Men of Men

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘ – You should get four thousand pounds for a stone like that, a profit of three thousand seven hundred; and we share that fifty-fifty, because I am not a greedy man. Equal partners, Major, eighteen fifty for you and eighteen fifty for me.’

  Zouga poured the glittering stones into his left hand. His eyes had not left Hendrick Naaiman’s lips.

  ‘What do you say, Major? Equal partners.’ Hendrick transferred the shotgun to his left hand and reached out with his right.

  ‘Equal partners,’ he repeated. ‘Let’s shake hands on it.’

  Slowly Zouga stretched out his own right hand, fingers open, palm upwards. And then, as their fingers touched, he hurled the handful of diamonds into Hendrick Naaiman’s face. All Zouga’s strength was behind the throw, all his anger at being so sorely tempted, all his outrage at this devilish assault upon his own self-esteem.

  The diamonds tore into Hendrick Naaiman’s flesh, one sharp-sided crystal ripped open his smooth olive-skinned forehead above the right eye, another sliced his lip.

  Involuntarily Hendrick threw up his hands, lifting the shotgun muzzle high before his face as he staggered back from this unexpected assault, but at the same instant his right hand closed over the pistol grip and his forefinger hooked for the triggers. The gun was still at full cock, each barrel loaded with lion-shot. Hendrick started to drop the muzzles, pointing for Zouga’s belly.

  Zouga grabbed the barrel six inches below the gaping muzzles and forced the gun upwards, grasping with his left hand for Hendrick’s right wrist. The big Griqua jerked backwards with both arms, and Zouga made no effort to resist him; instead he lunged forward, thrusting the gun into Hendrick’s own face. The blue steel barrels cracked against his cheekbone, and Hendrick gasped at the blow and reeled backwards. Zouga drove at him again, forcing him into the soot-blackened wall so that he grunted with pain, pinned there for a moment with the shotgun pointing at the roof. In these seconds Zouga reached with his left hand, hooked his thumb through the trigger guard and jerked back against the triggers.

  Both barrels fired simultaneously.

  The burst of gunfire in the tiny confined kitchen was deafening. The bright orange muzzle flashes lit the gloom like a lightning strike, and the charges of shot crashed through the rotten roof, blowing gaping holes through which the sun shot long bright shafts of light.

  The massive recoil of the double-shotted gun drove the butt back into Hendrick’s own belly, and he doubled over with a gasp of shock and agony.

  The gun was empty, harmless. Zouga let it go and dived full length across the dusty floor. At full stretch his fingers touched the cool checkered grip of the ugly black Colt revolver. As he fumbled for it desperately, he heard the light crunch of footsteps across the earthen floor behind him, and rolled right, flicking over on his back without raising his head.

  Hendrick was over him, the empty shotgun raised above his head with both hands like an executioner’s axe, and he had already launched the stroke. The gun swung down in a wide arc, the blue steel glittering sullenly in the gloom and the hiss of it like the sound of a goose’s wing. Zouga rolled again flipping his body aside. But the butt of the shotgun caught him.

  It was only a touch, high in the shoulder, but it jerked his head so that his teeth clashed in his skull, and his right arm was instantly nerveless, numb from his shoulder to fingertips. The Colt revolver went flying from his grip, spinning away across the kitchen floor until it hit the far wall.

  Instantly Hendrick turned to chase the pistol, and Zouga kicked out at the back of his knee, landing solidly with the heel of his boot. Hendrick’s leg folded under the blow, and he would have gone down but the wall was there to hold him. He fell against it, pinned for a moment by his crippled leg, and Zouga rolled to his feet.

  He stabbed with his good left hand, feeling the solid shock of the Griqua’s jawbone under his fist. Then again Zouga caught him with the left and heard the gristle in the beaky nose give with a crunch like chewing on a ripe apple, and the fresh blood from Hendrick’s nostrils gave him a fierce joy.

  He was going to beat this man to a bleeding pulp.

  ‘Wait!’ Hendrick shouted. ‘Please! Don’t hit me again.’

  The appeal was so frantic, the terror on the Griqua’s bloody face so pitiful, that even in his own cold killing anger, Zouga checked.

  He stepped back and lowered his hands, and the Griqua hurled the empty shotgun at Zouga’s face. It was completely unexpected, Zouga was off-guard, and even as he started to duck, Zouga knew it was too late, and he hated himself for a fool.

  It felt as though somebody had slammed a door behind Zouga’s eyes, and his vision was suddenly narrowed and dimmed with blood. He hurled himself forward, and dived again for the revolver. He got a hand on the barrel, and as he touched it the full weight of Hendrick’s charging body crashed into his back, driving him into a heap against the doorjamb. But he still had a grip on the pistol barrel, and he struck out blindly using it like a club.

  He felt the steel butt sock into flesh, and he hit again and again, some of the blows dying in the air, others thudding into the floor, but others cracking against bone.

  He was sobbing and panting, blinded by his own blood, and for seconds he did not realize that Hendrick no longer clutched and tore at him.

  Zouga shrank back against the wall and wiped the blood from his eyes. Then he peered like an old man through the red film. Hendrick was beside him. He was on his back, his arms flung wide as a crucifix and the blood snored and bubbled from his nostrils. He lay very still, his breathing the only sign of life.

  Zouga lowered the pistol, and used the wall to hoist himself to his feet. He stood there swaying, his head hanging, the pistol dangling from his hand that was suddenly so weak that he could barely support its weight.

  ‘Master Zouga!’ Jan Cheroot dashed into the yard, panting from his run, carrying the Lee-Enfield rifle at high port across his chest, sweat streaking down from under his brimless pillbox infantry cap and his face crumpling with dismay as he saw Zouga’s bloody torn face.

  ‘You took your time,’ Zouga accused him huskily, still clinging to the door for support. He had left Jan Cheroot with the rifle hidden in a ravine half a mile out across the dusty plain.

  ‘I started running as soon as I heard the shots.’

  Zouga realized that the fight had lasted only a few minutes, as long as it takes a man to run half a mile. Jan Cheroot unslung the water-bottle from his shoulder and tried to wash a little of the blood from Zouga’s face.

  ‘Leave that.’ Zouga pulled away brusquely. ‘See if there is a rope in the Bastaard’s saddle bags, something to tie him, a knee halter, anything.’

  There was a coil of braided rawhide rope on the pommel of the grey mare’s saddle. Jan Cheroot hurried back with it and then paused in the door of the derelict shanty.

  ‘I know him.’ He stared at Hendrick Naaiman’s bloody snoring face. ‘I think I know him, but you made such a mess of him.’

  ‘Tie him,’ Zouga whispered, and drank from the water bottle. Then he unwound the silk scarf from around his throat and wetted it from the bottle before tenderly wiping away the blood and dust from his cuts and scratches.

  The worst injury was in his hairline, where the breech of the broken shotgun had caught him; by the feel of it, it needed to be stitched.

  Jan Cheroot was muttering insults and abuse at Hendrick Naaiman as he worked.

  ‘You yellow snake.’ He rolled the Griqua onto his back. ‘You got shoes on your feet and pants covering your black arse, and you think you are a gentleman.’

  He pulled Hendrick’s arms up behind him and trussed them, quickly and expertly, at wrist and elbow.

  ‘You’d give a vulture a bad name.’ Jan Cheroot looped the rawhide around his ankles and pulled it up tight. ‘Even the hyenas wouldn’t eat dung alongside of you, my beauty.’

  Zouga capped the water bottle and picked up the empty tobacco bag. Then he hunted for the diamonds. They had been kicked and s
cattered about the kitchen. The eighth and last was the green dragon, dark and inconspicuous in one gloomy corner.

  Zouga tossed the bag to Jan Cheroot, and he whistled as he peered into it.

  ‘I.D.B.,’ he muttered, his wrinkled brown face puckering into a sculpture of pure avarice. ‘The yellow snake was I.D.B.’

  ‘He wanted us to run those stones across our sorting-tables.’

  ‘What shares?’ Jan Cheroot demanded, playing with the stones.

  ‘Half shares.’

  ‘That’s a good deal. We could be rich in six months and get out of this god-damned and blasted desert for ever.’

  Abruptly Zouga snatched the bag back again. He had been through the temptation once already.

  ‘Get his horse,’ he ordered angrily.

  They hoisted the Griqua’s inert body and threw it over the grey’s saddle. As Jan Cheroot was tying the Griqua to the horse, Hendrick kicked his legs weakly and tried to raise his head, twisting his neck to peer blearily at Zouga.

  ‘Major,’ he croaked, only half conscious. ‘Major, let me explain. You don’t understand.’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Zouga growled at him.

  ‘Major. I am not a thief, let me explain about those diamonds.’

  ‘I told you to hold your mouth,’ Zouga warned, and wrenched the Griqua’s jaw open, roughly digging his thumbs into the sallow bloody cheeks; then he thrust the bag of diamonds into his slack mouth.

  ‘Choke on your bloody diamonds, you thieving, treacherous bastard,’ he told him grimly as he bound the man’s mouth closed with his scarf, jamming the bag in place, while Hendrick squawked and rolled his eyes, jerking his head from side to side, his cries muffled and his spittle soaking the gay band of silk.

  ‘That will keep you quiet until we get you in front of the Committee.’

  Jan Cheroot sat up behind the trussed Griqua on the grey’s back and followed Zouga on the gelding.

  He sucked his teeth mournfully, sighed and shook his head.

  ‘What a waste!’ he grumbled just loud enough for Zouga to hear. ‘That bag would take us back to the north.’

  He rolled his eyes sideways at Zouga, but there was no reaction.

  ‘The Committee is going to see this yellow bastard lynched anyway. He is as good as vulture breakfast already—’

  Hendrick wriggled helplessly and snuffled through his swollen nose.

  ‘ – If we just did the job for them, nice and quietly, a bullet in the head, and leave him for his brothers and sisters, the jackals and the hyena, man, nobody will ever know.’

  He glanced hopefully at Zouga again. ‘What’s in that bag will take us north again, as far as we want to go.’

  Zouga kicked the gelding into a canter, and ahead of them the iron roofs and dusty tent cones of New Rush glowed ruddily in the slanting rays of the sunset. Jan Cheroot sighed, swatted the double-laden grey across the quarters and followed Zouga into the camp.

  Pickering and Rhodes messed with a few other bachelor diggers directly beyond Market Square, at the edge of the main tailing dumps. There were two good spreading acacias to give them shade, and they had planted a hedge of milkbush around the cluster of iron huts and walled shanties.

  Every member of the mess owned good claims and was recovering stones; he had to do so to afford the mess bills for champagne and old cognac that seemed to form the group’s staple diet. One of them was the younger son of a belted earl, another was a baronet in his own right, although merely of the Irish aristocracy. Most of them were members of the Diggers’ Committee, and their style had earned the group the title of ‘The Swells’.

  When Zouga rode into their camp, half a dozen of the Swells were lounging under the acacia trees, dining on Veuve Cliquot champagne, although the sun was still above the horizon, and wrangling amiably over the heavy wagers that they were placing against how many flies would settle on the sugar lumps that each had on the camp table in front of him.

  Pickering looked up, his fair open features for once puckered in astonishment, as Zouga rode into the camp.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Zouga announced grimly. ‘I have something for you.’

  He leaned out of his saddle and cut the thongs that secured Hendrick Naaiman’s heels to the saddle girth of the grey mare, and then tipped him off the horse, letting him fall head-first into the dust in front of the seated group of Diggers’ Committee members.

  ‘I.D.B.,’ Zouga told them, as they stared at him.

  Pickering moved first. He jumped to his feet.

  ‘Where are the diamonds, Major?’ he asked.

  ‘In his mouth.’

  Pickering went down on one knee next to the Griqua, and he undid the scarf.

  He worked the saliva-drenched bag out of Hendrick’s broken mouth, and poured the contents onto the camp table amongst the flies and sugar lumps and champagne bottles.

  ‘Eight,’ Rhodes counted them swiftly, and looked immensely relieved. ‘They are all there.’

  ‘I told you not to worry. I bet fifty guineas on them all being there. Don’t forget it.’

  Pickering smiled at Rhodes and turned back to the Griqua, who was flapping around in the dust like a trussed chicken.

  Pickering helped him solicitously to his feet.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ he asked. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘He nearly killed me,’ Hendrick bleated bitterly. ‘He’s a madman!’

  ‘I told you to be careful,’ Pickering agreed. ‘He’s not a man to trifle with.’ He patted the Griqua’s back. ‘Well done, Hendrick; you did a good job.’

  Then Pickering turned to Zouga. ‘We owe you a little apology, Major.’ He spread his hands and smiled winningly.

  Zouga had been staring at him, unable to speak, his face so pale that his scratches and gouges stood out lividly. But now the scar under his eyes began to glow and he found his voice.

  ‘A trap!’ he whispered. ‘You set a trap for me.’

  ‘We had to be sure of you,’ Rhodes explained reasonably. ‘We had to know what kind of man you really were before we got you onto the Diggers’ Committee.’

  ‘You swine,’ Zouga husked. ‘You arrogant swine.’

  ‘You came out of it with flying colours, sir,’ Rhodes told him stiffly. He was not accustomed to being addressed in those terms.

  ‘If I had fallen for your trap, what would you have done?’

  Rhodes shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘The question doesn’t arise. You acted like a true English gentleman.’

  ‘You will never know how close it was,’ Zouga told him.

  ‘Oh yes, I do. Most of us here have been tested.’

  Zouga turned to Pickering. ‘What would have happened, a lynching party?’

  ‘Oh, my dear fellow, probably nothing so theatrical. You just might have slipped on the roadway and taken a tumble into the diggings, or had the misfortune to be standing under a gravel bucky when the rope parted.’ He laughed merrily, and the men at the table laughed with him.

  ‘You need a glass of Charlie Champers, Major, or something stronger perhaps.’

  ‘Do join us, sir,’ cried another, making room for him at the table. ‘An honour to drink with a gentleman.’

  ‘Come along, Major.’ Pickering smiled. ‘I’ll send for the quack to see to that cut on your head.’

  Then Pickering stopped and his expression changed.

  Zouga had kicked his feet loose from the stirrups and jumped down to face him. They were of an even height, both big men, and the group at the camp table was instantly enchanted. This would be more diverting than watching bluebottles settling on sugar lumps.

  ‘By gad, he’s going to bang Pickling’s head.’

  ‘Or Pickling his.’

  ‘Ten guineas the elephant hunter to win.’

  ‘I don’t approve of brawling,’ murmured Rhodes, ‘but I’ll take Pickling for ten.’

  ‘I say, the other horse has run a fair chase already. I do think you might offer some odds.’

  Pickering’s
smile had turned frosty, and he was on his toes, his fists clenched, and his guard half raised.

  Zouga dropped his own guard and turned disgustedly to the group under the acacia.

  ‘I’ve provided you with enough amusement for one day,’ he told them coldly. ‘You can take your bloody diamonds, and your damned Committee and you can—’

  There was a burst of clapping and laughing cheers to cover Zouga’s outburst. Zouga swung back onto the gelding’s back and kicked him into a gallop, and the ironical applause followed him out of the camp.

  ‘I hope we haven’t lost him.’ Pickering lowered his fists and stared after Zouga. ‘God knows, we need honest men.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Rhodes told him. ‘Give him time to simmer down and then we’ll square him.’

  ‘Henshaw.’ Bazo held the woven reed basket on his lap and peered into it mournfully.

  ‘Henshaw, she is not ready to fight again so soon.’

  They sat in a circle about the cooking fire in the centre of the thatched beehive. Ralph felt more at home here than in the tent under the camel-thorn tree. Here he was with friends, the closest friends he had ever known in his nomadic life, and here also he was beyond the severe and unrelenting surveillance of his father.

  Ralph dipped into the communal three-legged black pot with his left hand and scooped up a little of the stiff fluffy white maize porridge. While he rolled it into a ball between his fingers he argued with the Matabele princeling opposite him.

  ‘If it were you to decide, she would never fight again,’ Ralph told him, and dipped the maize ball into the flavouring of mutton gravy and wild herbs.

  ‘Her new leg is not strong enough yet,’ Bazo shook his head.

  Ralph popped the morsel and chewed as he talked. ‘The leg is hard and bright as a knife.’

  Bazo puffed out his cheeks and looked even more lugubrious, and on her perch in the shadows behind him Scipio, the falcon, shook out her feathers and ‘kweeted’ softly as though in sympathy with him.

  Bazo’s decision, although heavily influenced by Ralph’s arguments and by the urgings of the other young Matabele, would be final. For it was Bazo who had made the original capture of the animal under discussion.