Two miles below the ford Sean was showing his anxiety by leaning
forward in the saddle and checking the ground that Mbejane had already
covered. Once he called,
'Mbejane, are you sure you haven't missed them?'
Mbejane straightened from his crouch and turned slowly to regard Sean
with a look of frigid dignity. Then he shifted his war shield to the
other shoulder and, not deigning to answer, he returned to his
search.
Fifty yards further on he straightened again and informed Sean.
'No, Nkosi. I have not missed them.' He pointed with his assegai at
the deeply scarred bank up which horses had climbed, and the flattened
grass which had wiped the mud from their legs.
'Got them!' Sean exulted in his relief; behind him he heard the stir
of excitement run through his men.
'Well done, sir.' Eccles's moustache twitched ferociously as he
grinned.
'How many, Mbejane?'Twenty, not more.'
'When?'
'The mud has dried.' Mbejane considered the question stooping to touch
the earth and determine its texture. 'They were here at half sun this
morning. ' The middle of the morning; they had a lead of five hours. .
Is the spoor fat enough to run upon?'
'It is, Nkosi.
'Then run, Mbejane.
The spoor bellied towards the west then swung and steadied in the same
persistently southward direction, and Sean's column closed up and
cantered after Mbejane.
Southward, always southward. Sean pondered the problem what could he
hope to accomplish with a mere six hundred?
Unless! Sean's brain started to harry a vague idea. Unless he
intended slipping through the columns of infantry and cavalry that lay
before him and trying for a richer prize.
The railway, as Saul had suggested? No, he discounted that quickly.
Jan Paulus would not risk his whole command for such low stakes.
What then? The Cape? By God, that was it, the Cape! That rich and
lovely country of wheat lands and vineyards. That serene and secure
land, lazing in the security of a hundred years of British rule, and
yet peopled by men of the same blood as Leroux and De Wet and Jan
Smuts.
Smuts had already taken his commando across the Orange River. If
Leroux followed him, if De Wet followed him, if the Cape burghers;
broke their uneasy neutrality and flocked to join the commandos, Sean's
mind baulked at the thought. He let!
the wider aspect of it and came back to the moment.
All right then, Jan Paulus was riding to the Cape with only six hundred
men? No, he must have more. He must be either! to a rendezvous with
one of the other commandos. Who'? De la Rey? No, De la Rey was in
the Magaliesberg. De Wet? No, De Wet was far south, twisting and
turning away from the columns that harried him.
Zietsmann? Ah, Zietsmann! Zietsmann with fifteen hundred men.
