The red-brown veldt stretched away to the sky-line, sixty miles
distant. Level as it looked, it was nevertheless a succession of
softly rolling ridges dotted with clumps of dried sagebrush and
spotted here and there with heaps of black volcanic rocks. Far to
the northward, a thin line of poplars and willows marked the bed of
a river. Beyond that, again, the air was thick with smoke from acres
of burning veldt. The days were full of dust, and the nights were
full of frost; it was the month of June, and winter was upon the
land.
The camp was taking a well-earned rest. For days, the men had swept
over the veldt, following hard on the trail of a Boer general who
only made himself visible now and then by a spatter of bullets, when
his convoy train was delayed at a difficult ford. It had been a week
of playing pussin-the-corner over a charred and dusty land, where
the only roads were trails trodden out to powder by the hoofs of
those that had gone before. Both men and mounts were wellnigh
exhausted, and the officers had decreed a halt.
The strain had been intense. Now, with the relaxing of it, its
memory vanished, and the halt swiftly took upon itself the
appearance of a school holiday. Laughing and chaffing each other,
groups of men loitered here and lounged there, smoking, writing
letters, and taking stout, unlovely stitches in their time-worn
khaki clothing. At one side of the camp was the tent of the mess
sergeant, equipped like a portable species of corner grocery. Near
by, Paddy apparently was in his element, presiding over his
camp-kitchen, a vast bonfire encircled with a dozen iron pots. At the
farther edge of the camp Weldon was umpiring a game of football
between his own squadron and a company of the Derbys. Owing to the
athletic zeal of the hour, it was big-side, and Weldon was too busy
in keeping his eye upon so many players to pay much attention to his
own loneliness.
In all truth, however, he was lonely. The week since he had rejoined
his squadron had dragged perceptibly. Captain Frazer was in Cape
Town; Carew was still in hospital at Johannesburg where, under the
eyes of Alice Mellen and her cousin, he was fast resuming his old
finical habits. Dingy and veldt-stained though he might be, Carew at
heart would always remain the exquisite. However, exquisite that he
was bound to be, he was even more the soldier, and his gay eyes had
clouded, as he had wrung Weldon's hand in parting.
"Lucky dog!" he said enviously. "I am off duty for two weeks more,
and you are going back to the thick of things. One must take it as
it comes; but I say, old man, don't forget me when the bullets begin
to pelt at you again."
And Weldon had been better than his promise. He had thought of
Carew, day and night, for the entire week, thought of him and missed
him acutely. Carew was an ideal comrade in that he never, under any
circumstances, took himself in earnest.
A leg which will carry a man on horseback is by no means fit for
football. Weldon, finished player that he was, found it tame work to
umpire a team whose sole idea of tactics was to get there in any way
that offered itself. Half an hour sufficed; then, appointing an
understudy, he walked away in search of Paddy. From the midst of a
torrent of instructions to his quartette of black subordinates,
Paddy's voice sang out a cheery greeting.
"Come along, little feller! Come and get something to eat. It's
hungry you ought to be, the day, after the way you've been walking
all over the country on horseback and an empty stomach. Try this, as
a sample of your dinner, and sit down by the edge of the fire,
whilst, and tell me how it tastes."
The iron spoon scraped lustily over the iron dixey. Then Weldon
returned them both with a low bow.
"Like yourself, Paddy, short and sweet."
Paddy brandished the spoon, weapon-wise.
"Short is it, you little Canuck! So is a pepperpot short; but it
holds a hell of a flavor. Leave Paddy a gun in his hand, and his
short legs will keep up with your long ones, when it's the firing
line that's before him."
"The old sing-song, Paddy. Give us something new."
"So will I, when I get my wishing. Till then, you'll hear it over
and over again. A man of my temper, little one, will never rest
content at a firing line that's all surrounded about with ten-quart
pots of boiling beef."
"Why don't you resign, then?"
"Resigned! How can I be resigned? I'm a chunk of dynamite in a
suet-pot, hard to manage and ready to go off at any time that something
strikes me. Meantime, I am like what they say is dirt: matter out of
place."
"Then why don't you get out?" Weldon queried.
"I am out of place now, I'm telling you," Paddy returned, as he
pensively rested his cheek upon the bowl of the spoon in his hand.
"Yes; but why not refuse to stay here as cook?"
Sorrowfully Paddy shook his head, spoon and all.
"That's what I did do, little one."
"And what happened?"
"This." The spoon came into evidence once more. "They blarneyed me
up and they blarneyed me down, and they said nobody could cook like
Paddy. Anybody could shoot a baker's dozen of Boers; but only one
man in the camp could fill up the boys to give them a fit and level
stomach for the battle. And here I am, and here I'm like to be, till
the new moon in the heavens turns to a curly strip of bully beef. If
I'd known the Captain was about to escape to Cape Town, it's Paddy
that would have escaped with him, hanging on to the tail of his
coat. Saint Patrick's vipers! What's that?"
A hum, a spat, and a little spurt of red dust rolled lazily upward.
Then another hum followed. There was a scurry of men, a squeak of
leather, the light clashing of rifles snatched from the stack; and
the troops were off.
Beside them, the nearer hills rose in brick-red patches against the
sky. Farther away, the brick color changed to gray and, still
beyond, to misty purple. Before them rolled the open, khaki-colored
veldt dotted in one direction by a ragged spot of black that flowed
over the crest of each ridge and vanished from sight for a moment
before rising from the hollow to flow over the crest of the ridge
beyond. And towards the ragged spot of black there rushed onward, at
an ever-lessening distance, the khaki-colored streak of the foremost
rank of C Squadron, led for the moment by a little gray broncho
whose hoofs touched the ground only to spurn it backwards.
The chase was long and hot; but the end was in sight. Directly
across the path of the quarry stretched a low line of willows
showing the course of the stream beneath, and, a few hundred feet
this side of the willows, scattered clumps of green marked as many
scattered dwellings. By the largest clump, the quarry halted and
turned to bay, and the pursuers, unable to check their speed, rode
down upon it and crashed through its ranks, regardless of the
pitiless fire, then, sweeping around on the arc of a mammoth
circle, took up their position in the shelter of a walled kraal,
only a few hundred yards away. Then for a moment they halted, face
to face and in absolute silence.
Even after her mad race, the little gray broncho was breathing
deeply and easily; but Weldon could feel his own breath come short.
Banged in open order before him were a full half-hundred of the
enemy, bearded, black-coated, bandoliered, grim and stolid and ripe
of years. Beside him were the new captain of the troop and seven
men. They were and alert; but there were only nine of them in all.
And the rest of the troop, it seemed to him, were half the veldt-length
away. Vaguely he wondered whether their distant khaki coats
would look as purple as did the distant khaki-colored hills. Then,
quite inconsequently, as he raised his rifle, he noticed that one of
the Boers had a button hanging loosely on its threads from the front
of his coat. He was rather surprised, the next instant, to see the
Boer pitch forward headlong in the dust. It was some time afterward
that he thought to connect the falling with the crack of his own
rifle.
Piggie bounded sidewise, as the mount of the trooper next Weldon
dropped and lay whimpering like a hurt child. Then she steadied to
the touch of Weldon's hand upon her neck. It was not the first time
he had guided her, unscathed, through a leaden shower. She would
trust him yet once again. As he raised his rifle, her wiry legs were
as steady as four iron rods. He saw another Boer fall and yet
another and a third; but one khaki-colored figure lay stiffly beside
him, and another was dragging itself away to a corner of the kraal,
to give greater space to its unwounded comrades. And still the
bullets whizzed about them, thick and ever thicker.
Piggie shied again. This time a bullet had grazed her neck, and the
sight of the narrow sear filled Weldon's mind with a dull,
unreasoning rage. Brutal to aim at the plucky mounts who bore their
riders so gallantly into the flight where all defensive power was
denied themselves! He paused long enough to pat the firm gray neck,
to feel the answering pressure against his hand. Then he raised his
rifle again and took careful aim, as he breathed a wordless prayer
that chance might guide his bullet into the man who had scarred his
faithful friend. Another Boer dropped; Weldon hoped it was by his
own bullet. Then both he and the gray broncho pricked up their ears
as, close on their flank, they heard the beating of galloping hoofs.
In the shock of the scrimmage that followed, there was scant time to
take thought of friend or of foe. On the heels of his new captain
as, of old, he had been on the heels of Captain Frazer, Weldon and
the gray broncho were in the thick of the fight. Then, as the Boers
sullenly fell backwards, Weldon became aware of a familiar voice in
his ears.
"Whisht, little feller! It's Paddy," the voice said in a spooky
undertone, as its owner ranged up alongside the gray broncho.
"Paddy!" Weldon stared at him in unfeigned astonishment. "What in
the name of heaven are you doing here, man?"
With perfect composure Paddy squared himself in the saddle.
"Little Canuck dear, as I told you before, heaven is a state of
eternal peace, and therefore an undesirable abode in these hot
times. I prefer a whiff of brimstone, myself; and, by the powers,
I've been getting, it." As he spoke, he took off his hat and showed
a neat trio of holes in the left brim.
"But how did you come here, Paddy?" Weldon asked again.
"Took your advice to heart, my jewel, kicked over my pan of fat and
jumped into the fire. Which, being put into straight English, I
swiped a horse and rode off with the rest of the boys on the tail of
the serpent." Weldon gasped, as he realized the enormity of the
crime. Then he laughed. In his haste to gain possession of a mount,
Paddy had taken no thought for his armament. His sole weapon was the
huge iron spoon, still grasped in his left hand.
"Whose horse did you take, Paddy?"
"I d'know. I never looked to see. I popped my toe into the stirrup
and came away, hot-foot; but," Paddy paused for a deliberate wink;
"as I was leaving camp, I thought I heard the voice of that pigeon-toed
little cockney Parrott, him that used to stub his toes on the
wall at Piquetberg Road, acalling out that some one had mislaid his
horse and he couldn't find it. I was sorry; but I was in a divil of
a haste and couldn't stop to condole with him then."
"But, Paddy, they'll run you out of camp for this," Weldon
remonstrated dutifully.
Paddy's shoulder mounted towards his left ear. "I'm thinking I have
run myself out, and that's just what I was meaning to do. I've been
a captain with four lieutenants under me. Any one of them can sling
the pepper and the salt, and they're welcome; but not one has the
fighting blood in his veins as I have. Let them mind their kettles
and leave me to mind the enemy."
"And if they won't let you go back?"
"Then I'll ship myself straight down to Cape Town, and take service
with Captain Frazer. He can fight with the best of them, and he
knows I'm a man. It's riding at his heels I'll be, henceforth and
forevermore."
Turning, Weldon looked long into the jovial Irish face, and at the
hunchy figure that joggled to and fro in the saddle, with no heed to
the rhythm of his horse's pace.
"Who taught you to ride, Paddy?" he asked at length.
For an instant, a lump in Paddy's left cheek betrayed the
whereabouts of his tongue. Then quietly he made answer, "Sure,
little feller, it must have been the grace of Saint Patrick. Nobody
else has ever took a hand in the training of me. But I'll back him
against all the riding masters in London and Aldershot."
And the result showed that Paddy's confidence was not misplaced.