In the veldt the bones bloom lily white. I shoot the most beautiful gemsbok that’s ever walked God’s earth in the neck. It collapses gracefully. We ride on. I shoot two quaggas and a few springbok to keep my barrel warm. I shoot at the rock piles of the Hottentots and think of the baby that died. I shoot an ostrich, a duiker and four wildebeest because there’s nothing else to shoot.
We come across a small Korana settlement and ride on. We want to get to the little company of Barolong west of Dithakong. Rumours are rife that their cattle have doubled in number in this last year. But see, a few miles on the other side of the Korana huts stands a sea of cattle. This we can’t pass by. One of Danster’s men goes to scout. There are two cattle-herds. Both on horseback, both armed. The one a Korana, the other a huge Caffre. It can’t be that easy.
We – the horde of hundreds that we are – spread out and surround the cattle. The bald-headed Caffre charges his horse through our spread-out line and bridles it the moment he is behind us. There he sits, motionless. His head is shaven and long, too long. I keep an eye on him and more particularly on the distance from his hands to his gun. I’m itching to shoot. My toe is giving me all sorts of hell. My hands take turns cramping up. The Korana herdsman’s horse staggers in the middle of the congested herd. The Korana’s finger tenses around the trigger, the bullet slams into a rock and ricochets into the heavens somewhere. Next to me somebody returns fire. The herdsman’s head gushes roses. Our horses trot up closer, tighten the noose around the cattle until they calm down. In the distance the people of the settlement stand and watch us rounding up their cattle. They stand for a while contemplating our numbers and our guns and then turn round and return to their huts. The Caffre on horseback is still sitting where he was sitting. His gun is resting across his neck and shoulders, his arms draped over the weapon on either side, as if crucified into judgement. Conceited scumbag.
I wave at a few of Makoon’s warriors and we trot nearer, each with a gun aimed at the Caffre. He is big, mid-thirties. His head looks so long and bare because where his ears should be there are only two little holes, like on either side of a bird’s head. I tell him in Xhosa to throw down his gun.
Speak Dutch, Whiteman.
Throw down your gun.
Don’t you have any respect for a firearm? he asks.
He tosses his gun at the nearest Korana, who catches it mid-air. I tell him to get the hell off his horse. He dismounts, walks towards me with the reins in his hand. Danster wants to know why I haven’t yet shot this piece of ooze.
My name is Arend, says the Dutch Caffre. Joseph Arend.
I am Coenraad de Buys.
Your name travels far and wide.
Believe me, everything you’ve heard is true.
He looks me up and down, an Eagle by name and nature, then at the Koranas on horseback with us, then at my army that has already started driving off the cattle.
Is it always so easy? he asks.
Is what always so easy?
Looting cattle.
You say no only once to a gun.
Is that all you do?
Is what all I do?
Rustling cattle.
I hunt elephants.
I’m coming along, says Arend.
He ignores all the guns aimed at him, turns around and jumps onto his horse. He starts cantering away. When we don’t move, flabbergasted at this scoundrel who seems so eager to get shot, he turns around in the saddle:
Come on! Before those miserable Koranas see us jabbering here! It’s their gun and their horse that I’m damnwell carting off here!
Arend kicks his horse where it hurts and the creature speeds off.
We can’t have a cattle-herd running away from us, says Danster and takes off after him.
I swing my rifle back over my shoulder and unlace my boot so that the toe can breathe more easily and follow my henchmen on horseback.
At the outspan I choke Arend’s story out of him. We celebrate our windfall-herd and slaughter a few of the Korana cattle. He drinks along with us and laughs loudly, but when I question him, he clams shut like a mule refusing to take the bit. Danster and Arend share a joke. Danster grabs him behind the neck and they bump heads in a friendly sort of way. Arend gets up and goes for a piss. I open my breeches next to him, wait for the rivulet, which nowadays flows in its own time, drop by drop and painfully. He gazes in front of him, speaks softly as if I weren’t there.
That misbegotten Boer took my ears because I wouldn’t listen. He wanted to take my nose as well because it was too high up in the air. So I ran away from his farm to the Great River. It was the beginning of this very year. It’s far from the Sneeuberg. Seventeen days I walked and chewed the bark of thorn trees. On the seventeenth day I caught a guinea fowl and devoured the thing – bones, feathers. A guinea-fowl beak you have to chew here towards the back, otherwise it jabs you in the cheek.
The rivulet stutters from my yard, doesn’t even wet the sand.
After two months of mucking along like that, one day I stumbled into a Korana kraal next to the Gariep and fell over and got up eleven days later from the reed mat on which I’d passed out. I trekked along with them to this place. I herd their cattle and they hide me from the Griquas.
Why would you want to hide from the Griquas?
I’m told they catch slaves and send them back to the Colony.
Back next to the fire he’s all affability again. Laughs and swears and talks about the weather and women. He is, after me, the biggest man here. His skull-like head and scarred body and eyes that don’t let go keep everyone on their toes. Danster’s little slits observe him every now and again, but he dishes up a second and a third helping of meat for the new friend. Arend knows when to tell a dirty joke, before caution turns into distrust.
It’s only Arend and I left by the glowing ash. Too lazy and drunk to get up out of the fire-warmed sand. I take off my shoe and press my foot into the cool sand. The thing is once again so swollen that it’s peeling. If I keep my hands over the coals and the brandy to hand, they’re less inclined to cramp. I try again.
What was the son-of-a-bitch’s name?
Master Burger. Andries Burger.
He spits.
Were you with him for a long time?
I’m told I came into the world in the Cape, but ever since I can remember I’ve been part of his household. He apprenticed me. I’m a thatcher and a builder. If I’d been free I could have gone and started a home in the Cape or Stellenbosch and rounded up a little Malay girl. Burger even rented me out one year to Reverend Campbell, a man of God…