Blunted Lance (12 page)

As they disappeared in a fold of the plain, dust clogging their mouths, the horses lathering, Dabney’s self-confidence was supreme. He knew he was good at the job in a way that the more conventional officers of the 19th never would be, and he had absorbed everything his father had ever said or written, while the time he had spent in South Africa had cleared his mind of the stiffness of European training. He was self-reliant and more insubordinate than his brother officers, and, unlike them, knew that to keep a good, sleek, hard-riding pony you needed to be expert, among other things, at stealing oats. He had watched his Kaffirs treat wounds with cow dung and, on the occasion when they had been fired on, had seen the surgeon faint when the Kaffirs had removed their foul covering from the wounded man’s injury. His men were a tough, self-reliant lot, some South African, speaking Kaffir and the Afrikaner ‘taal’, some Australian and New Zealand, some British. They were lean, dusty men, their only real uniform the pink puggaree they wore round their slouch hats, and among their weapons were a few long-range Mausers captured from the Boers.

The country fascinated and repelled him at the same time. Hot, sandy, stony and desolate, yet fertile where there was water, it was like a drowsy, yellow-grey monster, dry and scaly, warted here and there with taibosch or prickly pear, or with aloes sticking up like bayonets. Most of the time it was a dust heap covered with flat stones, still and silent, a gauze of purple clinging to the distance and melting away in the sun. The sunsets were awe-inspiring and night came suddenly like a purple curtain pulled across a window, the sun sinking in a golden-green haze shot with crimson and azure. Dawn came with equal speed, the first gleam followed by a saffron glow that edged out of the violet shadows until the hills stood out black against the horizon. As the clouds became edged with gold, they gradually vanished into rosy wisps that dispersed in the brightening sky, and as the stars disappeared beams of light struck upwards and the sun began to flood the plain with day.

It was a mounted man’s country and he had learned how to look after his mount. British officers had always prided themselves on their horsemastership but he had found, in fact, that they knew next to nothing. Riding horses in England had not meant looking after them, and those who rode at home invariably had grooms to care for their mounts. Looking wise as a hand was run over a fetlock did not make a man an expert but his father had always insisted on his family caring for their own horses and even Robert, who claimed to hate them, knew how to look after them. The General himself knew more about them than any man Dabney knew and once, when the vet had been unable to get rid of mange in a pony, he had seen him do it with a mixture that consisted chiefly of ointment prescribed for lice.

Picking up the trail of horses near a range of hills known as the Kwathambas, a rocky group laying in a long featureless hog’s back terraced by erosion and strewn with red rock, aloes and acacia thorn, among the dusty hoof prints he found the tracks of guns which seemed to confirm that the trail was De Hoog’s. Moving forward with nothing but an outlying patrol, he picked up the tracks again just to the south of the hills, and, leaving his men well back out of sight crouching round the fires they had built of dung and the thorn scrub that filled the air with the aromatic smell of acacia, he moved forward at dusk with only Ellis Ackroyd and a man to hold the horses. Hiding themselves in a patch of scrub, they lay down, stiff with cold despite the heat of the day, and waited for dawn. They were across the route where Crawford had been surprised some time before, and in the first light of the new day saw the grave of a British officer nearby, a crude cross with a name burned on it with a heated bayonet, and a pair of feet, disturbed by prowling animals, protruding from the soil.

‘There are men on top of them hills, sir,’ Ackroyd said quietly, peering through Dabney’s binoculars. ‘That means we’ll have to climb the slopes as usual to dislodge ’em.’

The day was still only a faint promise of gold in the east and it was a pure morning with all the world still and the air invigorating, the early sun turning the rust-coloured peaks of the hills into pink battlements. Africa seemed empty, bare and rolling, and covered with thin brown grass dried by the sun. The ridge in front rose slantwise, rough-edged like a saw where small outcrops of rocks broke through the surface and edged the skyline.

Just behind them their ponies snorted softly, Ackroyd’s nuzzling at the dried blood on a foreleg where it had cut it the night before climbing out of a donga. The plain was covered with a thick milky mist that lay like a blanket several feet deep above the ground, above it the ghostly tops of a few trees. After a while they spotted buck, dim ghostly shapes suspended against an invisible background, bodies without legs, heads without bodies; then as they watched, twenty or thirty horned heads shot up where they had originally seen only two or three. Finally, as the mist shifted, they saw the whole herd.

A moment later, as a frightened covey of thickhead birds rose in a clatter of wings, like drops of bright water flung against a stone the buck split apart, swung together like iron filings drawn to a magnet, then began to race across the veldt, sweeping away in a strung-out cloud, a whirlpool of racing shapes, the sun catching the black and white stripes on their tawny sides so that they seemed like a stream running across the empty plain. Over the silence they heard the faint sound of Dopper hymns coming from the base of the hills.

‘They’re not at the top, Ellis,’ Dabney said quietly. ‘They’re at the bottom. There’s a dried river bed there – one of the tributaries of the Koro. I think they’re in that and burrowing like ants.’

By the time Dabney returned to the main column, General Goff had moved from Bester’s Nek and had set up his headquarters in a farm building with pink stone walls. The Kwathamba Hills ran straight across his front and, with the Boers at an altitude to see any move he made, he was aware that it was going to be difficult to cross the Koro without being involved in a fight. It looked in fact, very much as though he was going to have to fall back on the sort of frontal attack he disliked intensely and, since he would have to be in position at dawn, would have to make a night march, something which had so far not proved particularly successful.

Leaning over his map while Dabney jabbed his finger at it to show the Boer positions, he found he was watching his son more than the map. So that the Boers should not know they’d been spotted, he and his small party had stayed where they were all day, sweltering in the shadeless sun until the sudden African dusk came and allowed them to ride off quietly in the growing darkness. His eyes were alight now with enthusiasm and intelligence and he had already grasped the essentials of the General’s plan and its difficulties.

Moving his hand over the map, the General pointed at the Kwathambas. ‘Is there any way through these hills?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ Dabney said. ‘There is. There’s a gap behind and to the left of where the river bed runs close to the slopes. There’s another to the right. They’re only narrow, sir, but they’re gaps. They’ve probably chosen the position so they can use them to run as usual if things get too sticky.’

General Goff stared at his son, frowning, then he ran his hand down the line of a hill running south at right angles to the main range. ‘What about this hill here – the Graafberg?’

‘It’s about a mile long and could give excellent cover.’

‘These gaps of yours – could cavalry get through?’

‘Yes, sir. In single file.’

‘It sounds damn’ dangerous. Could they do it in the dark so that when the infantry moved forward, they’d be in position to cut off Brother Boer?’

‘I think they could, sir.’

‘What about lookouts?’

‘If they’re in trenches at the bottom, there’d surely not be many on top and they’d be looking south where the main column’s expected, not north-east where we’d be.’

‘We?’

Dabney smiled. ‘You’d need me, sir, to show the way. I’d be more reliable than a native guide, and more trustworthy than a local.’

As his son left headquarters, the General stood for a moment staring after the slim, confident figure. What Dabney had suggested was a definite possibility, but it would also be damned dangerous for his son, his favourite son. He stood for a long time staring at the map then he sighed, lit a cigarette and called Ellesmere to the map table.

‘Ned,’ he said, ‘I want you to set up a night march to the Kwathambas. We shall need to be in position before dawn. Let’s have the commanding officers in.’

The regimental officers seemed startled at the plan but they had already learned not to object and the more intelligent of them were well aware that, if they were to avoid casualties, they would need to move fast.

‘The men will travel light,’ the General announced. ‘No heavy equipment. No tents. No greatcoats. Just food, ammunition and full water bottles. The men will not smoke after dark, and equipment that’s likely to rattle or clink will be tied in handkerchiefs or scarves.’

As he paused, Ellesmere looked up expectantly.

‘One other thing. De Hoog’s no fool so I want him to believe we’re moving to his left, so as to draw off some of his men. One half-battery will remain behind, together with a company of infantry and whatever native bearers we can muster. The ox wagons will move out in a wide sweep into the veldt and join up with the rest of the column tomorrow. They’re to make as much noise as possible, shouting and letting off their rifles. They can even light fires. The half-battery will fire its guns.’

He looked at Trim. ‘This will be your responsibility, Trim. Think you can look after it?’

‘I’d rather be where the fighting is, sir.’

‘Have no fear, my lad, you might get more fighting than you expect. Your job will be to make the Boers think we’re trying to move over towards Buller and that we’ve scared ourselves to death as usual with a false alarm.’

As the plan developed, there was a growing enthusiasm among the listening officers.

Giving positions and start times, the General turned to Morby-Smith.

‘Your people will move to the left here, throwing out a half-squadron in advance to warn you of danger. You’ll take no risks, however, and will attempt to get on this slope here to enfilade the river bed and to be ready to chase the Boers back to Donotsfontein and beyond. They’re not to be given a chance to hole up in Jacobspoort. One half-squadron will operate with the North Cape Horse. Who do you suggest?’

‘Johnson’s able, sir.’

‘Johnson it shall be. Lieutenant Goff, who will be acting as guide, will lead them round the back of the Graafberg and the Kwathamba Range.’

When the tent had emptied the General looked at Ellesmere. ‘There will be no mistakes, Ned,’ he said. ‘Everything will be checked and double checked. If we’re stopped by Brother Boer, so be it, and I’ll answer with my neck, but by God we’ll not be stopped through our own carelessness.’

As the bugles sang, the forward march began. By dusk the few tents round the farm had vanished, only bare patches on the earth to indicate where they had stood and nothing but empty bully beef and biscuit tins to show where the force had halted.

The men marched off cheerfully, mouth organs whining to ‘Kiss Me, Mother; Kiss Your Darling Daughter’, with the Lancers thrown out in a wide screen to watch for Boer scouts.

As darkness fell and the shapes strung across the veldt disappeared into the night, the din Trim’s column was making could be heard quite clearly, the silence of the veldt magnifying the rumble of the wagons, the calls of the African drivers and the crack of their whips, the click of metal horseshoes against the stones sounding over the low rumble of the gun carriages. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, there was a faint rattle of musketry and the thud of a gun.

‘Trim’s been found,’ the General said grimly.

In fact, Trim was doing better than anybody had imagined possible, and two hours later a subaltern on a lathered horse came thundering up to the column demanding to know where the commanding officer was. ‘Here,’ the General snapped. ‘What the devil are you making all that noise about?’

‘Major Trim’s been attacked, sir. He thinks it might be De Hoog himself. He’s established himself on a kopje on our left and opened long-range fire on us. Major Trim laagered as many wagons as he could and had the oxen taken down to the river bed for protection but he brought them out again as soon as he could in the hope of continuing the move. Unfortunately, the mules stampeded and set off the oxen and the whole lot bolted. Major Trim feels more men’ll be needed to drive the Boers off.’

The General gnawed at his lip, adding up figures in his mind. ‘How many supplies have they with them, Ned?’ he asked.

‘Not many, sir,’ Ellesmere said.

‘Well—’ the General made up his mind quickly ‘—we shall need every man we have to tackle the Kwathambas. We’ll have to sacrifice the column, if necessary, to keep up the momentum here.’

He saw Ellesmere pull a face and rounded on him angrily. ‘And don’t pull that damned face at me, Ned! Jesus Christ in the Mountains, I don’t like it any more than you do! But we can’t put off the attack to save a few wagons and oxen.’ He turned to the subaltern on the panting horse. ‘Can you hold?’

‘We ought to be able to, sir.’

‘Then get back to Trim and tell him there must be no mistake and no surrender. He’s to keep the Boers occupied. In any way he likes. I’ll try to relieve him by the day after tomorrow.’

As the officer swung his horse and clattered off into the darkness, the General became aware of Ellesmere’s eyes on him.

‘Are you accusing me, Ned?’ he growled.

‘On the contrary, sir.’ Ellesmere’s face was grave. ‘I was thinking a decision of that sort shows the mettle of a leader. It must have been a difficult one to take.’

The General studied him for a moment, then he stared to the north-east where Dabney and the North Cape Horse had disappeared. ‘Not half so difficult as sending my own son round by the back door, Ned,’ he growled.