will never see him again. He has made a jackass of me, and of the
VOC.'
Koots showed no sign of distress at these trespasses. He could not prevent a bleak smile reaching his thin lips as he thought, That's no great feat. It doesn't take a genius to make a jackass of the colonel.
Keyser caught a glimmer of the smile. 'You, too, Koots. You will be the butt of every joke of every drunkard and whore in every tavern in the colony. You will be buying your own drinks for years to come.' Koots's face darkened into a murderous scowl. Keyser pressed the advantage. 'That is, Koots, unless you and I can see to it that he is captured and brought back to give a public performance of the rope dance on the parade outside the castle.'
'He is taking the Robbers' Road to the north,' Koots protested. 'The VOC cannot send troops after him. It's outside their suzerainty. Governor van de Witten would never allow it. He could not flout the orders in council of Het Zeventien.'
'I could arrange for you, my fine fellow, to take an indefinite leave of absence from the Company service. Paid leave, of course. I would also arrange a travel pass for you to cross the frontier on a hunting expedition. I would give you Xhia and two or three other good men Richter and Le Riche, perhaps? I would provide all the supplies you needed.'
'And if I succeed? If I capture Courtney and bring him back to the
castle?'
'I will see to it that Governor van de Witten and the VOC place a bounty on him of ten thousand guilders in gold. I would even settle for his head pickled in a vat of brandewijn.'
Koots's eyes widened as he thought about it. With ten thousand guilders he could leave this God-forsaken land for ever. Of course, he could never return to Holland. He was known by a name other than Koots in the old country, and he had unfinished business there that might end on the gallows. However, Batavia was Paradise compared to this backward colony on the tip of a barbaric continent. Koots allowed himself a fleeting erotic fantasy. The Javanese women were famous for their beauty. He had never developed a taste for the simian-featured Hottentots of the Cape. Moreover, there were opportunities in the east for a man who was good with a sword and gun, who did not flinch at the sight of blood, and even more so if he had a purse of gold guilders on his belt.
'What do you say to that, Koots?' Keyser interrupted his daydreams.
'I say fifteen thousand.'
'You are a greedy fellow, Koots. Fifteen thousand is a fortune.'
'You are a wealthy man, Colonel,' Koots pointed out. 'I know that you paid two thousand each for Trueheart and Frost. I would bring back your two horses, along with Courtney's head.'
At the mention of his stolen horses Keyser's sense of outrage, which he had managed to hold under tenuous control, returned in full force. They were two of the finest animals outside Europe. He looked down at his ruined feet, the pain in them almost as bitter as the loss of his horses. Yet five thousand guilders out of his own purse was indeed a fortune.
Koots saw him wavering. He needed only a gentle push. 'Then there is the stallion,' he said.
'What stallion?' Keyser looked up from his feet.
'The one who beat you at Christmas. Drumfire. Jim Courtney's stallion. I would throw him into the bargain.'
Keyser was weakening, but he set one last condition. 'The girl. The convict girl, I want her also.'
'I will have a little fun with her first.' Although his lean, hard features were impassive, Koots was enjoying the bargaining. 'I will bring her to you damaged but alive.'
'She is probably damaged already.' Keyser laughed. 'And will be more so when that young Courtney ram is finished with her. I want her only
to make a good show on the gallows. The crowds always love to see a young girl on the rope. I don't mind what you do to her before that.'
'We have an agreement, then?' Koots asked.
'The man, the girl and the three horses.' Keyser nodded. Three thousand each, or fifteen thousand for all of them.'
There were ten men to share the labour of carrying the colonel. A team of four was changed every hour, timed with Keyset's gold watch. The saddle was in the English style, but the work of one of Holland's finest saddle-makers. They secured it in the centre of the carrying poles. Keyser sat at ease with his feet in the stirrups, while two men at each end lifted the poles on to their shoulders and walked away with them. It took them nine days to reach the colony, the last two without food. The shoulders of the men were sadly galled by the weight of the poles, but Keyser's feet had almost healed, and the enforced diet had slimmed down his belly and bulk; he looked ten years younger.
Keyser's first duty was to report to Governor Paulus Pieterzoon van de Witten. They were old comrades, and shared many secrets. Van de Witten was a tall dyspeptic-looking man of not yet forty. His father and grandfather before him had been members of Het Zeventien in Amsterdam, and his wealth and power were considerable. Very soon he would return to Holland and take his seat on the board of the VOC, as long as there were no blemishes on his career or reputation. The activities of this English bandit might conceivably leave such a stain on his reputation. Colonel Keyser described in detail the crimes against the property and dignity of the VOC perpetrated by the youngest Courtney. Slowly he stoked the flames of the governor's outrage, repeatedly hinting at van de Witten's own responsibility in the affair. Their discussion lasted several hours, helped along by the consumption of quantities of Hollands gin and French claret. Finally van de Witten capitulated and agreed that the VOC would offer a reward of fifteen thousand guilders for the capture of Louisa Leuven and James Archibald Courtney, or for positive proof of their execution.
The placing of rewards on the heads of criminals who had fled the colony was a long-established practice. Many of the hunters and traders who had licences to leave the colony supplemented their profits with bounty money for the VOC.
Keyser was well pleased with this result. It meant that he was not obliged to risk a single guilder of his own carefully accumulated fortune to contribute to the bounty he had agreed with Captain Koots.
That same night Koots visited him in the little cottage in the lane behind the Company gardens. Keyser advanced him four hundred guilders to cover the costs of provisioning the expeditionary force that was to pursue Jim Courtney. Five days later a small party of travellers assembled on the banks of the Eerste river, the first river after leaving the colony. They had come separately to the meeting place. There were four white men: Captain Koots, with his pale eyes and colourless hair, his skin reddened by the sun; Sergeant Oudeman, bald, but with heavy drooping moustaches, Koots's right-hand man and accomplice; Corporals Richter and Le Riche, who hunted together like a pair of wild dogs. Then there were five Hottentot troopers, including the notorious Goffel, who was the interpreter, and Xhia, the Bushman tracker. None of them wore VOC military uniform: they were dressed in the coarse homespun and leather of the Cape burghers. Xhia's loincloth was made of tanned spring buck skin decorated with beads of ostrich eggshell and Venetian trade beads. Over his shoulders he carried his bow and bark quiver of poisoned arrows, and round his waist a belt hung with an array of charms and buck horns filled with magical and medical potions, powders and unguents.
Koots swung up into the saddle and looked down at Xhia, the Bushman. 'Take the spoor, you little yellow devil, and drink the wind.' They followed Xhia in single file, each trooper leading a spare horse that carried a packsaddle.
'Courtney's spoor will be many weeks old before we cut it again,' Koots watched Xhia's bare back and pepper corned head bobbing along ahead of his horse's nose, 'but this hunting dog is a shaitan. He could follow a snowball through the fires of hell.' Then he let himself savour the thought of the warrant in his saddlebag signed by Governor van de Witten, and the prospect of fifteen thousand guilders in gold. He smiled. It was not a pretty smile.
Bakkat knew that this was only a respite, and that Keyser would not allow them to escape so easily: sooner rather than later Xhia would be following their spoor again. He scouted well ahead and on the sixth day after the capture of Keyser's horses he found the place ideally suited to his purpose. Here, a stratum of black igneous rock cut diagonally across the floor of a wide valley, through the bed of a fast flowing river, then climbed the steep far side of the valley. The stratum ran straight and stood out as clearly as a paved Roman road, for no grass or other vegetation grew upon it. Where it crossed the river it was so
resistant to the erosion of the waters that it formed a natural weir. The river dropped over the far side, a thundering waterfall, into a whirlpool twenty feet below. The black rock was so hard that not even the steel shod hoofs of the horses left a scratch upon the surface.
'Keyser will come back,' Bakkat told Jim, as they squatted on the shiny black floor. 'He is a stubborn man, and you have made it a matter of his pride and honour. He will not give up. Even if he does not come himself he will send others to follow you, and Xhia will guide them.'
'It will take even Xhia many days and weeks to reach the Cape and then return,' Jim demurred. 'By then we will be hundreds of leagues away.'
'Xhia can follow a spoor that is a year old, unless it has been carefully wiped clean.'
'How will you wipe our spoor, Bakkat?' Jim
