To Chase the Storm: The Frontier Series 4 (32 page)

THIRTY-TWO

T
he fire raged along the plains of the Elands River outpost, crackling with long fingers that chased the billowing clouds of smoke and obliterated the afternoon sky. Matthew was unconcerned as he watched. The grass fire had been lit by the Boers in an attempt to burn the defenders off the small hill, but Colonel Hore had anticipated the enemy’s tactic and earlier counter-burned the
veldt
to a distance of a hundred yards in front of his lines.

It was the tenth day of the siege and still there was no hope of being relieved. Matthew scratched at his chest and thought fleetingly about a bath. His uniform was in tatters and the wound in his side throbbed and itched. The doctor who changed the dressings each day had frowned when he examined it, fearful of infection. But the soldier was young and his wound was fighting putrefaction.

Saul Rosenblum was still missing after two days, and questions had been asked. But all the men denied any knowledge of his whereabouts, even though most knew what he had set out to do.

General De la Rey had sent one of his officers under a flag of truce to organise the return of two wounded South Australian prisoners, Lieutenants Collins and Douglas. A Cape cart was organised to go out and bring them back from the Boer lines and when the Boers were questioned during the truce about the missing Queensland soldier they adamantly denied that he was amongst any prisoners taken.

Finally Saul Rosenblum had his name ticked off as missing in action in the squadron roll book and the matter was closed. For now, all that mattered to the survivors at the beleaguered outpost was that they stay alive just another day. Already they had almost eighty killed or wounded in their ranks and the depletion of men was starting to tell.

Matthew saw the telltale flashes from the big Boer artillery guns ranged against them from ridges either side of the river. He did not have to shout the warning as the bleary eyes of the other defenders also picked up on the muzzle blasts of the big guns. Those in exposed places above ground scuttled for the shelter of the trenches, now reinforced against the exploding rounds.

Matthew lay low and waited with fatalistic patience for the rounds to land. He was surprised when only three shells exploded and a long silence followed. It was as if the Boer gunners were simply going through the motions of letting the defenders know they were still out there. Or was it that the Boers were running
out of artillery rounds? But the Mauser fire continued all day, making life miserable for the already physically and mentally exhausted Australian and Rhodesian defenders.

Through a rare stroke of luck, an African messenger, despatched by General De la Rey to take a message to his fellow commando General De Wet, was captured by a mounted patrol scouting ahead of General Kitchener’s advancing column. The British general had been pursuing the wily Boer commander for some weeks and had been unsuccessful in his chase of the highly mobile commando. But the contents of the captured dispatch stunned him more than the frustration of the unsuccessful pursuit. The outpost at Elands River had not been captured or destroyed. In the message, General De la Rey was asking his fellow general to join him in an attempt to finally crush the stubborn colonials.

Acting on this new intelligence, Kitchener did not hesitate. New orders were quickly issued and the weary column changed route to march the fifty miles to the beleaguered garrison at Elands River.

On the twelfth day the defenders rose to fight another day. But no incoming shots were returned in response to their probing volleys of rifle fire. The defenders had fought them to a standstill and when De la Rey learned through his own intelligence sources that the British were sending a large force to relieve the colonials, he chose to withdraw.

When the first of Kitchener’s relieving column of twenty-five thousand men rode into the outpost – now
resembling a giant garbage dump, littered with smashed cases once containing meat and jam – the defenders cheered.

All except Trooper Matthew Duffy. As the myriad new campfires flickered in the night, Matthew lay amongst the wounded in a deathly fever. His wound had turned septic and he was suddenly very close to dying.

Amongst the relieving force was a British colonel who was normally attached to staff duties at headquarters, preferring his lot there to duties in the field. He walked amongst the defenders who scarcely gave him a second look. But if the defenders did not pay him much heed, he did them. He stopped and quietly asked questions about a certain Queensland Bushman by the name of Saul Rosenblum. In his pocket, Colonel Hays Williams carried a piece of paper. It was a warrant duly sworn for the arrest of the colonial soldier on a charge of murder of one British sergeant.

The British colonel was bitterly disappointed when he was informed by the man’s commanding officer that Private Rosenblum was officially listed as missing in action. As the Boers had denied taking him prisoner, then his body must be somewhere out on the
veldt
, bloated and rotting under the African sun. But a thorough search of the area did not find his corpse amongst those retrieved.

With this information Colonel Hays Williams could not accept that the man was dead. The British officer suspected strongly that the wanted man had deserted and he determined to find him one way
or the other. When he did, the colonial would be punished to the full extent of the law. Rosenblum would stand before a firing squad and pay for his deeds.

Colonel Hays Williams was right in one respect. Private Saul Rosenblum was well and truly alive, riding with the commando and no longer wearing the uniform of an Australian Bushman. Saul had swapped his uniform for the garb of the enemy: the floppy hat, crumpled shirt and trousers of a Boer farmer.

He rode in silence alongside Field Kornet Isaacs of De la Rey’s commando as they slipped away from the advancing army under the command of Kitchener. Saul’s thoughts were mixed as he rode; he was leaving behind his countrymen, who would now call him a traitor, and riding into an uncertain future. He had given his word that he would no longer take up arms against the Boers, and indeed it was his former enemy who had most certainly saved his life from a British firing squad.

On the morning Saul was taken prisoner he had been marched barefooted before a bear of a man. Mutual recognition dawned on both their faces at the meeting and the grim-faced Isaacs had called for a bottle of Cape brandy whilst he spoke in private with the captured Queenslander.

They had walked a short distance from the lines of wagons and bivouacs of the tough Boer fighters who stared with curiosity at the enemy soldier. For reasons known only to their commander, Isaacs had
given orders that the Australian was to be shown courtesy. When they were out of hearing of his men, Isaacs offered the bottle to Saul who took a deep gulp of the fiery liquid. It helped chase away his weariness and the feeling of despair at being captured so easily.

‘I was told how you stayed with the boy, my friend,’ the Dutchman said gruffly but without hostility. ‘You could have left him to die and got away.’

Saul let the fiery fumes waft through his weary body and shrugged. ‘He was only a boy.’

‘He was a soldier. Like many of the other young men you see around here who have yet to feel the sprouting of a man’s beard on their chins.’

Saul could see that those without beards were indeed mere boys – some younger than Matthew Duffy. ‘Yeah, well I stayed, and here I am.’

‘It is for the best,’ the big Dutchman said quietly. ‘Your capture may have saved your life.’

Saul blinked as he passed the bottle back to the enemy commander. His eyes felt puffy and as if sand had been rubbed into them. ‘What does that mean?’ Saul asked with a frown and the Dutchman levelled his gaze.

‘Had you survived our siege of your outpost, then you would have been arrested for murder, by the Englanders.’

‘What!’

‘The British have evidence that you killed the pig who was responsible for my sister’s death.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Some weeks ago we captured a dispatch being
sent to Elands. Amongst the papers was a message to have you brought in under guard to Pretoria to answer a charge of murder. It seems that they are very sure of your guilt. So, should we hand you back to your Colonel Hore, as we already have with two of your countrymen, you will surely be arrested should you survive our siege.’

Saul reached for the bottle and took another swig to settle the fear in his stomach. ‘What are you going to do with me then?’

‘That is your choice,’ the Dutchman replied. ‘But, should you give me your parole to cease fighting us, I will make arrangements for you to escape British justice.’

Saul looked away, staring across at a line of hills. It was kind of funny seeing the sweating backs of the Boer gunners toiling at the guns when he had only ever faced the flashes of their muzzles before. He had never felt so trapped. Always there had been options to get him out of danger but this time he had only one.

‘You have my parole,’ Saul answered without turning to the Boer officer. ‘What happens next?’

Isaacs placed his broad hand on the Queenslander’s shoulder. ‘I think you have the right to know that the English woman my sister was staying with said she thought Karen was pregnant.’

Saul gasped. He had not suspected!

‘I do not expect you to fight beside us, my friend,’ Isaacs continued gently. ‘But I do expect you to carry out a favour, in return for the help I will give you to disappear from Africa. It is a very personal favour
which will take you a long way from this country to another life. But by accepting my request, you will never be able to go back to your own land. This you must understand.’

‘I will do whatever you ask, so long as it does not require me to fight against my mates.’

The Dutchman smiled sadly. ‘No, it will not require such a thing. But it will require great sacrifice.’

As Isaacs outlined his conditions, Saul listened in stunned silence. But when Isaacs had finished Saul agreed to the proposal. At least it was an alternative to being shot by his own side for murder.

Field Kornet Isaacs issued instructions to his men that the Australian prisoner did not officially exist amongst the captured, and as Saul rode north with the commando he realised that he was now a man without a country. There was no way back.

On a hill overlooking a sluggish series of waterholes in Queensland’s north-west, an old man sat cross-legged staring into the flames of the small fire made to roast the goanna he had speared. His long grey beard reached to his chest and his body revealed the scars of his initiation as well as those inflicted by the whiteman’s bullets.

Wallarie, the feared warrior and former bush-ranger who had once rode with the notorious Irishman Tom Duffy, poked at the fat body of the lizard in the fire. It sizzled with a delicious aroma that filled the nostrils of the hungry man. He had trekked countless days and nights in his life across the length
and breadth of the inland plains and this day was just the end of one long trek and the beginning of another. But he knew his next journey was possibly his last.

Wallarie did not know who were coming to meet him, but the spirits had visited him in his sleep and told him that they were coming into the hills of the Kalkadoon. And when they came to him, something important to the long dead people of the Nerambura clan would happen. Was it that she who would one day save the memory of his spirit people was with them? The spirits of his people who spoke to him in the silence of the night did not tell him these things. But Wallarie did know that while one amongst the travellers was under the protection of the sacred hill of the Nerambura clan, death would visit another of those now entering the empty lands of the Kalkadoon.

THIRTY-THREE

T
he warm tropical surf swirling around Saul Rosenblum’s bare legs felt good as he stood looking out over the Indian Ocean, brooding about the future. David Isaacs had delivered him to the Portuguese harbour town of Lourenco Marques in East Africa, having detached both of them from the main commando to more easily elude British patrols. On arrival, Saul had found himself in a world as alien as he could ever know, a place of mixed races from India, Europe and Africa.

Saul’s first meal in the neutral territory of spicy
peri peri
chicken had come as a shock. Until now the only spicy condiment he had known was English mustard but the subtle taste of the Portuguese food was a delight to his palate. He had shared the meal with Jakob Isaacs and his son David in an Indian eating house where the scents of Asia and Africa
blended in a heady mix of unusual aromas. Over the meal David had explained to Saul his task: escorting his father to the Ottoman-ruled province of Palestine. As Jakob Isaacs would be carrying a small fortune in uncut diamonds, Saul was to ensure that harm did not come to the Jewish man on his secret mission to the ancient land.

Neither Jakob nor David ever mentioned Karen’s name in Saul’s presence. Saul had wondered why but let the matter alone. Maybe it was a way of shielding themselves from the terrible pain of grief, he thought, as he too tried to forget that she would never again tease him about his forgotten ancestral roots, or cling to him after they had made love.

But standing in the surf that swished with a gentle hiss on the hot sands, he found her fresh in his memories and recalled her plans to take him with her to Palestine when the war was over to start a new life. Saul wiped away the tears flowing down his suntanned cheeks. To remember the pain of the past achieved nothing. He would go with Jakob Isaacs to the land he had heard his father talk about if for no other reason than to honour the memory of the only woman he had ever loved as well as that of his father.

The next day he and Jakob were scheduled to depart the Portuguese town on an American cargo ship steaming for Egypt. From there they would travel to Palestine and a future he could not really imagine.

As Saul waded back to the beach to collect his
boots and walk barefooted along the sand back to the town, he wondered what Palestine was like. Would it have anything in common with the sweeping flat lands he had so much loved but could never return to? Within weeks he would find out.