by John Harris
As he raised his head, he saw the cart vanish among the clump of eucalyptus trees a short distance away. His eyes full of dust, his knee jabbed by a stone, he began to clamber from the ditch to follow it, when, not more than two hundred yards away, he saw a group of horsemen appear over a slight rise. In a panic, he whirled and dived once more into the digging under the trees and lay still.
Hardly daring to breathe, convinced that his heart could be heard thumping, as the horsemen drew nearer he saw the dust they stirred up catching the faint light of the stars. There were about twenty-five men, their horses rough-coated and shaggy with hard work, their figures bulky with the ammunition pouches across their chests and the rifles slung across their backs.
As they drew level with him, the officer in the lead raised his hand and the little squad clattered to a halt.
‘This it, Sergeant?’ he heard.
‘Chichester Junction, sir,’ a second voice said, and he heard the rattle of the map over the soft snorts of the horses and the thump of their hooves pawing at the dust. ‘Looks a bit of a dorp, but I don’t suppose it’s going to be a long stay.’
‘Sergeant’ – the first voice sounded weary – ‘we shall be covering every one of these bloody little railway stations till they catch the bastards, and if they’re clever enough to pinch forty-seven thousand quid, they’re very likely clever enough to get away with it, too. It’s probably as well the whole damn division’s supposed to be available to chase ’em if we get a whiff of their scent.’
His eyes blinking above the lip of the ditch in the blackness, the Tiger saw the officer sweep his arm forward over his head and the little troop moved forward again. As they disappeared among the huddle of houses a figure appeared from among the eucalyptus trees and began to hurry towards him. It was Willie.
‘We’ve got to get going,’ the Tiger bleated as he scrambled out of the ditch. ‘Now! Instanter! You bet! They were after us and they said there was forty-seven thousand quid in those boxes we pinched.’
‘Forty-seven…? Ye Gods!’ Willie was shaken.
‘They’re going to cover every bloomin’ railway station in the country till they catch us.’ The Tiger was twittering on like a nervous curate at a sticky garden party as they hurried to the hidden buckboard. ‘There was an officer and a sergeant. They said the whole division was after us.’
They had reached the clump of eucalyptus by this time and Willie passed on to Fish the information the Tiger had brought. His reaction was much the same as Willie’s had been.
‘Forty-seven thousand quid!’ The sum took his breath away. ‘What the hell shall we do?’
‘Leave,’ the Tiger said. ‘As fast as we can.’
Willie grabbed the seat of his trousers as he climbed on to the buckboard and pulled him off again.
‘Can’t just go running blindly from one place to another all the time,’ he said in a panic.
‘Come on, Willie, buddy,’ Fish urged nervously. ‘You got to come up with something. What do we do?’
‘We’ve got to get rid of it.’
‘Dump it?’ Fish was indignant. ‘For sweet Jesus’ sake, we’re in trouble just for pinching it! We might as well keep it!’
‘We’ve got to hide it,’ Willie said, ‘and collect it later when the fuss has died down.’
‘How long will that be?’
Willie smiled for the first time. ‘War’s over,’ he pointed out. ‘Roberts said so. Troops’ll start to disappear any day now. People’ll forget. A week or two from now it’ll be as safe as houses.’
Fish’s frown vanished and he grinned. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Where?’
Willie stared round him. ‘Dig a hole,’ he suggested.
‘No spade.’
‘What’s wrong with that hole?’ the Tiger asked, pointing.
‘What hole?’
‘The one I fell in. We could make it a bit deeper, shove the bags in and cover ’em up.’
They eyed each other for a moment. ‘Just the ticket,’ Willie agreed. ‘Just keep a few quid for expenses and come back in a fortnight for the rest.’
‘What is it anyway?’ Fish asked.
‘What?’
‘The hole.’
‘It’s to keep people off,’ the Tiger said. ‘Because it’s a memorial.’
‘Suppose they fill it in?’
‘Saves us a job,’ Willie pointed out. ‘Any case, we’ll be back before then.’
The ditch was deep and there was plenty of it and it didn’t take them long to hide the canvas bags of coin in it.
‘Now,’ Willie said, slapping the dust from his clothes and climbing on to the cart. ‘We’ll head for Winifred. At least that’s big enough to get lost in, and we’ve got money. This is where the fun starts.’
Part Two
‘Will you walk a little faster?’
said a whiting to a snail. ‘There’s a
porpoise close behind us, and he’s
treading on my tail.’
Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland
One
Captain Mace in neat civilian clothes and a wide-brimmed felt hat, stood with Sergeant Instant, staring into the darkness of the livery stable at Makuasi.
The proprietor was as excited as a phlegmatic Boer could be. ‘I claim the fifty-pound reward,’ he said in English in a loud clear voice as though he were reading the lesson at the Dopper Church.
Mace looked at him coldly. He was a large square man with a blunt nose, close-set eyes and a greying beard big enough for birds to nest in. His corduroy waistcoat and trousers were heavily spotted with grease and he smelled like a badger.
‘It says “For information leading to the arrest”,’ Mace pointed out. ‘Nobody’s been arrested yet.’
The proprietor frowned. ‘Ag, and when you do arrest them then.’
‘You’d better give me the story again,’ Mace suggested.
The proprietor nodded. Then his Adam’s apple worked. ‘Let’s have a drink, jong,’ he suggested. ‘I have a bottle of vauwjaapie in my office.’
They went into the little room at the end of the stable where the proprietor not only carried on business but also lived, ate and slept. It was a stuffy little room looking out on to a yard that was so loud with bluebottles it seemed that half the fly population of South Africa was there. A roll-top desk was a foot deep in papers – veterinary bills, bills for saddlery and bills for farriery and blacksmithing – all held down by empty bottles that had once held everything from brandy to liniment and horse doses, and all an inch deep in the dust that came from the straw- and chaff-chopping machine in the yard. The proprietor’s bed was a narrow cot which looked as though it hadn’t been made since he’d acquired it and there were dirty shirts, underwear and clothes scattered about – on the desk, on the bed, on the chairs.
Mace gingerly pushed aside a resentful cat curled up on an old arm-chair with the springs hanging out, poked a dirty shirt to the floor with his riding crop, removed a plate containing the dried remains of the proprietor’s lunch which it had hidden, and sat down. The proprietor had produced three glasses now, all so old they were opaque. To Mace’s fastidious gaze, it was clear they had never been washed.
The proprietor sloshed the spirit out and handed one of the glasses to Mace. A second he handed to Sergeant Instant, who, as became a soldier, remained standing in the presence of his officer. The third he filled for himself.
‘Water?’ Mace hinted.
The proprietor grinned. He was a good Boer but it didn’t stop him making money out of the British. ‘Never use it,’ he said cheerfully, and, knocking back his tumbler of spirit, filled it up again.
‘It was the horse,’ he said. ‘I found the brand. It is blind in one eye and kicks if you approach it from the wrong side.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well’ – the proprietor gestured – ‘there he was, a little schelm who blinked a lot, buying a cart and two horses from me. Are you getting all this down, Meneer?’
‘Every bit. What next?’
‘He left. He do not say where, but there is only one way he can go – Fairplay.’
‘I see. What else?’
‘Ag, imagine my surprise. The next morning when I woke up, there they were.’
‘The swine who pinched the pay?’
‘Nie, nie! My horses. And two other horses – riding horses. They all come in together.’ The proprietor felt pleased. Four horses for two was good trading. ‘Ag, then I think if I make enquiries I might even find their rig and do it up! I have all the facilities.’ He waved a hand round the broken-down stable which looked as though it hadn’t the facilities to mend a wheel-barrow. ‘I find it at the kopje. They try to burn it. I make repairs. I bring it in. That is it at the back of the stable, Meneer.’
Mace glanced at the scorched cart and then at Instant. ‘Sergeant, are you prepared to swear that this was the cart which left Venter’s Road Sidings?’
Instant clicked to attention. Since he had discovered his true role in life, he didn’t waste a single opportunity to impress himself on people. ‘Yessir. I remember the number–’
‘Never mind the number, man,’ Mace said, unimpressed by Instant’s memory. ‘I know the number. I only want you to confirm it.’
‘Oh! Well, yessir. I do confirm it.’
‘And the police horse? You can identify that as the one that was ridden by the man with the blinking eyes?’
Instant advanced to the police horse for a closer look. He chose the wrong side and as the hind hoof flashed he had to jump back hurriedly. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t very good with it.’
‘The schelm nearly had me in the balls twice the first day,’ the proprietor said. ‘Such verneukery.’
Mace ignored him, his eyes on Instant. ‘Do you identify it, Instant?’
‘Yessir, I do identify it.’
‘And the other two?’
Instant peered. ‘Look like ’em, sir.’
‘Good.’ Mace rose thankfully from the smelly chair. ‘That’ll be all.’
‘When do I get the reward, Meneer?’ The proprietor peered up at him.
Mace looked down his nose. ‘When we arrest the swine,’ he said, then maliciously added, ‘And, judging by the way they’re moving, we’ll be a long time doing it.’
Rather to Mace’s surprise, however, he made better progress than he’d expected and it didn’t take him long to establish that the men he was trailing had indeed gone to Fairplay and he was there himself by the beginning of October. The bartender at the hotel was able to recognise the descriptions he offered and a Koranna railway worker remembered seeing the little buckboard heading in the direction of Chichester Junction. At Chichester Junction, however, he drew a blank.
‘Perhaps they got on the train, sir,’ Instant suggested.
‘Couldn’t,’ Mace said. ‘Station was watched by then.’
Instant remembered the labour of hefting the boxes into the cart. ‘They’ve got quite a problem, sir, shifting that stuff about,’ he observed.
Mace nodded. ‘That’s what I’m relying on,’ he admitted. ‘Let’s slip over to Winifred. It’s a bigger place. There are a few frisky girls there. I think if I had money to spend, that’s where I’d go.’
Mace’s inspired guess was a good one, because on the way, riding in front of Sergeant Instant’s little squad, he unexpectedly came across more evidence of the passage of the men he was seeking.
He liked to ride well ahead. None of Instant’s squad had shown much promise as a horseman and they sat their mounts like sacks. Wooden, in particular, hadn’t taken happily to the roughrider corporal’s ministrations and had shown the same blank indifference to the niceties of horsemastership as he had to everything else.
‘Why the ’ell can’t you use yer dock sponge proper?’ The roughrider’s furious screams had become part of Mace’s background in the last week or so. ‘Mouf, nostrils and dock in that order. His dock’s his arse so you don’t do it first! You wouldn’t like it and neither does ’e!’
Mace sighed. In his civilian clothes he liked people to think he wasn’t part of his men. Even the bugler they’d given him managed to make every call he sounded seem like a sackful of angry cats.
As they clattered along the dusty road towards Winifred, he saw a line of Zulu labourers walking towards them in single file along the edge of the road. Each carried a heavy solidly made wooden box on his head. The leader’s dark face split in a wide smile and he waved his hand to Mace as he trotted past. The black men of South Africa had long preferred the British to the Afrikaners because they knew the British had been trained to be kind to animals and lesser races and never kicked or beat them as the Boers were in the habit of doing.
‘Good morning, Baas!’
‘Good morning,’ Mace said.
His eyes ahead, his head up, indulging in a little self-admiration, it was only by the time he had passed five of the boxes that he realised there was something familiar about their shape and size. By the time he had passed six, it had registered that they were painted in the dun brown of the army. By number seven it had dawned on him that they were ammunition boxes, by number eight he realised that since they’d not been returned to store or smashed up by the troops for firewood they must have been thrown away, and by number nine that they must therefore be the paymaster’s ammunition boxes – his paymaster’s ammunition boxes, by God!
As he swung round at number ten, wrenching at his reins to wheel his mount quickly, he found himself right in the middle of Instant’s troops who were clattering close behind, trying to keep up with him. There was a moment of confusion.
‘For God’s sake, get out of the way, damn you!’ Mace snarled as he found himself face to face with Wooden who was staring balefully at him between his horse’s ears, wondering heavily how to make his mount sidestep.
Galloping back to the head of the line of Zulus, while Instant and his men endeavoured to sort themselves out and follow, Mace hauled his horse to a halt in front of the leading black man. The black man halted. All the other black men halted, the line closing up like a concertina. Instant galloped up a moment later, followed at intervals by the rest of the command.
‘Those are army property,’ Mace pointed out, indicating the boxes.
‘Yassir, Baas.’ The black man grinned. ‘Fine – fine for fire.’
‘Put them down at once.’
It dawned on the black men that they were in danger of losing their newly acquired property and they set up such a tongue-clicking chatter of protest Mace only managed to silence them with the presentation of a half-sovereign.
‘We’re obviously on the right track, Sergeant,’ he said, on his knees, opening the boxes one after the other, as though he hoped a few odd coins had been left behind by accident. ‘These are our boxes. We’ll take ’em with us as evidence.’
Instant stared at the boxes. They looked pretty clumsy to balance on the back of a horse. ‘How, sir?’
Mace stared at him. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you, Sergeant, that a horse’s harness contains large numbers of strips of leather which, when detached, can be used in place of ropes. What about your tethering ropes and halters, you idiot? Tie them in twos and hang them over the saddles. We can store them with the remount section at Chichester Junction and arrange for them to be sent on to Sinai with the cart and the police horse.’
Highly encouraged by the recovery of the boxes, he left Instant to attend to the salvage and hurried ahead to Winifred. By the time Instant arrived, he had found the two army mules in a livery stable just outside the town that was almost as seedy as the one in Makuasi.
The proprietor, though he was English, was much the same type as the man at Makuasi, and assumed at once from his clothes that Mace was a civilian.
He proudly showed him the two animals. ‘Army,’ he pointed out. ‘You can ’ave ’em cheap. I’ve fixed the brand up.’
‘Have you, indeed?’ Mace said. ‘You know you can be heavily fined for
that sort of thing, don’t you?’
The proprietor gave him a greasy smile. ‘Bless you, sir, everybody does it.’
‘Not in my area,’ Mace snapped. ‘I’ll be sending a squad of men to reclaim them forthwith!’
The proprietor’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean you’re army!’
‘Provost Department.’
‘You might have said!’
‘You might not have shown me the animals if I had.’
Sergeant Instant was waiting in the road with the rest of the troop and Mace called him inside and indicated the mules.
‘Do you identify these mules?’ he asked sharply.
‘Of course, sir.’ Instant smiled. ‘That’s Duiker and the black’s Florrie. Corporal Pattinson called it Florrie because…’
‘I don’t want its damned history,’ Mace snapped. ‘I merely want confirmation. I know the bloody animal’s name.’
‘Ah, of course, sir! I do identify them as Florrie and Duiker, sir, animals on our establishment.’
‘Thank you,’ Mace said sarcastically. ‘Remove ’em, Instant. See they’re handed in to the remount depot. They’ll handle ’em. Doubtless give ’em both mange.’
‘Don’t I get paid for ’em?’ the proprietor demanded hotly.
‘You do not,’ Mace said.
The proprietor’s manner was a mixture of indignation and wheedling. ‘I didn’t know they was army when I bought ’em,’ he said.
‘I’m damned sure you did,’ Mace snapped and his mouth shut with a click. ‘So the less you say, the better, especially as I’m less interested in the mules than in the men who brought them in.’
The proprietor frowned, eyeing him more warily. ‘Nice young fellers they seemed,’ he said gloomily. ‘I thought they was all right. He had a nice smile.’
‘He did?’ Mace remembered other descriptions of this smile at Fairplay. ‘What about the other chaps?’
‘Pale-faced feller. Sandy hair. Blinked a lot.’
