by Wilbur Smith
Ralph sent Isazi ahead to scout the drift and he found it defended. Ralph closed up the little party and they took it at a gallop, catching the dozen or so Matebele amadoda by surprise, shooting four of them down as they ran to their weapons, and thundering up the far bank together in the dust and gunsmoke. They were not followed, though Ralph, hoping they might be, turned back and lay in ambush beside the road.
Ralph held Jonathan in his lap during the night, starting awake every few minutes from nightmares in which Cathy screamed and pleaded for mercy. In the dawn he found that without realizing it, he had taken the mole-skin headband from his jacket and held it balled in his fist. He put it back in his pocket and buttoned the flap, as though it was something rare and precious.
They rode on northwards all that day, past the little one-man gold mines and the homesteads where men and their families had begun to carve a life out of the wilderness. Some of them had been taken completely by surprise. They were still clad in the remnants of their night-clothes. One little boy even clutched his teddy bear while his dead mother reached out to him with fingers that did not quite touch his sodden curls.
Others had sold their lives dearly, and the dead Matabele were flung like wood chips from a sawmill in a wide circle around the burned-out homesteads. Once they found dead amadoda but no white bodies. There were tracks of horses and a vehicle heading out northwards.
"The Andersons. They got away," Ralph said. "Please God, they are in Bulawayo by now." Vicky wanted to take the old wagon road, past Khami Mission, but Ralph would not do so.
"If they are there, it's too late. You've seen enough. If they got away, we'll find them in Bulawayo." So they rode into the town of Bulawayo in the early morning of the third day. The barricades opened to let them pass into the huge central laager in the town square, and the townspeople thronged around the horses, shouting questions.
"Are the soldiers coming?" "When are the soldiers coming?" "Did you see my brother? He was at the Antelope Mine-" "Have you any news?"
When she saw Robyn waving to her from the top of one of the wagons in the market square, Vicky wept again for the first time since leaving the Harkness Mine. Elizabeth jumped down from the wagon and pushed her way through the crowd to Ralph's horse.
"Cathy?" she asked.
Ralph shook his head and saw his own sorrow reflected in her clear dark honey-coloured eyes. Elizabeth reached up and lifted Jon Jon down from the front of the saddle.
"I'll look after him, Ralph," she said softly.
The family was installed in a corner of the central laager. Under Robyn's and Louise's direction, the single wagon had been turned into a crowded but adequate home.
On the first day of the rising, Louise and Jan Cheroot, the little Hottentot, had brought the wagon in from King's Lynn. One of the survivors from the Matabele attack at Victoria Mine had galloped past the homestead, shouting a barely coherent warning as he went by.
Louise and Jan Cheroot, already alerted by the desertion of the Matabele labourers and servants, had taken time to pack the wagon with a load of essentials, tinned food and blankets and ammunition, and they had driven into Bulawayo, Jan Cheroot handling the traces, and Louise sitting on top of the load with a rifle in her hands. Twice they had seen small war parties of Matabele at a distance, but a few warning shots had kept them there, and they reached the town amongst the very first refugees.
Thus the family did not have to rely on the charity of the townsfolk, like so many others who had arrived in Bulawayo with only a lathered horse and an empty rifle.
Robyn had set up a clinic under a canvas awning beside the wagon and had been asked by the Siege Committee to supervise the health and sanitation of the laager. While Louise had quite naturally taken charge of the other women in the laager, setting up a system by which all food stocks and other essential supplies were pooled and rationed, delegating the care of the halfdozen orphans to foster mothers, and organizing the other activities, from an entertainment committee, to lessons in loading ammunition and handling firearms for those gentlewomen who did not already have those skills.
Ralph left Vicky to break the news of Cathy's death to her mother, gave Jon-Jon into Elizabeth's care and set off across the laager to find a member of the Siege Committee.
It was after dark when Ralph got back to the wagon. Surprisingly, there was a brittle air of festivity upon the town. Despite the terrible bereavements that most families had suffered, despite the threat of dark imp is gathering just beyond the walls of the laager, yet the cries of the children playing hide-and go-seek amongst the wagons, the merry notes of a concertina, the laughter of women and the cheerful blaze of the watch-fires might have been those of a picnic in happier times.
Elizabeth had bathed both Jonathan and Robert, so they glowed pinkly and smelled of carbolic soap, and now as they ate their dinner at the camp table, she was telling them a story that made their eyes big as marbles in the lamplight.
Ralph smiled his thanks at her, and summoned Harry Mellow with an inclination of his head.
The two men sauntered off on a seemingly casual circuit of the darkening laager. They walked with their heads close together, while Ralph told Harry quietly, "The Siege Committee seem to be doing a good job. They have held a census of the laager already, and they reckon there are six hundred and thirty two women and children and nine hundred and fifteen men. The defence of the town seems to be on good footing, but nobody has yet thought of anything but defence. They were delighted to hear that their plight is known in Kimberley and Cape Town. I gave them the first news that they have had from outside the territory since the rising began "Ralph drew on his cheroot "and they seemed to think it was as good as a couple of regiments of cavalry on their way already. We both know that isn't so." "It will take months to get troops up here." "Jameson and his officers are on their way to England for trial, and Rhodes has been summoned to a court of inquiry." Ralph shook his head. "And there is worse news. The Mashona tribes have risen in concert with the Matabele." "Good God." Harry stopped dead and seized Ralph's arm. "The whole territory all at the same time? This thing has been carefully planned." "There has been heavy fighting in the Mazoe valley and in the Charter and Lornagundi districts around Fort Salisbury." "Ralph, how many have these savages murdered?" "Nobody knows. There are hundreds of scattered farms and mines out there. We have to reckon on at least five hundred men, women and children dead." They walked on in silence for a while. Once a sentry challenged them, but recognized Ralph.
"Heard you got through, Mr. Ballantyne are the soldiers coming?"
"Are the soldiers coming?" Ralph muttered, when they were past.
"That's what they all ask from the Siege Committee downwards." They reached the far end of the laager and Ralph spoke quietly to the guard there.
"All right, Mr. Ballantyne, but keep your eyes open. Those murdering heathen are all over." Ralph and Harry passed through the gateway into the town. It was utterly deserted. Everyone had been moved into the central laager. The thatch and daub shanties were dark and silent, and the two men walked down the centre of the broad dusty main street until the buildings petered out on either hand, they stopped and stood staring out into the scrubland. , "Listen!" said Ralph. A jackal yipped down near the Umguza stream, and was answered from the shadows of the acacia forest out in the south.
"Jackal,"said Harry, but Ralph shook his head. "Matabele!" "Will they attack the town?" Ralph did not reply immediately. He was staring out into the veld, and he had something in his hands that he was teasing like a string of Greek worry beads. "There are probably twenty thousand fighting bucks out there. They have got us bottled up here, and sooner or later, when they have massed their imp is and plucked up their courage, they will come. They will come long before the soldiers -can get here." "What are our chances?" Ralph wrapped the thing he held in his hand around one finger, and Harry saw it was a strip of drab fur. "We have got four Maxim guns, but there are six hundred women and children, and out of the nine hundred me
n, half are not fit to hold a rifle. The best way to defend Bulawayo is not to sit in the laager and wait for them-" Ralph turned away and they went back along the silent street. "They wanted me to join the Siege Committee, and I told them I did not like sieges." "What are you going to do, Ralph?" "I am going to get together a small group of men. Those who know the tribe and the land, those who can shoot straight and talk Sindebele well enough to pass as natives and we are going to go out there in the Matopos Hills, or wherever else they are hiding, and we are going to start killing Matabele." Isazi brought in fourteen men. They were all Zulus from the South, drivers and wagon-boys from the Zeederberg Company who had once worked for Rholands Transport, but had been stranded in Bulawayo by the rinderpest.
"I know you can drive an eighteen ox span," Ralph nodded at the circle of their faces as they squatted around the fire passing the red tin of "Wrights No. ! Best Snuff that Ralph had provided, from hand to hand. "I also know that any one of you can eat his own weight in sadza maize porridge in one sitting, and wash it down with enough beer to stun a rhinoceros, but can you fight?" And Isazi answered for them all, using the patient tone usually reserved for an obtuse child.
"We are Zulu." It was the only reply necessary. an Cheroot brought in six more, all of them Cape boys, with mixed Bushman and Hottentot blood, like Jan Cheroot himself.
"This one is named Grootboom, the big tree." Ralph thought he looked more like a Kalahari Desert thorn bush dark, dry and thorny.
"He was a corporal in the Fifty-second Foot at Cape Town Fort. He is my nephew." "Why did he leave Cape Town?" Jan Cheroot looked pained.
"There was a dispute over a lady. A man had his gizzard slit. They accused my dear nephew of the bastardly deed." "Did he do it?" "Of course he did. He is the best man with a knife that I know after me, "Jan Cheroot declared modestly.
"Why do you want to kill Matabele?" Ralph asked him in Sindebele, and the Hottentot answered him fluently in the same language. "It is work I understand and enjoy." Ralph nodded and turned to the next man.
"It is possible that this one is even more closely related to me," Jan Cheroot introduced him. "His name is Taos, and his mother was a great beauty. She owned a famous shebeen at the foot of Signal Hill above Cape Town docks. At one time she and I were dear and intimate friends, but then the lady had many friends." The prospective recruit had the flat nose and high cheekbones, the oriental eyes and the same waxen smooth skin as Jan Cheroot if he was one of Jan Cheroot's bastards and had spent his boyhood in Cape Town's notorious dock land then he should be a good man in a fight. Ralph nodded.
"Five shillings a day," he said. "And a free box to bury you in if the Matabele catch you." Jameson had taken many hundreds of horses south with him, and the Matabele had swept the horses off the farms.
Maurice Gifford had already taken 160 mounted men down towards Gwanda to bring in any survivors who might be cut off on the outlying farms and mines, and still be holding out. While Captain George Grey had formed a troop of mounted infantry, "Grey's Scouts', with most of the mounts that remained. The four mounts that Ralph had brought in with him were fine beasts, and he had managed to buy six more at exorbitant prices, 100 pounds for an animal that would have fetched 15 pounds on a good day at Kimberley market, but there were no others. He lay awake long after midnight under the wagon worrying about it while above him Robyn and Louise slept with the two girls and the children on the wagon truck under the canvas tent.
Ralph's eyes were closed, and a few feet away Harry Mellow was breathing deeply and regularly drowning out any small sounds. Yet even in his preoccupation, Ralph became aware of another presence near him in the darkness. He smelled it first, the taint of woodsmoke and cured animal furs and the odour of the fat with which a Matabele warrior anoints his body.
Ralph slipped his right hand up under the saddle he was using for a pillow, and his fingers touched the cheque red walnut butt of his Webley pistol.
"Henshaw," whispered a voice he did not recognize, and Ralph whipped his left arm around a thick corded neck and at the same moment thrust the muzzle of the pistol into the man's body.
"Quickly," he grated.. "Who are you, before I kill you?" "They told me you were quick and strong." The man was speaking Sindebele.
"Now I believe it." "Who are you?" "I have brought you good men and the promise of horses." Neither of them had spoken above a whisper.
"Why do you come like a thief?" "Because I am Matabele, the white men will kill me if they find me here. I have come to take you to these men." Ralph released him carefully, and reached for his boots.
They left the laager and slipped through the silent deserted town.
Ralph had spoken only once more.
"You know that I will kill you if this is treachery." "I know it, "replied the Matabele..
He was tall, as tall as Ralph but even heavier built, and once when he glanced back at Ralph the moonlight showed the silky sheen of scar tissue slashed across his cheek beneath his right eye.
In the yard of one of the last houses of the town, close to the open veld, yet screened from it by the wall that some house proud citizen had erected to protect his garden, there were twelve more Matabele amadoda waiting. Some of them wore fur kilts while others were dressed in ragged Western cast-offs.
"Who are these men?" Ralph demanded. "Who are you?" "My name is Ezra, Sergeant Ezra. I was Sergeant to One-bright-Eye who the imp is killed at Khami Hills. These men are all Company police." The Company police have been disbanded and disarmed," Ralph said.
"Yes, they have taken away our guns. They say they do not trust us. That we may go over to the rebels." "Why do you not?" Ralph said.
"Some of your brothers have. They say a hundred of the Company police have gone over, and taken their rifles with them." "We cannot even if we had wished to." Ezra shook his head. "Have you heard of the killing of two Matabele women near the Inyati river? A woman called Ruth and another called Little Flower, Imbali?" Ralph frowned. "Yes, I remember." "It was these men, and I was their sergeant. The and una named Gandang has asked that we be taken to him alive. He wishes personally to supervise the manner of our deaths." "I want men who can kill the women of the Matabele as easily as they killed ours," said Ralph. "Now what of these horses?" "The horses captured by the Matabele at Essexvale and Belingwe are being held in the hills at a place I know of." Long before the curfew bell, they had all slipped out of the central laager singly and in pairs, Jan Cheroot and his Cape boys taking the horses with them, and by the time Ralph and Harry Mellow strolled down the main street as though they were taking the evening air before returning to the laager for dinner, the others were all gathered in the walled garden at the end of the street.
Sergeant Ezra had brought the kilts and spears and knob-kierries, and Jan Cheroot had the big black three-legged pot of beef fat and lampblack boiled to a paste. Ralph and Harry and the Hottentots stripped naked and "smeared each other with the rancid mixture, taking care to work it in around the back of the ears, the knees and elbows, and below the eyes where pale skin might show.
By the time the curfew bell in the Anglican church began to toll, they were all dressed in the kilts of Matabele amadoda. Ralph and Harry covered their hair, which would have betrayed them, with headdresses of black widow-bird feathers. Isazi and Jan Cheroot strapped the rawhide bootees over the hooves of the horses, while Ralph gave his final orders, speaking in Sindebele, the only language they would use during the entire raid.
They left the town in the sudden darkness between sunset and moonrise, the hoofbeats of the horses deadened by the rawhides, and Ezra's Matabele running at the stirrups on silent bare feet. After the first hour, Ralph muttered a curt order to the Matabele and they took a stirrup-leather and hung from it, a man on each side of the horses. The pace of the march never slackened below a canter. They swept south and eastwards, until the crenellated crests of the Matopos Hills were outlined against the moon-pale sky.
A little after midnight Ezra grunted. "This is the place!
" Ralph rose in the stirrups and raised his right arm. The column bunched up and dismounted. Jan Cheroot's reputed bastard, Taos, came to take the horses, while Jan Cheroot himself checked his men's weapons.
"I will put them against the firelight for you," Ralph whispered to him. "Watch for my signal." Then Ralph smiled at Isazi, his teeth glinting in the shiny black mask of his daubed face. "There will be no prisoners. Lie close, but beware of Jan Cheroot's bullets." "Henshaw, I want to go in with you." Harry Mellow spoke in Sindebele, and Ralph answered him in the same language.