Captain Leo Frazer, age thirty and an Englishman, had a trick of looking Fate between the eyes with those black-fringed blue eyes of his, of accepting its gifts with gratitude, its occasional knocks with cheery optimism.At Rugby he had ultimately been captain of the school; at Oxford he had been of equal prowess in rowing and football.Since taking his degree, he had been a successful doctor in the intervals of time allowed him by his membership in one of the crack regiments at home.He had never seriously contemplated the possibility of active service; but Colenso had been too strong a pull upon him.Leaving some scores of sorrowing patients to bemoan him as already dead, he had promptly shipped for Cape Town.The year of grace nineteen hundred had found him on the scene at most of its exciting events.Where Fate refused to take him, he asserted his strong hand and took Fate, until that weary lady was forced to go hopping about the map of South Africa with the agility of a sand flea.
In battle, Frazer was always in the thickest spatter of bullets, where he bowed himself to the inevitable and lay prone, though with his face turned to one side to give free passage to the chaff which carried his comrades through so many grim hours.In the presence of danger, his humor never failed him.In those sorrowful hours which followed the cessation of firing, no man was in greater demand than he.Many a brave fellow had died with his hand shut fast over Frazer's long, slim fingers; many a man's first, awful moments in hospital had been soothed by the touch of those same firm, slim hands.And in the singsongs around the camp fire, or at the mess table, Frazer's voice was always heard, no matter how great the tumult of a moment before.
Like many another of his countrymen, Captain Frazer had learned lessons since he had left the ship at Cape Town, just a year before.
He had come out from England, trained to the inflexibly formal tactics of the British army.Again and again he had seen those tactics proved of no avail in the face of an invisible enemy and an almost inexpugnable country.He had learned the nerve-racking tension of being exposed to a storm of bullets that came apparently from nowhere to cut down the British lines as the hail cuts down the standing grain; he had learned the shock of seeing the level veldt, over which he was marching, burst into a line of fire at his very feet from a spot where it seemed that scarce a dozen men could lie in hiding, to say nothing of a dozen scores.He had learned that, under such fire, a man's first duty was to drop flat on his face, to push up a tiny breastwork of earth and to fire from behind that slender shelter.England could not afford to send her sons over seas for the sake of having them slaughtered by needless obedience to the laws of martial good form.Fighting a nation of hunters, they too must adopt the methods of the hunt.And, most of all, Captain Frazer had learned the imperative need of mounted riflemen.Two months before, while lying up at Durban until his wrist had healed from a Mauser bullet, he had come into close contact with the Marquis of Tullibardine.As a result of that contact, January had found Captain Frazer in Cape Town, ready to take command of the newly enlisted Scottish Horse.
Now, as he looked over his force at Piquetberg Road, he was congratulating himself that his men were fit for service, very fit.
Frazer knew something of men.Experience had assured him that these men were worth training and his months of service under the great Field Marshal had taught him that an officer could be a man among his men, yet lose not one jot of his dignity.Accordingly, Frazer set himself to the task in band.By the time he had been at Piquetberg Road for two days, he knew the name and face of every man in his squadron.A week later he could tell to a nicety which of his men were engaged to girls at home, which of them had heard of one Rudyard Kipling, and which of them could be counted upon in an emergency.The two latter counts Weldon filled absolutely.In regard to the first, Frazer permitted himself a moment of acute uneasiness.
It had been in a spirit of unmitigated joy that Frazer had met Ethel Dent in Cape Town, on the morning of New Year's day.In London he had known the girl just well enough to admire her intensely, not well enough, however, to have found out that she had any permanent connection with South Africa.His joy had lasted until the hour of his calling upon her, three days later; then it had received a sudden check.Ethel had been as cordial as ever; nevertheless, her talk had been full of the young Canadian whom he had met in the drive.Frazer was intensely human.After a year of separation he would have preferred to bound the talk by the experiences of their two selves.
As a natural consequence, he had developed a strong prejudice against Weldon; but Weldon, all unconsciously, had done much to remove that prejudice.Not every man could manage a crazy, bucking broncho in any such fashion as that; fewer still could come out of the scrimmage, unhurt, to bow to a young woman with a cordiality quite untinged with boyish bravado.That day at Maitland, Frazer had registered his mental approval of the long-legged, lean Canadian with his keen gray eyes and his wrists of bronze.He had registered a second note of approval, that first night at Piquetberg Road, when Weldon, with no unnecessary words, had contrived to impress upon the mind of his captain that he was to be included in the guard to cross the river.Totally obedient and respectful, Weldon nevertheless had given the impression of a man who intended to win his own way.
Moreover, the direction of that way appeared to be straight towards the front.
