It was a long column. Behind the van rode the prisoners, many of them
mounted two up. Then followed the wounded, each in a horse litter of
poles and blankets, behind them the scotch cart and finally Eccles and
two hundred troopers of the rear guard Their progress was slow and
dismal.
In the scotch cart neither of them spoke again. They lay in pain,
bracing themselves against the jolt and lurch, with the sun beating
down mercilessly upon them.
In that dreamlike state induced by pain and loss of blood, Sean was
thinking of Saul. At times he would convince himself that it had not
happened and he would experience a rush of relief as though he had
woken from a nightmare to find it was not reality. Saul was alive
after all. Then his mind would focus with clarity and Saul was dead
again. Saul was wrapped in a blanket with the earth above him, and all
they had planned was down there with him. Then Sean would grapple once
more with the unanswerable.
'Ruth! ' he cried aloud, so that Jan Paulus beside him stirred
uneasily.
'Are you all right, Sean?'
But Sean did not hear him. Now there was Ruth. Now there was Ruth
alone. He felt joy then in his loss, joy quickly swamped with guilt.
For an instant he had been glad that Saul was dead, and his treachery
sickened him and ached like the bullet in his guts. But still there
was Ruth, and Saul was dead. I must not think of it like that. I must
not think! And he struggled up into a sitting position and clung to
the side of the scotch cart
'Lie down, Sean,' Jan Paulus told him gently. 'You'll bleed again.
'You!' Sean shouted at him. 'You killed him.
'Ja. ' Leroux nodded his red beard into his chest. 'I killed them,
but you also, all of us. Ja, we killed them. ' And he reached up and
took Sean's arm and drew him down into the blankets. 'Now, lie still
or we'll bury you also.'
'But why, Paul. Why?' Sean asked softly.
'Does it matter why? They are dead. ' 'And now what happens?'
Sean covered his eyes from the sun.
'We go on living. That is all, we just go on.'
'But what was it about? Why did we fight?'
'I don't know. Once I knew clearly, but now I have lost the reason,'
Leroux answered.
They were silent for a long time and then they began to talk again.
Groping together for the things that must take the place of that which
had filled these last three years.
Twice that afternoon the column halted briefly while they buried men
who had died of their wounds. And each of these deaths, one a burgher
and the other a trooper, gave poignancy and direction to the talk in
the scotch cart
In the evening they met a patrol that was scouting ahead of the big
columns returning from the vaal River. A young lieutenant came to the
scotch cart and saluted Sean.
