The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

  “So Mrs. Kleff thinks of us as enemies still?”

  “Oh yes!” said Denny. “You especially.”

  As enjoyable as the talk was, Frank had a worsening dilemma. He had forgotten to go to the outhouse before Young Sam and Jim left. Now, after several glasses of water and lunch, his condition was desperate. There were two choices. He could either tell Alma to go inside as he squatted beside the veranda, or he could go to the outhouse. The first option seemed crude under the circumstances so he opted for the outhouse. He took his rifle with him, so he would still in some sense be guarding Denny Straytor.

  Frank ran for it, and once settled on the seat, left the door open a crack so he could see the veranda’s corner. He finished quickly and ran back, putting his clothes in order as he went. The veranda was empty. The dining room and sitting room were empty. The kitchen door was closed. He banged it open and found Alma at the basin, washing the lunch dishes.

  “Where’s Denny?”

  She would not look at him. Over her shoulder, framed in the tiny window, the ridgling came backing out of the barn, dragging his halter rope. He galloped west. Frank ran outside and saw Mrs. Kleff appear from the dark of the barn. She shook her skirt and walked past him.

  Frank went to the horse corral knowing what he would see. The gate open. Straytor’s horse gone. Even the mules were hopping west in their hobbles, following the direction of the escape.

  Frank ran past the mules, past the house. He made it to the veldt in time to see the ridgling rounding the kopje’s edge at a gallop, churning orange dust.

  Frank made Alma and Mrs. Kleff stay in the sitting room. He sat outside in the willow chair so he could watch the veldt, the rifle across his lap. When Jimmy and Young Sam returned, each with a springbok across his saddle, the sun was not far above the horizon.

  When Frank explained how Straytor had got away, Young Sam looked sad and Whitford angry. Mrs. Kleff must have tacked Straytor’s horse, then come back to serve them dessert, then returned to the barn to be ready to let the ridgling loose. They had been waiting for their moment, and Frank had provided it by going to the outhouse.

  Young Sam looked away to the kopje’s top. Whitford spat juice.

  Jim was disgusted, and showed it by not allowing Frank to go after his own horse. Jim and Young Sam fed and watered the two cayuses and left again. They rode into the dusk and returned two hours later with the ridgling. The pinto had tramped his halter rope to strings, and was covered in a scurf of sweat, dirt, and burrs. Though tired, he looked pleased with himself.

  When Frank led the horse to the water tank, the ridgling bit him, and did so again when he put the feed bag on his nose. After Frank put him in the innermost stall of the barn, the ridgling kicked the wall for an hour.

  Lionel Brooke sat at his place at the head of the table with a newspaper obscuring him from view. He snapped the paper often and shuffled the pages back and forth. Smoke was rising from the top of the paper as if it were on fire. Brooke had bought himself a pipe and tobacco in Pretoria and seemed to be making up for lost smoking time. After Brooke had returned with Kettle and Jimmy, he had asked everyone to come for a late lunch so he could catch them up on his plans. So far he had said nothing.

  Finally, Allan Kettle slammed a fist down and said, “Lionel, for God’s sake. You ask these men to come to the house and you sit there reading the paper in front of them.”

  Brooke folded the newspaper and set it down. He lifted the pipe from his mouth. “Sorry. Had to check some details.”

  He pulled a map out of his breast pocket and flattened it on the table’s surface. Frank could see Transvaal, Orange Free State, and Cape Colony marked in big print. Brooke spun the map around to the others.

  “On November 6, General Knox’s army caught De Wet napping. The Orange Free State president Steyn was camped there too. Lt.-Col. Le Galláis came within an ace of capturing De Wet and Steyn, but both got away.”

  Brooke stabbed the map with his finger, just south of the Vaal River.

  “Right here. At Bothaville. De Wet lost six Krupp guns.”

  Brooke dragged his thumb slowly south from Bothaville to a spot east and south of Bloemfontein.

  “De Wet and Steyn took to their horses and went south. They crossed the middle veldt to a village east of Bloemfontein. There, they surprised a British garrison and took four hundred prisoners. That was November 23. The name of the town? De Wetsdorp! Remember when I told you we should go there? That De Wet would not be able to stand having a town named for his father in British hands?”

  Brooke continued creeping the thumb south, driving the nail into the map so that a thin, visible trail led to the Orange River.

  “The latest paper we were able to buy, the one I was just reading, suggests that De Wet went to the Cape Colony after that.” The thumbnail creased over the Orange River and invaded the Cape.

  “But what do you mean, Lionel?” Kettle drawled.

  “What do you mean, mean?”

  “Mean for us. You’re implying some big action involving us but you’re not saying what it is.”

  “Have you no sense of drama?”

  “Please.”

  “We must go south. With the biltong smoked and the horses in good fettle, I think we could go as soon as tomorrow.”

  Frank’s heart rose in his chest and choked him.

  “South is a little imprecise as a plan,” Kettle challenged.

  “De Wetsdorp. How’s that for precise? My hunch is De Wet will fail in the Cape. He will be forced to return to his own country. Somewhere he feels safe. The town of his father. We will be waiting.”

  Brooke’s thumb had retraced its line to De Wetsdorp.

  “Or, if I’m wrong and he does succeed in the Cape, or escapes to some other place, we will keep chasing him.”

  After that, the talk was about horses. Each horse was discussed in turn. When they got to the ridgling, Jim said it had a loose shoe, right front. Must have caught it on a root during its escape. When Brooke wound the meeting up, he asked Frank if they could talk privately.

  The talk turned into a walk. Brooke’s stride was so long and quick that Frank had to put a little trot in his step to stay even. The sun was blinking off Brooke’s monocle like a heliograph.

  “Would you like to travel with us, tomorrow?” Brooke asked.

  “I don’t think so, thank you.”

  “You’ve changed your mind, then?”

  “I think I should stay and guard the women. The British were here before and almost burned them out. It could happen again.”

  Brooke raised his eyebrows and the monocle fell. He caught it expertly.

  “You’re deluded, my boy.”

  “What?”

  “Deluded. I have observed your infatuation with Miss Alma. I wasn’t trying to spy but it’s hard not to notice. Do you imagine that Mrs. Kleff would let you stay for one moment, without my being here with money for your keep?”

  Frank tried to think of an argument. He wasn’t sure there was one.

  “No, son, you must come with us—or go back and try to find your unit before it embarks for Canada. That’s probably best. That was the other news I meant to tell you. In one of the papers, it said the Canadian mounted infantry battalions were at Irene waiting for a train to Cape Town. They’ll sail before Christmas. You could probably still tell your amnesia story. We could mess up the scab on your head.”

  “I don’t want to go back.”

  “Not interested in going home?”

  The way he said it stabbed Frank. The truth was, if there was a truth, Frank had lost too many things here. He wanted his horse. He wanted Alma. Wherever Jeff was now, he was trying to fix things so he could have a wife when he got home. Frank was doing the same.

  “So what will it be, Frank? You want to go with us, or you don’t?”

  “If I can’t stay here, I’ll go with you.”

  “Tell you what then. Get your mad horse shod properly. I’m asking Mrs. Kleff and Alma to join
us for dinner, as it’s our last night. You can try to convince the missus that she needs you. Plight your troth. If you win her over, so be it. If not, your horse is ready to travel. Fair?”

  Obviously, it was fair—so fair that Frank could no longer justify holding back the truth about Denny Straytor’s escape. Brooke had already started for the house, but Frank ran and held his sleeve. He got through the story as fast as he could, but spared no detail about his own stupidity.

  “And Jimmy did not tell me.”

  Frank flushed. It hadn’t occurred to him that his disclosure would betray Jimmy’s silence. Nor had it occurred to him that Jimmy would be silent to protect him.

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Lionel, reading his face. “If he’s keeping it from me, he probably has a reason. Jim has a theory, you know, that Mister Kleff is not dead. Whether or not this Straytor was a cousin, he was probably sent by the father to check on things.”

  “Do you still want me along?” Frank asked.

  “I’m not the least troubled by your having taken a shit when you shouldn’t have. I’m amazed, though, that you would consider staying for a girlfriend who betrayed you.”

  Frank looked at a plume of grass by his foot. By his mother’s code, Alma choosing her family or her kind over a new boyfriend was entirely the right thing to do. But, by either Brooke’s logic or Madeleine’s, there did not seem to be much hope of convincing Mrs. Kleff.

  The horses were in the barn, happily eating. Young Sam had scythed them a manger full of cured grass. In his tender mood, Frank could not imagine pulling the horses out of that happy situation so he could get at the ridgling. Instead, he took his shoeing box behind them to the ridgling’s manger position, against the barn’s far wall.

  As Frank passed behind the ridgling, the horse flashed a china eye. He was scrunching a mouthful of grass that stuck out the corner of his lips, going round and round. He kept his feet on the floor.

  The ridgling’s right front shoe was closest to the manger and the wall. It was dark as a pit there. Frank found a dried knot in a board and clubbed it with the shoeing hammer until it fell out. A little braid of light spurted in, shining on the hair-oiled rail.

  He slid his hand down the cannon bone; talked to the ridgling and tapped until the pinto took the weight off. Frank squeezed his thighs to make a lap and set the knuckled joint there. He cleaned the frog and pushed against its sponginess. He knew from the horse’s lack of interest that there was no pain. The ridgling had not hurt himself when he’d snagged the root. Frank wiggled the shoe, saw which nail had pulled. He set the foot down, knelt, and studied where a new nail could go.

  Through the wickets of the other horses’ legs and below their bellies, he saw a change in the light and knew someone else was in the barn. He squinted into the gloom and saw the hem of Alma’s skirt. He stood and warned her that the ridgling was dangerous. She spoke to the horse, who flicked an ear back to listen and let her pass.

  Frank had the shoe nail in his fingers and the hammer in his hand. The light was spooling onto the hammer hand, and Alma looked there rather than at his face. The two were in the narrow squeeze between the ridgling’s hot side and the barn wall. She pointed at the hammer and down at the hoof.

  Frank knelt again, facing away from her. He found his spot, set the nail, tapped. Alma pushed the ridgling’s hip to make more space, bracing her leg against Frank’s back for purchase. He tapped until the nail was seated, then drove it home. The ridgling stopped chewing briefly.

  Frank left the hammer on the floor and stood. He turned and she was in front of him, her face inches away in shadow. She came closer and printed the full length of herself onto him, the softness of her breasts, the roundness of her belly. Her thighs on his thighs. He reached his arm around her and pulled her tighter to him. Kissed her open lips. The click of teeth.

  They could have started opening buttons, raising her skirts. Frank guessed they did not because her mother was not far away and that still mattered.

  It ended when Alma’s name was shouted from the direction of the house. She pulled back and said in English, “I am sorry.”

  She slid behind the ridgling, who grumbled at her leaving. Frank squatted and watched her feet pass behind the other horses’ legs. There was a bucket of sand inside the door where last year’s carrots were buried. She plunged her hand in and dug around, came up with a rubbery few, and left.

  That night’s celebration dinner was anointed by a special brandy Brooke had bought from a bootlegger in Pretoria. Mrs. and Alma Kleff had one sip each and let the rest sit in their glasses. Maybe they did not care for it, or, more probably, the mother wanted them to demonstrate their resistance.

  Alma’s face was already red from crying and new tears ran down her cheeks. When this happened, her mother shoved a cloth napkin onto her daughter’s lap.

  A confrontation and argument must have occurred, probably as soon as Alma entered the house with the carrots. The law had been laid down, and something in it, something just beyond the deducible facts, told Frank that there was a living father as Jimmy thought, probably a tyrant from whose wrath the mother was trying to protect Alma.

  Frank knew that he would have to leave tomorrow.

  Orange Free State

  They stopped in a north-south swale of green to let the horses piss, the riders standing off their saddles and leaning forward to free the kidneys. Brooke was studying his compass to make sure the heading was still south. Jimmy left and went ahead because the low spot ended in a rise over which they could not see. The country was empty except for an occasional deserted farm. Even these they stayed away from.

  Brooke came to Frank while they waited on Jimmy, and indicated that he wanted a private talk. When they had ridden far enough away, Brooke turned Century so he faced the ridgling.

  “There’s something you should know,” he said, “if you’re going with us.” He picked at a loose sprig of leather on his saddle horn’s wrap. “You’ll think this an odd statement, but Allan Kettle is a woman. Alice Kettle, all right?”

  Frank could not help but twist his head and look at Kettle. It looked like Allan, same as always.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Actually, I seldom joke. Everything else I’ve told you is more or less true. Alice was a university friend, if not quite a childhood one. She did do all that mountain climbing. She was one of the first women up the Matterhorn.”

  “But why?”

  “Why masquerade as a man? Her contention is that if she were travelling here as a female, both the Boers and the British would treat her differently. I agreed from the outset to go along with it. Even this conversation is with her permission. We did not tell you earlier because we didn’t know if you would stay. If you were going back, it was better you didn’t know.”

  “Jimmy and Young Sam know?”

  “Of course.”

  Whitford was returning from beyond the ridge. Halfway back, he stopped and signalled them to come. Moving again, Frank tried not to be obvious about Kettle. But he had to look sometimes. Once, she caught him and smiled. It was a woman’s smile, and he could see that the consistently clean-shaven look should have been a giveaway. But there was no sense thinking like that. Whatever had not been obvious suddenly was, and reason didn’t enter into it.

  They rode all morning and into the afternoon, and came to a creek bending through a shallow coulee on its final descent to the Vaal. Brooke decided to water there and rest, while Jim Whitford went ahead to find a drift by which they could cross in the night. Lionel said they should eat biltong and Smutsies, then sleep.

  The day was hot and moist because of the nearness of the big river. Lionel had paid Mrs. Kleff for Frank’s blanket and Frank lay on it now, staring at the sky that had been pale all day but was now darker and rimmed with cloud. He was beside the pinto, who was knee-haltered away from the other horses. The ridgling’s ambitions had been stirred when Mrs. Kleff let him out of the barn. He was after Young Sam’s gelding agai
n.

  Alone, Frank looked hard at his mind’s image of Alma. He was so far away in that study he did not see Alice Kettle coming until she sat down on his blanket’s edge. Frank had not entirely surrendered the idea of her as a man, so it felt strange when she took his hand and laced their fingers, then set their hands on her strong climber’s thigh.

  “There’ll be other girls, you know,” she said.

  “I don’t want any.”

  “In any case, there will be, and you’ll feel better then.”

  She gave their hands a knock on her leg, then wiggled her fingers free. She rose and walked back to her bedroll, a place denoted by Brooke’s pipe smoke. Frank thought about the nights of Brooke and Kettle sharing a bedroom at Kleffs’. He wondered whether they were lovers.

  He also thought about what Alice had said. She was trying to be kind but he saw the situation differently. He had already tried to think of Alma as gone, but something in him, something with a claw, would not let go. Frank was certain he would see Alma Kleff again.

  De Wetsdorp

  There was nothing fast about their move south. The night Jim Whitford led them to the Vaal, it was full of a British convoy crossing. The moon showed the procession of wagons into the river, rocking their way across. The teamsters’ yells and whip cracks echoed in the night chill.

  Next morning, it was the same. Black drivers led the oxen back into the river, to pull the wagons that were stuck. Among these were the ones carrying guns. One-eyed cow guns stared at the heavens.

  It took three days for the river to empty, and not until the last night was it safe for Brooke’s band to cross. The spring rains were still running off the land, and the river went over the backs of the horses and wet the mules to the tops of their packs.

  After the Vaal, it was still slow, never because of the Boers but because the British had garrisoned so many towns and villages, and travelled so many roads.

  The worry had been that Frank would be apprehended as a deserter, but most of these troops barely looked at them. When Lionel was called upon to explain his crew, he blathered on about being a reporter and they soon lost interest. One British lieutenant asked why there was a man in khaki among them, but he listened to Frank’s story only as far as his saying he was a Canadian Mounted Rifle. The lieutenant butted in.