The covenant - James A. Michener [162]
'I am,' she said, and when the interrogators were gone, and Sarel had laughed at how Andries Boeksma had tried to insert irrelevant probes, Geertruyd took her husband's hand and led him to where Annatjie, exhausted, slumped in a chair.
'Your son was magnificent,' Geertruyd said. 'He saved our vineyard.'
'Did I?' Sarel asked, and from the way he straightened up when he spoke, his women were satisfied that he was at last ready to be the master of Trianon.
In 1702 Hendrik van Doorn became a trekboer, one of those wandering graziers who moved eastward across virgin land at the slow pace of an ox.
Turning his back on any further claim to Trianon, because his mother had married the Huguenot only eight days after his father had been slain by Bushmen, he had penetrated the mountains, taking his wagon apart and carrying it piece by piece up precipices, then reassembling it for tortuous descents into the valleys.
He kept on till he reached a stream where kingfishers flashed blue as they dived toward crystal water, and when he saw the good pastures nearby, he knew he had reached his temporary home. For the first years he grazed his cattle and sheep, lived himself in the meanest reed-and-mud hovel, and shared his austere food with the one slave and the two Hottentot families who had come into exile with him.
Each spring he swore, 'This summer I shall build me a real house,' but as the season lengthened, his resolve weakened, and he watched idly as his Hottentots ranged deep into surrounding valleys, seeking their own people who still dwelt in the region, raising their own cattle, which they would readily barter. His herd increased, and every other year he was able to drive some of his stock back to a Compagnie buying-station; there he would acquire the supplies needed for the approaching two years, then vanish, for he was growing to treasure the freedom he had attained and feared contact with the merchants of the Cape.
Each year, two or three wandering white men might pass his way, or some other young trekboer 'finished with the Cape,' or one of the hunters who ventured far into the interior for months at a time, seeking his fortune in ivory or hides. Once Hendrik joined with a hunter who probed far to the south, where a mighty forest of stinkwood and yellow-wood concealed a herd of elephant.
In the fourth year, drought struck, spreading its ashen terror, choking the river where the kingfishers danced and destroying the pasture. The Hottentots, always aware of water, led them sixty miles to the edge of a great pan containing a little water, and here Hendrik remained with two other trekboers. When the rains finally came, he returned to his stream, but it was never quite the same again, for in the evenings when he sat near the fire with the Hottentots and his slave he felt a sense of restlessness, of loneliness. It never occurred to him that this feeling might terminate if he married, for there were no Dutch girls in that vast region.
In 1707, on a journey home from the cattle station, the Hottentot who guided the oxen realized that Hendrik was not pleased. There had been talk among the Compagnie buyers of a proposed rent for farms such as Van Doorn occupiednothing definite ... no legal placaats . . . just rumors of rix-dollars to be paid. 'Verdomde Compagnie!' the Hottentot heard the baas mutter over and over, and it was in this mood that Hendrik stomped alongside his wagon as it approached his hut. It helped his temper none to see another trekboer outspanned there.
The man shuffled toward him and held out his hand. He, too, had braved the mountains and carried his wagon piece by piece down the precipices. The difference was that he had women with him, a haggard wife and a pigtailed daughter named Johanna. Hendrik was twenty-six that year, the girl sixteen, and during the three months the itinerant family stayed at the hut he became enraptured of her. She was willow-thin, a most energetic worker, and the one who held her small family together, for her father was irresolute,