The covenant - James A. Michener [454]
Frank laughed. 'I've learned one splendid lesson from Buller. If a stupid order comes down, ignore it.'
'But is he burning farms?'
'Darling, he's a wonderful, bumbling old fool, who has more sense of warfare than all the others. He'll fight this war his way, with good food, and sparkling Trianon, and plenty of rest for his men. And do you know what? In the end he'll win.'
On his side of the battle lines, General de Groot was encountering difficulty. Despite an occasional dashing sortie like his attack on the English cavalry, he was so stuck in routine that more of his commando had left him to affiliate with larger units engaged in the serious efforts of the war. The Venloo Commando now consisted of the general himself and ninety horsemen, plus their blacks. To keep it any longer in existence was ridiculous, and one afternoon the council told him so.
Standing before his men in his double-breasted frock coattattered and ruined, its silver buttons goneand his tall top hat, he was a forlorn figure, a fat old man of sixty-eight whom the world had passed by. 'Commandant-general says we must join Tobias Brand's commando.'
'We're ninety men!' Van Doorn protested. 'We can still fight as a unit.'
'No. We must obey orders. Our commando is no more.'
'But it would be humiliatingto take orders from someone else, after you've been a general.'
'Not to me. I don't care where I fight.' He summoned Sybilla, and in the presence of his men, said, 'Old lady, they tell me I must surrender my command and fight under Tobias Brand.'
'He's a good man,' she said. 'I'll fetch the wagon.'
But when they rode over to Brand's camp, with Van Doorn sharing the
wagon, the younger general said, 'You understand who's in command?' And De Groot said, 'You are, Tobias.'
Now Brand objected to having Sybilla along, for she was much older than the women in his commando, but Paulus pleaded: 'This beaten wagon is her only home. We have fought side by side for sixty years.' So she resumed her position at the rear of a column, this one commanded by a stranger. On hot days when she could shoot an antelope she would make biltong for the long treks that she knew lay ahead.
Anyone who looked even casually at the map of South Africa could see what the strategy of the English forces had to be, and De Groot listened as the combat generals explained what they must do to keep the Boer republics alive: 'The railroad to Lourenco Marques is our only link with the world outside. It must be kept open. We've already lost it east of Pretoria, but we dare not lose this part.' A brief flick of the finger indicated all that remained: only the area between Middleburg and the Portuguese border, including the two remarkable villages of Waterval-Boven (Above-the-Waterfall) and Waterval-Onder (Under-the-Waterfall), for here in the space of a few miles the whole face of Africa changed.
The Elands River, coming down off the high plateau, cut a deep gorge through soft rock, creating a beautiful tumbling waterfall from which the villages took their names, but this was not the spectacular character of the place. Waterval-Boven, at the edge of the high plateau, was a typical veld settlement, with harsh landscape, wide stretches of almost barren land and a forbidding aspect. Then came the plunging drop, and at Waterval-Onder one was in the lush lowlands, with high humidity, twisting vines and a richness of grass and tree that was startling.
In the winter of 1900, when the Transvaal republic was falling apart, the two Watervals became the focus of world attention, for to the high one came Oom Paul Kruger, seventy-five years old, stooped and weary, a president losing his country. From his railway carriages, he tried to hold his nation together, wincing when he learned that districts upon which he had depended were gone. He had not wanted to leave Pretoria and was especially grieved at being forced to abandon his old wife, but here he was near the end of the railway line.
Men leading the commandos came to see him and spoke reverently of his accomplishments in the past: 'Oom Paul, we're