Poppy Part 5

Eventually they were all in the tent, lying in a row crossways, the mother by the opening as a sort of barricade. They did not undress--only loosened their clothes.

Everyone wanted to lie across the opening. They couldn't see anything at the back of the tent, they complained; only had to lie and stare at the things bobbing overhead.

"You never mind that," said the mother, arguing. "You've got three or four weeks to see the veldt and the oxen in. I'm going to lie here so that I can keep you children from falling out while we're trekking. Why I knew a woman once who let her baby lie on the outside, and in the middle of the night she woke up and heard an awful crunching under the wheels, and when she felt for the baby it wasn't there!" This story caused a great sensation, but presently Johnny asked how the baby's bones could crunch under the wheels "if it fell out behind the wagon!"

The mother considered for a moment, then said:

"It was the wheels of the wagon behind, of course, _dom-kop_."

But Johnny pointed out that a whole span of oxen would come before the wheels of the next wagon, and that the baby would be all trodden to bits before the wheels reached it.

"Oh, _Kgar! Sis!_" cried the sisters; and at this his mother told him amiably to shut his mouth and go to sleep.

But though she put out the lantern the talk still went on intermittently until replaced by snores.

The _boys_ and the transport-drivers all lay wrapped in their blankets, snoring too. Only afar the oxen could be heard moving as they grazed, and the bell on the neck of one of them clanked restlessly. The fires had died down to dim red spots. The watcher in the bushes was the only one awake in the camp. She feared that if she slept the family in the wagon might be up and away. Her mind was made up to accompany that good-natured-looking woman and her family to Pretoria, since that was where they were bound for. She would follow the wagons and join them when a long way from Bloemfontein, and her tale would be that she belonged to a wagon which had gone on in front. She would pretend that she had got lost, and ask to be taken on to rejoin her relations in Pretoria.

At about eleven o'clock the moon rose, but no one stirred in the camp.

Suddenly the figure of a man arose, took a long whip from the side of a wagon, unwound it, walked a little way from the camp, swung it whistling softly round his head for a moment, then sent a frightful report ringing across the veldt. Afterwards he lay down again until a great crackling and trampling and shouting told that the oxen were in the camp with their herders hooting and yelling round them. In a moment other still figures were on their feet; a clamour arose of voices shouting, wooden yokes clattering, dissel-booms creaking; bullocks were called at by their names and sworn at individually:

"_Rooi-nek! Yoh Skelpot! com an da!_" (Redneck! You tortoise! come on there!)

"_Viljoen! Wat makeer jij?_" (Viljoen! What's wrong with _you_?)

Loud blows and kicks were heard and demands for missing oxen.

"_Jan, war is de Vaal-pans?_" (John, where is the yellow-belly?)

"_Ek saal yoh net now slaan, jou faarbont._" (I'll strike you in a minute, you baseborn.)

"_De verdomder Swart-kop!_"

Each wagon had a span of eighteen or twenty oxen, and as soon as the last pair was yoked, a small black boy, the _voerlooper_, would run to their heads, seize the leading _rein_ and turn them towards the road.

Then came a tremendous crack of the driver's whip, a stream of oaths and oxen's names, intermingled and ending in:

"_Yak!_"

One by one the four wagons took the road, raising clouds of red dust, the drivers and boys running alongside.

Usually pa.s.senger-wagons go first in the line, but the wagon with Poppy's adopted family in it, started last, because _Swart-kop_, a big black-and-white ox, had been particularly fractious, and had delayed the operation of inspanning, putting the driver into a terrible pa.s.sion.

Poppy waited until his cursings and revilings were only faintly heard on the air, then slipping quietly through the camp which had returned to peaceful sleeping, she plunged into the clouds of dust.

Throughout the night hours she padded along, her throat and ears and mouth filled with the fine dirt, her eyes running and sore; afraid to get too near the wagons for fear of being seen; afraid to be too far behind for fear of she knew not what.

Towards dawn they pa.s.sed through a narrow _sluit_. The water was filthy at the _drift_ when all the wagons had gone through it, but she left the road and found a clean place higher up where she thankfully drank and laved her begrimed face. As the dawn broke she could see that the veldt was well-bushed with clumps of rocks, and big ant-heaps here and there; there would be plenty of hiding-places when the wagons stopped.

Presently there were signs of a coming halt. The oxen slackened pace, the drivers began to call to each other, and the man who was evidently the _Baas_ of the convoy went off the road and inspected the ground.

Then a long loud:

"_Woa! An--nauw!_" pa.s.sed along the line, each wagon took to the veldt, drawing up at about fifty yards from the road.

Thereafter came the outspanning, with the identical accompaniments of the inspanning. When the oxen had gone to seek water and food in charge of their herders, the _voerloopers_ departed to gather wood and _mis_ (dry cow-dung) for the fires, and the drivers unrolled their blankets and lay upon them resting, but not sleeping, until a meal had been prepared; someone began to play a concertina at this time. Afar from the encampment Poppy had found a big dry hole in the heart of a clump of bushes. The thorns tore her face and her clothes as she struggled through them, but in the hole at last she fell down and succ.u.mbed to the pa.s.sion for sleep which overwhelmed her. She lay like a stone all through the day, hearing nothing until the loud clap of a whip pulled her out of her dreams.

"_Yak--Varns!_"

Half dead with weariness--stiff, wretched, hungry--she crept from her hiding-place and stumbled on her way, wrapped once more in the impenetrable dust.

On the night of the second day she discovered herself to the family in the tented wagon. Staggering from the bush at the side of the road she climbed on to the brake of the slowly moving wagon and appeared before the comfortable contented occupants--a filthy, tattered, unkempt vision; her face peaked and wan under the dirt, her eyes glazy. "Give me food and water," she whispered--her voice had never returned since Ina's death.

After one long stare, and amidst screams from the children, the woman pulled her up into the tent, bade the children make room, and quickly found water and biscuits.

Poppy ate and drank ravening, then lay back and cried weakly, the big hot tears washing white streaks down her cheeks. The woman with an eye to her clean bedclothes, proceeded to sponge her face with water in a tin beaker, and told Alice to take off the tattered boots and stockings.

She questioned Poppy the while, but Poppy cared for nothing but sleep.

She lay back and slept even as they washed her. About noon she awoke and found herself still lying on the big bed, and the woman was standing on the brake with coffee and a plate of stew.

"Wake up and eat this, girl; and now you are better tell me where you come from and where you're going, hey?"

Poppy, between eating and drinking, recited her tale: she was travelling with her father and brothers and sisters to the Transvaal; had wandered away from the wagons and got lost on the veldt--believed she had been wandering for a week; her name she fancifully gave as Lucy Gray (it seemed to wake no echoes in the minds or memories of her listeners); no doubt, she said, these wagons would catch the others up in a few days.

She begged the woman to take care of her in the meantime. She would help with the cooking and the children--she wouldn't eat much.

The woman regarded her suspiciously once or twice, but she was stupid as well as good-natured and had not the wit to find flaws in the well-thought-out tale. She consented to fall in with Poppy's request--in common humanity she could do little else--found some clean clothes for her and a pair of old boots, and gave her _fat_ to smear on her wounds and sore feet.

But first Poppy had to be pa.s.sed before the _Baas_ of the wagons--the big fierce-looking Boer who fortunately was not at all fierce, only very stupid, and although he refused to believe her tale, turning to Mrs.

Brant and remarking briefly: "_Sij le!_" (she lies!) he could not offer any suggestion as to what the truth might be; nor did he make any objection to Mrs. Brant's plans; so Poppy was outcast no more. She became one of a family, and speedily made herself so useful to Mrs.

Brant that the good woman was glad to have her.

Followed many long happy weeks. Happy even when the wet-season swooped down on them and they had to wait on the banks of swollen rivers fireless for days; or remain stuck in a mudhole for hours, until their wheels could be dug out or pulled out by three spans of oxen combined, while mosquitoes bit and swarmed over them, leaving a festering sore for every bite they gave; even under the heavy sweltering _sail_ that was flung over them at nights to keep rain out, and which also kept the air out and made the small tent like a pest-house; even when the food gave out and they had to rely on what they could get at the scattered farms.

In spite of all the mishaps, everyone was kind and good-natured. No one offered blows or taunts to Poppy, and her starved heart revived a little and began to hold up its head under the gentle rain of kindliness and friendliness. Then, the glamour of travel was upon her for the first time. Never before had she seen the hills, the mountains, the great rolling s.p.a.ces of veldt, the rivers sweeping and boiling down their wide ravines. It was most wonderful and beautiful, too, to wake every dawn and step out of the wagon to a fresh world. Where last night had been a hill, to-morrow would be a rushing river, befringed with mimosa, whose odour had been sweet on the breeze all the day before. The next day would find them on a bare plain, with no stick or stone to give shelter from the burden of the sun or the rain, and the next they would lie in the purple shadow of a mountain, on which were scarlet geraniums as tall as trees, and strange flowers shaped like birds and insects grew everywhere.

And oh! the fresh glory of the morning dews! The smell of the wood smoke on the air! The wide open empty world around them and the great silence into which the small human sounds of the camp fell and were lost like pebbles thrown into the sea! Happy, rain-soaked, sun-bitten days!

Bloemfontein and misery were a long way behind. Poppy's sad songs were all forgotten; new ones sprang up in her heart, songs flecked with sunlight and bewreathed with wild flowers.

But a cloud was on the horizon. The convoy of wagons drew at last near its destination. Poppy began to be haunted at nights with the fear of what new trouble must await her there. Where would she go? What would she do? How could she face kind Mrs. Brant with her tale of parents and friends proved false? These frightful problems filled the nights in the creaking wagon with terror. The misty bloom that had fallen upon her face during the weeks of peace and content, vanished, and haggard lines of anxiety and strain began to show.

"Child, you look peaky," said good Mrs. Brant. "What'll your ma say? I must give you a c.o.c.kle's pill."

But Poppy grew paler and more peaky.

Two days' _trek_ from Pretoria she was missed at inspan time. Long search was made. The wagons even waited a whole day and night for her; the _boys_ called and the drivers sent cracks of their great whips volleying and echoing for miles, as a signal of their whereabouts in case she had wandered far and lost her bearings. At night they made enormous fires to guide her to their camping-places. But she never returned. It was then and for the first time that two little lines of verse came into the memory of Alice, the eldest girl, who had been at a good school. She recited them to the family, who thought them pa.s.sing strange and prophetic:

"But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen."