Men of Men b-2

by Wilbur Smith

  "What a clever darling," Louise laughed, but with the huskiness of excitement and the tremor of heart-breaking exertion in the sound of it.

  She did not have the strength left to vault for the saddle, and for a moment she hopped with one foot in the stirrup before she could find the energy to swing her other leg up over Shooting Star's back, while Zouga stood and gaped at her.

  From the saddle she looked down at Zouga. "Playing dead is an old Blackfoot Indian's trick, Major."

  Louise swung the stallion's head towards the finish line.

  "Let's see you run the last lap on equal terms," she challenged, and Shooting Star jumped away at full gallop.

  For a moment Zouga could not bring himself to believe that she had taught the stallion to fall so convincingly, and to lie so still. Then suddenly his concern for her safety, the desolate feeling of believing her dead or maimed turned to fury and outrage.

  As he ran back to where Tom stood, he yelled after her.

  "Madam, you are a cheat, may God forgive you for that."

  She turned in the saddle and waved gaily. "Sir, you are gullible, but I will forgive you for that."

  And Shooting Star bore her away towards the finish at a pace that poor Tom could never match.

  Zouga Ballantyne was drunk. It was the first time in the twenty-two years they had been together that Jan Cheroot had seen him so.

  He sat very erect on the high-backed deal chair, and his face above the beard had a strange waxen look to it.

  His eyes were glazed over with the same soapy sheen of uncut diamonds, The third bottle of Cape Brandy stood on the green baize of the table between them, and as Zouga fumbled for it, he knocked it over. The spirit glugged loudly from the mouth, and soaked into the cloth.

  Jan Cheroot snatched it upright, with a shocked oath.

  "Man, if you want to lose the Devil's Own, I don't mind, but, when you spill the brandy, that's another thing."

  Jan Cheroot stumbled a little over the words; they had been drinking since an hour before sundown.

  "What am I going to tell the boys?" mumbled Zouga.

  "Tell them that they are on holiday, for the first time in ten years. We are all on holiday."

  Jan Cheroot poured brandy into Zouga's mug, and pushed it closer to his hand. Then he poured a good dram into his own, thought about it for a moment, and added as much again.

  "I have lost everything Old Jan."

  "Ja," Jan Cheroot said cheerfully. "And that was not very much, was it."

  "I have lost the claims."

  "Good." jan Cheroot nodded. "For ten years those double-damned squares of dirt ate our souls away, and starved us while they were doing it."

  "I have lost the bird."

  "Good again!" Jan Cheroot swigged his brandy, and smacked his lips with appreciation. "Let mister Rhodes have his share of bad luck now.

  That bird will finish him, as it nearly finished us. Send it to him as soon as you can, and thank God to be rid of it."

  Slowly Zouga lowered his face into his hands, covering his eyes and his mouth, so that his voice was muffled.

  "Jan Cheroot. It's all over. For me the road to the north is closed. My dream is finished. It's all been for nothing."

  The bibulous grin faded slowly and Jan Cheroot's yellow face puckered with deep compassion.

  "it is not finished, you are still young and strong with two strong sons."

  "We shall lose them too, soon, very soon."

  "Then you will have me, old friend, like it has always been."

  Zouga lifted his head out of his hands and stared at the little Hottentot.

  "What are we going to do, Jan Cheroot?"

  "We are going to finish this bottle and then open another," Jan Cheroot told him firmly.

  In the morning they loaded the soapstone idol into the gravel cart, and laid it on a bed of straw; then Zouga spread a stained and tattered tarpaulin over it and Jordan helped him rope it down.

  Neither of them spoke, until they were finished, and then Jordan whispered so softly that Zouga barely caught the words.

  "You can't let it go, Papa." And Zouga turned to look at his younger son, truly seeing him for the first time in many years.

  With a small shock he realized that Jordan was a man.

  In imitation of Ralph perhaps, he also had grown a moustache. It was a dense coppery gold, and accentuated the gentle line of his mouth, yet, if anything, the man was more beautiful than the child had been.

  "Is there no way we can keep it?" Jordan persisted, with a thin edge of desperation in his voice, and Zouga went on staring at him. How old was he now? Over nineteen years, and yesterday he had been a baby, little Jordie.

  Everything was changed.

  Zouga turned away from him, and placed his hand on the tarpaulin-wrapped burden in the bottom of the cart.

  "No, Jordan. It was a wager, a matter of honour."

  "But, Mama -" Jordan started and then broke off abruptly as Zouga looked back at him sharply.

  "What about Mama?" he demanded, and Jordan looked away and flushed, bringing up the colour under the velvety skin of his cheeks.

  "Nothing," he said quickly, and went to the head of the lead mule.

  "I will take the bird to mister Rhodes," he volunteered, and Zouga nodded immediately, relieved that he would be spared this painful duty.

  "Ask him when he will be free to sign the transfer of the claims."

  Zouga touched the wrapped statue again as though in farewell and then he pulled his hand away, went up the steps onto the verandah and into the bungalow without looking back.

  Jordan led the mules out into the rutted road and swung them towards the settlement. He walked bareheaded in the sunlight. He was tall and slim and he moved with a peculiar grace, stepping lightly and lithely in the soft red dust. His chin was up, his eyes focused far ahead, with the dreaming, yet all-seeing, gaze of a poet.

  Men and women, especially women, looked after him as he passed and their expressions softened, but Jordan walked on as though he were alone on a deserted street.

  Though his lips never moved, the words of the invocation to the goddess Panes kept running through his mind.

  "- Why did you run away? You would have been better with us -" So many times he had called to the goddess, the words were part of his very existence. "Will you not come back to us, great Panes?"

  The goddess was going, and Jordan did not believe he could support the agony of it. Statue, goddess and mother were all one in his mind, his last link with Aletta. Aletta who had become Panes.

  He felt desolate, bereaved as though of his dearest love, and when he reached the milkwood fence of Rhodes' camp, he stopped and wild fancies seized him. He would take the goddess, run with her into the wilderness, hide her in some distant cave. His heart bounded. No, he would take her back to the ancient ruined city from which she had come, that far place in the north from which his father had stolen her, where she would be safe.

  Then with a plunge of his spirits and a slide of despair in his guts he knew that these were childish dreamings and that he was no longer a child.

  With a light touch on the lead mule's bridle, he guided her into the camp, and Rhodes was standing at the front door of his bungalow, bareheaded and in shirtsleeves. He was talking quietly, urgently to a man below the stoep.

  Jordan recognized him as one of the Central Diamond Company overseers.

  When Rhodes looked up and saw Jordan, he dismissed the overseer with a curt word and a nod.

  jordan," Rhodes" greeting was grave, perhaps he sensed the mood of the young man before him, "you have brought it?"

  When Jordan nodded, he turned back to the waiting overseer.

  "Bring four of your best men," he ordered. "I want this cart unloaded, and carefully. It's a valuable work of art."

  He watched keenly as they untied the ropes that held the tarpaulin in place, but cocked the large curly head when Jordan spoke.

  "If we have to lose it, then I'm glad it's y
ou that it goes to, mister Rhodes."

  "The bird means something to you also, Jordan?"

  "Everything," Jordan said simply, and then caught himself; that sounded ridiculous. mister Rhodes would think him strange. "I mean, it has been in my family since before I was born. I don't really know what it will be like without that goddess. I don't really want to think about losing it."

  "You don't have to lose it, Jordan."

  Jordan looked at him, unable to bring himself to ask the meaning.

  "You can follow the goddess, Jordan."

  "Please don't tease me, mister Rhodes."

  1you are bright and willing, you have studied Pitman's shorthand, and you have an excellent pen," Rhodes said.

  "I need a secretary, somebody who knows and loves diamonds as I do. Somebody whom I feel easy with.

  Somebody I know and whom I like. Somebody I can trust. Jordan felt a vast soaring rush of joy, something sharper, brighter and more poignant than he had ever known before. He could not speak; he stood rooted and stared into the pale blue and beautiful eyes of the man whom he had worshipped for so many years.

  "Well, Jordan, I am offering you the position. Do you want it?"

  "Yes," Jordan said softly. "More than anything on earth, mister Rhodes."

  "Good, then your first task is to find a place to set up the bird."

  The white overseer had pulled the tarpaulin aside to expose the statue, and the sheet hung down over the side of the cart.

  "Easy now," he shouted at the gang of black labourers.

  "Get a rope on it. Don't drop it. Watch that end, damn YOU.

  They swarmed over the statue, too many of them for the job, getting in one another's way, and Jordan's heady joy at Rhodes" offer was submerged in a quick stab of concern for the safety of the bird.

  He started forward to set the ropes himself, but at that moment there was the clatter of hooves and Neville Pickering rode into the yard. He was astride his mare, a highly bred and finely mettled bay, and he reined her down to a walk.

  He shot a glance at Jordan, and his face clouded for an instant, a quick show of irritation, or of something else.

  With a sudden intuitive flash Jordan realized that Pickering resented his presence here.

  Then as quickly as it had come the shadow passed from Pickering's handsome features and he smiled that sunny charming smile of his and looked down at the statue in the cart.

  "What have we here?" His tone was gay, his manner carefree and relaxed. As always he was elegantly dressed, the drape of broadcloth showing off his broad shoulders, the tooled leather belt emphasizing his narrow waist, as the polished half boots did the length and shape of his legs. The low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat was cocked forward over one eye, and he was smiling.

  "Oh, the bird." He looked up at Rhodes on the stoep of the bungalow. "So you have it at last, as you said you would. I should congratulate you."

  The day had been still and too hot, it would change soon. The wind would-come out of the south and the temperature would plunge, but until then the only movements of air were the sudden little dust devils that sprang out of nowhere, small but violent whirlwinds that lifted a high churning vortex of dust and dry grass and dead leaves a hundred or more feet into the still sky as they sped in a wildly erratic course across the plain, and then just as suddenly collapsed and disintegrated into nothingness again.

  One of these dust devils rose now, on the open ground beyond the milkwood hedge. It tore a dense red cloud of spinning dust off the surface of the road, then swerved abruptly and raced into the yard of Rhodes" camp. Jordan felt his heart gripped in a cold vice of superstitious dread.

  "Panes!" The cry was silent in his head. "Great Panes!"

  He knew what that wind was " he knew the presence of the goddess, for how many times had she come to his invocation? Suddenly the whole yard was filled with the swirling torrents of dust, and the wind battered them. It flew into Jordan's face, so that he must slit his eyes against it. It flung his soft shiny curls into his face, and it flattened his shirt against his chest and his lean flat belly.

  The broad-brimmed hat sailed from Pickering's head, the tails of his coat flogged into the small of his back and he lifted one hand to protect his face from the stinging sand and sharp pieces of twig and grass.

  Then the wind got under the ragged old tarpaulin, and filled it with a crack like a ship's mainsail gybing onto the ovvosite tack.

  The harsh canvas lashed the bay mare's head, and she reared up on her back legs, whinnying shrilly with panic.

  So high she went that Jordan thought she would go over on her back, and through the red raging curtain of dust, he jumped to catch her head; but he was an instant too late. Pickering had one hand to his face, and the mare's leap took him off balance; he went over backwards out of the saddle, and he hit hard earth with the back of his neck and one shoulder.

  The rushing sound of the whirlwind, the grunt of air driven from Pickering's lungs and the meaty thump of his fall almost covered the tiny snapping sound of bone breaking somewhere deep in his body.

  Then the mare came down from her high prancing dance, and she flattened immediately into full gallop.

  She flew at the gateway in the milkwood hedge, and Pickering was dragged after her, his ankle trapped in the steel of the stirrup, his body slithering and bouncing loosely across the earth.

  As the mare swerved to take the gap in the hedge, Pickering was flung into the hedge, and the white thorns, each as long as a man's forefinger, were driven into his flesh like needles.

  Then he was plucked away, out into the open ground, sledging over rocky earth, striking and flattening the small wiry bushes as the mare jumped them, his body totally relaxed and his arms flung out behind him.

  One moment the back of his head was slapping against the earth, and the next his ankle had twisted in the stirrup and he was face down, the skin being smeared from his cheeks and forehead by the harsh abrasive earth.

  Jordan found himself racing after him, his breath sobbing with horror, calling to the mare.

  "Whoa, girl! Steady, girl!"

  But she was maddened, firstly terrified by the wind and the flirt of canvas into her face, and now by the unfamiliar weight that dragged and slithered at her heels.

  She reached the slope of the trailing dumps and swerved again, and this time, mercifully, the stirrup leather parted with a twang. Freed of her burden, the mare galloped away down the pathway between the dumps.

  Jordan dropped on his knees beside Pickering's inert crumpled body. He lay face down; the expensive broadcloth was ripped and dusty, the boots scuffed through to white leather beneath.

  Gently, supporting his head in cupped hands, Jordan rolled him onto his back, turning his face out of the dust so that he could breathe. Pickering's face was a bloodied mask, caked with dust, a flap of white skin hanging off his cheek, but his eyes were wide open.

  Despite the complete deathlike relaxation of his arms and body, Pickering was fully conscious. His eyes swivelled to Jordan's face, and his lips moved.

  Jordie," he whispered. "I can't feel anything, nothing at all. Numb, my hands, my feet, my whole body numb."

  They carried him back in a blanket, a man at each corner, and laid him gently on the narrow iron-framed cot in the bedroom next door to Rhodes" own room.

  Doctor Jameson came within the hour, and he nodded when he saw how Jordan had bathed and dressed his injuries and the arrangements he had made for his comfort.

  "Good. Who taught you?" But he did not wait for an answer. "Here!" he said. "I'll need your help." And he handed Jordan his bag, shrugged out of his jacket and rolled his sleeves.

  "Get out," he said to Rhodes. "You'll be in the way here."

  It took Jameson only minutes to make certain that the paralysis below the neck was complete, and then he looked up at Jordan, making sure that he was out of sight of Pickering's alert, fever-bright eyes, and he shook his head curtly.

  "I'll be a minute," he said. "I must
speak with mister Rhodes."

  "Jordie," Pickering whispered painfully, the moment Jameson left the room, and Jordan stooped to his lips.

  "It's my neck, it's broken."

  "No."

  "Be quiet. Listen." Pickering frowned at the interruption. "I think I always knew, that it would be you. One way or the other, it would be you He broke off, fresh sweat blistered on his forehead, but he made another terrible effort to speak. "I thought I hated you. But not any more, not now. There is not enough time left for hate."

  He did not speak again, not that night, nor the following day. But at dusk when the heat in the tiny ironwalled room abated a little, he opened his eyes again and looked up at Rhodes. It was frightening to see how low he had sunk. The fine bones of forehead and cheeks seemed to gleam through the translucent skin, and his eyes had receded into dark bruised cavities.

  Rhodes leaned his great shaggy head over him until his ear touched Pickering's dry white lips. The whisper was so light, like a dead leaf blown softly across a roof at midnight, and Jordan could not hear the words, but Rhodes clenched his lids closed over his pale blue eyes as though in mortal anguish.

  "Yes," he answered, almost as softly as the dying man.

  "Yes, I know, Pickling."

  When Rhodes opened his eyes again they were flooded with bright tears, and his colour was a frightening mottled purple.

  "He's dead, Jordan," he choked, and put one hand on his own chest, pressing hard as though to calm the beat of his swollen heart.

  Then quite slowly, deliberately, he lowered his head again, and kissed the broken, torn lips of the man on the iron-framed cot.

  Zouga thought the voice was part of his dream, so sweet, so low, and yet tremulous and filled with some dreadful appeal. Then he was awake, and the voice was still calling, and now there was a light tap on the window above the head of his bed.

  "I'm coming," Zouga answered, as low as he was called.

  He did not have to ask who it was.

  He dressed swiftly, in total darkness, instinct warning him not to light a candle, and he carried his boots in his hand as he stepped out onto the stoep of the cottage.