CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
ON THE MARCH.
Our next week or two seemed to be passed in doing nothing but riding from place to place for the purpose of cutting off parties of Boers.
Information was sent to the Colonel, generally from headquarters; but, whether because we were too long in coming, or because the Boers were too slippery, we always found they had not stopped to be cut off, but were gone.

There was no doubt they had been at the places we reached, generally some farm, where the old occupier and his people received us in surly silence, and invariably declared there was nothing left to eat, for the Boers had stripped the place.

This sullen reception was not because we were going to plunder them, for the orders were that everything requisitioned was to be paid for; it was solely from a feeling of pitiful racial hatred.
We reached a big and prosperous-looking farm one afternoon after a long hot ride, and I had been chatting with Denham more than once, and remarking how rapidly he had recovered from his injury, which he attributed to the healthy open-air life, and had also spoken with the sergeant, whose injury troubled him very little; while of our men, thirty who had received slight injuries had refused to go into hospital, and were now ready to laugh at any allusion to wounds.
We had reached, as I said, a big and prosperous-looking farm on the open veldt, hot, fagged, hungry, and thirsty; and the first thing we saw was the disorder left after the encamping of a large body of men.

There were the traces of the fire they had made, the trampling and litter left by horses, and the marks where wagon after wagon had been placed to form a laager; while in front of the long, low house a big, old, grey-bearded Boer stood smoking, with his hands in his pockets.
One of the officers rode forward to tell him that we were going to camp there for the night, and that he must supply sheep, poultry, grain for the horses, and fuel for the corps, at the regular market-prices, for which an order for payment would be given to him.
The officer was received with a furious burst of abuse in Dutch.

There was nothing left on the farm.