And now and then a day brought with it a letter, frank, friendly and full of news.Those days Weldon marked with a white stone; but his sleep, on those nights, was as quiet and dreamless as ever.Facts were facts.Theories and hopes were for the future; and no man looks much to the future in a time of war.
Besides the letters, there were minor events, too, events which went to fill up the letters of reply.Now it was a hospital train which halted at the camp on the way southward, and each red-taped nurse had reminded him of Alice Mellen, and of those last days in Johannesburg.Now it was a two-day trek, as escort for a convoy train whose long lines of bullock-drawn wagons marked the brown veldt with a wavering stripe of duller brown.Again a wounded picket came straying back to camp, bleeding and dazed, to report the inevitable sniping which furnished the running accompaniment to most other events; or an angry squad came riding in, to tell of the shots which had followed close upon the raising of the white flag, or of the score of armed men who had suddenly leaped out from the safe shelter of a Red-Cross ambulance.And, on one occasion, he had been in the thick of a similar fray.Hand to hand, he had fought on the doorsteps of a farmhouse to which he and his five comrades had been bidden by a sprightly Boer in gown and sunbonnet.At the door, the bonnet had been cast from the cropped head, and the gown had been pushed back to give access to the bandolier beneath, while a dozen shots from an upper window had driven them from the dooryard into the comparative shelter of the lower rooms.The skirmish had ended with a charge up the stairway.Weldon, that same night, had written to Ethel a wholly humorous account of the whole affair, and it was not until long afterwards that she had learned from Carew, who had been of the party, which was the trooper who had mounted guard over the room where the aged grandmother had tucked herself away under her bed.The old Dutch vrouw had bidden him to share her shelter;but he had taken note of her dimensions, and had declined her hospitality.Later on, when the fight was over and she had painfully wriggled her way out from her trap, he had also declined certain of her manifestations of gratitude.Even chivalry to the aged possesses its humorous side.
Then, one November night, Weldon came into his tent with alert step and glowing eyes.He found Carew going through his camp outfit in detail, and, squatting on the floor in the corner, Kruger Bobs was cleaning accoutrements as if his life depended on it.
"You look as if events were about to happen," he observed, from the dispassionate distance of the doorway.
"They are."
"Ask them to include me, then."
"What do you need of events, you regimental broncho-buster?""One gets sick of even the best horseflesh in time," he answered nonchalantly.
"Sorry, for you are doomed to more of it.""Another herd of bronchos?" Weldon's voice showed that the idea displeased him.
"No; but a two-hundred-mile trek across country.""Good.I am tired of being cooped up, and a spin of that kind will be a boon."Carew settled back on his heels and looked up at him.
