Kermit took a swig. His eyes opened wide as he swallowed. ‘You can call it Mam-whatever. I call it a hundred-per-cent proof moonshine.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and passed the bottle to Leon. ‘Have a blast of that, pardner!’ He was still euphoric, and Leon was even happier that he had allowed him to claim the buffalo kills. The bottle went around the fire twice before it was empty and all three were in expansive mood.
‘So, Hennie, you’re from South Africa. Were you there during the war?’ Kermit asked.
Hennie considered his reply for a minute. ‘
‘We read a lot about it in the States. The newspapers say it was something like our own war against the South. Damn hard and bitter.’
‘For some of us it was worse than that.’
‘Sounds like you were mixed up in the fighting.’
‘I rode with de la Rey.’
‘I read about him,’ Kermit said. ‘He was the greatest commando leader of them all. Tell us about it.’
The Mampoer had loosened the tongue of the usually taciturn Boer. He became almost eloquent as he described the fighting in the veld, where thirty thousand Boer farmers had stretched the military might of the greatest empire the world had ever seen almost to its limits.
‘They would never have forced us to surrender if that bloody butcher Kitchener had not turned on the women and children we had left on our farms. He burned the farms and shot the cattle. He herded all the women and children into his concentration camps and put fish-hooks into their food so they coughed up blood before they died.’ A single tear ran down one of his weathered brown cheeks. He wiped it away and excused himself brokenly. ‘Ag! I am sorry. It’s the Mampoer, but they are bad memories. My wife, Annetjie, died in the camps.’ He stood up. ‘I’m going to turn in. Good night.’ He picked up his blanket roll and walked away into the darkness. After he had gone Kermit and Leon sat quietly for a while, their mood sombre now.
Leon spoke softly: ‘It wasn’t fish-hooks. It was diphtheria that killed them. Hennie can’t understand that on our side it wasn’t deliberate, but the Boer women had always lived out on the open veld. When they were crowded together they had no idea of hygiene. They didn’t know how to keep the camps clean. They became filthy plague holes.’ He sighed. ‘Since the war the British Government has tried to make compensation. They have poured millions of pounds into the country to rebuild the farms. Last year they allowed free elections. Now a government under the two Boer generals, Louis Botha and Jannie Smuts, runs the country. Never has a victor treated the vanquished with such generosity and magnanimity as Britain has shown.’
‘But I understand how Hennie feels,’ Kermit said. ‘There are many people in the south of our country who, even after forty years, have not been able to forget and forgive.’
The following morning Hennie behaved as though the conversation had not taken place. After they had breakfasted on coffee and the remains of the cold tongue, they climbed into the heavily laden trucks. The trackers and skinners sat on the bloody buffalo joints. Kermit cajoled Leon into letting him drive one truck and Hennie followed in the second.
Once again Kermit’s mood was gay and carefree. Leon found him a pleasant companion. They had so much in common. They were both passionate about horses, motor-cars and hunting and had much to talk about. Although Kermit did not elaborate, he hinted that he had a father who was rich and powerful and dominated his life.
‘My father was just the same,’ Leon told him.
‘So what did you do?’
‘I said, “I respect you, Dad, but I cannot live under your rules.” Then I left home and joined the army. That was four years ago. I haven’t been back since.’
‘Son of a gun! That must have taken some guts. I often wish I could do that, but I know I never will.’
Leon found that the better he came to know Kermit the more he liked him. What the hell? he thought. He shoots like a crazy maniac, but no one’s perfect. During the conversation he discovered that Kermit was a keen naturalist and ornithologist. He would be if he’s at the Smithsonian, Leon reasoned, and told Kermit to stop the truck whenever he spotted some interesting insect, bird or small animal to show him. Hennie kept going and disappeared into the distance ahead.
They were not far from the spot where Kermit had left his horse the previous day, only a few miles from the presidential camp, when suddenly and unexpectedly two white men stepped out of the bush into the track in front of them. They were dressed in safari clothing but neither carried a rifle. However, one was armed with a large camera and tripod.
‘Damn it to hell! The gentlemen of the fourth estate,’ Kermit muttered. ‘Just can’t get away from them.’ He braked to a halt. ‘I guess we just have to be nice and polite to them or they’ll cook our goose for us.’
