Between Snow and Fire — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

_™ raised in the district. 7" 63 ve ee = * v s _—s P 3 e ae and come back as soon as he has put things straight, Bentley’s my man down there. I let him live at Swaane- poel’s Hoek and run a little stock of his own on considera- tion of keeping the place in order and looking after it generally. He'll be glad enough to look after our stock now for a consideration—if Eustace gets sick of it and really does elect to come and have a shot at his ‘ blanket friends ’"—Ho-ho !”’ The Kaffrarian Rangers were, as we have said, a corps The farmers composing it mounted and equipped themselves, and elected their own leaders. There was little discipline, in the military sense of the word, but the men knew each other and had thorough confidence in their leaders. They understood the natives, and were as much at home on the ve/d¢ or in the bush as the Kafirs themselves. They affected no uniforms, but all were clad in a serviceable attire which should not be too conspicuous in cover—an important consideration—and all were well equipped in the way of arms and other necessaries. They asked for no pay—only stipulating that they should be en- titled to keep whatever stock they might succeed in captur- ing from the enemy—which in many cases would be merely retaking their own. ‘The Government, now as anxious as it had been sceptical and indifferent a month previously, gladly accepted the services of so useful a corps, The latter numbered between sixty and seventy men. This, then, was the corpsto which Carhayes had attached himself, and among the ranks of which, after two or three days of enforced delay while waiting for orders—and after a characteristically off-hand farewell to the Hostes and his wife—-he proceeded to take his place, They were to march at sundown and camp for the night at the Kei Drift. All Komgha—and its wife—turned out to witness their departure. Farmers and storekeepers, transport riders and Mounted Police, craftsmen and natives of every shade and colour, lined the roadway in serried ranks. There was a band, too, blowing off ‘God Save the Queen,” with all the power of its leathern lungs, Cheer after cheer went up as the men rode by, in double file, looking exceed- ingly workman-like with their well-filled cartridge belts and their guns and revolvers. Hearty good-byes and a little parting chaff from friends and intimates were shouted after them through the deafening cheers and the brazen strains Gomilecboo Si