Men of Men b-2

by Wilbur Smith

  Lil studied his face for a moment, then picked up the handwritten sheet of cheap notepaper from the tea tray and glanced down the list and the figures.

  "Nine hundred pounds for oxen?"

  "A full span of the biggest and best animals," Ralph explained. "The road to the Shashi river is sand veld, heavy going. I want to be able to haul a full load, eight thousand pounds weight."

  "Trade goods, fifteen thousand." She looked up at him again.

  "Guns, powder, brandy, beads and limbo cloth."

  "What type of guns?"

  "Tower muskets. Five pounds ten shillings each."

  Lil shook her head. "They have seen the breech-loaders. Your muskets won't have much pull."

  "I can't afford breech-loaders, and I wouldn't know where to find a load."

  "Ralph dearie, I could hire a bunch of Whitechapel hags to run my dressmakers" shop and I could get them cheap.

  But I don't. I pick them young and fresh and pretty. If you think small, your profits are small. Don't be cheap, Ralph darling, never be cheap." She poured a little gin from the silver flask into the empty teacup before she went on. "I can get Martini-Henry rifles but they will cost us fifteen hundred more." Lil reached across and dipped her pen in the ink-well, then scratched out and re-wrote the figure.

  "Brandy?"

  "Cape Smoke in twenty-gallon casks."

  "I have heard that Lobengula likes Courvoisier cognac, and his sister Ningi drinks only Piper-Heidsieck champagne."

  "Another five hundred pounds, at least," Ralph mourned.

  "Three hundred," Lil corrected the list. "I can get it at wholesale prices. Now, ammunition, ten thousand rounds?"

  "I'll need at least a thousand for my own account, and the rest to trade with the rifles."

  "If Lobengula gives you permission to hunt elephant," Lil corrected.

  "My grandfather is one of his oldest friends; my Aunty Robyn and her husband have been at Kharni River Mission for almost twenty years."

  "Yes, I know that you have friends at court, Lil pursed her lips approvingly. "But I have heard that the elephant have been shot out across the whole of Matabeleland., "The herds have been driven into the fly belt on the Zambezi."

  "You cannot take horses into the fly and hunting elephant on foot in the fly is not work for a white man."

  "My father hunted on foot, and anyway I cannot afford a horse."

  "All right," she agreed reluctantly, and made a tick on the sheet.

  They worked on for an hour longer, going down the list item by item, and then starting again at the head and going over it all once more, Lil ticking and scratching with the pen, fining it down by ten pounds here and a hundred there, until at last she tossed the pen onto the tea tray, and then poured a little more gin into her tea cup and sipped it with a genteel flourish, her little finger raised, the spirit slurping softly through the gap in the front of her teeth.

  All right," she said again.

  "Does that mean you will lend me the money?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't know what to say." He leaned towards her, young and glowing and eager. "Lil, I just don't,"

  "Then don't say anything until you have heard my terms." She smiled thinly, without lifting her upper lip.

  "Twenty percent per annum. interest on the loan."

  "Twenty percent!" he gasped. "In God's name, that's usury, Lily!"

  "Exactly," she told him primly. "But let me finish.

  Twenty percent interest and half the profits."

  "And half, Lil, that's not usury, that's highway robbery."

  "Right again," she agreed. "At least you are bright enough to recognize it."

  "Can't we just -" he started desperately.

  "No, we cannot. Those are my terms." And Ralph remembered Scipio, his falcon, with her beautiful pouting breast and fierce cold eyes.

  "I accept," he said, and though she did not smile with her lips, her eyes were suddenly soft and merry.

  "Partners," she murmured, and placed her plump white hand on his forearm. His muscles were lean and sinewy, the skin brick-coloured from the sun. She stroked it slowly, sensually.

  It only remains to seal our bargain," she told Ralph.

  "Come!" She slid her hand down his arm and twined her fingers into his.

  She led him through the stained-glass doors, and when she drew the velvet corded curtains it was cool and dark in the room. She turned back to him and reached up to unbutton his shirt at the throat. He stood still while she worked her way down slowly to his belt buckle, and then she placed one hand, palm down, upon his naked right breast.

  "Ralph," her voice was a husky tremor. "I want you to do something for me."

  "What is it?" he asked, and she stood on her tiptoes, placed her lips against his ear and told him in a whisper.

  She felt him begin to pull back from under her hand.

  "Partners?" she asked, and he hesitated a moment longer and then stooped and picked her up, one arm behind her knees, and carried her to the wide brass bed with the patchwork quilt.

  "You will find it less arduous than hunting elephant on foot in the fly," she told him, and it was dark enough in the room for her not to worry about the missing tooth.

  She lifted her arms above her head, opened her mouth and chuckled in delicious anticipation.

  "The good thing about life, dearie, is that you can have whatever you want, just as long as you are willing to pay the price," she told him, still chuckling.

  "These are not bullocks," Bazo told Ralph. "Each one is the son of a snake mated with the ghost of a Mashona dog."

  They were all strong oxen, big-boned, heavy in the shoulder, with wide straight horns for strength and even yellow teeth, hand-picked by Bazo, who was a Matabele and loved cattle, had lived with the great herds since he was old enough to toddle after the calves.

  However, Bazo was not a trek man. He had never worked an eighteen-foot wagon, with an eight-thousand pound "load aboard. He had never tried to put twentyfour trek oxen into the traces.

  The entire Matabele nation owned only a pair of wheeled vehicles, and those belonged to King Lobengula. To Bazo cattle were a store of wealth, a source of meat and milk, they were not draught animals. The closest that either he or Ralph had ever come to putting a team into the traces was working the little two-wheel gravel carts.

  Ralph had assumed that the oxen he had purchased were trained and amiable, but within minutes of his and Bazo's first attempt to get them into span, the animals sensed their incompetence and became as spooky and wild as hunted buffalo.

  it took two hours of wild chasing across the bleak grasslands beyond the town limits, two hours of running and cursing and whip-cracking to bring the bullocks together and get the yokes upon their necks. Half of them were badly winded by then and promptly lay down, and the others backed out and turned their great homed heads towards the load, tangling the trek chain and plunging the entire span into chaos.

  The excitement had brought out most of the loafers and idlers from the canteens on Market Square, though they had enough forethought to bring their bottles with them. They formed an appreciative and jovial audience, greeting each new effort by Bazo and Ralph with delighted guffaws and facetious advice.

  Bazo wiped the sweat from his face and chest, and looked broodingly down the dusty road to town.

  "Soon Bakela will hear of this and come to see our disgrace," he said.

  Ralph had not seen his father since that stormy night, but he had visited Jordan in his tiny office next door to mister Rhodes in the magnificent new Central Diamond Company building on De Beers Street.

  Perhaps Zouga Ballantyne had not yet recovered from the shock of being deserted by both his sons, but Jordan said that he had not yet left for Cape Town.

  The thought of his father witnessing this humiliating scene brought dark blood to Ralph's face, and he fired the long trek whip, at least that was one trick he had learned, and bellowed at the span.

  "Nkosana!" There was a saluta
tion at the level of Ralph's elbow, the mild tone belied by the mocking title.

  "Nkosi'was a chief, and'nkosana was the condescending diminutive, usually reserved for a little white boy, an untried child.

  Ralph turned and glared at the speaker, who went on to explain in the same condescending tone. "Only one beast in ten will pull in front." He pointed out one of the oxen. "That one there is a lead ox.

  Any man who knows oxen can see that with both his eyes closed."

  He was a little black gnome, not as tall as Ralph's shoulder. His face was wrinkled and lined like that of a very old man, his eyes were mere slits in the merry smiling folds, but his cap of woolly hair and his little goatee beard were unmarred by a single strand of grey, and his teeth were even and white, the teeth of a man in his full flowering.

  On his head was the polished black ring of the induna, and about his waist was a kilt of wild cat tails. Over that he wore a threadbare military-type tunic from which all insignia and buttons had been stripped, leaving small punctures in the fabric, some of which had enlarged into rents from which the lining peaked coyly. In the pierced lobe of one ear, he carried an ivory snuff-box, and in the other lobe a snuff spoon of the same material and a toothpick of porcupine quill. The language he used was lose to Matabele, but it preserved the ancient intonvery classic word structures of Zululand.

  an So when Ralph asked Zulu?" the question was redundant, and the littl man shot a contemptuous glance at Bazo "Pure Zulu, not the treacherous house of Kumalo, of the traitor Mzilikazi who denied a king and whose blood is now so watered by Venda and Tswana and Mashona that they can no longer tell you if an ox grows horns on its head or on its testicles."

  Bazo bridled instantly. "Hark!" He cocked his head. "Do I hear a small baboon barking his boasts from the top of the kopies?"

  The little Zulu grinned at him mirthlessly, and took the stock whip from Ralph's sweaty hands. Then he walked to the tangled span with a jaunty step.

  He touched the big black ox on the neck. "Hau, Sathan!" he greeted him, and at the same time baptized him "Devil".

  The great ox rolled one eye at him, seemed to recognize his assurance and immediately quietened. The little Zulu loosed him and took him forward, talking to him easily in a bizarre mixture of Zulu, English and the Cape Dutch taal, and chained him into the lead position.

  He went back quickly and pulled the red ox out of the tangle by the rein about his horns.

  "Dutchman he named him, for no good reason.

  "Come, you red thunder!"

  And he put him into the lead file beside Sathan and called to them quietly.

  "Donsa, Sathan, pull. Pakamisa, Dutchman, pick up the chain!"

  Obediently the pair of bullocks straightened their forelegs and leaned forward against the yoke, and a miracle happened. The long heavy silver chain from the disselboom came up straight and hard as an iron bar, and those animals on the ground were forced to lunge up onto their feet, those that had backed out were pulled into the span, horns and heads pointing forward. In that moment Ralph learned the single most important rule of the open road, keep the chain straight and true, and all else is possible.

  Now the little Zulu moved with a deceptively casual air along the double rank of bullocks, touching and talking and wheedling.

  "Hey! Fransman, I can see by your wise and beautiful eyes that you were born to the wheel!" And the sturdy black and white beast was led back to his position at the off-wheel.

  It took ten minutes, and then the Zulu put the long lash into the air. It hissed like a black mamba and then snaked forward over the ears of the team, not touching a single hair as it fired explosively. The heavy wagon jolted, the white canvas tent that covered the rear half of the long body shook like the unfurling mainsail of a tall ship and then it was rolling away smoothly.

  The Zulu crinkled his eyes at Ralph and called a question. "Yapi?

  Where? Which way?"

  "Yakatol" Northr Ralph shouted back joyously, and despite himself Bazo snatched up his war shield and assegai and whirled into a frenzied challenge dance, leaping and stabbing at a host of imaginary enemies, shouting defiance and ecstasy to all the world.

  The road to the Vaal river was the first leg of the journey, and the ruts were axle deep, and red soil raw as a fresh wound, the dust a fog in the windless air through which it was just possible to make out the horns of the two wheeler bullocks. The dust hid from Ralph his parting view of the sprawling town, and its high stagings above the gaping hole which had been his home and his prison for so many years, and by the time that the other traffic on the road had thinned sufficiently for the dust cloud to settle, they had made five miles and the stagings might have been merely a distant line of dead thorn trees silhouetted against the sunset.

  The little Zulu called to his boy who led the front oxen, and the child swung them off the road, and the high rear wheels bumped out of the ruts and then crunched through crisp winter grass as the wagon rolled towards a spreading umbrella-shaped acacia which would "We their shelter and firewood for the night.

  Walking at the front wheel Ralph pondered the two unexpected additions to his company.

  The child had come out of the curtain of red dust, naked except for the little flap of his mutsha in front, cooking-pot and with the roll of sleeping-mat balanced upon his head.

  He had placed these meagre possessions on the tailboard of the wagon and then, at a nod and a word from the Zulu, had taken the lead rein and plodded solemnly ahead of the span, his bare feet sinking ankle-deep in the powder dust.

  Ralph wondered how old he was, and decided he could not be more than ten years of age.

  What is his name?" he asked the Zulu.

  "A name?" The little man shrugged. "It is not important. Call him Umfaan, the Boy."

  And what is your name?" Ralph went on, but the little driver suddenly had urgent business at the head of the span and perhaps the dust had clogged his ears for he did not seem to hear the question.

  Ralph had to ask the question again, after the outspan, when the Zulu was squatting beside the cooking fire watching Urnfaan stir the maize-meal in the black pot.

  "What is your name?" And the Zulu smiled as though at a secret thought, and then he said: "A name can be dangerous, it can hover over a man like a vulture and mark him for death. Before the soldiers came to the royal kraal at Ulundi, I was called one thing-' Ralph stirred uncomfortably at the reference to the battle that had ended the Zulu War. The tattered tunic that the Zulu wore had once been the same dark blue as that of the Natal police uniform and one of those rents in the faded cloth might have been made by the stabbing blade. Lord Chelmsford had sent the Zulu king and most of his indunas in chains to the island of Sint Helena, where another emperor had died in captivity. However, some of his fighting chiefs had escaped from Zululand and now wandered homeless exiles across the vast continent. The driver wore the head-ring of an induna.

  It was a name which men once spoke carefully, but I have not heard it for so long now that I have forgotten it," the Zulu went on, and again Ralph wondered if there was a legend still alive amongst the defeated Zulu of a little induna, smaller than the tall warriors he commanded and wizened far beyond his years, who had led them in that terrible charge into the English camp below the Hill of the Little Hand.

  In the firelight Ralph studied the Zulu's tunic again, and he told himself that it was unlikely that it had been taken from the corpse of an Englishman on that grisly field; yet he shivered briefly although the night was warm.

  "Now you have forgotten that name?" he encouraged, and the Zulu crinkled his eyes again.

  "Now I am called Isazi, the Wise One, for reasons that should be clear even to a Matabele."

  Across the fire Bazo snorted disdainfully, then stood and walked out of the firelight, into the darkness where the jackals piped plaintively.

  "My name is Henshaw," Ralph told him. "Will you stay with me and drive my wagon all the way?

  "Why not, Little Hawk?"


  "You do not ask where I am going."

  "i need a road." Isazi shrugged. "The one to the north is no longer or harder than the road to the south."

  The jackal yipped again, but much closer this time, and Bazo paused, changed the assegai to his right hand, and answered the cry, cupping his palm over his mouth to give resonance to the sound; and then he moved on to where a small stone kopje shone in the moonlight like a pile of silver bullion.

  "Bazo!" The greeting was a whisper, soft as the night wind in the pale grass, and a shadow stepped from amongst the moon shadows at the base of the kopje.

  "Kamuza, my brother." Bazo went to him and embraced him, open hands upon his shoulders.

  "i have a stone in my belly, heavy with sorrow at this parting."

  "We will share the road again, one day, we will drink from the beer pot and fight with our shoulders touching-" Kamusa answered him quietly. "But now we are both upon the king's business."

  Kamuza slipped the thongs that held his kilt in place, and it sagged heavily to his knees, leaving him naked.

  "Hurry," he said. "I must return before the curfew bell."

  Since the Diamond Trade Act, blacks were not allowed on the streets of Kimberley once the curfew bell had rung.

  "You were not marked by the police?" Bazo asked, as he removed his own kilt and changed it with Kamuza.

  "They are everywhere, like pepper ticks in the new spring grass," Kamuza grunted. "But I was not followed."

  Bazo weighed the fur kilt in both hands while Kamuza swiftly belted the replacement about his own waist.

  "Show me," Bazo said, and Kamuza took the kilt back from his hands and spread it on one of the flat moonwashed boulders.

  He picked at the knotted thong that doubled the waistband, and as it came undone he opened the secret pouch of soft tanned leather, crusted with ceramic trade beads.

  The pouch ran the full length of the wide waistband, the opening concealed by the decorative beadwork, and the interior of the long pouch was divided into cells, like a wasp's nest.

  In each stitched leather cell nestled a large pebble that glistened with a slick soapy sheen in the moonlight.