The Sound of Thunder (33 page)

“You speak in riddles.”

“These men we follow ride in a different manner from the way they did before , ” Sean thought about that for a few seconds before he saw it Yes! He was right. Where previously Leroux’s commando had spread and trampled the grass in a road fifty feet wide, since this morning they had ridden in two files as though they were regular cavalry.

“They ride as we do, Nkosi, so the hooves of the horses fall in the tracks of those that lead. In this way it is difficult to tell how many men we follow.”

“We know there are about six hundred… . Hold on! I think I see what you .

“Nkosi, it comes to me that there are no longer six hundred men ahead of us.”

“My God! You could be right.” Sean jumped up and began to pace restlessly. “He is splitting his commando again. We’ve crossed a dozen rocky places where he could have detached small groups of his men. By evening we’ll be following less than fifty men, , when that happens they’ll break up into individuals, lose us in the dark and head separately for a prearranged rendezvous.” He punched his fist into the palm of his hand.

“That’s it, by God!” He swung round to face Saul

“You remember that stream we crossed a mile back, it would have been an ideal place.”

“You’re taking a big risk,” Saul cautioned him. “if we go back now and it turns out you’re wrong, , then you’ve lost him for good.

“I’m right,” Sean snapped. “I know I am. Get them mounted up, we’re going back.”

Sean sat his horse on the bank of the stream and looked down into the clear water that sparkled over gravel and small round boulders.

“They will have gone downstream, otherwise the mud they stirred up would have washed down across the ford. ” He turned to Saul. “I’m going to take fifty men with me so as not to raise too much dust. Give me an hour’s start and then follow with the rest of the column.

“Mazelto! ” Saul grinned at him.

With a Zulu tracker on each bank Sean and Eccles and fifty men followed the stream towards the north, west. Behind them the mountains of the Drakensberg were an irregular pale blue suggestion against the sky and around them the brown winter sere veld spread away in the folded complexity of ridges and the shallow valleys. In the rocky ground along the ridges grew the squat little aloe plants, holding up their multiple flowers like crimson candelabra while in the valleys the stunted Thorn bushes huddled along the course of the stream. High, cold cloud obscured the sky. There was no warmth in the pale sunlight, and the wind had a knife, edge to it.

Two miles below the ford Sean was showing his anxiety by leaning forward in the saddle and checking the ground that Mbejane had already covered. Once he called,

“Mbejane, are you sure you haven’t missed them?”

Mbejane straightened from his crouch and turned slowly to regard Sean with a look of frigid dignity. Then he shifted his war shield to the other shoulder and, not deigning to answer, he returned to his search.

Fifty yards further on he straightened again and informed Sean.

“No, Nkosi. I have not missed them.” He pointed with his assegai at the deeply scarred bank up which horses had climbed, and the flattened grass which had wiped the mud from their legs.

“Got them!” Sean exulted in his relief; behind him he heard the stir of excitement run through his men.

“Well done, sir.” Eccles’s moustache twitched ferociously as he grinned.

“How many, Mbejane?“Twenty, not more.”

“When?”

“The mud has dried.” Mbejane considered the question stooping to touch the earth and determine its texture. “They were here at half sun this morning. ” The middle of the morning; they had a lead of five hours. . Is the spoor fat enough to run upon?”

“It is, Nkosi.

“Then run, Mbejane.

The spoor bellied towards the west then swung and steadied in the same persistently southward direction, and Sean’s column closed up and cantered after Mbejane.

Southward, always southward. Sean pondered the problem what could he hope to accomplish with a mere six hundred?

Unless! Sean’s brain started to harry a vague idea. Unless he intended slipping through the columns of infantry and cavalry that lay before him and trying for a richer prize.

The railway, as Saul had suggested? No, he discounted that quickly. Jan Paulus would not risk his whole command for such low stakes.

What then? The Cape? By God, that was it, the Cape! That rich and lovely country of wheat lands and vineyards. That serene and secure land, lazing in the security of a hundred years of British rule, and yet peopled by men of the same blood as Leroux and De Wet and Jan Smuts.

Smuts had already taken his commando across the Orange River. If Leroux followed him, if De Wet followed him, if the Cape burghers; broke their uneasy neutrality and flocked to join the commandos, Sean’s mind baulked at the thought. He let!

the wider aspect of it and came back to the moment.

All right then, Jan Paulus was riding to the Cape with only six hundred men? No, he must have more. He must be either! to a rendezvous with one of the other commandos. Who’? De la Rey? No, De la Rey was in the Magaliesberg. De Wet? No, De Wet was far south, twisting and turning away from the columns that harried him.

Zietsmann? Ah, Zietsmann! Zietsmann with fifteen hundred men.

That was it.

Where would they meet? On a river obviously, for they must have water for two thousand horses. The Orange was too dangerous, so it must be the Vaal, but whereabouts on the Vaal’? It must be a place easily recognizable. One of the fords’? No, cavalry used the fords.

A confluence of one of the tributaries’? Yes, that was it.

Eagerly Sean unbuckled his saddle, bag and pulled from it his map. Holding the heavy cloth map folded against his thigh he twisted sideways in the saddle to study it.

“Here we are now,” he muttered and ran his finger south.

“The Padda River!”

“I beg your pardon, sir.

“The Padda, Eccles, the Padda!

“Very well, sir,” agreed Eccles with stolid features covering his bewilderment.

In the dark valley below them the single fire flared briefly, then died to a tiny glow.

“All ready, Eccles,” Sean whispered.

“Sir!” Without raising his voice Eccles placed affirmative emphasis on the monosyllable.

“I’ll go down now.” Sean resisted the impulse to repeat his previous orders. He wanted to say again how important it was that no one escaped, but he had learned that once was enough with Eccles.

Instead he whispered,

“Listen for my signal. ” The Boers had only one sentry. Secure in the knowledge that their stratagy had thrown off all pursuit, they slept around the poorly screened fire. Sean and Mbenjane moved down quietly and squatted in the grass twenty paces from the high rock on which the sentry sat. The man was outlined darkly against the stars and Sean watched him intently for a full minute before he decided.

“He sleeps also.”

Mbejane grunted.

“Take him quietly,” Sean whispered. “Make sure his rifle does not fall.” Mbejane moved and Sean laid a hand on his shoulder to restrain him. “Do not kill, it is not necessary.”

And Mbejane moved silently as a leopard towards the rock.

Sean waited straining his eyes into the darkness. The seconds dragged by, and suddenly the Boer was gone from the rock. A gasp, a soft sliding sound and stillness.

Sean waited, and then Mbejane was back as silently as he had left.

“It is done, Nkosi.

Sean laid his rifle aside and cupped his hands over his lips, filled his cheeks and blew the long warbling whistle of a night bird

At the fire one of the sleepers stirred and muttered. Farther off a horse stamped and blew softly through its nostrils. Then Sean heard a pebble click and the cautious swish of feet through grass, small sounds lost in the wind.

“Eccles?” Sean murmured.

Sir.

Sean stood up and they closed in on the camp.

“Wake up, gentlemen. Breakfast is ready.” Sean shouted in the Taal, and each burgher woke to find a man standing over him and the muzzle of a Lee, Metford pressing into his chest.

“Build up that fire, ” Sean ordered. “Take their rifles. ” It had been too easy, he spoke roughly in the irritation of anti, climax, “Mbejane, bring the one from the rock, I want to see how gently YOU dealt with him.

Mbejane dragged him into the firelight and Sean’s lips tightened as he saw the way the man’s head lolled and his legs hung

“He’s dead,”

Sean accused.

“He sleeps, Nkosi,” MbeJane denied.

Sean knelt beside him and twisted his face to catch the light.

Not a man, a lad with a thin bitter face and the fluff of pale, imature beard on his cheeks. In the corner of his eye a stye had burst to matt the closed lashes with yellow pus. He was breathing.

Sean glanced up at the other prisoners. They were being herded away out of earshot.

“Water, Mbejane. ” And the Zulu brought a canteen from the fire while Sean explored the hard swelling above the boy’s temple “He’ll do,” Sean grunted, and curled his lips in distaste at what he must do as soon as the lad recovered. He must do it while he was still groggy and bemused by the blow. From his cupped hand he splashed cold water into his face and the boy gasped and rolled his head.

“Wake up,” Sean urged quietly in the Taal. “Wake up.

“Oom Paul?” The Boer mumbled.

“Wake up. ” The lad struggled to sit.

“Where … You’re English! ” As he saw the uniform.

“Yes,” Sean snapped. “We’re English. You’ve been caught.”

“Oom. Paul?” The boy looked round wildly.

Don’t worry about him. He’ll be with you on the boat to Mt. Helena. Leroux and Zietsmann were both caught on the Vaal yesterday. We were waiting for them at the Padda and they walked right into the trap.”

“Oorn Paul caught!” The boy’s eyes were wide with shock.

still dazed and out of focus. “But how did you know? There must have been a traitor, someone must have told. How did you know about the meeting, place? ” He stopped abruptly as his brain caught up with his tongue. “But how … Oom Paul couldn’t be on the Vaal yet, we left him only yesterday. ” Then sickeningly he realized what he had done. “You tricked me,” he whispered. “You tricked me.”

“I’m sorry, ” Sean said simply. He stood up and walked across to where Eccles was securing his prisoners.

“When Captain Friedman arrives tell him to bring the column into the garrison at Vereeniging and wait for me there. I am going ahead with my servant, ” he said abruptly, then called across to Mbejane.

“Mbeiane, bring my horse.” He would trust no one else to carry the news to Acheson.

The following afternoon Sean reached the railway line guarded by its blockhouses and flagged a northbound train. The next morning he detrained with soot, inflamed eyes, tired and filthy, at Johannesburg station.

Jan Paulus Leroux checked his horse and behind him the tiny fragment of his commando bunched up and all of them peered eagerly ahead.

The Vaal is a wide, brown river, with sandbanks through which it cuts its own channel. The banks are steep and along them are scattered a few of the ugly, indigenous thorn trees which provide no cover for an army of three thousand men and horses. But Leroux had chosen the rendezvous with care. Here the tiny Padda River looped down through a complex of small kopjes to join the Vaal and among these kopJes an army might escape detection, but only if it exercised care. Which ZietsMann was not doing.

The smoke from a dozen fires hazed out in a long pale smear across the veld, horses were being watered on one of the sandbanks in the middle of the river, and a hundred men were bathing noisily from the bank, while laundry decked the thorn trees.

“The fool,” snarled Leroux and kicked his pony into a run.

He stormed into the laager, flung himself off his horse and roared at Zietsmann.

“Menheer, I must protest.”

Zietsmann was nearly seventy years old. His beard was pure white and hung to the fifth button of his waistcoat. He was a clergyman, not a general, and his commando had survived this long because it was so ineffectual as to cause the British no serious inconvenience. Only great pressure from De la Rey and Leroux had forced him to take part in this wild plan. For the last three days, as he waited for Leroux to join him, he had been harassed by doubts and misgivings. These doubts were shared by his wife, for he was the only Boer general who still had his woman with him in the field.

Now he stood up from his seat by the fire and glared at this red, bearded giant Leroux, whose face was mottled with fury.

“Menheer, ” he growled. “Please remember you are speaking not only to your Elder, but also to a Dominie of the Church. ” In this way was set the tone for the long discussions which were to fill the next four days. During this time Leroux saw his bold design bog down in a welter of trivialities. He did not resent the loss of the first day which was spent in prayer, indeed he realized that this was essential.

Without God’s blessing and active intervention the enterprise must fail, so the sermon he delivered that afternoon lasted a little over two hours and the text he selected was from Judges,

“Shall I yet again go out to battle against the children of Benjamin, my brother, or shall I cease?”

and the Lord said,

“Go up; for tomorrow I will deliver them into thine hand.”

Zietsmann bettered his time by forty minutes. But then, as Leroux’s men pointed out, Zietsmann was a professional while Oom Paul was only a lay, preacher.

The next and most critical question was the election of the Supreme Commander for the combined enterprise. Zietsmann was the older by thirty years, a factor heavily in his favour. Also, he had brought sixteen hundred men to the Vaal against Leroux’s six hundred. Yet Leroux was the victor of Colenso and Spion Kop, and since then he had fought consistently and with not “little success, including the wrecking of eight trains and the anihilation of four British supply columns.

Zietsmann had been second in command at Madder River, but since then he had done nothing but keep his commando intact.

For three days the debate continued with Zietsmann dourly refusing to bring the matter to the vote until he sensed that opinion had swung to his side. Leroux wanted command; not , only for personal Satisfaction, but also because he knew that under this cautious and stubborn old man they would be lucky to reach the Orange River, let alone force an effective entry into the Cape.