by Lark, Sarah
Captain Jones, a carpenter in civilian life, turned red at once. He had been chosen leader by his men and led the unit more like an expeditionary corps than a military regiment.
“This isn’t a fishing trip, soldier. This here is the British Army, and we’re going to act like it from now on. You’re still not standing straight, Captain. Did no one show you how?”
Captain Jones and his men spent the next half hour on bearing drills and the following hours doing exercises on foot and horse.
“Who the hell is this guy?” Vincent asked when he sat down next to Kevin and Preston at the fire that night. “And what is he doing here? I thought the war was over.” The veterinarian had just come back from the horse paddocks and had stumbled on a new guard who barked at him to give his name and rank. “My lands, if the second guard hadn’t recognized me, I might have been shot. By a kid ready to piss his pants for fear of his major.”
Vincent looked around for the whiskey bottle.
Kevin fished it out from under a woodpile. “Here, but hide it again when you’re done. They might start rationing.”
Vincent looked incredulous.
“The war is by no means over, as it turns out,” Preston explained. He’d been treating blisters the Rough Riders had gotten from the drills, and heard all the gossip. “Only the cities are liberated. In fact, now the Boer commandos are making good on their threats. In the last three nights, there were attacks on the train lines between Johannesburg and Cape Town. In each attack, several hundred yards of track were blown up at distances of about fifty miles. Lord Kitchener is in a rage. He’s reinforcing all units and forming new patrols. There’s no more talk of withdrawal.”
“And that’s why we have to do drills and ration our whiskey?” Vincent asked. “Under the command of blokes like Coltrane?”
Preston shrugged. “He’s apparently a New Zealander. That’s what the Aussies say, anyway. The Kiwis claim he’s Irish. But no doubt, he’s a professional officer with a diploma from Sandhurst. Something must have happened along the way, because he left the service and is now back as a volunteer.”
“The way he looks, he must already have a few battles under his belt,” Vincent remarked, helping himself to the whiskey.
Indeed, the major’s face was covered in scars, several teeth were missing, and his crooked nose and chin had been broken more than once. His blond hair had a metallic sheen.
Kevin shook his head. “If I’m not mistaken, he didn’t get those wounds in war but in fistfights with lowlifes and bookies. I could be wrong—Coltrane’s a common name, and I was pretty young back then. But man, if he doesn’t remind me of the lout who got my big sister in the family way and then abandoned her when my parents wouldn’t hand over a massive dowry. Instead, he married a rich heiress and made her miserable. She financed a racetrack for him, which he ran into the ground. There was also supposed to be something about bet fixing. But before all that, he did attend a certain renowned military academy. The Sandhurst diploma’s real.”
Vincent and Preston gaped at him.
“It’s a small world,” Preston remarked.
Vincent and Kevin laughed. “New Zealand is a village,” Vincent told the Australian. “The South Island, anyway. But what are we going to do about this guy?”
“What can we do?” Preston replied. “Dowry hunting is far from gentlemanly, but nor is it illegal. And rumors of bet fixing aren’t going to interest high command either. At least not if he’s a good officer. So, let’s see how he does—and hope he doesn’t recognize Kevin.”
The very next day, Major Coltrane inspected the medical station.
“You’re the staff doctors? Not assigned to any proper unit? Then you now belong to this one. We’ll be receiving further reinforcements as well. The Boers are expanding their commando units.”
“Expanding?” Preston asked. “How? They don’t have any conscription, and since the war is officially over anyway—”
“Smaller groups are banding together,” Coltrane said. “And because of the peace agreement, all those Boers we’d beaten in the towns have been freed. Somehow, command didn’t think it necessary to declare them prisoners of war.”
Coltrane fell silent a moment, seeming to contemplate the severity of this mistake. “So, be ready to work. We’ll be fighting the devils without any mercy now.”
For the Rough Riders, that meant, first of all, living up to their name. Under Colin Coltrane, the New Zealanders were now definitively to become the hunters, and for that, they needed to control a bigger area and move around more quickly in it. Over the next few weeks, the men spent up to twelve hours a day in the saddle. Coltrane forbade the firing of weapons so as not to give away their position, which meant they couldn’t hunt. As a consequence, meals consisted of hardtack and dried meat, mostly choked down quickly in the saddle. After a few days, Vincent complained the horses were losing weight.
“Sir, the grass here isn’t particularly nutrient rich,” he explained. “If the horses are supposed to live on it, they need more time to graze.”
Coltrane made a face but accepted the argument. His solution, however, took a different shape than Vincent had hoped.
“I’m looking for volunteers for a task force,” he thundered when they broke camp the next morning. The Rough Riders now rode dutifully in rows four wide, trailed by the kitchen wagon and the doctors. “The task force will break off from the train lines and ride to targeted Boer farms. There, it will requisition oats for the horses—and potentially quarter there for the night. Sergeant Beavers will have command.”
“Him?” Vincent said with a grimace. “That’s the nasty kid who almost shot me the first night because I didn’t know the password.”
“Well, you wouldn’t choose a kindly fellow to dispossess Boer women of their oats,” Kevin replied. “Do you want to ride with them, Preston? They might need a translator.”
Preston Tracy nodded, trotted up to Coltrane, and reported for duty. Coltrane looked him over, then nodded.
“Having a doctor on hand is always good. As for making ourselves understood, though, I’ll rely on Beavers. He’ll make it clear to the womenfolk what we want.”
The task force split from the main unit, which had its first success that day. They caught a very young Boer boy, a scout, who led them to his unit’s hideout.
That surprised Kevin, who had been instructed to set up the hospital tent and wait near the train tracks for possible casualties.
“They’re normally so stubborn,” he said to Vincent. Coltrane had not wanted him in the attack party either, although Vincent normally liked to stay close to the front. After all, one could not load an injured horse onto a cart as easily as an injured soldier. “But now, Coltrane says a few words to the kid, and he betrays his unit?”
Vincent bit his lower lip. “Did you see the boy when they rode out? I didn’t get too close, but it looked as if he could hardly stay in his saddle. Let’s just say Coltrane didn’t limit himself to words.”
The Boer camp was near enough that the doctors could hear the sounds of fighting. A short time later, a few lightly wounded men arrived.
“We caught the blokes with their pants down,” a corporal reported. “That Coltrane’s a tyrant, but he knows how to fight a war. Planned the attack precisely. Probably nothing would have happened to any of us if that little scout hadn’t taken off. At the last moment before we charged, he put the spurs to his nag and rushed right into the middle of the kraal where they were holed up. Coltrane shot him from his horse, but he’d already given us away.”
Vincent gave Kevin a horrified look.
“Were there any, uh, further deaths?” asked Kevin.
The man nodded. “Dozens. The major said shooting them was better than taking prisoners. Where are we supposed to put the blokes? In any case, it was a great victory.”
“The task force was also successful,” announced another man, whose hand Vincent was bandaging. “They smoked out a farm and made quarters for the nig
ht. That’s where you’re supposed to set up your field hospital, Dr. Drury. Dr. Tracy is already there.”
As Kevin rode toward the farm, he saw smoke was still rising from the rubble of the main house.
“There was no other way,” Beavers was telling Coltrane. “The womenfolk had barricaded themselves inside.”
The major had just arrived at the farm with his regiment and, despite the massacre, fifty prisoners.
Kevin and Vincent did not listen further. They had spotted Preston Tracy at the entrance to the barn and were anxious to hear his version. Both were shocked at the appearance of the young doctor. Preston’s face was pale and twisted with disgust and horror. He looked considerably worse than after the battle for Wepener.
“Do you know how to treat burns?” he asked Kevin before offering a word of greeting. “I’ve never dealt with any, and the two children here—”
A frightful scene awaited Kevin and Vincent in the barn. The little boy wept bitterly with pain; a girl toddler was unconscious. An old woman, maybe their grandmother, rocked her in her arms. Kevin did not know much about burns either, but he saw at once that the little girl couldn’t be saved. Vincent confirmed that. The veterinarian actually had the most experience with burns. He had treated multiple horses after a fire in a stable in Blenheim.
“I only hope she doesn’t regain consciousness,” he whispered with a look at the horrifically burned child. “Do we have morphine for the boy?”
Kevin hurried to unload the mules, but the old woman, whose hands and arms also showed burn blisters, refused any help. She became hysterical when Vincent tried to touch the dying child. The veterinarian did not ask Tracy to translate. The woman’s recriminations were clear.
“What in heaven’s name happened here?” Kevin asked.
Preston, Vincent, and Kevin worked a few hours, treating the two New Zealanders who’d been seriously wounded. Amazingly, there were no wounded Boer commandos. They could not get another word out of Preston. He seemed to lose even more color when Kevin and Vincent treated the burned boy, though there was little they could do but excise the destroyed skin and apply clean bandages. The old woman still would not let anyone approach, and the tiny girl died without ever regaining consciousness.
Now, the little boy slept under the influence of morphine, and the grandmother sat beside him and stared into nothingness. The doctors withdrew, exhausted, with a bottle of whiskey. So far, the rationing had not affected them—Preston Tracy was discerning when it came to whiskey, and instead of drawing from the communal stores, they had always drunk from bottles they had hoarded themselves. Now, Preston drank in powerful gulps, clearly seeking oblivion in the alcohol.
“It was horrible,” he told them in a quiet, flat voice. “There were three women, three generations. One was still quite young. And three children, probably two, five, and nine.” He paused, looking back toward the barn where the younger ones lay. “They were all armed—well, the women and the older child—and firing, of course. The women had barricaded themselves inside the house, and we wanted oats more than anything, so we could have just checked the barn. But Coltrane’s men, they set the house on fire. And shot at anyone who ran out. They shot the younger woman, but the children fled back inside. Then the oldest child came out, his clothing on fire, and they shot him again. In the chest. You can check; he’s lying behind the barn. But they—they shot an eight-year-old in the chest. Then the house collapsed, and the old woman crawled out with the little boy. I found two men who looked as horrified as I was, and we searched for survivors. We managed to pull the baby girl out.” Preston shivered. “Not that it did her any good.”
“Dear God,” Vincent moaned. “I shouldn’t have said the horses needed to eat.”
Kevin filled his colleagues’ cups. “Then he would have found another excuse,” he told Vincent. “Beavers is a bastard. And Coltrane too. He knew what he was doing, giving Beavers command. But there’ll be consequences. We’ll report it.”
“That,” said Preston, draining his cup in one swallow, “will not bring these children back to life.”
Chapter 2
The regiment stayed two days at the burned-out farm, the name of which the New Zealanders never learned. Then the prisoners were transported to prison camps, the old woman and the surviving child as well. Neither was doing well. The woman had a fever after consistently declining both treatment and food. The child’s wounds seemed to be healing, but it would be a long time before he was completely healthy.
“He still needs a lot of morphine,” noted Preston as he gave the boy another dose for the road. “Do they have enough in the camps?”
Colin Coltrane looked at him indignantly. “The treatment in English camps is exemplary,” he declared stiffly. “Probably these primitive people have never been as well housed, not to mention the food and medical care. So, don’t fuss, Doctor. Nothing’ll happen to the brat.”
Preston did not answer, and the three doctors tried not to think about their little patient when the Rough Riders finally continued onward. They were still hoping for an opportunity to report Beavers and Coltrane to senior officers, but soon it became a moot point, as Kitchener’s new orders justified the massacre after the fact. Now the British were by no means withdrawing. Instead, they deployed more and more soldiers to patrol the train lines and attack the Boer commandos. And yet, for every commando unit destroyed, a new one seemed to form. The damage they inflicted was immense, and the empire’s troops largely powerless. This country was simply too large to control.
“And they can hide anywhere,” Kevin observed as they camped overlooking a valley. A deep-blue lake lay in the shadows of rugged rock formations, and forested slopes protected the cropland on its shores.
“They’ll never go hungry either.” Vincent cast an envious look at the fields. The Rough Riders had been living off emergency rations for days. “They’re taken in on every farm.”
Lord Kitchener also came to this realization and drew horrendous conclusions from it. With the next yearned-for delivery of provisions came new orders. From now on, the soldiers were to lay waste to the Boers’ farms and fields.
“They can fight,” Kitchener explained, “but they won’t have anything to eat.”
“And where are we supposed to get our supplies from?” asked Kevin, disgusted as he saw the second farm that day go up in flames. The women and children had been captured alive, at least, and were now awaiting transportation to a prison camp.
“They won’t let us starve,” Preston replied. “But what about these camps? In the past week, we alone have taken fifty women and children prisoner. If you add up all the units in the field, that must make thousands. And here we’re burning the harvest that should really be feeding them.”
Kevin thought nervously about the van Stout farm. Had they destroyed Doortje’s home too? What had happened to her father and her fiancé? Based on what Cornelis had told him, it seemed unlikely that either man had laid his weapons down.
And now, the destruction of their farms seemed only to enrage the Boers more. The few times that Coltrane’s regiment caught a commando, the men fought with courage born of desperation. Often, no prisoners were taken at all. The Boers fought to the death.
Kitchener then adopted further measures that revealed his desperation and, moreover, cost the empire a fortune. Blockhouses were erected along all the train tracks in Transvaal, round huts of sheet iron each manned with seven soldiers. Between the huts, the British stretched barbed wire and, beyond that, built barriers—traps into which one could drive the Boer commandos.
To Vincent’s dismay, the trapped Boers rode their ponies furiously into the fences. Most of them shied back, but some of the animals tried to jump them. If they did not succeed, Vincent would have to patch them up—or shoot them.
“They drive cattle herds into the fences too,” reported Preston, who had scrounged up a newspaper somewhere. The men were camping at Witbank, near Pretoria. “The bulls trample the barbed wire, and Ge
neral de Wet and his men are promptly back on their way.”
“And afterward, the injured bulls die hideously in the veld,” grumbled Vincent. “I know the Boers fight with uncommon bravery, but I can’t stand them.”
The other medical officers laughed.
“And I can’t stand Coltrane,” Preston declared. Nightfall, and it was raining, a rare event here, and the doctors had set up their medical station in one of the blockhouses. So far, only a few soldiers had come by, seeking advice about little booboos. That could change in a heartbeat, though. This blockhouse was equipped with a telephone, and the report had just come in that Coltrane and his men were pursuing a Boer commando.
“The bloke’s like a viper, ice-cold. Those women and children on the farms . . . The last woman whose house he burned down was a widow—she didn’t even have men fighting. And the house was hardly more than a hut. All this destruction only stokes the hatred.”
Kevin sighed. “It’s what Kitchener ordered,” he said sadly.
Preston raised an eyebrow. “So, we should just go along with a war against women and children? Incidentally, it’s making us unpopular with the rest of the world. The international newspapers give rather unflattering reports. Some of them side quite clearly with the Boers.”
Vincent raised his hand. “Be quiet,” he said softly. “There’s something outside.”
Indeed, the horses out front were shifting nervously from one hoof to the other, and Kevin heard Silver whinnying.
“The jades don’t like this rain,” Kevin said. “When Silver gets back to New Zealand, he’ll have to reacclimate to our weepy sky god.”
But then the whinnying repeated, full of longing. Kevin jumped up. That particular call could only mean the animal had caught the scent of unfamiliar mares. Vincent recognized it too. He reached for his gun.
“Let’s go check it out.”
Kevin followed, as did three of the soldiers manning the post. Outside the blockhouse, it was pitch black, and Kevin felt for his lamp. The soldier next to him, however, shook his head. The soldiers strained to peer into the night—but Kevin only needed to watch Silver to know where to look. The horse pricked its ears to the west, where the tracks curved and ran toward another blockhouse. Kevin followed its gaze and managed to just make out the silhouette of a pony. There was a low clicking noise.
