“But you were so quick. Why did not you wait the year? We were not ready, Jan.”
“That is a lie. All you Cape people lie. You want to save your cattle and your farms. Wait till our flag flies from here to Port Elizabeth and you shall see what you will save when the President learns how you have risen—you clever Cape people.”
The saddle-coloured sons of the soil looked down their noses. “Yes—it is true. Some of our farms are close to the line. They say at Worcester and in the Paarl that many soldiers are always coming in from the sea. One must think of that—at least till they are shot. But we know there are very few in front of you here. Give them what you gave the fools at Stormberg, and you will see how we can shoot rooineks.”[[3]]
“Yes. I know that cow. She is always going to calve. Get away. I am answerable to the President—not to the Cape.”
But the information stayed in his mind, and, not being a student of military works, he made a plan to suit. The tall kopje on which the English had planted their helio-station commanded the more or less open plain to the northward, but did not command the five-mile belt of broken country between that and the outmost English pickets, some three miles from camp. The Boers had established themselves very comfortably among these rock-ridges and scrub-patches, and the “great war” drizzled down to long shots and longer stalking. The young bloods wanted rooineks to shoot, and said so.
“See here,” quoth the experienced Jan van Staden that evening to as many of his commando as cared to listen. “You youngsters from the Colony talk a lot. Go and turn the rooineks out of their kopjes to-night. Eh? Go and take their bayonets from them and stick them into them. Eh? You don’t go!” He laughed at the silence round the fire.
“Jan—Jan,” said one young man appealingly, “don’t make mock of us.”
“I thought that was what you wanted so badly. No? Then listen to me. Behind us the grazing is bad. We have too many cattle here.” (They had been stolen from farmers who had been heard to express fears of defeat.) “To-morrow, by the sky’s look, it will blow a good wind. So, to-morrow early I shall send all our cattle north to the new grazing. That will make a great dust for the English to see from their helio yonder.” He pointed to a winking night-lamp stabbing the darkness with orders to an out-lying picket. “With the cattle we will send all our women. Yes, all the women and the wagons we can spare, and the lame ponies and the broken carts we took from Andersen’s farm. That will make a big dust—the dust of our retreat. Do you see?”
They saw and approved, and said so.
“Good. There are many men here who want to go home to their wives. I shall let thirty of them away for a week. Men who wish to do this will speak to me to-night.” (This meant that Jan needed money, and furlough would be granted on strictly business lines.) “These men will look after the cattle and see that they make a great dust for a long way. They will run about behind the cattle showing their guns, too. So that, if the wind blows well, will be our retreat. The cattle will feed beyond Koopman’s Kop.”