On the Firing Line

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.