for Pete Belton to say something stupid, and he did.

  “It’s Fred Morden who done us. And that Halfbreed Davis. You saw him in the crowd that come for us.”

  Frank was surprised to find himself answering.

  “Davis and Callaghan were on night patrol when this meeting was arranged. They couldn’t have known about it. If Meech told them to help arrest us, they had to, didn’t they? And how could Fred Morden tell anybody when he was with us?”

  The night was hot and muggy, not having cooled much since day. The room was stuffy. Lizards were falling off the ceiling. Frank could not sleep after the excitement. He was beside Morden and became certain that Morden was awake too. There were things he wanted to know, so he spoke.

  “How come you went out there, Fred? Or I guess you said. But why did you eat the meat?”

  “I was hungry.”

  Frank knew that answer was a way of not saying. That did not bother him. Not saying was Morden’s right. Frank went directly to imagining what the truth might be. Then Morden spoke.

  “I’m a corporal, but I hope to be more than that soon. Even as a corporal, situations could arise where I was the ranking officer. I might have to ask men to do dangerous things. They would need to trust me.”

  Frank sat in the dark and chewed on that: the idea that Morden had tied his fate to theirs to earn their trust. It was not a thought Frank would have had. First, you would have to care about the war, which Frank was no longer sure he did. Then, you had to be a leader. Frank saw leaders as something born, something you either were or were not.

  Frank and Ovide were definite followers. Morden and Jeff Davis were leaders. When Herchmer wanted to kill their horses back in Victoria West, Frank had gone straight for hopeless despair. Jeff had not seen the situation as hopeless at all. He’d made a plan and challenged Herchmer with it. A leader.

  This line of thought made Frank feel weak. He rebelled against the severity of the accusation. He might not be a leader, he told himself, but he was someone you could give a job to and he’d get it done. Mr. Billy Cochrane had often picked him for jobs you did alone, like finding lost cattle on the Blood Reserve. But when Mr. Cochrane suggested once that Frank take a crew out cutting corral poles, as crew foreman, Frank had shrugged and blushed and said someone else should do it. He was not asked again.

  During this thinking jag, Frank had assumed Fred Morden had fallen asleep. He jumped when Morden asked, “Why did you go tonight?”

  “I was hungry.”

  Frank hoped Morden would laugh, and he did. It was a small noise but it stood for laughter. Morden had sounded depressed in their earlier conversation and did again now. Frank guessed it was because the fracas would cost him his corporal stripe.

  “I like to see how things turn out,” Frank said. It was the real answer.

  They sat quietly. There was a crunching sound on the outside of the wall. At home, that would be a porcupine chewing low boards. Here, he couldn’t say.

  “You said they wouldn’t shoot us,” Frank said. “Why not?”

  “Too far away from the front,” Morden said. “If we were at the front, and they thought our actions would touch off a trend of looting, they might then.”

  “What will they do?”

  “I think they’ll send us back. Either to Canada or to hard labour behind the lines. Out of the war, in any case.”

  “You’re sorry about that, I guess.”

  “Very sorry. I’ll be ashamed before my family and before the town.”

  “Your father, was he a soldier, then?” Frank meant, at one time. He knew Morden’s father was a rancher now.

  “No. Just someone who believes in the Empire and doing the right thing by it. I was raised on that idea. Will your family be ashamed of you?”

  Frank worked at not laughing. His father would not like it, but would say little and soon forget. Frank’s mother would be delighted. She would bake a cake to celebrate. She hated his being in this war, for reasons that might sound treasonous if he tried to explain them to Morden.

  “Not much, I guess. You’ll think I’m ignorant but I don’t even know why a person fights for Empire.”

  “You’re a little late inquiring.”

  “But I’d like to know. If you care to tell me.”

  “First of all,” said Morden, after he’d paused to think, “you have to believe the British Empire is good. That is, good for the part of the world it rules. Things like the right to vote. Schools. When I went to school in Pincher, there was a picture of Queen Victoria and the Union Jack over the front blackboard. We sang ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Ru
le, Britannia’ every day. Memorized poems by Tennyson. I can still recite ‘Charge of the Light Brigade.’ My father taught me that I wouldn’t get that education in a place like Alberta if we weren’t part of the British Empire. Fair trials is another thing. I went with my father to Ft. Benton, Montana, a couple of times. I had the impression that if you killed an Indian there, people would cheer.”

  What Morden was saying was not foreign to Frank, but caring about it was. If Pincher Creek was the edge of Empire, then the Cochrane Ranch must be just off the edge. There were two white schools, Yarrow and Fishburn, within riding distance of the ranch. At his mother’s urging, Frank had gone to Fishburn. He’d seen the Union Jack and the picture of the Queen. He’d found the room stuffy, and the teacher had made him sit with the youngest children because he’d never been to school before. She never asked him if he could read, and he never told her he could. He just didn’t go to school again.

  As for fair trials, Frank’s father had taken him to Charcoal’s murder trial in Ft. Macleod and then to his execution. Charcoal had killed another Blood for fucking his wife. They chased him for a month, until he killed a Mountie called Sergeant Wilde. If they had caught Charcoal before he killed Wilde, he would have been found not guilty, since killing someone caught fucking your wife was considered justified. When his father took Frank to watch Charcoal hang in Macleod, that was what Frank was thinking: that Charcoal was there on the scaffold about to die because he had not been caught soon enough.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, Adams, if you don’t believe in Empire, why did you enlist?”

  “I don’t mind, but I don’t have an answer.”

  “Because you wanted to see how it turned out?”

  If it had not been dark, Morden would have seen Frank’s eyes become suddenly wet. As it was, he made a slurping sound that he turned into a cough. When he could trust his voice, he said, “That’s right.”