“If there is any truth in it, that villain Muller has a hand in it,” he said. “I’ll go to the house and see Jantje. Give me your arm, John.”
He obeyed, and, on arriving at the top of the steep path, they perceived the stout figure of old Hans Coetzee, who had been John’s host at the shooting-party, ambling along on his fat little pony.
“Ah,” said Silas, “here is the man who will tell us if there is anything in it all.”
“Good-day, _Oom_ Coetzee, good-day!” he shouted out in his stentorian tones. “What news do you bring with you?”
The jolly-looking Boer rolled awkwardly off his pony before answering, and, throwing the reins over its head, came to meet them.
“_Allemachter_, _Oom_ Silas, it is bad news. You have heard of the _bymakaar_ at Paarde Kraal. Frank Muller wanted me to go, but I would not, and now they have declared war on the British Government and sent a proclamation to Lanyon. There will be fighting, _Oom_ Silas, the land will run with blood, and the poor _rooibaatjes_ will be shot down like buck.”
“The poor Boers, you mean,” growled John, who did not like to hear her Majesty’s army talked of in terms of regretful pity.
_Oom_ Coetzee shook his head with the air of one who knew all about it, and then turned an attentive ear to Silas Croft’s version of Jantje’s story.
“_Allemachter!_” groaned Coetzee, “what did I tell you? The poor _rooibaatjes_ shot down like buck, and the land running with blood! And now that Frank Muller will draw me into it, and I shall have to go and shoot the poor _rooibaatjes_; and I can’t miss, try as hard as I will, I _can’t_ miss. And when we have shot them all I suppose that Burgers will come back, and he is _kransick_ (mad). Yes, yes; Lanyon is bad, but Burgers is worse,” and the comfortable old gentleman groaned aloud at the troubles in which he foresaw he would be involved, and finally took his departure by a bridle-path over the mountain, saying that, as things had turned out, he would not like it to be known that he had been calling on an Englishman. “They might think that I was not loyal to the ‘land,’” he added in explanation; “the land which we Boers bought with our blood, and which we shall win back with our blood, whatever the poor ‘pack oxen’ of _rooibaatjes_ try to do. Ah, those poor, poor _rooibaatjes_, one Boer will drive away twenty of them and make them run across the veldt, if they can run in those great knapsacks of theirs, with the tin things hanging round them like the pots and kettles to the bed-plank of a waggon. What says the Holy Book? ‘One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one, and at the rebuke of five shall ye flee,’ at least I think that is it. The dear Lord knew what was coming when He wrote it. He was thinking of the Boers and the poor _rooibaatjes_,” and Coetzee departed, shaking his head sadly.