"'Keep your prayers for yourself,' says Van Zyl, throwing back a bunch of
grapes. 'You'll need 'em, and you'll need the fruit too, when the war
comes down here. _You_ done it,' he says. 'You and your picayune Church
that's deader than Cronje's dead horses! What sort of a God have you been
unloading on us, you black _aas vogels_? The British came, and we beat
'em,' he says, 'and you sat still and prayed. The British beat us, and you
sat still,' he says. 'You told us to hang on, and we hung on, and our
farms was burned, and you sat still--you and your God. See here,' he says,
'I shot my Bible full of bullets after Bloemfontein went, and you and God
didn't say anything. Take it and pray over it before we Federals help the
British to knock hell out of you rebels.'
"Then I hauled him back into the car. I judged he'd had a fit. But life's
curious--and sudden--and mixed. I hadn't any more use for a reb than Van
Zyl, and I knew something of the lies they'd fed us up with from the
Colony for a year and more. I told the minister to pull his freight out of
that, and went on with my lunch, when another man come along and shook
hands with Van Zyl. He'd known him at close range in the Kimberley seige
and before. Van Zyl was well seen by his neighbours, I judge. As soon as
this other man opened his mouth I said, 'You're Kentucky, ain't you?' 'I
am,' he says; 'and what may you be?' I told him right off, for I was
pleased to hear good United States in any man's mouth; but he whipped his
hands behind him and said, 'I'm not knowing any man that fights for a
Tammany Dutchman.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43