Men of Men b-2

by Wilbur Smith

The height of the moon told him that it was after midnight, but he barely glanced at it before turning to the figure that leaned against the wall beside the door.

  "Are you alone?" he demanded softly. There was something in the way the figure slumped that frightened him.

  "Yes." The distress, the pain, were clear in her voice now that they were so close.

  "You should not have come here, not alone, missis Sint John."

  "There was nobody else to turn to."

  "Where is Mungo. Where is your husband?"

  "He is in trouble, terrible, terrible, trouble."

  "Where is he?"

  "I left him out beyond the Cape crossroad."

  For a moment her voice choked on her, and then it came out with a forceful rush.

  He's hurt. Wounded, badly wounded."

  "Her voice had risen, so that she might rouse Jan Cheroot and the boys. Zouga took her arm to calm and quieten her, and immediately she fell against him. The feel of her body shocked him, but he could not pull away.

  "I'm afraid, Zouga. I'm afraid he might die." It was the first time she had used his given name.

  "What happened?"

  "Oh God!" She was weeping now, clinging to him, and he realized how hard-pressed she was. He slipped his arm around her waist and led her down the verandah.

  In the kitchen he seated her on one of the hard deal chairs, and then lit the candle. He was shocked again when he saw her face. She was pale and shaking, her hair in wild disorder a smear of dirt on one cheek and her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot.

  He poured coffee from the blue enamel pot at the back of the stove. It was thick as molasses. He added a dram of brandy to it.

  "Drink it."

  She shuddered and gasped at the potent black brew, but it seemed to steady her a little.

  "I didn't want him to go. I tried to stop him. I was sick of it.

  I told him I couldn't take it any more, the cheating and lying. The shame and the running, "

  "You aren't making sense," he told her brusquely, and she took a deep breath and started again.

  "Mungo went to meet a man tonight. The man was going to bring him a parcel of diamonds, a parcel of diamonds worth one hundred thousand pounds. And Mungo was going to buy them for two thousand."

  Zouga's face set grimly, and he sat down opposite her and stared at her. His expression intimidated her.

  "Oh God, Zouga. I know. I hated it too. I have lived with it so long, but he promised me that this would be the last time."

  "Go on," Zouga commanded.

  "But he didn't have two thousand, Zouga. We are almost broke, a few pounds is all that we have left."

  This time Zouga could not contain himself and he broke in.

  "The letter of credit, half a million pounds "Forged," she said quietly.

  "Go on."

  "He didn't have the money to pay for the diamonds and I knew what he was going to do. I tried to stop him, I swear it to you."

  "I believe you."

  "He arranged to meet this man tonight, at a place out on the Cape road."

  "Do you know the man's name?"

  "I'm not sure. I think so." She passed her hand over her eyes. "He is a coloured man, a Griqua, Henry, no, Hendrick Somebody "Hendrick Naaiman?"

  right! Naaiman, that's it."

  "He's an I.D.B. trap."

  "Police?"

  "Yes, police."

  "Oh sweet God, it's even worse than I thought."

  "What happened?" Zouga insisted.

  "Mungo made me wait for him at the crossroads and he went to the rendezvous alone. He said he needed to protect himself, he took his pistol. He went on my horse, on Shooting Star, and then I heard the gunfire."

  She took another gulp of the coffee and coughed at the burn of it.

  "He came back. He had been shot, and so had Shooting Star. They couldn't go any further, neither of them. They were both hard hit, Zouga. I hid them near the road and I came to you."

  Zouga's voice was harsh. "Did Mungo kill him?"

  "I don't know, Zouga. Mungo says the other man fired first and he only tried to protect himself."

  "Mungo tried to hold him up and take the diamonds, without paying for them," Zouga guessed. "But Naaiman is a dangerous man."

  "There were four empty cartridges in Mungo's pistol, but I don't know what happened to the policeman. I only know that Mungo escaped, but he is hurt very badly."

  "Now keep quiet and rest for a while." He stood up and paced up and down the kitchen, his bare feet making no sound, his hands clasped at the small of the back.

  Louise Sint John watched him anxiously, almost fearfully, until he stopped abruptly and turned to her.

  "We both know what I should do. Your husband is I.D.B. he is a thief and by now he is probably a murderer."

  "He is also your friend," she said simply. "And he is very badly wounded."

  He resumed his pacing but now he was muttering to himself, troubled and scowling, and Louise twisted her fingers in her lap.

  "Very well," he said at last. "I'll help you to get him away."

  "Oh, Major Ballantyne, Zouga He silenced her with a frown. "Don't waste time talking. We'll need bandages, laudanum, food, "He was ticking off a list on his fingers. "You can't go like that.

  They'll be watching for a woman. Jordan's cast-off clothes will fit you well enough, breeches, cap and coat, " Zouga walked at the flank of the mule, and the gravel cart was loaded with bales of thatching grass.

  Louise lay silently in the hollow between two bales, with another ready to pull over herself if the cart was stopped.

  The iron-shod wheels crunched in the sand, but the night dew had damped down the dust. The lantern on the tailboard of the cart swung and jiggled to the motion.

  They had just passed the last house on the Cape road, and were drawing level with the cemetery when there was the dust-muffled beat of hooves from behind them and Louise only just had time to drop down and cover herself before a small group of riders swept out of the darkness and overtook them.

  As they galloped through the arc of lantern light, Zouga saw they were all armed. He stooped and lowered his chin into the collar of his greatcoat and the woollen cap was pulled low over his eyes. One of the riders pulled up his horse and shouted to Zouga.

  "Hey, you! Have you seen anybody on this road tonight?"

  "Niemand me! Nobody!" Zouga answered in the taal, and the sound of the guttural dialect reassured the man.

  He wheeled his horse and galloped on after his companions.

  When the sound of hooves had died away Zouga spoke quietly.

  "That means that Naaiman got away to spread the word. Unless he dies of his wounds later, it's not murder."

  "Please God," Louise whispered.

  "It also means that you cannot try to get out on either the Cape road or the road to the Transvaal. They will be watched."

  "Which way can we go?"

  if I were you I would take the track north, it goes to Kuruman. There is a mission station there, it's run by my grandfather. His name is Doctor Moffat. He will give you shelter, and Mungo will need a doctor. Then when Mungo is strong enough, you can try to reach German or Portuguese territory and get out through Mideritz Bay or Lourenqo Marques."

  Neither of them spoke for a long time as Zouga trudged on beside the mule, and Louise crawled out to sit on the bench of the cart, it was she who broke the silence.

  "I am so tired of running. We seem to have run out of lands, America, Canada, Australia, we cannot go back to any of them."

  "You could go home to France," Zouga said, "to your sons."

  Louise's head jerked up. "Why do you say that?"

  "When Mungo and I first met he told me about you, his wife, that you were of a noble French family. He told me that you and he had three sons."

  Louise's chin sank onto her chest and Jordan's cloth cap covered her eyes.

  "I have no sons," she said. "But oh how I pray that one day I may have. I belong to a noble family,
Yes, but not French. My grandmother was the daughter of Hawk Flies Lightly, the Blackfoot War Chief."

  "I don't understand, Mungo told me "He told you about the woman who is his wife, Madame Solange de Montijo Sint John., Louise was silent again, and Zouga had to ask: "She is dead?"

  "Their marriage was unhappy. No, she is not dead. She returned with their three sons to France at the beginning of the Civil War. He has not seen her since."

  "Then she and Mungo are," Zouga hesitated over the unsavoury word, "divorced?"

  "She is a Catholic," Louise replied simply; and it was fully five minutes before either of them spoke again.

  "Yes," Louise said. "What you are thinking is correct.

  Mungo and I are not married; we could not be."

  "It's not my business," Zouga murmured, and yet what she had said did not shock him. He felt instead a strange lightness of spirit, a kind of glowing joy.

  "It's a relief to speak completely honestly," she explained. "After all the lies. Somehow it had to be you, Zouga. I could never have admitted all this to anybody else."

  "Do you love him?" Zouga's voice was rough-edged, brusque.

  "Once I loved him completely, without restraint, wildly, madly."

  "And now?"

  "I do not know, there have been so many lies, so much shame, so much to hide."

  "Why do you stay with him, Louise?"

  "Because now he needs me."

  I understand that." His voice was gentler. He did understand, he truly did. "Duty is a harsh and unforgiving master. And yet you have a duty to yourself also."

  The mules plodded on in the darkness, and the swinging lantern did not light the face of the woman on the bench, but once she sighed, and it was a sound to twist Zouga's heart.

  "Louise," he spoke at last. "I am not doing this for Mungo, even a friendship cannot condone deliberate robbery and premeditated murder."

  She did not reply.

  "Many times you must have seen the way I have looked at you, for, God knows, I could not help myself."

  Still she was silent.

  "You did know," he insisted. "You, as a woman, must know how I feel."

  "Yes," she said at last.

  "When I thought you were married to a friend, it was hopeless. Now, at least, I can tell you how I feel."

  "Zouga, please don't."

  "I would do anything you asked me to, even protect a murderer, that is how I feel for you."

  "Zouga "I have never known anybody so beautiful and bright and brave "I am not any of those things "I could put you and Mungo on the road to Kuruman and then go back to Kimberley and tell the diamond police where to find you. They would take Mungo, and then you would be free."

  "You could," she agreed. "But you never would. Both of us are tied, Zouga, by our own peculiar sense of duty and of honour., "Louise, "

  "We have arrived," she said, with patent relief. "The crossroads. Turn off the road here."

  From the bench she guided him as he threaded the cart through the scattered bush and the high wheels bumped over rock and rough ground. A quarter of a mile from the road there stood a massive camel-thorn tree, silver and high as a hill in the moonlight. Beneath its spread branches the moon shadow was black and impenetrable.

  From the darkness a hoarse voice challenged.

  "Stand where you are! Don't come any closer."

  "Mungo, it's me and Zouga is with me."

  Louise jumped down from the cart, lifted the lantern off its bracket and went forward, stooping under the branches. Zouga tethered the mules and then followed her. Louise was kneeling beside Mungo Sint John. He lay on a saddle blanket, propped on the silver ornamented Mexican saddle.

  "Thank you for coming," he greeted Zouga, and his voice was ragged with pain.

  "How badly are you hit?"

  "Badly enough," he admitted. "Do you have a cheroot?"

  Zouga lit one from the lantern and handed it to him.

  Louise was unwrapping the torn strips of shirt and petticoat that were bound about his chest.

  "Shotgun?" Zouga asked tersely.

  "No, thank God," Mungo said. "Pistol."

  "You are lucky," Zouga grunted. "Naaiman's usual style is a sawed-off shotgun. He would have blown you in half."

  "You know him, Naaiman?"

  "He's a police trap."

  "Police," Mungo whispered. "Oh God."

  "Yes," Zouga nodded. "You are in trouble."

  "I didn't know."

  "Does it really matter?" Zouga asked. "You planned an I.D.B. switch, and you knew you might have to kill a man."

  "Don't preach to me, Zouga."

  "All right." Zouga squatted next to Louise as she exposed the wound in Mungo's back. "And it looks as though it missed the bloody lymph, set in a livid spread of bruise."

  Between them they lifted Mungo into a sitting position.

  "Through and through," Zouga murmured, as he saw the exit wound in Mungo's back. "And it looks as though it missed the lung. You are luckier than you'll ever know."

  "One stayed in," Mungo Sint John contradicted him, and reached down to his own leg. His breeches had been split down the leg, and now he pulled the bloodstained cloth aside to reveal a strip of pale thigh in the centre of which was another vicious little round opening from which fluid wept like blackcurrant juice.

  "The bullet is still in," Mungo repeated.

  "Bone?" Zouga asked.

  "No." Sint John shook his head. "I don't think so. I was still able to walk on it."

  "There is no chance of trying to cut the bullet out.

  Louise knows where she can find a doctor, and I have told her how to get there."

  "Louise?" Mungo asked with a sardonic twist of his lips.

  She did not look up, concentrating on the task of painting the skin around the wounds with iodine. Mungo was staring at Zouga, his single eye gleaming, and Zouga felt the scar on his cheek throb and he did not trouble to hide his anger.

  "You don't think I am doing this for you," he demanded. "I hate I.D.B. as much as any digger on the workings, and I'm not that complacent about deliberate robbery and murder." And he took the pistol from the blanket where it lay at Mungo's side.

  He checked the load as he walked to where Shooting Star stood, head down in the moonlight beyond the camel-thorn tree.

  The stallion lifted his head, and blew a fluttery breath through his nostrils as Zouga approached; then he shifted his weight awkwardly and painfully on three legs.

  "There, boy. Easy, boy." Zouga ran his hands down the animal's flank. it was sticky with drying blood, and Shooting Star whickered as he touched the wound.

  Behind the ribs, bullet hole, and Zouga sniffed at it quickly. The bullet had pierced the bowel or the intestines, he could smell it.

  Zouga went down on one knee and gently felt the foreleg that the stallion was favouring. He found the damage, another bullet wound. It had struck a few inches above the fetlock and the bone was shattered. Yet the horse had carried Mungo, a big heavy man, and it had brought him many miles. The agony must have been dreadful, but the stallion's great heart had carried them through.

  Zouga. shrugged off his greatcoat and wrapped it around the pistol in his right hand. A shot could alert the searching bands on the not too distant road.

  "There, boy," Zouga whispered, and touched the muzzle to the forehead between the horse's eyes.

  The cloth muffled the shot. It was a dull blurt of sound, and the stallion dropped heavily on his side and never even kicked.

  Louise was still bowed over Mungo, tying the knots in the bandage, but Zouga saw that her eyes were bright with tears in the moonlight.

  "Thank you," she whispered. "I couldn't have done it myself."

  Zouga helped her lift Mungo to the cart. Mungo's breath whistled in his chest and the sweat of agony drenched his shir t and smelled rancid and gamey.

  They settled him into the nest of thatching grass and spread a screen of it over him. Then Zouga led the mules on over the veld until
they struck the track that led nor thwards towards the Vaal river, and beyond it Kuruman and the vast Kalahari Desert.

  "Travel at night, and hobble the mules to graze during the day," Zouga told her. "There is more than enough meal and biltong; but you will have to spare the coffee and sugar."

  "Words cannot thank you enough," she whispered.

  "Don't attempt the main drift of the Vaal."

  "Somehow I know that this is not goodbye." She seemed not to have heard the advice. "And when we meet again," she broke off.

  "Go on," he said, but she shook her head and took the reins from his hand and led the mules onto the track.

  The cart seemed to merge into the night, and the heels made no sound in the thick pale sand. Zouga stood staring after them, long after they had disappeared , and then Louise came back.

  She came silent as a wraith, running with a kind of terrible desperation, the long tresses of hair had fallen out from under the cap and were streaming down her back. Her face was pale and stricken in the moonlight.

  The grip of her arms about his neck was fierce, almost painful, and her mouth was shockingly hot and wet as it spread over his. But the taste of it he would never forget, and her sharp white teeth crushed his lips.

  For seconds only they clung to each other, while Zouga thought his heart would burst; then she tore herself from his arms, and with neither a word nor a backward glance, she flew into the night, and was gone.

  Ten days after Neville Pickering's funeral, Zouga signed the transfer deeds to the Devil's Own claims, and watched while one of Rhodes" secretaries registered them in favour of the Central Diamond Company. Then he walked out into the cold.

  For the first time in living memory it was snowing over the diamond fields. Big soft flakes came twisting down like feathers from a shimmering white egret struck by birdshot.

  The snowflakes vanished as they touched the earth, but the cold was a vindictive presence and Zouga's breath steamed in the air and condensed on his beard as he trudged up to the workings to watch the shift come off the Devil's Own claims for the last time. As he walked he tried to compose the words to tell Ralph that this was the last shift.

  They were coming up in the skip. Zouga could make out Ralph, for he was the only man who wore a coat.

  The other men with him were almost naked.