The Great Karoo Read online

  Praise for THE GREAT KAROO

  Governor General’s Literary Award Finalist

  Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best Book

  (Canada and the Carribean)

  “[A] page-turner…. Through gorgeous prose, Stenson puts readers right into the saddle with the Canadian soldiers.”

  —Calgary Herald

  “No one writes about cowboys, horses, landscape and the military quite like Fred Stenson. Here is the humour, humanity and insight that can only come from an author who knows what he’s talking about. A true-hearted book about Canadians caught up in the dark cause of the Boer War.”

  —Governor General’s Literary Award Jury Citation

  “Fred Stenson is a gifted writer of historical fiction, and The Great Karoo is an excellent addition to his oeuvre.”

  —Edmonton Journal

  “Discovers and illuminates a lost chapter of Canadian history.”

  —National Post

  “In The Great Karoo, Fred Stenson has once again brought the past to shimmering life, this time evoking the hallucinatory experience of war in a foreign land. While the novel centres on Frank Adams—a wide-eyed cowboy who joins the Canadian Mounted Rifles—it encompasses much more than the tale of a single soldier. In language both vivid and precise, Stenson paints a vast and damning portrait of war. Dark matter indeed, but a species of transcendent light shows through in the tender feelings men harbour for their horses, in the fierce, unspoken friendships those men forge, and in the life-affirming rush of romantic love. You’ll be tempted to read it in one sitting. Go ahead—the story will be with you long after you close the book.”

  —Alissa York, author of Effigy

  “A truly magnificent novel by one of Canada’s greatest living writers.”

  —David Adams Richards, author of Mercy Among the Children

  “Stenson’s knowledge of the South African landscape is extensive…. The Great Karoo offers illumination to both history and the human heart.”

  —Vancouver Sun

  FOR VERA BANTING

  AND PAMELA BANTING

  Prologue (I)

  FORT MACLEOD

  March 16, 1897

  The Concorde stagecoach had been a tarry, shining black when they left the train station in Calgary. Now every surface was dull, and little drifts of yellow sat on the ledges between roof, wall, and wagon. Inside, the schoolteacher pulled back the leather window cover and looked at the Macleod Hotel, where she had reserved a room for the night. An impolite crowd jostled between the coach and the hotel’s door. She slumped back in her seat.

  The scald-faced drummer opposite wore a superior smile. He had his fingers stuck in his trouser pockets to the second knuckle, a posture that spread his jacket halves and exaggerated the tightness of his waistcoat. Each button strained and the shiny cloth replicated his seamed flesh in a way the schoolteacher did not want to see. Looking at the floor, she was treated to an image of his fallen socks speckled white with skin. His unshined shoes tweezed a drab carpet bag, bulging with samples.

  She pulled the window blind again and the wind deflected into her face. She saw the bizarre crowd passing, moving within itself like a boiling fudge. Bow-tied storekeepers. Tradesmen in dusty jackets with hanging pockets. Bareheaded people fighting the crowd to chase a hat. The drovers, or “cowboys,” the dandies of this society, wore wide-brimmed chapeaux that seemed glued to their heads. They leaned against the posts that held up the hotel’s overhanging balcony, smoking cigarettes and looking amused.

  And Indians! These were mostly in white-man’s clothing but a few had blanket coats cinched at the waist with brass-studded belts. The wild ones had long, loose hair, slung like rags across their starved faces. Children clinging to their legs looked like little cadavers.

  She turned to the smug drummer and asked, “Why are so many people here, then?”

  For some reason he was holding his breath. The air escaped with a whistle. “Necktie party,” he said.

  She hated him, and one of the main reasons was this way of talking. Nothing clear. You had to ask and ask, thus appearing more interested than you were.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Hanging.”

  The drummer reached between his feet. He abruptly hoisted himself and his carpet bag, turned the handle, and let the wind slap the door open. He squeezed out through the explosion of wind. Desperately, the schoolteacher plunged after him and stayed in his wake until they were inside. In the sudden relative quiet of the hotel, she said, “And who is to be hanged?”

  “Indian, Charcoal. Murdered a Mountie, Wilde.”

  “I don’t understand you. A wild Indian?”

  “Name of the Mountie he killed was Sergeant Wilde. Shot him.”

  A short, stout Englishman was in a cubby behind a flip-up board, keys on hooks behind him. When her turn came to sign the book, he saw her inscribe schoolteacher beside her name and said, “You’d be the miss for Fishburn School, then.” She admitted she was. Next he asked if she was going to the hanging. Beyond his filthy front window, the mass was surging west now, heads thrust into the wind. She certainly would not be, she said. Ignoring her meaning, he told her that he’d given her the second-floor room at the rear, which had a view of the gallows. Then he flipped his counter, squeezed through, clapped on a hat, and left.

  A pair of boys had brought the luggage in before running off to the hanging. Hers stood by the door. She dragged the two suitcases up through the creaking, booming hotel. It appeared she was the only person present. In her tiny room, she passed the bed and tugged the green paper blind, letting it roll to the top. The dirty little window quaked in dry putty, sprayed cold air, but did provide a fly-specked view of the gallows stage, and the crowd like a dark mat out of which the gibbet thrust.

  After a while, men climbed to that stage. She counted four. The condemned man was shackled and handcuffed, and supported by the others. They took off the ankle irons and dragged a bag over his head. The priest, his dress-like garment whipping, aimed his mouth at the condemned man’s ear. Then there were only two: the hangman and his victim.

  It was a shocking motion that went up, not down, when the trap door fell. She thought it would be quick but it wasn’t. The Indian kicked and kicked. Until finally he did hang. Deadweight. The school teacher understood the word anew.

  Dinner was at two long communal tables. She sought out the drummer. After witnessing the execution, the people in the hotel were excited in a dangerous way. She felt protected against the drummer’s hot, bulky flank. Had she seen the hanging, he asked. Certainly not, she said. He was waiting to be asked what he had seen. She let him wait.

  Across the board and down sat a rancher and his wide-eyed son, then an old man with a long white beard like something groomed in a creek bottom, and finally a skinny, nervous youth with boils on his face. All four were bent over their stew. The young fellow with the boils filled the silence as water fills space.

  “God’s will. Says right in Exodus. Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. Hand for hand. Foot for foot. Says again in Leviticus, 24:21: ‘and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.’”

  This biblical authority mopped his bowl with a sopping crust. Then the older man beside him began to unbend and rise. He rose and rose, being very tall above the waist. His beard kept coming up as well until its white tail cleared the table. He drew a long handkerchief from his shirt pocket and daintily dabbed his beard. All this unwinding and dabbing was preparation for speech, and when his mouth bloomed pink in his beard, the voice was loud and French.

  “Yessir me, I ting dey hang da last wild Indian today.”

  The boy was poised to spout more Old Testament, but the old man was not finished.

 
“Yessir me, I wonder what dey’ll ever do now.”

  Prologue (II)

  COLENSO, NATAL

  December 16, 1899

  For two days, the British guns had flown their shells over the dozen brick houses of Colenso, blasting the hills on the far side of the Tugela River. The lyddite exploded yellow and the sum of the blasts was a red earth cloud tinged with green. When the smoke and dust cleared, the general’s staff scoped the slopes looking for escaping men. Nothing. They threw in shrapnel rounds but, again, the effect was nil. The hills were as impassive as great turds.

  On the second afternoon, Gen. Sir Redvers Buller, Red Heifer to the Boers, briefed his senior officers on the plan of attack. On the right, Buller would send Dundonald to fight for a hill that would be their buffer. On the left, Hart’s Irishmen would advance to the river and cross. But the centre was the key. There, Hildyard’s infantry brigades, with artillery support, would cross the Tugela beside the wrecked railway bridge. Then, all together, they would force their way up the hills. They would battle to the besieged town of Ladysmith and free her.

  Until two days ago, there’d been a more cautious plan to go around the position. Then came word of General Methuen’s defeat on the Modder River. Red Heifer had seen red. He would pussyfoot no longer. Up the Boer middle he would go. If Louis Botha got in his way, he would smash him and his farmers like so many eggs.

  The attack began at daybreak. Buller stood on Naval Gun Hill with his signalmen and staff officers. It did not take long to come apart. Hart had a sketch that showed the drift where he was to cross. He’d been told it was beside a loop in the river, where a creek emptied. Now, for some reason, he was going into the loop. He had been told the loop was a dangerous salient and not to go there. Now a message arrived. Hart could not find the creek and was following a Native guide to some other crossing. Buller sent a galloper back: “Stay out of the loop!” But Hart’s men were already surging into it.

  A disturbing sound turned Buller’s attention to the centre. Colonel Long’s fifteen-pound guns were erupting. It was too soon and they were farther away than they should be. Stopford came riding to say that Long was ahead of Hildyard, by at least a mile.

  Buller studied the hills in front of which these mistakes were being made in his name. It was not yet seven in the morning. Please, he implored, let those hills be empty. His answer was an abrupt roar of field guns and automatic rifles. Not his.

  Much of what came next Buller would find out later. Hart’s masterful packing of the river loop created a target a blind man could not miss. It was enfiladed by Boer trenches on three sides. A private pinned down in the grass said the Mauser bullets came so fast they looked like telegraph wire. Another called it a butcher’s kitchen. The artillery, attempting to adjust to the changed plan, dropped its first shots on top of Hart’s men.

  In the centre, Long was wounded through the guts. A third of his men were mown down. His twelve lightest guns were abandoned to the enemy. Only the heavy naval guns, his cow guns, lagged behind enough to be saved. Going forward to survey the mess, Buller took a piece of shell to the ribs. Captain Hughes, his doctor, carne to check on him, and was shot through the lungs. Hughes died a bubbling death. In the attempt to retrieve the lost guns, Tommy Roberts, General Lord Roberts’ son, was killed. Buller called it off. Accepted defeat.

  The next day, there was a ceasefire. Malay body snatchers hurried the wounded into ambulances. Dotted around the plain were one hundred and forty-three dead.

  In the worst places, the river loop and where Long’s guns had been lost, the sound was no longer warlike or even agonized. Often there was a gaping silence, so great and meditative that the occasional thrashing fight to live by horse or man seemed unmannerly, like a dish thrown on a temple floor.

  BOOK ONE

  The CANADIAN MOUNTED RIFLES

  Part One

  TO AFRICA

  Pincher Creek, December 1899

  Tommy Killam stood with the other children in the crowd on Main Street, come to see the soldiers off to South Africa. Along the hitching post in front of Charlie Beebe’s livery barn, their horses stood saddled. Fred Morden’s bay had a feed bag but the rest were staring miserably at the frozen ground. A Chinook meant it was windy but warm enough that the soldiers could parade without buffalo coats. It would have looked better, thought Tommy, if they all had uniforms and if the uniforms had been the same. As it was, the Mounties had Mountie ones, Fred Morden had a different kind, and the rest were in ranching and cowboy clothes.

  While his teacher was not looking, Tommy stepped out of line and re-emerged at the corner. He pretended the move was so he could better hear Inspector Davidson, who was answering an earlier speech by Mr. Herron. Davidson was the Mountie in charge of the Pincher Creek detachment, and a terrible speaker who was trying to say how honoured he was to be an officer with the Canadian Mounted Rifles, Second Battalion; and how … honoured he was to lead such fine brave soldiers as these into the … honourable war for freedom in South Africa.

  The real reason Tommy moved was to have a better look at Fred Morden. The Mordens were Killam’s next-door neighbours on the north side of the creek, and though Tommy was only ten and Morden grown up enough to go to war, they were friends. Fred let Tommy come over and take his coyote hounds for runs in the hills. When Tommy’s father gave him a .22 rifle off their store shelves at Christmas, it was Morden who took him to the canyon and taught him to hit tomato cans. Fred Morden had said many times, “Here’s my good friend Tommy.”

  On Sundays, in good weather, Morden and his friends, including his girlfriend Trudy Black, went coyote hunting with hounds. They dressed up and pretended it was an English fox hunt. Tommy was not allowed to go but attended the punch parties afterwards, either in Morden’s yard or in their front room depending on the weather. Tommy was given a glass of punch like everyone else while he fooled with the tired dogs.

  For the last two months, the parties had consisted less of jokes and more of Fred Morden explaining to the others why they had to fight in South Africa.

  “You can’t be part of an Empire, enjoying its fruits, and not do your part.”

  When Canada sent its first thousand troops, they were infantry from eastern militias. Fred called it an outrage and said Canada’s westerners must demand their right to fight. When the Canadian Mounted Rifles was formed, based on Mountie officers and western troopers, Tommy told Inspector Davidson to count him in. “Part of the fun,” he told his friends, was that they could take their own horses.

  Tommy Killam didn’t try to sound like Fred Morden around his own friends. It just came out that way.

  “A Boer has nothing to do with a pig. It’s a Dutch farmer in Africa. South Africa is on the other side of the world. They have to cross the Atlantic Ocean. We have to fight them because the Boers won’t let us vote.”

  Tommy was not so clear on why it was important to vote in Boer Africa, but Fred was dead certain. British Empire workers were not allowed to vote, and they must be.

  Tommy was proud of Fred Morden, even though his going to war meant not seeing him for a year. Fred was good at everything he did—riding, shooting, sports—and right now he looked better than the other soldiers. His mother had altered the borrowed uniform to fit, and it was snappy. His squared shoulders went right to the seams. His chest filled the front. His hat was new and brushed, and the brim was straight. The Belton brothers had curled their brims, like rougher cowboys always did with hats.

  Tommy watched to see where Fred’s eyes went. He hoped they would look at him but they were studying Trudy Black, who was trying not to cry and failing. She had a lace handkerchief pushed to her mouth, and her friend Lily Martin, who could play a guitar, was looking sad and holding tight to Trudy’s arm.

  Suddenly, Inspector Davidson stopped talking. He made a helpless circling gesture with his hand, and Tommy’s father, who was standing on their store porch in his apron, called for three cheers. Then a local boy did some awful bugling after which
the whole street fell silent except for the wind. A wavery moment in which people didn’t know if they should go or stay. The soldiers looked at their horses and were uncertain. They turned to Davidson, who was looking at the ground, probably still thinking about his speech.

  A tall rancher named Lionel Brooke took a big step into the space between the soldiers and the crowd. He raised his arm and called for attention. All Brooke said was that he knew what soldiers needed at a moment like this, and he would be pleased if those who cared to would follow him to the Arlington for a stirrup-cup. Several mothers were standing behind the children. Tommy heard one say with disgust, “Drink at this hour.”

  The soldiers and most of the other men followed Brooke’s lead to the brick hotel. It was the Arlington, but everyone called it the brick hotel. Fred Morden was with them, though his head was practically turned backwards trying to see Trudy Black. Tommy could see her clear enough. She had broken down in tears and was supported by Mrs. Morden on one side and Lily Martin on the other. The three were walking for the bridge and home.

  Tommy knew he needed to be quick. He bolted from the other schoolchildren and sped by the soldiers and townsmen. He made for the back of the brick hotel, and saw a figure by the river bushes that he hoped was Young Sam. Young Sam and Tommy shared the secret that the hotel foundations were loose behind the bar. Though there was a basement under the main hotel (where Chinamen cooked and did laundry), the bar was an addition with only a crawl space beneath.

  Young Sam was a Nez Perce, a kind of Indian that had fought the U.S. Cavalry. They tried to come into Canada like Sitting Bull’s Sioux, but got beat first. The few who did make it were scattered. Young Sam’s family lived up the canyon where a rancher let them pitch their tent, but Sam and his brother spent most of their time in town. Though Young Sam was a few years older than Tommy, they did things together, such as pull out the loose stones and crawl under the bar.