The covenant - James A. Michener [461]
'You are my life,' she said.
'It's the others. They made the decision. You must go home.'
'Where you are is home.'
'The rides will grow more difficult. The lines tighter.'
Thinking that this might be the last time she would ever see him, she knew that she must not cry. Instead she broke into an infectious chuckle. 'Remember when we were married? After the last battle with the Zulu? And the dominee said in a loud voice, "Does any man know why this man and woman should not be wed?" '
'Good God, what a moment!' the general cried, and then he, too, laughed.
'And Balthazar Bronk, always a troublemaker for other people, shouted that the marriage was forbidden. That we had been raised as brother and sister.'
They stood silent on the dark veld, and then she took his hand and whispered, 'You were never my brother, Paulus. After that night at Blauuw-krantz, I loved you always. And I always will.'
De Groot tried to speak, but no words came.
'Get sleep when you can,' she said, and they walked to the old wagon. He kissed her and helped her up, and she started up the hill.
Paulus remained holding his hat as she climbed to the crest. He did not expect her to look back, nor did she, but when she was gone, he prayed: Almighty God, forget the battles for a while and look after that woman.
When De Groot saw the first one, he shuddered. It was Lord Kitchener's invention for ending the guerrilla war. It was perched beside a vulnerable stretch of railway track, a device of admirable simplicity. It was made of corrugated iron and looked like one of those circular Spanish barns called silos, except that it was squatter. It consisted of two iron cylinders, one fitted inside the other, with enough room inside to house armed patrolmen. In the narrow space between the two cylinders rocks and debris had been jammed to give both protection and insulation. The top was enclosed by a conical roof, so that from a distance the contraption resembled a heavy, blunt cigar jammed into the earth.
Since the new device was obviously lethal and intended to halt the depredations of commandos, De Groot wanted to know as much about them as possible, and a man from the Carolina Commando, who had seen one after it had been blown up by a large force of dynamite, told all the burghers, 'Very difficult to destroy. Manned by seven soldiers. Three little beds. Place to cook. And some have telephones to the next blockhouse.'
As the commando looked down the tracks they had expected to dynamite, they saw six more of the blockhouses, cheap to build, easy to erect, and effective in breaking the open veld into manageable units out of which a mounted commando would have difficulty in moving.
'Look!' Jakob cried, and at the far end of the line of blockhouses, soldiers were stringing barbed wire from one house to the next. 'Kitchener's building a fence across Africa.'
This was correct. Goaded by ridicule, the commander had given orders that the railway system be protected by these new-style blockhouses, and when the first hundred proved successful, he called for eight thousand more, some of them built of stone. Once a commando found itself driven against one of the fortified barriers, its retreat could be so cut off that capture seemed inevitable.
Not for Paulus de Groot. When he was trapped the first time, in southern Transvaal, there was no escape; barbed wire flourished everywhere, but the English troops still had to find him. At the darkest moment he told Van Doorn, 'No army in the world ever found a way to keep all its enlisted men awake. Somewhere there's a blockhouse sound asleep.' He sent Micah to test the line for a weak spot, but when the Zulu scout crawled back he reported: 'All manned. All awake.'
'Try again,' De Groot growled, and this time the scout isolated one iron fort in which all seven men seemed to be asleep. With a swiftness that amazed some of the commandos, De Groot, Van Doorn and Nxumalo crept up to the house, worked their way under