The Sound of Thunder (28 page)

Acheson had approved Sean’s request to use Charlestown as a base.

He had arranged rail transport south to this tiny village near the Natal border, promised support from the big flying columns in the area, and informed Sean that he was expecting big things from him. He made it sound like a threat.

“But, darling, you haven’t even been given a real uniform. You look so drab.” Candy, who was watching him dress from the double bed, held very definite views on what constituted a real uniform. It had gold lace and fragging with, say a Star of the Garter on a rich scarlet ground. ” Look at those buttons, they’re not even shiny.”

“Boers like shiny things, makes for good shooting in the sun. ” Sean glanced over his shoulder at her. Her hair was fluffed into golden disorder and the blue gown was arranged to provoke rather than conceal. Hastily Sean reMmed his eyes to his own reflection in the full-length mirror and brushed the hair back along his temples. A touch of grey in it now. Quite dignified, he decided. Pity about the nose.

He took it between his fingers and straightened it, a hell of a nose, but when he released his grip it returned immediately to a half, cock position.

“Well, I’ll be leaving you now,” he said, and she stood up quickly and the laughter was gone from her lips, they trembled a little.

“I’ll come down with you.” She arranged the gown quickly.

“No. ” “Yes, I have a farewell present for you.

In the hotel yard, hitched behind four fat mules, was a scotch cart She led him to it and lifted the tarpaulin cover.

“A few things I thought you might need. ” Against the cold she had provided a sheepskin coat, six fine woollen blankets and a silk eiderdown, two feather pillows and a mattress; a case of Courvoisier brandy and a case of Veuve Clicquot champagne. Against starvation there was potted salmon, strawberry jam, caviar in little glass jars, tinned delicacies all carefully packed in wooden boxes. For his health a medicine chest complete with a set of surgical instruments.

Against the Boer there was a

“Ibledo steel sabre in a leather scabbard worked with silver and a matched pair of Colt revolvers in a mahogany presentation case.

“Candy … ” Sean stumbled. “I don’t know what to say.”

She smiled a little and took his arm, hugging it. “There’s something else also.” She nodded to one of the grooms, who disappeared into the stables and led out a full, blooded Arab stallion with an English hunting saddle on its back.

“My God!” exclaimed Sean, and the stallion danced sideways so that the early sun glowed on the sheen of its coat. It flared with great pink pits of its nostrils and rolled its eyes before rearing high and dragging the groom off his feet.

“Candy, my dear,” Sean repeated.

“Good, bye, Sean.” She lifted her lips for his kiss and then broke away and almost ran back to the hotel.

While Saul shouted ribald encouragement, Mbenjane and the groom held its head. Sean mounted the stallion, then they turned it loose and Sean fought to quieten it. At last he brought it under a semblance of control and, crabbing and prancing with arched neck and dainty high, stepping gait, persuaded it to head off in the general direction of Johannesburg railway station.

Eccles watched his approach impassively.

“What the hell are you laughing at, Sergeant, Major?”

“I wasn’t laughing, sir.

Sean dismounted and, with relief, gave the stallion into the care of two of his troopers.

“Nice bit of horseflesh, sir.

“What do you think he’ll fetch?”

“YOU’re going to sell him, sir?” Eccles could not hide his relief.

“You’re damn right, I am. But it’s a gift, so no sale here in Johannesburg.

Well, Colonel Jordan at Charlestown is usually in the market for a good nag. I should be able to get you a price, sir. We’ll see what we can do.

Colonel Jordan purchased not only the stallion but the pistols and the sabre as well. The secretary of the Charlestown garrison officers’ mess frothed at the mouth with excitement when Eccles drew back the tarpaulin cover from the scotch cart

When Sean’s column rode out into the brown open winter grassland towards the jagged line of the Drakensberg, the little scotch cart trotted behind with the Maxims and a dozen ammunition cases making a full load.

There was cold that first night, and the stars were brilliant, clear and very far away. In the morning the land lay white and brittle in the grip of the frost; each blade of grass, each twig and fallen leaf transformed into a white, jewelled wonder. A thin scum of ice covered the pool beside which the column had camped.

Mbejanc and Sean squatted together. Mbejane with his monkey, skin kaross draped over his shoulders and Sean with the sheepskin coat buttoned to the throat.

“Tonight we will camp below that mountain.” Sean pointed away towards the west at the blue cone that stood out against the lighter blue of the dawn sky. “You will find us there.

, Nkosi, ” Mbejane nodded over his snuffbox.

“These others. ” Sean pointed with his chin at the group of four natives who awaited quietly with the spears beside the pool.

“Are they men?”

Mbejane shrugged. “I know little of them. The best of those I spoke with, perhaps. But they work for gold, and of their hearts I do not know. ” Before going on, he regarded their clothing; tattered European cast, offs which were everywhere replacing the traditional tribal costume. “They dress without dignity.

But beneath the rags it is possible that they are men.”

“They are all we have so we must use them. Yet I wish we had those others who now grow fat in the company of their women.”

Mbejane smiled. A week before he had put the message into the grapevine and he knew that both Hlubi and Nonga were at that moment dissipating their accumulations of fat as they trotted north from their kraals along the Umfolozi River. They would be here soon.

“This is the way we will hunt,” Sean told him. “Your men will spread out ahead of us and search for sign. The horses of those we seek will carry no steel on their hooves. If you find it fresh, then follow it until the run and direction of it is clear.

Then return to me in haste.”

Mbejane nodded and sniffed a pinch from his snuffbox.

“While you search, stop at the kraals you find along the way.

Speak with the people there, clearly, if the Mabune are here these people will know of it.

“It will be as you say, Nkosi.

“The sun comes. ” Sean looked up at the glow of it upon the high places while the valleys were blue with shadow. “Go in peace, Mbejane.

” Mbejane folded his kaross and tied it with a strip of leather.

He picked up his stabbing spear and slung the great oval war shield on his shoulder. “Go in peace, Nkosi.”

Sean watched while he talked with the other trackers, listening to the sonorous rise and fall of his voice. Then they scattered, trotting away into the veld, dwindled and were gone.

“Eccles?” “Sir. ” “Finished breakfast?”

“Yes, sir.

The men stood to their horses, blanket, rolls and carbines on the saddles, slouch hats pulled well down and the collars of their greatcoats turned up against the cold. Some were still eating with their bayonets from the cans of shredded beef.

“Let’s go, then.” The column closed up, riding four abreast, the pack, mules and the scotch cart in the centre, the outriders fanning out ahead to screen the advance. It was a tiny command, not a hundred and fifty paces long even with the pack animals, and Saul smiled as he remembered the massive fifteen, mile column that had marched from Colenso to Spion Kop.

Yet it was enough to tickle his pride. Courtney’s Fighting Scouts. The task now was to justify the second word of their title.

Saul hooked one leg over the saddle, balanced his notebook upon it, and while they rode he and Sean planned a thorough reorganization of the column.

When they halted at midday the planning was put into effect, A patrol of ten men in charge of the mules, for this duty Sean picked those who were fat, old or ungainly in the saddle. These men would also act as horse holders when the unit went in to fight on foot.

From among his sailors, Sean selected the gunners to captain the four Maxim teams. The riflemen were divided into patrols of ten with the most likely men promoted Sergeant Patrol Leaders, and their warrants noted in Saul’s little book.

It was well after nightfall when they off saddled that night below the dark massif of the mountain. MbeJane was waiting with his men beside a small, well, screened fire.

“I see you, Mbejane.

“I see you, Nkosi. ” In the firelight Mbejane’s legs were coated with dust to the knees and his face was grey with fatigue.

“What news?”

“Old sign. Perhaps a week ago, many men camped over there below the river. ‘twenty fires not in lines as the soldiers make them.

They left no little tin pots as the soldiers (to when they have emptied them of meat. No tents, but beds of cut grass, many beds.”

“How many?” It was an idle question for Mbejane could not count as a white man counts. He shrugged.

“As many beds as there are men with us?” Sean sought a comparison.

“More.” Mbejane thought carefully before answering.

“As many again?” Sean persisted.

“Perhaps as many again, but no more than that.”

Probably five hundred men, Sean guessed. “Which way were they moving?”

Mbejane pointed south, west.

Back towards Vryheid and the protection of the Drakensberg mountain. Yes, it was part of the Wynberg commando without doubt.

“What news from the kraals?”

“There is fear among them. They tell little, and that of no importance.” Mbejane made no attempt to hide his disgust, the contempt that the Zulu feels for every other tribe in Africa.

“You have done well, Mbejane. Rest now for we ride before the dawn. ” Four more days they moved south, west, Sean’s trackers sweeping the ground ten miles on each side of their path and finding it empty.

The Drakensberg reared up like a serrated back of a prehistoric monster along the south horizon. There was snow on the peaks.

Sean exercised his men in the counters to a surprise attack.

Riflemen wheeling out and dismounting in line to cover the Maxims as they galloped wildly for the nearest high ground.

Holders gathering the loose horses and pelting away to the cover of the nearest don ga or kopJe. Again and again they repeated this manoeuvre.

Sean worked them until they leaned forward in their saddles to nurse aching backsides and cursed him as they rode. He worked them to the edge of exhaustion and then on to a new physical fitness. They sprouted beards, their faces reddened and peeled, then darkened with the sun, their uniforms darkened also, but with dirt. Now they no longer cursed him. There was a new feeling among them, they laughed more and sat solid in the saddle, slept soundly at night despite the cold and woke with eagerness.

Sean was moderately satisfied.

On the morning of the tenth day Sean was scouting ahead of the column with two of his troopers. They had just dismounted to rest among an outcrop of boulders when Sean picked up movement out on the plain ahead. With a savage lift of anticipation he scrambled down from the boulder on which he was sitting and ran to his horse for his binoculars.

“Damn it! ” he mouthed his disappointment as he saw the lance blades glitter in the round strangely fore, shortened field of the glasses. “Cavalry.”

Half an hour later they met the small patrol of lancers from one of the big columns that were driving south from the line of block, houses. The young subaltern in command gave Sean it cigar, and the latest news of the war.

De la Rey and Smuts were rampaging north of Johannesburg in the Magaliesberg with forty thousand men chasing their three thousand.

South in the Free State another of the great De Wet hunts was in full swing. But this time they would catch him, the subaltern assured Sean.

Fifty thousand foot and horse soldiers had driven his commando into the angle between the blockhouse line and the flooded Riet River. In the east it was quieter. The commandos there lacked leadership and were lying up in the mountains around Komatipoort.

“So far it’s quiet here also, sir. But I don’t like the looks of it. This man Leroux is a nasty piece of work, clever man too.

So far he’s limited his activities to a few raids. Ten days ago about five hundred of his men hit one of our supply columns; near Charlestown. Wiped out the guard and collected enough ammunition to fight a full, scale battle, then made off towards the mountains.”

“Yes,” Sean nodded grimly. “We found one of his camps.” “No sign of him since then, sir. We’ve been scouring the ground for him, but so far without luck.

“What’s his force?” Sean asked.

“He can muster three thousand, so they say, My guess is that he’s getting himself poised for something really big.

That night Mbejane came into camp well after midnight. he came to where Sean slept under the scotch cart and with him were two other men.

N’kosi.

Sean rolled on his side, instantly awake at the touch. “Mbejane?

” He crawled out from under the cart and stood up.

The moon was up, silver and round and bright. By its light he recognized the men with MbeJane and exclaimed with pleasure: “By God!

“Hlubi! Nonga! ” Then remembering his manners, sean stepped forward grinning broadly to clasp their shoulders in turn. And each replied gravely as they returned his embrace.

“I see you, Nkosi.

“Are YOU well?”

“I am well. Are you well?”

The catechism of Zulu greeting can be carried on for as long as there is time available. More than a year had passed since Sean had discharged them from his service outside Pretoria, and so Sean must ask each of them for news of his father, his brothers, his herds, and the journey they had made, before he could put his own question.

“You came through Ladyburg?

“We came that way,” agreed Hlubi.

“You saw the Nkosizana Dirk?”

Now for the first time they both smiled, white teeth in the moonlight.

“We sat in council with the Nkosizana,” Hlubi chuckled.