The Fabulous Valley

by Dennis Wheatley

  Even the afterglow of the sun had vanished now, and in this desolate valley there were no grasses or scrub, which he could gather to make himself a couch. He hollowed out a place in the sand in which to sleep but, weary as he was, slumber refused to come to him.

  George’s terrible fate weighed upon his mind and the utter hopelessness of his own situation. He was separated from Ernest and the outspan by that great treeless mountain and ringed in by a dozen others, all of which looked impossible to climb. Even if he could break out to the southward at the far end of the valley there were miles of mountains before he could reach the plain, and he would still be many days’ march from the fringe of civilisation. His stores were no more than could support him for three or four days at the utmost even if he cut himself down to the barest ration which would maintain his strength. Once he left this flowing river how long would the contents of the water bottle, which was still strapped upon his hip, last out? His rifle and ammunition lay somewhere at the bottom of the pool beneath the thundering torrent. Only his pistol remained with which to face the wild beasts who ranged the summits and valleys beyond this gargantuan pit, should he ever succeed in climbing out.

  He sat crouched in the hollow that he had made for himself, his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees, desperate and desolate. He longed to live, yet doubted his capacity to crawl like a fly up those frowning cliffs. He cursed himself for a fool ever to have believed the fantastic story that this hidden valley contained the fabulous wealth which they had dreamed of for so long.

  A couple of hours dragged by while he wrestled with his bitter thoughts in the darkness. Then the moon rose above the crest of the mountains, drenching the valley with a strange, unnearthly light. It shone as only an African moon can, with the clarity of pale, whitish sunlight, round Michael’s despondent figure.

  With haggard eyes he looked about, him, almost driven insane by the injustice of this dead uncle who had sent him, out of sheer malice against his family, into this desert hell.

  Frantically he sought a way, a break in the surfaces, a cleft, a funnel by which he might attempt to scale those seemingly impassable barriers which held him imprisoned.

  Then, suddenly, his eyes became fixed upon a gleaming light no more than a yard beyond his feet. As he looked there were other—dozens—hundreds scattered along the foreshore of the lake—round, oblong, irregularly-shaped stones, catching and reflecting the gentle glow of the moonlight.

  With a sudden staggering heartbeat he realised the truth. His uncle had not lied. He was sitting there utterly alone—surrounded by enough diamonds to ransom a dozen kings. He had found it. He was there—in the valley of fabulous wealth—the ‘Place of the Great Glitter’.

  20

  The Valley of the Leopards

  Sandy and the two Van Niekerks stood beside the useless aeroplane, their faces tense with anxiety. None of them dared to put into words the frightening thoughts that were coursing through their minds. They were seven days’ march from the nearest native settlement at Noro Kei but unlike the other parties they had no wagon, no oxen, no horses. How could they possibly carry a sufficient supply of water, let alone food, upon their backs for such a journey? To add to the appalling difficulty of their situation, Cornelius’s limp would not allow him to cover half the ground in a long day’s tramping that any physically perfect man could accomplish.

  ‘Only one thing for it,’ Sandy tried to make his voice sound as cheerful as possible. ‘We’ll have to sit here until one of the other parties returns and get them to give us a lift back in their outspan.’

  ‘Hell!’ exclaimed Sarie, cutting at her riding boot viciously with her crop. ‘To think of this happening after we’ve been kidding ourselves for days that we had the laugh of the others. How I shall hate having to put my pride in my pocket and cadge a lift off the Roman-nosed girl, or that awful George Bennett.’

  ‘Pride—nothing!’ her brother said philosophically. ‘Sandy’s right and it’s the only thing to do. If I thought there was a sporting chance of you reaching the Noro Kei pan I’d tell the two of you to clear out right away and leave me to take the chance of picking up one of the wagons, but I’m dead certain you couldn’t make it, so heroics on my part are quite uncalled for.’

  In a forlorn hope that they might yet be able to substitute some other spring for the broken one they spent the morning taking down various parts of the plane and experimenting with such spares as Cornelius had with him. By the time old Willem announced the midday meal they had to abandon the attempt as completely hopeless.

  After they had fed they set about preparing a camp. As they might have to occupy it for a number of days they exercised more care in the selection of its site than they had for their previous temporary halting places.

  The mountain range into which they had seen the leading outspan disappear early in the morning was only a few miles’ distant and the place where Cornelius had been forced to land was a sandy patch surrounded by the broken ground of the rising foothills leading up towards the peaks.

  After a thorough reconnaissance, Sandy discovered, some half mile distant from the plane, a place where two great chunks of rock formed a clean natural hollow facing towards the south, so that even at midday they gave a good patch of shade several square yards in extent. The position had the additional advantage that they would be protected at night upon two sides from prowling wild beasts. Fires would only be necessary across the entrance.

  Cornelius having approved it, they set to work to carry all their stores, arms and ammunition from the plane to their new camping ground, while Sarie occupied herself in searching every crevice in the rocks for small snakes, scorpions, and other dangerous reptiles, whose home they were invading.

  By nightfall their arrangements were complete and, with the fires burning brightly beyond the half-circle formed by the two great rocks, they sat down to a haunch of springbuck which Sandy had shot early that morning.

  Once more as he looked at Sarie’s face, gentle and shadowed in the flickering light of the fires, Sandy was seized with an appalling longing to have her in his arms again. But it was impossible for him to tell her what was in his heart in her brother’s presence and he knew that it would be madness to suggest her going for a stroll with him beyond the glowing circle of light cast by the fires. Already the nightly serenade had commenced out there in the darkness. The woof, woof, woofing roar of a lion came from the nearby valley and the hideous laughing bark of a hyena, slinking after the offal that the lion would leave, rent the stillness in the intervals. As Sandy stared out into the darkness between the fires he thought, every now and again, that he caught a glimpse of two round yellow watchful eyes reflected in the blackness by the glow of the flames. A leopard perhaps, or a cheetah, lurking out there ready to spring should one of these two-legged creatures that had invaded its solitude venture beyond the protective circle of light. He could only hope that some chance might come for him to get Sarie on his own during the daytime.

  Next day it came. As he was crawling from rock to rock, his rifle held carefully in front of him, on the look-out for a gemsbok or dik-dik for their pot, he came upon a wagon abandoned there in the desert.

  The woodwork had been bleached white by the relentless rays of many thousand days’ exposure to the sun. The canvas of the hood had rotted but the hoop-shaped uprights which had supported the material showed stark against the sky-line with a few tatters of the decomposing stuff hanging from them.

  As he walked over to it he saw nearby, half buried in the sand, a few enormous bones, obviously the oxen that had been attacked and devoured by leopards. When he examined the wagon he found that several packing-cases still remained where they had been left upon its floorboards and, without waiting to investigate further, he returned at once to the camp. He was convinced that he had found the relics of his uncle’s last venture. A grim memento of his unknown relative.

  Cornelius was also out after game in a different direction so Sarie was there alone excep
t for old Willem. Immediately Sandy told her of his discovery she was all agog to walk the mile or so over the crest to see this relic of a past adventure with him.

  Both remained silent as they trudged along. Sandy was biding his time and Sarie knew it, but in any case it was too hot to make any unnecessary effort at conversation.

  When they reached the wagon Sandy sprang up into it and, holding out his hand, pulled her after him. Then, still maintaining that silence which now had something electric and unnatural about it, they began to break open the half-dozen cases. The letters J.T.L. were branded on the sides, so there seemed no doubt that Sandy was right in his supposition. They had little hope of finding anything which might be of any use to them after all these years but they emptied them one after the other out of curiosity.

  One contained nothing but a large ham bone picked clean by ants. Others held rows of water bottles, the contents of which had long since evaporated, but towards the front of the wagon they came upon a small iron box which, after some difficulty, Sandy managed to prise open with his knife. At first they thought it might contain money but evidently their predecessor had taken that with him. A single copper coin showed that the little box had once been used as a safe deposit. Now it contained nothing but old papers, some faded bills and a few bundles of letters.

  Sarie took one packet and Sandy another, then they settled themselves underneath the vehicle in the small patch of shade provided by it and began to read the dead man’s correspondence.

  ‘These are love letters!’ said Sarie after a moment. At the word Sandy dropped his packet, pulling her quickly towards him.

  ‘Love letters!’ he ejaculated. ‘It’s about love that I’ve been trying to talk to you for days. You’ve been a perfect little beast to me, Sarie, but I believe you do love me, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do, stupid. Haven’t you seen that from the beginning?’ She suddenly dropped her eyes and hid her golden head upon his shoulder.

  ‘You darling!’ Sandy tilted her chin and kissed her violently. ‘I knew it, I knew it,’ he cried exultantly, ‘but why have you been so devilish cruel to me all this time since we left Zwart Modder?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ she protested, a provocative twinkle in her eye. ‘It’s just that you never seemed to want to speak to me!’

  ‘You little liar,’ he caught her to him again and pressed his bronzed cheek against her own. ‘You’ve been deliberately avoiding me.’

  ‘Have I?’ she laughed suddenly. ‘Well, perhaps I have. It’s been fun to tease you when we sit round the camp-fire in the evening, but I’m not avoiding you now, am I? And I like to listen to your voice when you’re excited, so tell me some more.’

  At sunset Cornelius became anxious about them both for he had returned to their rocky home over an hour before, but it was not until the gorge was full of gathering shadows that Sandy and Sarie put in an appearance.

  On the following days they seemed to have developed a most extraordinary interest in the derelict wagon. Soon after breakfast each morning they set off to it and, except for a brief spell at lunch-time, did not return to camp until falling dusk made the surrounding veldt a dangerous place to linger in.

  Cornelius understood perfectly what was going on. He liked Sandy and, although they said nothing to him of their feelings for each other, he was unselfishly glad to see that a strange delirious happiness appeared to protect the two from the crushing anxiety which was weighing upon himself.

  Their food supply caused him no concern. Sarie had brought iron-rations for a month and with the game they shot these could be eked out to double that time if necessary. For water, too, they had no immediate need to worry. Used with strict economy they had sufficient to last for several weeks, but the gathering of enough fuel to maintain their nightly bonfires was proving a real difficulty.

  In this treeless hollow on the edge of the great blue mountain range there was no verdure of any kind except an occasional cactus and a few small withered shrubs which grew in the depths of the rocky clefts. The great areas of toa grass over which they had passed were a full day’s march behind them. They were marooned in that great sandy waste, of which the Zulu Induna had told Philbeach when he spoke of the leopards devouring old John’s cattle because they were unable to keep up sufficient fires to protect them.

  After three days they had searched every cranny for a couple of miles around and burnt the last twig which they had uprooted. On the fourth night a good half of old John’s wagon, flaring like a tinder, was consumed with terrifying rapidity, while the beasts howled dismally beyond the glare.

  Sandy and Sarie were compelled to seek out another nook for those long and intimate conversations which they held each day. They seemed oblivious of the terrible danger which was creeping upon them but Cornelius, seated upon a stony crag from which he could overlook most of the country towards the mountains, searched the shimmering, heat-soaked distances with desperately anxious eyes. If the Longs or the Bennetts failed to appear in a few hours now he knew the next morning they would be forced to attempt to cross the many miles which separated them from Noro Kei on foot, carrying what little water they could on their backs.

  Early that afternoon his heart suddenly missed a beat for a little cloud of dust at the entrance of the defile announced the coming of one of the wagons. Slipping from his knobbly perch, he hobbled with a limping run the mile that separated him from the others and arrived, steamming with sweat, to tell them his good news.

  Sandy and Sarie were lying closely embraced, apparently asleep. They started up immediately he appeared, both flushing crimson, and hastened back with him to a depression between two hillocks through which it seemed certain that the approaching convoy would emerge.

  As they watched it advance towards them they saw that it consisted of an outspan and three horsemen. Obviously then it must be Philbeach and the Longs. In another few moments they were able to distinguish the riders and recognised them as Philbeach, Darkie Rickhartz and Ginger Plattenburg. A frown of annoyance creased Sandy’s brow as he realised that he would have to beg a lift from the treacherous devil who had cracked him over the head in London.

  On seeing them standing there, Philbeach galloped forward and reined in his horse some ten yards away. His grimy, mosquito-bitten face broke into a grin as he recognised the despondent party.

  ‘Well,’ he said brightly, ‘out after diamonds after all, it seems! I had an idea you meant to try your hand.’

  ‘We’ve tried and failed,’ Sandy said evenly. ‘Our plane broke down. Have you succeeded?’

  ‘Do you think I’d tell you if I had, with the police waiting for the lot of us after the way we all stuck around asking for trouble in Zwart Modder?’

  ‘You have, then?’ Cornelius cut in dryly.

  ‘That’s nothing to do with you, young Dutchie,’ the big man laughed unpleasantly.

  ‘Where are the Longs?’ Sarie asked suddenly.

  ‘They met with a bit of an accident,’ Philbeach informed her, still grinning. ‘Old Henry and the girl would go strolling round at nights outside the camp-fires, though I warned them not to, and one night a leopard got them. The old man was a deader even before he had a chance to shout. Like a fool, instead if running for it, young Pat tried to pull him away from under the brute, so it turned on her and savaged her too. We did what we could for her but she lost a lot of blood. She petered out before the morning.’

  ‘I see,’ said Sandy slowly. ‘Have you seen any sign of the other party?’

  Philbeach nodded and stuck out his unshaven chin from which ten days’ growth of beard sprouted. ‘Yes, and they’re sunk too. I reckon another leopard must have come on them sudden and scared the oxen. Anyway, two days’ march back in those God-forgotten mountains we came on their wagon tracks which seemed to have skidded on the narrow ledge. When we looked over, there was the whole caboodle, wagon, oxen, horses and men tangled up in no end of a mess a hundred feet below us in the gorge.’

  Darkie and Ginger r
ode up beside him as he finished describing the tragedy which had overtaken Michael and the Bennetts, and the plodding oxen in his outspan came to a halt a little distance in their rear. Darkie sat grinning in his saddle at the unfortunates and Ginger stared at them with his round black eyes that looked so strange in his fair, hairless, almost leprously white face.

  Seeing nothing else for it, but filled with the bitterness of defeat, Sandy said slowly: ‘Well, I owe you one for what happened in London and had we met anywhere else you would have got it all right, but we’re on our uppers at the moment, so I’m prepared to forget the past. You’ve won—whether you ever secured the diamonds or not, so I give you best. We’ll keep still tongues in our heads and give you a free field to get the stuff out of the Union if you’ve got it. Now you can have the satisfaction of giving your defeated rivals a lift back to the nearest place where we can have a civilised drink.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Philbeach leered at him with undisguised amusement. ‘I don’t need any promises about still tongues. Yours will be still enough anyway this time next week or thereabouts.’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Sandy. ‘You don’t mean that you’re going to leave us here to die?’

  ‘Why not?’ The big man had seen Cornelius’s hand slip to his hip where he carried his pistol and next second he had drawn his own, covering the three.

  ‘No nonsense now,’ he barked, ‘or you’ll be dead even before your water gives out.’ Then he turned towards his companions. ‘If there’s a little shooting to be done, I reckon we can show them something, don’t you, boys?’

  Ginger laughed as he, too, lovingly fingered his automatic. ‘I’ll say so, Chief, but we wouldn’t mind giving little blondy a ride back if she’s prepared to pay her passage, would we?’