The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

  But tonight, Frank had his mother’s temper, and Madeleine could not be cooled off by any cowboy living. Just because you’re old and would trade a leg for a new story to tell, doesn’t mean the rest have to hop around. That was the sort of thing she would say.

  Possessed by his mother’s fury, Frank thought of Fred Morden, who would be delighted by the battles, because Pincher Creek had a school with a Union Jack and a picture of Queen Victoria.

  Hair on him, Frank said to himself in his mother’s voice. Hair on all of them.

  What finally calmed Frank was Ovide. The old cowboy had made a little fire by his bedroll. He had his hat off, and the firelit dome of his head showed through his thin hair. His hat was flipped in the cross of his legs, and he was stitching along the inner band.

  The sight quieted Frank because he knew that, all war long, Ovide had been thinking thoughts like Frank’s tonight. He was proof you did not need to be sore about it all the time.

  After Vet River, the Boers spilled across the prairie thirty miles. They were on their way to the next river, called the Zand. On the march toward that river, a Mounted Rifles private started singing. The tune was from a popular song, but he had made up new words.

  Just tell them that you saw me, a mile or so behind

  With clammy brow and features drawn with pain.

  He’s heard the Mausers calling, he’s gone supports to find,

  And when the shooting stops, he’ll come again.

  Many laughed when they heard it, because they had observed the inspiration: a Mounted Rifles officer who had spent the Brandfort and Vet fights riding around well behind the lines. Verse by verse, the men started learning it, until dozens knew it well enough to sing. When the officer in question rode into earshot, the whole gang roared it out. The officer kept on riding, his face like plaster.

  It was cruel, but Frank learned the song and sang it same as the rest. He did not plan to behave like a coward. And if he had to sit behind an anthill with red-hot metal flying around him, then it was only justice that an officer should have the courage to do the same. Even Ovide, who barely paid attention to the war, did not run from it.

  The truth was that all the men around Frank had only just found out they were not cowards, that they could face enemy fire. Maybe singing the coward song was a proclamation and celebration of that fact.

  Smaldeel Junction

  They stopped their march at Smaldeel Junction, where General Roberts wanted them to wait for the battle at Zand River. Ovide and Frank had a little trash fire going against the cold, and Ovide was looking at his Basuto with displeasure. That is, he was happy with the mud-coloured mare, who walked with such a quick, true action, and never bottomed out, but she was losing flesh. Back at Fischer’s Farm, she had begun to fatten. But the march was peeling it all off again.

  Ovide’s particular annoyance today was that he had asked to take his mare beyond the scoured road to graze. The request was denied. Boer patrols might be out there waiting to pick him off. For the same reason, no one was allowed to hunt, though the Roberts-Kitchener supply system had brought no food again.

  Ovide, in a garrulous mood for him, said it was like coming west from Quebec with his uncle when he was ten. They had entered the wake of a huge buffalo herd and soon lost their way on that stripped and shitted ground and could not get out. They and their horses almost died. But this was worse for being deliberate.

  The good news of the day was that neither Frank nor Ovide had been chosen for Curly Hutton’s expedition. Hutton did not think his brigade was getting enough action and wanted to forge ahead. There’d been a squabble, and the compromise was that Hutton was allowed to mount an expedition to try to cut off Boer convoys before they crossed the Zand. Franks theory on bravery was that you did not volunteer for extra fighting. He had also taken Ovide’s advice on how to use dirt and grease to make Dunny look shabby and thin.

  Frank and Ovide were not in much danger of being chosen anyway. The officers always picked fellows like Morden, Kerr, Redpath, and Griesbach—and just as automatically passed on Ovide, Frank, and the Beltons. It was the same social division that determined who got invited to a Pincher Creek oyster supper.

  But Jeff had again managed to turn himself into an exception. When Hutton’s expedition was forming, Casey Callaghan was there, directing the scouts. He chose Jeff to join them; to be one of his four.

  Hutton’s expedition dribbled back in the late afternoon. They had managed to cause an artillery duel. A private has been wounded. Some horses killed. No convoy captured. It was declared a victory, of course.

  Frank and Ovide were still feeding their little fire and warming by it, anticipating a no-fires rule come dark. They stared at their dixies, which they had set to warm on the rocks at the fire’s edge. They had no crumb of meat so it was a hopeful superstition: that by readying the pans, meat would come.

  Then, amazingly, it did. Fists of meat flopped into their dixies. Jeff Davis coiled his long legs and sat down at the fire’s open edge. He set his own dixie on the fire and placed another steak there.

  Frank was marvelling at the size of the steaks. “What the hell, Jeff? Did you kill a cow?”

  “Big antelope,” he said. He set his fingers on his forehead, making the shape of its horns. This made Frank laugh because it was how an old man from the Blood would portray an unusual animal. Being a scout for the day had turned Jeff more Indian.

  Davis’s version of Hutton’s expedition was that he and Casey had been well in front of it. They met the Zand downstream of the Boers, and that was where Jeff saw the eland and marked the spot for later. They had worked their way upstream to the railroad crossing where the Boers were digging trenches. An Irish wrecker had just finished blowing the first span of the bridge and was setting charges on the next one.

  “So we blew him.”

  Irish wrecker was not part of Franks and Ovide’s vocabularies. Jeff explained that some Irish rebels who had been fighting the British in Ireland were now in Africa, making common cause with the Boers. They were ex-miners, dynamite experts, and they wrecked things the Boers wanted wrecked.

  While the eland steaks sizzled, Lieutenant Davidson came carrying a small envelope. Arriving, he greeted only Davis. Frank assumed it was a dispatch that Jeff was meant to carry. Jeff thought so too.

  “No, no,” said Davidson. He pointed where the name was written. “It’s for you. A dispatch for you. From General Roberts’ staff.”

  Casey Callaghan had followed Davidson over. Behind him were two older men, leathery sorts. Frank knew one of them was Charlie Ross, who had been a Mountie around Macleod and Lethbridge. He was someone Frank’s father knew and his mother would not let in the house, because Ross had fought against the Halfbreeds in 1885. By his uniform, Ross was not a Mounted Rifle or a Canadian Dragoon, and Frank had not seen him in Africa before.

  The other fellow was a Canadian Dragoon, the top officer in their machine-gun section, but Frank had never heard his name.

  Jeff opened the envelope and drew out a single sheet. The reading took but seconds, then he shrugged and held it out to Davidson. As the lieutenant read, his eyebrows rose and stuck. Casey, Charlie Ross, and the Dragoons’ gunnery officer jammed in behind Davidson, trying to see.

  “I’ll be damned,” the Dragoon gunner said.

  Davidson returned the sheet to Jeff, who handed it to Frank, who turned aside and read it aloud to Ovide.

  “Private Jefferson Davis, please proceed immediately to General Roberts’ staff headquarters for temporary reassignment to Roberts’ Scouts.”

  “What’s it mean?” Jeff asked.

  No one knew beyond the obvious. Davidson wanted to know whether Jeff had asked for a move. A corporal in C Squadron had recently asked to go to an English regiment where he had a first cousin. His wish had been granted by a similar letter.

  Jeff shook his head. “I don’t want to move.”

  The gunner leaned in. “Charlie Ross here just came from Roberts’ Scou
ts. Maybe this private here, Davis, is the other half of a trade. They’re real scouts over there, aren’t they, Charlie?”

  Ross neither affirmed nor denied it. Frank looked at Casey and saw his fur rise. The gunner’s implication was that the Mounted Rifle scouts were not as “real” as these others.

  “What do I have to do?” Jeff asked Davidson.

  “No choice, Davis,” Davidson said. “These are your orders. They’re clear. You have to go. You should be proud.”

  “Can I wait until tomorrow?”

  “It says immediately. You shouldn’t even stay the night. I guess it’s my duty to order you to go.”

  Jeff went to pack. The story flashed around, and several gathered where Ovide and Frank were brushing and readying Jeff’s horses. To go along with The Blue, Hugh Davidson had given Jeff an Argentine to use as a pack horse. When Jeff came back, they tied his pack on the Argentine.

  Frank noticed the Belton brothers standing in the shadows, looking thunderstruck. Then a bigger crowd came, and everybody wanted part of Jeff Davis. He was a sudden celebrity, the way he had been at the baboon camp. Sergeants and officers offered advice. The English ones saw a move closer to the heart of British command as a tremendous promotion. One of these had a bottle from which he gave Davis several pulls. Frank saw Fred Morden take Davis aside and whisper urgently in his ear. Frank bet it was an overdue apology for calling him a stupid Halfbreed on the Pomeranian.

  While all this went on, Frank and Ovide withdrew to their dying fire and ate the rest of the antelope. Though burned on one side, it was excellent.

  While Frank ate, he kept an eye on the Beltons and wondered again why their attitude toward Jeff had improved so dramatically. Pete had a canvas bag in his hand and Frank saw a shape inside that looked like a pistol. The hair on his neck tickled. He remembered Pete’s threats on the train to Halifax and all the ones afterwards. Was there the slightest chance, he wondered, that all the recent sucking up had been a ruse: that Pete still intended to do Jeff harm? Maybe he had identified this moment as his last chance.

  While the crowd fawned, Frank kept watch. If Pete had murder on his mind, he was a master actor. Both he and Eddy looked limp and sad.

  The sun had by now set into the thorn trees. Jeff made a quick round shaking hands, then mounted up and turned his horse to where Frank and Ovide sat wiping eland fat off their chops. Jeff leaned down over his saddle rolls.

  “Don’t know where I’m going. If it’s good, I’ll try to get you in.”

  Frank doubted this was possible but appreciated his saying it. Pete Belton had followed Jeff and was again standing close. Frank got up and put himself in Pete’s way. He asked what was in the bag.

  “The bag ain’t none of yer business,” said Pete. “It’s for Jeff.”

  “Ya, but what?”

  “Never mind. Present.”

  Frank stayed close as Pete lifted the bag. If it was a pistol, at least he had it by the barrel end.

  “What you got there?” Jeff asked.

  “Mauser pistol, Jeff. What they call a broom handle. And a dozen rounds. Eddy and me found it on a corpse. Shoots good.”

  “Keep it, then.”

  “Me and Eddy be proud you take it.”

  Jeff reached and took it. He opened his saddlebag and stuck the pistol in, then tapped his hat and touched a spur to The Blue. She sparked forward. The Argentine lagged, and The Blue swung around and bit him on the ass.

  When the two horses were swallowed whole by the falling dark, Frank’s feeling of loss was out of proportion. It was how he should have felt when he’d left the Cochrane Ranch and his old parents were waving—and hadn’t. He felt a deep gouge, like a hand scooping the soft pulp out of him.

  Ovide hung his head and said nothing. He pulled his seldom-used tobacco plug out of his shirt pocket and offered it: a sign of distress, as he knew Frank did not chew. Ovide stuck the plug in his teeth and sawed back and forth until a piece broke off.

  Frank was looking at Ovide, but in his mind was riding away with Jeff. He saw cactus blades reaching to his stirrup. Tree thorns clawing at the night sky. A kopje’s form shouldered out of the smooth horizon, and the night insects shook like beads in a gourd.

  Frank came back to the world as the crowd scattered. Again he saw Charlie Ross, Casey Callaghan, and the Dragoons’ gunnery officer. The three were standing in a knot having a smoke.

  “Who is that?” Frank asked. “That one beside Casey and Charlie Ross?” Frank did not expect Ovide to know but gave him the only clue he had. “He’s the boss of the Dragoons’ machine-gun section, but what’s his name?”

  Ovide sucked the tobacco ball in his cheek.

  “Howard. They call him Gatling.”

  Arthur Gatling Howard. It was an explosive fact. Howard was one of Frank’s mother’s least favourite humans. In the 1885 Halfbreed rebellion, he had fired on her relatives at Batoche with a machine gun. Frank was still digesting this when Pete and Eddy Belton came to their fire.

  When Frank asked their business, Pete said he and Eddy wanted to join Ovide and Frank’s four. Eddy could be their horse-holder, their number three.

  “Horses like Eddy,” said Pete, which was true.

  Frank asked him why and he said, “You’re friends of Jeff Davis, and so are we.”

  Frank looked at Ovide, and Ovide shrugged. The fact was that their own four since Cape Town was trying to get rid of them. Andy Skinner had convinced Gil Snaddon that they should be with “real cowboys”—meaning American cowboys.

  Frank nodded and Pete gave a little hop of pleasure.

  Zand Hiver

  The Zand River fight had the usual elements: a feeling that the real action was elsewhere; an hour of terror; a wild charge upslope after an enemy long departed.

  The Mounted Rifles were sent to the left to hook around the Boers’ right and were soon under fire. They dismounted, took cover, and shot into the trees along the river’s far edge, where any parting in the willow sticks might be the enemy.

  Already across the river, a mixed column of British and Australians went into an African village on foot. The sheep kraals were lined inside with Boers, who gave it to them point-blank. Those who could still move ran. Their horses stampeded. The dead and wounded were left behind.

  Colonel Alderson sent orders to his Canadian squadrons to relieve this crew. Together, the Dragoons and Rifles crept to the sheep kraals and found them empty. The Dragoons unslung their Lee-Enfields. The Mounted Rifles pulled their Colts. They dodged the rocks, the dead and wounded, and yelled their way to the top. From there, Frank and Ovide saw the enemy as specks in a cloud of dust, riding away. Some Scots Greys rounded the bottom of the hill on horseback and gave chase.

  “Never catch ‘em,” Ovide said.

  And they never did. The African horses were too nimble in the rocks and pulled away.

  Waiting for the ambulance wagons, Ovide and Frank tied their horses and wandered the hillside. They counted fourteen corpses and not one of them Boer. Ovide found two British rifles that were still cocked and let the hammers down. He shook out the bullets and put them in his pocket. Of the wounded, some were writhing, some coughing blood. Horses tried to lift themselves, looking back at limbs that would not answer.

  It was sad and sickening, but walking through it made Frank feel powerfully alive. He felt sorry every time he saw a fly on an open eye, and for the men who were suffering. But he was still happy it was not him.

  Red Crow’s Camp

  A fine spring day. The sky was blue everywhere except for little clouds moving fast high up. Nevertheless, Red Crow brought his white secretary into the still heat of the cabin. Two letters lay on the table, side by side.

  The secretary, Jean Roux, was a stout man with a black beard and very white skin. He always dressed in dark, heavy cloth. His age was hard to guess, as is the case with white men who blacken their beards with shoe polish. He had come to the Bloods long ago, in the guise of a priest. A story came with him that, back
east where they make priests, Roux had been caught at some kind of sex with another boy. The priests had cast him out. That was when he came west and begged his way into the Blackfoot camps. It was also why they gave him the name Three Faces. Who knew if he understood the joke? That he was a priest, not a priest, and a mounter of men, all at once. Roux could read and write French and English, and knew the Nitsitapi language well. It was enough to earn his keep.

  In the past month, Red Crow had called Three Faces to his house three times, to read his letters: the one from Butler and the one from Jefferson. Red Crow could almost recite them from memory, but he liked to hear Three Faces turn them into Blackfoot. His words were never quite the same with each reading, and Red Crow listened closely for new shades of meaning.

  Red Crow did not demand that Three Faces start right away. They began by talking of other things, the latest people carried off by the blood-spitting sickness, and how the new deputy from the government’s Indian office said its cause was Indians living too close together in their houses and spitting on the floor. Then Red Crow’s wife came with tea and Roux filled his pipe a second time from Red Crow’s tobacco bag. They smoked and drank in silence.

  Finally, Red Crow turned his chair so it pointed at his one glass window. Chief Mountain, still dressed in snow on its north side, was framed by the wood around the glass. Red Crow pointed to Butler’s letter. When the words started, he did not look at Three Faces, only at the holy mountain, its square head.

  Butler’s letter started the English way, with flattery. He called Red Crow his admired friend and a great warrior and leader. Eventually, he got to the matter of Red Crow’s nephew in South Africa. Butler said he was no longer a general in Africa but was training soldiers in England for the South African war. Just locating Jefferson in such a big army was no simple thing, but he knew people of influence who might find him and ensure that he had a place of respect in battle.

  One of these letters Butler had written was to Colonel Herchmer. Red Crow knew Herchmer, who became the Mountie chief after Red Crow’s friend Bull Head (Colonel Macleod) became a judge. Red Crow did not think as highly of Herchmer as Bull Head. In any case, according to Butler, Herchmer now led the part of the Canadian army in South Africa to which Jefferson belonged. Butler had asked Herchmer to consider making Jefferson a scout.