The next morning when we
awoke at the Vaal River Station the train despatcher informed us that
during the night the "Rooineks" had taken Winburg, and that the
burghers were gathered at Smaaldel.
We agreed not to go to Winburg, but to stop off at Smaaldel. We also
agreed that Winburg was an impossible position to hold. When at
eleven o'clock the train reached Kroonstad, we learned than Lord
Roberts was in Smaaldel. It was then evident that if our train kept
on and the British army kept on there would be a collision. So we
stopped at Kroonstad. In talking it over we decided that, owing to
its situation, Smaaldel was an impossible position to hold.
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. Their cowboy spurs jingled
on the floor of the bar-room, on the boards of the verandas, on the
stone floor of the kitchen, and in the billiard-room, where they were
playing pool as joyously as though the English were not ten miles
away. Grave, awkward burghers rode up, each in a cloud of dust, and
leaving his pony to wander in the street and his rifle in a corner,
shook hands with every one solemnly, and asked for coffee. Italians
of Garibaldi's red-shirted army, Swedes and Danes in semi-uniform,
Frenchman in high boots and great sombreros, Germans with the sabre
cuts on their cheeks that had been given them at the university, and
Russian officers smoking tiny cigarettes crowded the little dining-
room, and by the light of a smoky lamp talked in many tongues of
Spion Kop, Sannahspost, Fourteen Streams, and the battle on the
morrow.
