they do sentry and stables and things. This is an afternoon off for them. We really must talk accordingly.”
“What are you and Captain Frazer talking about?”
“Cricket and seven-year locusts.”
Ethel held out her empty cup.
“Very well. Then Mr. Weldon and I will discuss mosquitoes and seven- day Baptists. No sugar, please, and I’d like another of those snappy things.”
“Does that mean a Mauser?” Weldon asked, as he brought back her cup.
“No. I mean biscuits, not cats. But you sinned then. However, my cousin has her eye upon us, so we must be distinctly frivolous. Is there any especially peaceful subject you would like to discuss?”
“Yes. Please explain your name.”
She looked up at him with sudden literalness.
“It is for my grandmother. For four hundred years there has been an Ethel Dent in every generation.”
“I meant the other.”
“Oh, Cooee?” She laughed. “It dates from our first coming out here, when we were children. My old Kaffir nurse–I was only five, that first trip–used to call me so, and every one took it up. We went back to England, after a few weeks, and the name was dropped; but my uncle stayed out here, and he and my cousin always kept the old word.”
Weldon stirred his tea thoughtfully.
“I rather like it, do you know?” he said.
“Surely, you don’t think it fits me?”
His eyes moved from her shining hair to the hem of her elaborate white gown. Then he smiled and shook his head.
“Not to-day, perhaps. But the Miss Dent of the Dunottar Castle–“
She interrupted him a little abruptly.
“Does that mean I am two-sided?”
“No; only complex.”
She smiled in gracious response.
“You did that very well, Mr. Weldon,” she said, with a slight accent of superiority which galled him. Then, before he could reply, she changed the subject, speaking with a lowered voice. “And what of the Captain?”
It suited his mood not to understand her.
“In what way?”
“Every way. What do you think of him?”
Then she drew back, abashed by the fervor of the answer, as he said slowly,–
“That the Creator made him, and then broke the pattern.”
The little pause which followed caught the alert attention of the hostess, and convinced her that it was time to shift the groups to another combination. A swift gesture summoned Weldon to the table, while Frazer dropped into his vacant chair. Ethel met the Captain with only a half-concealed eagerness. This was not the first time that a consciously trivial word of hers had been crushed out of life by Weldon’s serious dignity. She was never quite able to understand his mood upon such occasions. The man was no prig. At times, he was as merry as a boy. At other times, he showed an inflexible seriousness which left her with the vague feeling of being somehow or other in the wrong. The result was a mood of pique, rather than of antagonism. Up to that time, Ethel Dent had known only unreserved approval. Weldon’s occasional gravity, to her mind, suggested certain reservations. By way of overcoming these reservations, she focussed her whole attention upon Captain Leo Frazer. Across the table, Weldon, in the intervals of his talk with his hostess, could hear the low murmur of their absorbed conversation.
It had been at Ethel’s suggestion that the tea-table had been set, that hot afternoon, under the trees in the heart of the garden. Just at the crossing of two broad walks, a vine-roofed kiosk gave shelter from the late sunshine, while its bamboo screens were half raised to show the long perspective of garden walk and distant lawn. Save for the orange grove at the left and the ash-colored leaves of the silver wattle above them, Weldon could almost have fancied himself in England. The lawn with its conventional tennis court was essentially English; English, too, the tray with its fixtures. There, however, the resemblance stopped. The ebony handmaiden who brought out the tray was never found in private life outside the limits of South Africa. When she sought foreign countries, it was merely as a denizen of a midway plaisance.
“Yes, and their names are their most distinctive feature,” Alice assented to Weldon’s comment.
“More than their mouths?” he asked, with a flippant recollection of Kruger Roberts engrossed in his jam tin.
“At least as much so,” she responded, laughing. “You notice that I called our maid Syb. She told me, when she came, that her old master named her Sybarite. I understood it, the next day, when I found her snoring on the drawing-room sofa.”
During the time of her answer, Weldon took his opportunity to look steadily at his young hostess. Up to the moment of the shifting of the groups, he had been too fully absorbed in the pleasure of once more meeting Ethel to pay much heed to any one else. Now he turned his gray eyes upon Alice Mellen, partly from real interest in her personality; partly to counterbalance the rapt attention which Ethel was bestowing upon the Captain. She had been the selfsame Ethel, a bundle of contradictions that attracted him at one moment and antagonized him at the next. He liked her absolutely; his very liking for her increased the sense of antagonism when, for the instant, she departed from his ideals of what she ought to be. And yet, Weldon was candid enough to admit to himself that she departed from them, rather than fell below them. Often as she had antagonized him, she had never really disappointed him.
As for Alice Mellen, he confessed himself surprised. Gathering together all that Ethel had ever told him of her cousin, of her living her entire life out there in the southern end of South Africa, of her desire to be a nurse, he had pieced together an effigy of the combined traits of a Hottentot and a vivandiere. This girl answered to neither description. Her clothes and her manners and her accent all had come, albeit with slow indirectness, from London. Not only would she and her gowns pass muster in a crowd; but furthermore she would end by being the focal point of a good share of that crowd. Nevertheless, Weldon found it impossible to discover her most distinctive point. Even while he sought it, he wondered to himself whether this might not be another cousin of whom he had never heard. The women doctors and nurses at home wore stout shoes and had pockets let in at the seams of their frocks, useful, doubtless, but with an unlovely tendency to yawn and show their contents. This girl was a mere fluff of pale yellow organdie which brought out the purplish lights in her ink-black hair.
“Did you have the heart to disturb her?” he asked, reverting to the subject of Syb’s nap.
“I was forced to. She was on all the cushions, and I needed one for myself. She took it in good part, though. She told me she had been disturbed, the night before, by the snoring of the parrot, two rooms away. As a result, she left me feeling that the apology really ought to come from me.”
“Is that the way of the race?” Weldon queried, as he set down his empty cup. “If so, you make me tremble.”
“Why?”
“Because, without in the least intending it, I have accumulated a boy.”
She looked up suddenly.
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know how. It apparently did itself. It was the day before we went out to be fired at, and he said his name was Kruger Roberts, and I fed him some empty jam tins.”
“A huge black boy with bristly hair?” she interpolated.
“Yes, and a mouth so large that one wonders how his face can hold it all.”
She sat up alertly, resting her folded arms on the edge of the table.
“This becomes interesting. Kruger Roberts is Syb’s avowed and lawful lover.”
Weldon laughed.
“Mine also, as it appears. As I say, I fed him jam tins. There were four of them, and they were very jammy. Then we became interested in the Boers, and I forgot Kruger Roberts. When I came back, yesterday morning, dead tired and my horse all in a mess, I found Kruger Roberts calmly sitting on my extra blankets, cleaning my shoes with Paddy’s best dishcloth. Paddy was in a wild state of mutiny, and told me that that chattering baboon had vowed he was Trooper Weldon’s boy. Since then, I have tried in vain to dislodge him; but it is no use. The Nig is like a piece of satin, and it is all I can do to keep my compressed-paper buttons from winking defiance at the Boers on the northern edge of Sahara.”
Alice Mellen laughed with the air of one who understood the situation.
“You builded better than you knew, Mr. Weldon, and your jam tins will be no house of cards. The Kaffirs are an unaccountable race of beings, lazy and good-natured. Once let them love or hate, though, and all their strength goes into the working out of the feeling. Kruger Roberts obviously has a sweet tooth; the day may come when your enemies may find it changed to a poisoned fang. Do you want the advice of one who knows the country?”
“I do,” he assented heartily.
“Then keep your Kruger Roberts,” she said decisively.
“But what shall I do with him?”
“Let him do for you.”
“As a valet? I’ve never been used to such luxury,” he protested, laughing.
She shook her head.
“Not only valet. He will be groom, cook, guide, interpreter and, whether you wish it or not, your chum. Moreover, he will do it all with the face of a clown and the manner of a tricksy monkey. As a panacea for the blues, you will find him invaluable.”
There was a little pause. Then she added, with a complete change of tone, “My cousin has spoken of you so often, Mr. Weldon.”
“And of you,” he returned.
The directness of her answer pleased him.
“Then we ought to start as friends, and not waste time over mere acquaintance.”
“I thought there were no acquaintances out here,” he answered lightly. “In camp, our first question is: Friend, or foe?”
“In the towns, we have every grade between. Often the same person slides through all the grades in a single day. But you haven’t answered me.”
His eyes met her eyes frankly.
“About the friendship? I thought that wasn’t necessary.”
“Customary, however,” she suggested, with a smile.
“But, as I say, there are no customs here,” he retorted. “At least, I should have said so, this morning. Now I am not so sure.” Then he laughed. “I’ve bungled that horribly, Miss Mellen. What I meant was that you have given me a very good time, this afternoon.”
“Prove it by coming again,” she advised him.
“If I may. I don’t wish to wear out my welcome; but one hasn’t so many friends in South Africa.”
“What about Kruger Roberts?” she reminded him.
“That gives me two.”
“And Captain Frazer?”
Weldon’s eyes lighted.
“Some day, perhaps. I would be willing to wait for that.”
Gravely her glance roved from the alert young Canadian at her side to the older, more steadfast face across the table. Then she shook her head.
“You will not have to wait long, Mr. Weldon?” she said quietly. “Captain Frazer spoke of you, a week ago. I have known him for months; I know what, with him, stands for enthusiasm.”
“I wish you might be a true prophet. I would honor you, even here in your own garden. For the sake of Captain Frazer’s regard, I would give up most things,” he replied, too low to be overheard by the couple who were now chaffing each other above their cooling cups.
Later on, he wondered a little how far the apparent inconsequence of her next question was the result of chance.
“What about Cooee?” she asked, in a voice as low as his own had been.
He hesitated. Then he looked up at her steadily.
“Miss Mellen, I am sure I don’t know,” he answered gravely.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Beastly shame that the Boers hadn’t buried themselves instead of the guns!” Carew remarked, as he wrestled with a tough thong of bully beef which yielded to his jaws much as an India-rubber eraser might have done.
Without making any pretence of extracting nutriment from his own ration, Weldon converted it into a missile and hurled it straight at his companion.
“There’s this difference,” he returned pithily; “a gun is a good enough fellow to deserve Christian burial. Carew, do you ever yearn for the fleshpots?”
Without bringing his jaws to a halt, Carew shook his head.
“Do you?” he asked, after a prolonged interval.
“Yes, if they could be brought here; not otherwise. I like the game; but I also like a little more oats mixed with my fodder. How long is it since we had a square meal?”
“How long since we halted in that pineapple grove, coming up from Durban?” Carew retorted. “That made up for a good deal. You have no cause to rebel, though. Between Paddy and Kruger Bobs, you stand in for all the tidbits that are going.”
With a mock sigh, Weldon pointed backward over his shoulder.
“But unfortunately Kruger Bobs and The Nig are left behind in the shadow of Naauwpoort’s dreary heights. By the way, Carew, does it ever strike you that these Boers make a lot more fuss over their spelling than they do over their pronunciation? At home, we’d get as good results out of dozens less letters.”
“They make as good use of their extra letters as they do of their extra bullets,” Carew returned tranquilly. “They’ve been sniping, all the morning long, and they have only hit a man and a quarter now.”
“Which was the quarter?”
Turning, Carew displayed a jagged hole in his left sleeve. Weldon laughed unfeelingly.
“Can’t you keep out of range, you old target? If there’s a bullet coming your way, it’s bound to graze you.”
“This is only the fourth. Only one of those really meant business. Oh, hang it! There they go again!” he burst out, as a distant line of rocks crackled explosively and, a moment later, a random bullet opened up the side of his shoe.
With the swift change of occupation to which the past four months had accustomed them, they were soon in the saddle and galloping off across the rolling veldt. Before them, a pair of guns were pounding away at the rocky line and its flanking bushes, and beyond, over the crest of the next ridge, scores of thick-set, burly figures were racing in search of shelter, with a fragment of the Scottish Horse in hot pursuit.
Neck and neck in the vanguard raced Weldon and Carew, with Captain Frazer’s huge khaki-colored horse hard on their heels. To Weldon, the next hour was one of fierce excitement and pleasure. The shriek of the shells, long since left behind, the flying figures before them, the rise and fall of his own gray little broncho as she stretched herself to measure the interminable veldt, the khaki- colored desert, dotted with huge black rocks and shimmering with the heat waves which rose above it towards the midday sun: his pulses tingled and his head throbbed with the glorious rush of it all.
And then the slouching figures were met by other slouching figures, and reluctantly Weldon drew in his horse, as the halt was ordered. Only madness would prolong the chase against such heavy odds. Mere sanity demanded that the troopers should delay until the column came up. The action must wait, while the heliograph flashed its call for help. Weldon grumbled low into Carew’s ear, as the minutes dragged themselves along, broken only by indeterminate volleys.
“I have exactly five rounds left,” he said at length. “I believe in obedience, Carew; but, when I get this used up, by jingo, I’ll pitch into those fellows on my own account.”
“Keep cool,” Carew advised him temperately. “You always were a thriftless fellow; you must have been wasting your fire. Oh, I say, what’s the row in the rear?”
“The column, most likely. It’s time, too. Those fellows would be on us in a minute. Ah ha!” And Weldon drew a quick breath of admiration, as the guns came up at the gallop under the watchful eye of the Imperial Yeomanry.
Once in position on a rise to the left, quickly the guns unlimbered and opened fire, while the sergeants gathered around the boxes of spare cartridges on the ground beside the panting ammunition horse. Then at last came the order for the advance, the order so eagerly awaited by Weldon, maddened by his long exposure to the bullets of his unseen foe. In extended order, the squadrons galloped forward until their goal was a scant five hundred yards away, when of a sudden a murderous fire broke out from the rocks in front of them, emptying many a saddle and dropping many a horse. Under such conditions, safety lay only in an unswerving charge.
Close on their leaders’ heels, the troopers spurred forward and, revolver in right hand, rifle in left, they charged over the remaining bit of ground and into the midst of the Boer position. Briton and Boer met, face to face. Revolvers cracked; Boers dropped.
Mausers crashed; Britons fell. And then, through and over, the British charge had passed.
Even then Weldon found no place for pause. From behind the Boer position, a band of their reinforcements came galloping down upon him. Caught between the two lines, the squadrons wheeled about, fell again upon the broken enemy, dashed through them and, amid the leaden hail, retired upon their own guns. And now once more the gunners could reopen fire, and the shells dropped thick and fast. The moment for a general advance had come. In open order, a thousand men dashed forward and reached the ridge, only to see the retiring foe galloping away in all directions across the open veldt. A halt was ordered, to rest the winded mounts. Pickets were thrown out on front and flank, while the British awaited their approaching convoy. That night, the column rested upon the veldt at Vlaakfontein.
After the rush of the day, its hope and its succeeding disappointment, Weldon was long in falling asleep. Carew was out on picket; Captain Frazer, coat off and sleeves rolled to his shoulders, was busy among the wounded, and Weldon had cared to make few other close friends in the squadron. Around him, he could hear the murmurs of other sleepless ones; but he lay silent, his arms under his head, his face turned upward to the shining perspective of the stars. In similar perspective there ranged them-selves before his mind the events of the past twelve weeks.
Already the month at Piquetberg Road seemed a chapter out of another volume. It had culminated in that languid afternoon spent around the tea-table under the wattle tree in the garden, culminated there and also ended there. With the unexpectedness that marks all things in a time of war, the next noon found him steaming across the Cape Flats, with Maitland in sight. Two days later, they were loaded on an empty hospital ship returning to Durban. Piquetberg Road was child’s play now, for the front was almost in sight. The voyage had been beastly; but after it had come the real beginning of things. Natal, in those days of late February, had seemed deserving of its name, a true Garden of Africa. The crossing was now a memory of heavy grades, of verdant country, of ripened fruits. There had been the week’s delay at Pietermaritzburg where they had tasted a bit of civilization in the intervals of completing their outfits; there had been the brief stop at Ladysmith, already recovered from her hardships of the year before, then the crossing the border into the Transvaal where the verdure slowly vanished to give place to the dreary wastes of red- brown veldt. At Johannesburg, he had manufactured an excuse for a long letter to Ethel who–
“Show a leg there!”
The sergeant’s voice at his ear called him back to the realities of life. He sat up as alertly as if he had slept upon eider-down.
By eight o’clock, Weldon was out on the veldt, two miles from camp. Before him, a force of Yeomanry was guarding the two guns; around him, a detail from his own squadron protected the flank on the right. And, still farther to the right, a cloud of yellowish smoke rose skyward across the yellower sunshine. Then, of a sudden, out from the heart of the wall of smoke came a muffled thud and roar, confused at first, growing strident and more detached until, sweeping from the haze of smoke, five score Boer horsemen rode in a bolt-like rush, fierce and uncheckable. Without swerving to right or left, they charged straight towards the Yeomanry drawn up beside the guns, drove them back and shot down the gunners almost to a man. An instant later, the guns were whirled about and trained upon their quondam owners.
From over his breakfast, that morning, the General raised his head to listen to the booming of the fifteen-pounders. No need to tell him that heavy fighting had begun. His experienced ear had taught him that magazine firing meant business. His hand went in search of his field-glasses.
“General, the enemy have captured the guns. The Major asks for assistance to retake them.”
The General lowered his glasses. Covered with dust, and breathless, Weldon was before him.
“Mount every available man, and gallop to the scene of action!”
Orderlies carried the command to the different regiments. Before the mounted men could start, the infantry were half-way to the guns. But already shells were falling into the camp, telling every man that the guns were in the hands of the Boers.
In the forefront of the remainder of his squadron, Weldon found himself borne onward in the rush, straight from the camp to the right flank of the guns. The broncho’s swinging trot had long since changed to a gallop, and her eyes were flashing with the wicked light of her old, unbroken days, as she went tearing across the sun- baked veldt, up and down over the rises and through the rare bits of thicket at a pace which Weldon would have been powerless to check. He had no mind to check it. The crisp air, full of ozone and warmed by the sun, set his cheeks to tingling with its impact. A true rider, he let his mood follow the temper of his horse and, like a pair of wild things, they went bolting away far towards the head of the squadrons.
And always the firing of the guns grew nearer and faster and more murderous.
He took no note of passing moments, none of the miles he had ridden during the past days. These counted for naught, while, with photographic distinctness, the picture before him fixed itself sharply in his mind: the dust-colored troops on the dusty veldt, the brown-painted guns, the distant line of the enemy’s fire and, far to the eastward, the wall of smoke which was fast sweeping towards them from the acres of burning veldt.
“Captain Frazer, the General orders you to take up your position in the kraal on the extreme right, and to hold it at any cost.”
From his place at the Captain’s side, Weldon glanced at the orderly, then, turning, looked across the veldt to the four gray walls surrounding the clump of trees a mile away. His hand tightened on the curb, and he straightened in the saddle, as the Captain led the way into the purgatory beyond, an orderly purgatory, but crossed with leaden lines of shot and shell.
At such moments, the brain ceases to act coherently. When Weldon came to himself, he was kneeling behind the old gray wall, revolver in hand, firing full in the faces of the Boer horsemen, scarce fifteen feet away. Carew, his right foot dangling, had been hustled to the rear of the kraal where the gray broncho and her mates were in comparative shelter.
“Weldon?”
He looked up in a half-dazed fashion. The wall of smoke was already shutting down about the retreating Boers. Beside him stood the Captain, his yellow hair clinging to his dripping face, his blue eyes, under their fringe of black lashes, glittering like polished gems. Coated as he was with dust and sweat, his clothing torn and spotted with the fray, he looked ten times more the gallant gentleman, even, than when he had met Weldon in the heart-shaped bit of lawn encircled by the Dents’ driveway. Now he held out his hand.
“Splendidly done, old man! One doesn’t forget such things.”
CHAPTER NINE
Captain Frazer had scarcely finished speaking, when the voice of the General sounded in their ears.
“A plucky attack and a plucky defeat, Captain Frazer. Kemp is a man worth fighting. You are not wounded?”
“Thanks to Trooper Weldon,” the Captain told him, with a smile.
The General’s keen glance included them both.
“Good! And now can you spare me a trusty man? One who can ride? I must have some despatches at Krugersdorp before midnight. I should like some one from your squadron.”
The eyes of Captain Frazer and Weldon met. Again the General’s keen glance was on them both; then it concentrated itself upon the younger man.
“I am ready,” he answered to its unspoken question.
“You are sure you are fit? It is forty miles, and the rain will be on us inside of an hour.”
“It makes no difference.”
As he spoke, Weldon felt himself surveyed from hat to shoelace.
“Very well. Get yourself fed, and come to my tent in an hour. It will be better to wait until dusk before starting, for these hills are infested with Boers. Do you know the country?”
“Partly. I can learn the rest.”
“You need a remount.”
Weldon stroked the little gray broncho.
“If I had my own horse. Otherwise, I prefer this. I can trust her, even if she is tired.”
Again the glance swept him over, beginning at the boyish face, resolute and eager beneath its streaks of red-brown dust. Then, as Weldon saluted, the General turned and rode away, with the Captain at his side.
“You’ve the making of a man there, Captain Frazer,” was his sole comment.
Weldon, meanwhile, was allowing the little gray broncho to pick her own dainty way out of the shambles about her feet. Then, once free from the litter of men and horses, he turned her head to the spot where, he had been told, his squadron were gathering together their diminished forces. As he rode slowly onward, he was surprised to see how low the sun had dropped. The fighting must have lasted longer than he had thought. It had been hot and heavy; but at least he had not funked it. For so much he could be thankful. In so far as he could recall any of his emotions as he had dashed into range of the pitiless firing, they had been summed up in a dull rage against the enemy, mingled with a vague hope that no harm should come to the plucky little mount. Just one instant’s pause he could remember. That was when he had put forth all his strength to check her pace until he could readjust a strap that was plainly galling her. And afterwards? Not even the thoroughbred Nig could have played her part in the fight with more steady gallantry. Stooping, he eased the bit and patted the firm gray neck where the mane swept upward for its arching fall.
“Boss?”
He straightened in his saddle.
“Kruger Bobs! By all special providences, where did you come from?”
“Naauwpoort. Kruger Bobs come bring Nig to Boss.”
“Kruger Bobs, you’re a genius.”
Kruger Bobs vanished behind his smile.
“Ya, Boss,” he replied then. “Boss all right?”
“Yes, all right.”
“Dutchmans no killed Boss?”
“No.”
Doubtfully Kruger Bobs shook his sable bristles. He had heard the firing, such firing as he had never dreamed of until then, and it seemed to him impossible that any man could come unscathed out of the heart of it. Of Weldon’s being in the very heart of it, no doubt had once stained the loyal whiteness of his soul. To assure himself of Weldon’s safety, he ambled around the gray broncho in a clumsy circle. The gray broncho showed her appreciation of the attention by nipping viciously at the flank of his horse. By Weldon’s left side, Kruger Bobs halted and pointed an accusing forefinger at his knee.
“Dutchmans hurt Boss,” he said anxiously.
“Where?”
“Dere.” In spite of his effort for sternness, the voice of Kruger Bobs quavered with anxiety.
Bending over, Weldon glanced down at the dark red stain on the coil of khaki serge. Then, all at once, he remembered the sudden stinging of his leg, just before he had started the gray broncho on her last mad rush across the lead-swept plain. In the excitement that followed, the matter had entirely passed out of his mind. Even now that his attention was called to it, he was conscious of no physical discomfort.
“Kruger Bobs go for doctor?” the boy was urging.
Weldon laughed reassuringly.
“It’s nothing, Kruger Bobs. I’ve no time to fool with doctors now.”
“What Boss do?”
“Feed Piggie, eat something, look up Mr. Carew and then get to the General’s tent, inside an hour.”
“What for de big boss soldier?”
“He wants me.”
“Ya?” Kruger Bobs demanded uneasily.
“To ride a despatch.”
“Despatch!” Kruger Bobs exploded in hot wrath. “Kruger Bobs go despatch; Boss go bed.” “Can’t do it, Kruger Bobs. This is war, and I’ve given my word to the General. It was an order, and I had to do it.” Backing his horse off for a step or two, Kruger Bobs sat looking at his master and shaking his head mournfully. Then he straightened in the saddle.
“Boss go; Kruger Bobs go, too,” he said, with steady decision.
Less than an hour later, outside the General’s tent Kruger Bobs sat astride The Nig, with the rein of the gray broncho in his hand. The clouds, since noon banked low in the eastern horizon, had swept up across the sky, and already the rain was pattering drearily over the hunched-up shoulders of Kruger Bobs. Inside the tent, the colloquy was brief. Twice Weldon repeated over the substance of his despatches and his instructions regarding their destination. The despatches were slipped between the layers of his shoe-sole, the cut stitches were replaced, and Weldon rose to his feet.
“My nigger has come from Naauwpoort, bringing me a fresh mount,” he said then. “May I take him with me?”
“What is he?”
“A Kaffir.”
“From where?”
“Piquetberg Road.”
“Can you trust him?”
Weldon’s eyes met the eyes of the General steadily. “As I would trust myself,” he answered.
Five minutes later, Weldon passed out of the tent door. At his quarters, he dismounted and went in search of a blanket. Muffled in the thick folds, the horses’ feet would make no sound on the hard- baked earth. Kruger Bobs, meanwhile, went out to reconnoitre in order to discover a possible gap in the line of Boer pickets.
The pickets once passed, Weldon mounted once more and, with Kruger Bobs following close behind, rode carefully away into the inky, drizzling night. For the first hour, he rode steadily and with comparative comfort. The excitement of the battle was still in his blood, its noises ringing in his head, its sights dancing like will- o’-the-wisps before his eyes. Later, the inevitable reaction would follow, and the inevitable weariness. Now, refreshed by their supper, both he and the broncho had come to their second wind, and they faced the storm pluckily and with unbowed heads. Beside him, The Nig, fresh and fit as a horse could be, galloped onward steadily under the weight of Kruger Bobs. It had been at Weldon’s own command that Kruger Bobs had abandoned his raw-boned steed and placed himself astride the sacred body of the thoroughbred Nig. On such a night and after such a battle, a horse abandoned was a horse forever lost. Neither The Nig nor Piggie could be left to any chance ownership, but neither could Piggie, fresh from a two-day fight, be left to the mercies of an inexperienced rider. Three inches shorter than his master, Kruger Bobs weighed fifty pounds the more, and he rode with the resilient lightness of a feather bed.
Weldon’s hour of rest had been divided in strict ratio between himself, his friend and his horse. For fully half that period, he and Kruger Bobs had rubbed the sturdy gray legs and anointed the scratched neck with supplies taken from the portable veterinary hospital always to be found in the recesses of the Kaffirs scanty garments. Then, snatching a hasty meal, with the last of it still in his hands, Weldon strode away to look for Carew. He found him, bandaged but jovial, a shattered bone in his foot and his pipe in his shut teeth. Fortunately the pain bore no relation to the seriousness of the case, and Weldon left him to his pipe, cheered by the doctor’s assurance that two or three weeks would bring him back into fighting trim. Carew’s own disrespectful comments on the injured foot were still in his ears, as he entered the tent of the General.
By degrees, the night grew dark and darker. Riding eastward with their backs to the southerly storm, nevertheless now and again the wind swirled about fiercely, to send the lashing rain against their faces. Under their feet, the dusty veldt turned to mire, from mire to a pasty glue, and from glue to the consistency of cream. Bottom there was none; the bottomlessness of it only became more apparent when one or other of the horses stumbled into the hole of an ant- bear. Twice the gray broncho was on her knees; once The Nig came down so sharply that Kruger Bobs rolled forward out of his saddle, to land on his back, nose to nose with his astonished mount. Worst of all, the fever of the fight was dying out from Weldon’s veins. His pulses were slowing down, and the ceaseless jar of the gray broncho’s gallop waked his wounded leg to a pain which fast became intolerable.
Kruger Bobs edged closer to his side.
“Boss sick?” he asked.
“Not altogether content, Kruger Bobs.”
“Leg?” the boy questioned anxiously.
“Yes; that–and some other things.”
“Me help Boss?”
“No, thank you. I’d better let the mess alone.”
“Boss ride Nig?” Kruger Bobs suggested, in the hushed tone in which all their talk had been carried on.
“It is better not to change.”
The silence broadened, broken only by the splashing of eight hoofs in the ever-deepening mire, and by the sighing squeak of wet strap rubbing on wet strap. Then Kruger Bobs spoke again.
“Paddy send,” he said, as he poked a soft parcel into Weldon’s dangling hand. “He say ‘Give it to little Canuck.'”
Weldon felt and tasted his way into the parcel. It was large, and filled with savory bits which Paddy must have gleaned here and there from the general mess, robbing freely from many a greater man, all for the sake of the “little Canuck.”
It was no time for the discipline which bids a servant eat of the crumbs from his master’s table. For the hour, Kruger Bobs and he were friends, bound upon one and the same errand. With impartial hand, Weldon tore the paper across and divided its contents. He only regretted that convention had forbidden him the trick of smacking his lips in sign of relish. It would have been good to have the ability of Kruger Bobs to give audible token of his appreciation of Paddy’s bounty.
Somewhat refreshed, he straightened in his saddle.
“Now be careful, Kruger Bobs. There are Boers in these hills,” he warned his companion; “and it would never do for us to be sniped.”
Kruger Bobs came close to his side.
“Dutchmans kill Kruger Bobs, no matter; kill Boss, no take despatch. Boss say to Kruger Bobs where de despatch. Kruger Bobs take him to Krugersdorp, if Boss die.”
And Weldon shivered a little, as the silence dropped again.
The ridges were steeper now, and came in more swift succession, as the horsemen plodded wearily along the southern slope of the Rand. Piggie was breathing heavily; and Weldon, clinging to his saddle with the purely mechanical grip of the exhausted rider, halted again and again to rest the plucky little animal whose best was always his for the asking. Of his own condition he took no heed. It was all in the game. He would play the game out as long as he could; but his last move should be, as his first had been, strictly according to rule. Meanwhile, for two facts he was at a loss to account. Dawning was still hours distant. Nevertheless, the darkness before him was blotted and blurred with alternating waves of blue and gray. The veldt was empty; yet, above the roar of the rain around him, an odd purring sound was in his ears. Then everything lost itself in his determination not to allow the saddle to slip from between his tired knees.
He roused himself at the challenging voice of a picket.
“Despatches for General Kekewich,” he answered, in a voice which seemed to his own ears to have come from miles away.
“Advance and give the countersign.”
Irritably he gathered himself together.
“I can’t, I tell you. I don’t know your blasted countersign. I’ve despatches from Dixon to General Kekewich. Take me to him at once.”
The colloquy lasted for moments, in a drawn battle of determination. Its stimulus had waked Weldon from his lethargy; it had also waked again that fierce and throbbing pain below his knee. He left the sentry in no doubt, either of the truth of his statement, or of his mood. Then, with Kruger Bobs at his side, he plodded forward towards the lights of the town, while he braced himself for a final effort.
Fifteen minutes later, he reached the second line of pickets. The gray broncho’s head drooped pitifully, as Weldon sat waiting for the inevitable challenge. It came at last; and Weldon’s answering voice was slow with a weakness which was not all feigned.
“Despatches from Dixon’s column. Take me to the Commandant, please.”
He was dimly aware of a hand on his bridle, dimly conscious that Piggie was being led forward for a seemingly endless distance. As they halted in front of a gray stone building, Weldon dimly heard the tingling of many bells within, then the hurried opening of a window, and a voice demanding the cause of the disturbance below. He felt himself going fast; but, gripping his will with all his might, he pulled himself together long enough to answer,–
“Despatches for General Kekewich between the soles of my left boot.”
Then he pitched forward on his broncho’s neck.
CHAPTER TEN
“Twelve inches make one foot, six feet make one man, sixty men make one troop, four troops make one squadron,” the monotonous voice ran on. Then it came to an unexpected finale. “And three squadrons make the Boer army run.”
The man in the next bed giggled. His wound was in his shoulder, and it had left his sense of humor unimpaired. As a rule, the fighting records of the wounded never came inside that long, bed-bordered room; but there were few within it now who were ignorant of the plucky ride made by the lean, boyish-looking Canadian trooper. A part of the story had come by way of the doctor in charge of the ambulance train which had brought him from Krugersdorp to Johannesburg, a part of it had come from the trooper’s own lips, and that was the most tragic part of it all.
Below, in the courtyard of the hospital, Kruger Bobs squatted on his heels in the sun and waited. Now and then, he vanished to look after the creature comforts of The Nig and the little gray broncho; now and then he shuffled forward to demand news from some passer-by whose sleeve was banded with the Red-Cross badge. Then he shuffled back to his former post and sat himself down on his heels once more. Kruger Bobs possessed the racial traits which make it an easy matter to sit and wait for news. He was also an optimist. Nevertheless, his face now was overcast and rarely did it vanish behind the spreading limits of his smile.
For four days, Weldon lay prostrate and babbled of all things, past, present and to come. Three names dotted his babblings. One was that of his mother, one of his captain, and the third that of Ethel Dent. With all three of them, he appeared to be upon the best of terms. Finally, on the fifth day, he suddenly waked to the fact that a woman was bending above him, to wipe his face with a damp sponge.
He was too weak to rise. Nevertheless, he straightened himself into a rigid line, and addressed her with dignity.
“I beg your pardon. Please don’t wash my face for me,” he said, in grave displeasure.
She smiled down at him, with the air of a mother smiling at a fretful child. The smile irritated him.
“Doesn’t it refresh you?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he answered, with flat, ungracious, mendacity.
“I am sorry. You have been sleeping heavily, and–“
He felt his mind slipping out of his own grasp, and he strove to hold it in his keeping.
“No matter now,” he interrupted hastily. “Please get me–“
She waited in silence. Then she asked encouragingly,–
“What shall I get you?”
The mind was almost gone; but still he held fast to the edge of it, as he murmured,–
“Some bully beef.”
The nurse turned away. Her lips were smiling; but her eyes clouded, as the babbling began once more.
Twenty-four hours later, she was greeted by a white-faced, clear- headed trooper.
“Good-morning, nurse,” he said coolly. “You see I am better.”
“Much better, Mr. Weldon,” she assented cordially. He looked puzzled. “I thought we fellows in hospital had no names, nothing but numbers,” he answered.
“It depends. When one meets an old friend, the number isn’t quite the right name for him.”
Turning slightly, he stared up at her with the impassive curiosity of a man just coming back from The Unknown. Then he shook his head.
“I am afraid–” he began slowly.
With a quick gesture, she took off her crisp white cap, uncovering a heavy pile of ink-black hair. “There!” she said, with a smile. “Does that make me look more natural, Mr. Weldon? I am Alice Mellen, Cooee Dent’s cousin.”
Instantly he put out his hand, sunburned still, but curiously thin. The smile on his lips was the boyish, frank smile which Alice had seen and liked, that afternoon in the garden at home.
“What good angel brings you here?” he asked eagerly.
“No angel; merely the lady who rules over the household of Mars. I am glad to find you again, even if the Johannesburg hospital isn’t a good place for a man. But you mustn’t talk now. Later, we can make up for lost time.”
Impetuously his fingers shut on a fold of her apron. Then his native instincts and his years of training asserted themselves, and he let go once more. Nevertheless, his eyes were appealing.
“Don’t go.”
“But I must,” she answered, her hands busy with her cap.
Her tone showed that, like himself, she too had learned the meaning of an order. He yielded to its quiet firmness.
“If you must. But, before you go, tell me this: have I been off my head?”
She nodded in assent.
He frowned.
“Sorry,” he said briefly. “Please answer me honestly. Have I mumbled things and made a blasted fool of myself?”
It was still two days before he was allowed to talk to his own satisfaction. Then, one afternoon in her rest hour, Alice Mellen let him have his way and, seated by his cot, she answered tersely to a raking fire of terse questions.
“How long have I been here?”
“Just a week.”
“How did I get here?”
“Hospital train from Krugersdorp.”
“What for?”
“You had a touch of fever. We could treat you better here.” Her replies were man-like in their brevity.
“Fever? I thought it was a Mauser bullet.”
“It was. Your leg was not so bad; but the long ride and the exposure to the storm–“
He interrupted her.
“What do you know about my ride?” he asked.
Her answer showed that the woman was not lost in the nurse.
“Everybody knows of your ride. Even in these days of plucky deeds, we are proud of you.”
He shook his head, though the color came into his cheeks, brown beneath their pallor.
“It was nothing. I did my duty.”
“So Kruger Bobs has informed us.”
“Kruger Bobs? Is he here?”
This time, she laughed outright.
“I should say he was. For a week, he has been sitting exactly in the path of the doctors, waiting for news. Twice he has been ordered off; but he merely hitches over to the other end of the steps and refuses to budge farther. We discovered him, the first night you were here, by having the bead surgeon fall headlong over him, as he went down the steps. Kruger Bobs doesn’t show up well, on a dark night.”
Weldon clasped his hands at the back of his head.
“If I thought you were using American slang, Miss Mellen, I should contradict you,” he answered, with a touch of his old humor. “I can remember at least one dark night when Kruger Bobs made an excellent showing.”
She nodded.
“We have bad a few Americans here before, Mr. Weldon. I think I understand.”
“How long have you been here?” he asked, after a pause.
“Ten weeks.”
“And you like it?”
“Why else should I be here?”
“From a sense of duty.”
“Is that what brought you out?”
“No. My coming was inevitable. It seemed a part of me that I couldn’t help.”
“But you wished to come?” she queried.
“Of course. But that was only a Dart of it. I have wished to do things before, and have done them. This was quite different. It all seemed a part of Fate, and I walked through it, like a puppet with somebody else’s hand pulling the strings.” He paused and shook his head. “It is no use. I can’t make you understand it. I acted freely and did just what I chose; but yet, all the time, I felt as if it had all been arranged for me, whole generations ago.”
Thoughtfully she bent forward, straightened the coverings above his wounded leg; then sat up again. Then she shook her head a little regretfully.
“No,” she said. “I am afraid I don’t understand. Perhaps it is because I am selfish; but I usually feel as if I made my plans, regardless of Fate.”
“What about our meeting here?” he asked quizzically.
She answered in the same tone.
“Wait until we see what comes out of it. Fate, if one believes in such a thing, only works in an endless chain.”
“And the broken links?”
“According to your notion, there should be none,” she retorted. “Fate ought to be a better workman than that.”
“Than what?”
“Than spoiling her work as she goes along. If there’s any chain at all, it should be endless and durable. But a man with a Mauser hole in his leg and a fever in his head has no business to be talking of Fate. Let’s talk about Ethel, instead.”
He settled himself back comfortably.
“Perhaps it amounts to the same thing, in the long run.”
“Perhaps. I don’t see how, though. Anyway, Ethel wouldn’t be pleased with the notion. She is absolutely independent, and generally arranges things according to her own sweet will.”
“Where is she now?”
“In Cape Town,” Alice answered, quite unaware of her own lack of truth.
“And well?”
“Gloriously. In fact, as far as I can learn, Cooee always is well. Just now she is having a wonderfully gay time. Since Lord Roberts went back to England, Cape Town has been full of people, resting there before sailing for home.”
“Resting?”
“Haven’t they earned the right?” she questioned, in swift challenge to the quiet scorn in his tone.
“Even if the battles are over, the fighting isn’t,” he answered tersely. “The glory doesn’t lie entirely in the pulverizing the Boer army; there’s a little left for the men who are sweeping up the pieces.”
Her trained eye saw the rising color in his face. Swiftly she changed the subject.
“Glory for all, enough and to spare,” she replied. “But, as I say, Cape Town is crowded with officers, lying up for repairs, and Ethel is queen bee among them. It’s not only for herself; it is what you would call Fate. She happens to be the only girl of her set who is just out from London; she had met a good many of them there, and now she is holding a veritable salon. She even has one sacred teacup, set up on a high shelf ever since the day that Baden-Powell used it.”
Weldon smiled.
“Miss Dent is a hero-worshipper,” he commented.
“So are we all, in certain directions. Moreover, most women like their heroes to have a little personality. One can’t make one’s admiration stick to a blank wall of impersonal perfection.”
Weldon’s mind moved swiftly backwards to two blue, black-fringed eyes glowing out from a dust-streaked face.
“No,” he assented; “but neither can one ever really be chums with his hero. Or, even if he can, he doesn’t care to try the experiment.”
Alice glanced at her watch, rose, then lingered.
“I am not so sure of that,” she replied thoughtfully. “I want the pedestal of my hero to be a low one; and Cooee declares that she wishes no pedestal at all. If her hero is worthy of the name, he must bear inspection even from above. The worst flaw of all might lurk in the very crown of his head.”
Half an hour later, she came back again.
“Mr. Weldon, do you feel strong enough to see Kruger Bobs for exactly five minutes?” she asked.
The gray eyes lighted.
“For ten times five,” he answered eagerly.
Kruger Bobs shuffled in upon the heels of an orderly. Under his bristly hair, his face was a study of mingled emotions which culminated in his mouth. A grin of pure happiness had drawn up the upper lip; at sight of his prostrate master, the lower one was rolling outward in a sudden wave of pure pity. Beside the cot, he halted and stood looking down at Weldon with eyes which, for the moment, transformed his lazy, jolly, simian face into a species of nobility. Lying back on his pillow, Weldon waited for him to speak, waited with an odd, restless beating of the heart for which he was wholly at a loss to account.
The pause between them lengthened. At last Kruger Bobs drew his mangy brown felt hat across his eyes.
“I’s here, Boss,” he said simply.
However, it was enough.
The next morning found Weldon sitting up. A clean-cut hole through the flesh of a man who has lived a clean-cut life is swift in healing. Now that his fever had left him, his superb vitality was asserting itself once more, and he rallied quickly. Meanwhile, it was good to be able to sit up and eat his breakfast like a civilized being. Weldon had all the detestation of the average healthy being for invalid ways. Moreover, he longed to be up and doing. With his growing strength, the orderly, noiseless routine of the hospital came upon his nerves. One of the nurses always walked on the points of her toes; and he was conscious of a wild longing to throw a pillow at her, as she went diddling to and fro past him, a dozen times a day. The doctor, a man of iron nerve and velvet hand, was a daily delight to him. And there was always Alice, frank, friendly and altogether enjoyable. During the past three days, their liking had grown apace. Absolutely feminine, yet with the healthy impersonality of a growing boy, Alice Mellen was a born comrade, and Weldon enjoyed her just as, in her place, he would have enjoyed Carew.
She came down the ward, that morning, and paused beside his chair.
“You look like your old self at last,” she said, as she held out her hand in congratulation.
“I might echo your words,” he answered, while he looked up into her eyes, shining with merriment and with something that yet seemed to him closely akin to annoyance. “Granted the apron, you might be pouring tea at home.”
“Not tea; but malted milk, in these latter days,” she said, laughing. “But I am about to retire from your case. May I introduce your new nurse, Mr. Weldon?”
His reluctant assent was changed to eager greeting. Light, swift steps came down the room; a tall figure stopped at his side in the full glare of a sunshiny window which all at once seemed focussing its light upon waving strands and heaped-up coils of vivid yellow hair.
“Cooee!” Then, too late, he bethought himself of his manners and tried to bite the word off short.
Linking her arm in that of her cousin, the girl stood looking down at him with merry, mocking blue eyes.
“Invalids are supposed to have privileges denied to well men,” she answered demurely. “It might perhaps be Cooee here, to-day; but it will have to be Miss Dent, to-morrow, when you are back in the field again. After all, it is hardly worth while to make the change, Trooper Weldon.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Upon one side, at least, the meeting between the two cousins on the previous night had been wholly unexpected.
Late that afternoon, an ambulance train had come in, loaded with men from the over-crowded field hospital at Krugersdorp, and for hours Alice had been in ceaseless attendance upon the surgeon in charge. Little by little, the girl had found her nerves steadying down to the task in hand; nevertheless, the past ten weeks, in return for the increase of her poise, had taken something from her vitality. Quickness of eye, firmness of hand, evenness of temper: all these may be gifts of the gods. Their use is a purely human function, and proportionately exhausting. The girl’s one salvation lay in the fact that her quick sympathy with her patients was for the most part impersonal. Up to this time, Weldon had been her only patient whom she had known outside the routine duties of her hospital life. In a sense, it had been a relief to meet some one whom she knew to be of her own world; in a sense, the case had worn upon her acutely. She could watch with a greater degree of stolidity the sufferings of other men.
Among her new charges, that day, only one had made any distinct impression upon her overworked brain. That was a jovial young fellow, handsome as Phoebus Apollo, in spite of a slashing scar across one cheek. He had answered to her questions regarding his wounded foot with an accent so like that of Weldon that involuntarily she lingered beside him to add a word of cheery consolation. His was her final case, that night. As she wearily turned towards her own room, she made no effort to analyze her exhaustion.
She found Ethel, still in her hat and jacket, sitting on the edge of her own narrow cot.
“Cooee Dent!”
“Yes, dear.” The girl’s tone was nonchalant, even while the telltale color came into her cheeks.
“What are you doing here?”
“Visiting you, of course.”
“Visiting me! But, Cooee, I really don’t know where I can put you.”
With perfect composure, Ethel passed her hand over the surface of the cot.
“Oh, I think this nutmeg-grater will carry two. Still, Alice, I must say that your hospitality isn’t exactly exuberant.”
Alice dropped into a chair and wearily pushed her hair still farther back from her forehead.
“But, Cooee–“
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” Ethel demanded.
“Certainly. You are always a dear; but–I wish I had known you were coming.”
Ethel raised her brows, and a slight edge came into her voice.
“If you don’t want me, Alice, I can go home in the morning.”
Dimly aware that her cousin was fencing with an invisible adversary, nevertheless Alice Mellen was too tired, that night, to range herself upon the side of that adversary. As far as she was concerned, Ethel had dropped upon her like a bolt from the blue. She was too busy, too absorbed in her patients to give more than a passing thought to even her most intimate cousin. And besides, Weldon–She pulled herself together sharply.
“Of course I want you, Cooee dear. It is only a bit sudden, and I am trying to think what to do with you.”
Now and then Ethel turned wayward. This was one of the times.
“If you didn’t know what to do with me, Alice, then why did you ask me to come?”
“But I didn’t,” Alice responded, too astonished to modify her denial into a polite form of fibbing.
Ethers tone was gently superior.
“Oh, yes; you did.”
“When?”
“When you were leaving home. You said then that I must be sure to come up to spend a week with you, early in the winter.” Then her accent changed. “You poor tired child!” she said, as she rose and crossed to her cousin’s side. “This work is too hard for you; you look as if you had been fighting the Boers themselves, instead of merely enteric and bullet holes. I think it is just as well that I am here to look out for you, for a few days.”
Alice lifted her hand to the hand that lay against her cheek.
“I am glad to see you, Cooee dear. I am only so surprised that it makes me slow to tell you so. If you can sleep here, to-night, I can find a better place for you in the morning.”
“This will do,” Ethel answered, while she slowly drew the pins from her hat. “It is neat, even if it isn’t spacious. Really, Alice, I should have let you know; but it was only just as I was starting that I found I could come at all. Father is at home, and mother is unusually well, and I thought I would best make the most of the opportunity.”
Crossing the room to the table, she stood with her back to her cousin, while she smoothed the feathers in her hat. Then, without turning, she asked abruptly,–
“How is Mr. Weldon?”
“Better.”
“Out of all danger?”
“Yes. Not that he has been in much danger, anyway.”
“Oh, I thought–“
Then silence fell.
Alice, meanwhile, was busy with a swift calculation. Five days, in these troubled times, for a letter to go from Johannesburg to Cape Town; five days since Ethel could have left Cape Town. And her one letter to Ethel since Weldon’s arrival had been posted just three days before.
“How did you know Mr. Weldon was here?” she asked sharply.
Ethel’s back was still turned towards her. Nevertheless, she could see the scarlet tide mounting to the ears and to the roots of the vivid gold hair.
“Why, your letter, Alice,” Ethel answered composedly.
Alice’s laugh was sharp and edged with malice.
“Yes, dear. My letter, telling you of his being here, will be delivered at your house to-morrow morning.”
“Oh, then I must have mixed things up,” Ethel replied, as she turned to face her cousin. “Probably Captain Frazer told me.”
“Captain Frazer?”
“Yes, he came down to Cape Town, just before I left there. I remember now, he was the one who told me. He was near Mr. Weldon at Vlaakfontein; he knew all about his awful ride into Krugersdorp, and I believe he did say be was to be brought here.”
For a moment more, the two pairs of eyes, the blue and the black, met in steady warfare, neither one yielding in the least, neither one quite aware how much she was betraying to the other.
“Well, what of it?” Ethel demanded tempestuously then.
“Nothing, only–are you sure you were wise to come?”
The blue eyes blazed.
“And what do you mean by that, Alice? You asked me to visit you here, to see your work among your patients. I have come. If I came at all, it had to be now. I can’t always leave home for a week at a time. And I can’t help it, can I, if Mr. Weldon happens to be one of your patients?”
“No; you can’t,” Alice admitted slowly. “It only remains to be seen whether you would care to help it, if you could.”
Again Ethel crossed the room. This time, she dropped down at her cousin’s side.
“Don’t let us argue about it and get cross at each other, dear. If I have made a mistake in coming now, I am sorry. But I am here. Let me stay a few days; I may be able to help you a little. Anyway, I promise not to be a trouble to you. It is so long since I have seen you, Alice. And–” Again the silence dropped.
Alice roused herself from the reverie which was creeping over her. She was glad to see Ethel, unfeignedly glad. The bright, animated presence of her cousin, during the next few days, could not fail to be a tonic. And, as Ethel had said, she herself had been the one to suggest the first idea of the winter visit. Chance and Captain Frazer had decreed that it should take place now, when Alice’s hands were immoderately full of work. But then, so much the better. Ethel could make herself invaluable among the convalescents. She herself had not put on her Red-Cross badge for the sake of taking her rest hour at the bedside of Trooper Harvard Weldon.
Half undressed, Ethel paused, hair brush in hand. “You can’t imagine how tired I am, Alice. It is a terrible journey up here nowadays. I was in terror of a train-wreck at any moment,” she said drowsily. “Don’t let me sleep too long in the morning, because,” she pulled open her eyes long enough to dart a mocking glance over her shoulder at her cousin; “because you know, right after breakfast, you are going to let me begin to help you take care of some of your people.”
From behind her own sheltering veil of ink-black hair, Alice laughed.
“Cooee, you are a dear; but you’re rather a trial,” she said slowly. “However, now that you are here, I think I shall ask the P. M. O. to set you to work to watch over the needs of Mr. Weldon. He won’t be here much longer; but, while he stays, I shall consider him your patient.” Then, brushing aside the veil, she bent forward and touched her lips to her cousin’s cheek.
“Might I ask what brought you up here, Miss Dent?” Weldon asked, the next day.
Beside him sat Ethel, her hands demurely clasped in the lap of her broad white apron.
“My cousin’s invitation,” she replied.
“Then Miss Mellen knew you were coming?”
“Yes. She asked me to come, early in the winter.”
“Strange she said nothing about it! We were talking about you, only yesterday.”
“She didn’t know, even then, that I was so imminent,” Ethel answered. “I took her quite by surprise, at the last.”
“A surprise all around, then,” he said, with a boyish laugh. “I was astonished to find Miss Mellen here, and you must have been equally astonished to find me. If only Captain Frazer would appear, our old quartette would be complete.”
“I am afraid we must get on without him,” she said lightly.
“Unfortunately, yes. I wonder where he is.”
“In Cape Town,” she replied unexpectedly.
“Really? What is he doing there?”
“Don’t expect me to tell. It has something to do with a staff; but whether he carries it, or becudgels recruits with it, I have no idea at all.”
“He hasn’t left the Scottish Horse?”
“In fact; but not in name. Your regiment is still in the Transvaal; but he keeps a sort of vicarious connection with it. Please don’t expect me to grasp military details, Mr. Weldon. I merely repeat the facts, parrot fashion; you must interpret them to suit yourself.”
He laughed again. Already, in that one morning, he appeared to have taken a long stride towards the regaining of his old self.
“You are a perfect gazette, Miss Dent, the first bit of news that has crept inside this place. Where did you get all your information?”
“From Captain Frazer.” Her rising color belied her unconcerned tone.
“You have seen him, then?”
“Yes. He is usually very good about calling, whenever he comes to Cape Town.”
“And is he well?”
“Absolutely. Also quite enthusiastic over his troopers and the work they did at Vlaakfontein.”
“Were–many–“
She understood.
“Not very many; but several were wounded. Worst of all, one or two of the wounded ones were shot by the Boers. Mr. Carew told me that he left a dozen of your men in the hospital at Krugersdorp.”
“Carew? Have you seen him, too, Miss Dent?”
“Didn’t you know he was here?”
He stared at her in blank amazement.
“Here in Johannesburg?”
“Here in this hospital.”
“In what shape?”
“Hilarious in his mind, and with a foot that is coming out right in course of time. Didn’t Alice tell you?”
“No.”
“Strange. She took me to see him, this morning, on my way here, because he was such a promising patient. She was quite surprised to find we were old acquaintances.”
“Oh,” Weldon said slowly. “I begin to see. Miss Mellen had never met Carew, so she had no idea we were friends. What a curious snarl it all is!”
“The hand of Fate is in it,” Ethel assented idly.
“Do you believe in Fate, too?”
“Surely. Why not?”
“Nothing, only your cousin said you didn’t.”
The girl frowned.
“Alice doesn’t know all my mental processes,” she said a little severely.
“She didn’t pretend to. We were speaking of Fate, yesterday, of the way certain events in one’s life seem absolutely inevitable; at least, I was. Then the conversation worked around to you, and Miss Mellen suggested that you usually rose superior to Fate,” Weldon explained at some length.
Once again, Ethel felt the note of finality in his tone. For an instant, she shut her lips. Then she reverted to the main question.
“How do you mean inevitable?”
“As if you chose your path, and then found that, for always, it had been the only thing for you to do. That’s not so clear, I know; but I can’t put it much better.”
“For instance?”
“For instance, my coming out here when I did. I was interested in the war; but there was no real question of my coming, until the month I sailed. Then, all of a sudden, I seemed to know why it was that I had spent my life on horseback. They told me in England that the real war was over. When I landed at Cape Town, I found out that the one thing needed was a man who could ride, and shoot straight. From the day I sailed from home, until now, I have been like an actor walking through a part that some one else has written for him. I have chosen nothing; it all has been inevitable.”
She rose to her feet, and stood leaning on the back of her chair.
“In that case, Mr. Weldon, you must include our meeting in your scheme of things,” she said, with a smile.
His answering smile met her smile with perfect frankness.
“I sometimes wonder if that wasn’t the most inevitable part of it all.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
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.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
By midwinter, the war had become a series of guerrilla raids, of sweeping drives and of occasional skirmishes. The epoch of the infantry had passed, and it was the day of the mounted man. The home-going of the great Field Marshal, six months before, had been followed by the return to England of transports loaded with foot soldiers. The hour, the country and the enemy all demanded the man on the horse. With Lord Kitchener in the field and the colonies aiding the mother country, the outcome was only a matter of time; but few could as yet say when the fulness of that time should be at hand.
“But it leaves me a good deal puzzled in my mind,” Weldon said thoughtfully.
“How do you mean?” Ethel Dent threw the question at him a little defiantly.
“About going home.”
“Surely, you aren’t going now?”
He winced at the accent.
“I am not sure. I volunteered for six months. My time is up; I paid my official visit to the Citadel yesterday.”
“Are you needed at home?”
“No. At least, not in any real sense.”
“But you are needed here.”
“There are enough without me, and the need will not last long.”
“Don’t be too sure. On the Dunottar Castle, there were plenty of people who laughed at you men for coming out to volunteer, after the war was over. You have proved that they laughed at nothing. Prove it again.”
Rising, he walked the length of the room and stood looking out from the long front window. The bamboo screens and the willow chairs were gone from their veranda corner; the flower-boxes were empty now, and Table Bay gleamed coldly back at him in the late afternoon sun of midwinter. Then he turned around to face the girl, seated where her golden hair seemed to him to catch and hold all the light centering about the gay little tea-table.
“Don’t,” he said with some impatience. “Your arguments all echo my own wish. I am pulled in two ways at once. At home, the mother is growing restless. Since Vlaakfontein, she has lost her nerve, and her heart is set on my meeting her in London in October.”
Deliberately Ethel made a neat triangle out of three unused spoons.
“Well?” she said, without looking up.
“Piggie and I have had a smell of powder,” he answered briefly. “We want more.”
“Well?” she said again.
“The question is, are we likely to get it.”
“Not in England; not even in Cape Town,” she answered, smiling at the spoons before her.
“Then where?”
“Wherever the Boers are thickest.”
“Yes; but, after all, you are talking platitudes, Miss Dent,” he said, with recurring impatience.
This time, she lifted her dark blue eyes to his face and allowed them to rest there for a full minute.
“But you forbade me to argue,” she said demurely.
He dropped down into a chair and faced her resolutely.
“Now look here, Miss Dent, I can’t talk shop in tea-table English. In fact, shop has no place at a tea-table, anyway. Still, you were the one to start it. Let’s have it out. I don’t want to funk, at this late day. If there is any fighting to be done, I want a hand in it. I went into a game of a certain length; I hope I played up, and stuck to the professional rules. That game is played out. I am not Trooper Weldon of the Scottish Horse. I am plain Harvard Weldon again and, to be quite frank, I don’t like the change from khaki to tweed. But about going in for another game: it all depends on what the game will be. If it plays itself out, well and good; if it just dribbles on and on, without accomplishing anything, even an end, then I can see no use in going in for it. Fighting is one thing; having a picnic all over the face of South Africa is quite another matter. And, for the life of me, I can’t see which is bound to come.”
There was a minor cadence to the final phrase. Then he fell silent, and sat staring at the rug, while Ethel, leaning back in her chair, studied him at her ease. All in all, she was pleased with the result of her study. Always frank and likable, Weldon had developed wonderfully during those past months of hard work and slender comfort. Underneath his sunburn, his face had taken on new lines of resolution. His eyes were as clear as ever; but their boyishness was all in the past. It was a man who had come striding into the room, that afternoon, and paused beside her tea-table. And Ethel, looking up, had greeted him as she might have greeted Baden-Powell in his place.
To a great extent, Cape Town was resuming at least a semblance of its oldtime social life. Heroes were more plentiful than is