The Sand River, which runs about forty miles south of Kroonstad, was
the last place in the Free State at which the burghers could hope to
make a stand, and at the bridge where the railroad spans the river,
and at a drift ten miles lower down, the Boers and Free Staters had
collected to the number of four thousand. Lord Roberts and his
advancing column, which was known to contain thirty-five thousand
men, were a few miles distant from the opposite bank of the Sand
River. There was an equal chance that the English would attempt to
cross at the drift or at the bridge. We thought they would cross at
the drift, and stopped for the night at Ventersburg, a town ten miles
from the river.
Ventersburg, in comparison with Kroonstad, where we had left them
rounding up stray burghers and hurrying them to the firing-line, and
burning official documents in the streets, was calm.
Ventersburg was not destroying incriminating documents nor driving
weary burghers from its solitary street. It was making them welcome
at Jones's Hotel. The sun had sunk an angry crimson, the sure sign
of a bloody battle on the morrow, and a full moon had turned the
dusty street and the veldt into which it disappeared into a field of
snow.
The American scouts had halted at Jones's Hotel, and the American
proprietor was giving them drinks free.
