Five minutes later, Weldon passed out of the tent door. At his
quarters, he dismounted and went in search of a blanket. Muffled in
the thick folds, the horses' feet would make no sound on the
hard-baked earth. Kruger Bobs, meanwhile, went out to reconnoitre in
order to discover a possible gap in the line of Boer pickets.

The pickets once passed, Weldon mounted once more and, with Kruger
Bobs following close behind, rode carefully away into the inky,
drizzling night. For the first hour, he rode steadily and with
comparative comfort. The excitement of the battle was still in his
blood, its noises ringing in his head, its sights dancing like
will-o'-the-wisps before his eyes. Later, the inevitable reaction would
follow, and the inevitable weariness. Now, refreshed by their
supper, both he and the broncho had come to their second wind, and
they faced the storm pluckily and with unbowed heads. Beside him,
The Nig, fresh and fit as a horse could be, galloped onward steadily
under the weight of Kruger Bobs. It had been at Weldon's own command
that Kruger Bobs had abandoned his raw-boned steed and placed
himself astride the sacred body of the thoroughbred Nig. On such a
night and after such a battle, a horse abandoned was a horse forever
lost. Neither The Nig nor Piggie could be left to any chance
ownership, but neither could Piggie, fresh from a two-day fight, be
left to the mercies of an inexperienced rider. Three inches shorter
than his master, Kruger Bobs weighed fifty pounds the more, and he
rode with the resilient lightness of a feather bed.

Weldon's hour of rest had been divided in strict ratio between
himself, his friend and his horse. For fully half that period, he
and Kruger Bobs had rubbed the sturdy gray legs and anointed the
scratched neck with supplies taken from the portable veterinary
hospital always to be found in the recesses of the Kaffirs scanty
garments. Then, snatching a hasty meal, with the last of it still in
his hands, Weldon strode away to look for Carew. He found him,
bandaged but jovial, a shattered bone in his foot and his pipe in
his shut teeth. Fortunately the pain bore no relation to the
seriousness of the case, and Weldon left him to his pipe, cheered by
the doctor's assurance that two or three weeks would bring him back
into fighting trim. Carew's own disrespectful comments on the
injured foot were still in his ears, as he entered the tent of the
General.

By degrees, the night grew da