Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur. Страница 29

Hendrick spoke for them all. He was paid a fair price.

Shall I finish him? No! Leave a horse for him. Lothar turned away. When he comes round he can follow us, or he can go to hell where he belongs. He swung up into the saddle of his own mount and avoided his son's stricken eyes as he raised his voice. All right, we are moving out. He rode with long stirrups in the Boer fashion, slouched down comfortably in the saddle, and Hendrick pushed his mount up on one side of him and Manfred on the other.

Lothar felt elated; the adrenalin of violence was like a drug in his blood still and the open desert lay ahead of him.

With the taking of the horses he had crossed the frontier of law, he was an outlaw once again, free of society's restraint, and he felt his spirit towering on high like a hunting falcon.

By God. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have a rifle in my hand and a good horse between my legs. We are men once again, Hendrick agreed, and leaned across to embrace Manfred. You too. Your father was your age when he and I first rode out to war. We are going to war again. You are a man as he was. And Manfred forgot the spectacle he had just witnessed and swelled with pride at being counted in this company. He sat up straight in the saddle and lifted his chin.

Lothar turned his face into the north-east, towards the hinterland where the vast Kalahari brooded, and led them away.

That night while they camped in a deep gorge which shielded the light of their small fire, the sentinel roused them with a low whistle.

They rolled out of their blankets, snatched up their rifles and slipped away into the darkness.

The horses stirred and whickered and then Pig John rode in out of the darkness and dismounted. He stood wretchedly by the fire, his face swollen and discoloured with bruises like a cur dog expecting to be driven away. The others came out of the shadows and without looking at him or otherwise acknowledging his existence climbed back into their blankets.

Sleep on the other side of the fire from me, Lothar told him harshly. You stink of brandy. And Pig John wriggled with relief and gratification that he had been accepted back into the band.

In the dawn they mounted again and rode on into the wide hot emptiness of the desert.

The road out to H'ani Mine was probably one of the most rugged in South West Africa and every time she negotiated it Centaine promised herself: We must really do something about having it repaired. Then Dr TWentyman-jones would give her an estimate of the cost of resurfacing hundreds of miles of desert track and of erecting bridges over the river courses and consolidating the passes through the hills, and Centaine's good frugal sense would reassert itself.

After all it only takes three days, and I seldom have to drive it more than three times a year, and it is really quite an adventure. The telegraph line that connected the mine to Windhoek had been expensive enough. After an estimate of fifty pounds it had finally cost her a hundred pounds for every single Mile and she still felt resentment every time she looked at that endless line of poles strung together with gleaming copper wire that ran beside the track. Apart from the cost, it spoiled the view, detracting from the feeling of wildness and isolation which she so treasured when she was out in the Kalahari.

She remembered with a twinge of nostalgia how they had slept on the ground and carried their water in the first years.

Now there were regular stages at each night's stop, thatched rondavels and windmills to raise water from the deep bores, servants living permanently at each station to service the rest houses, providing meals and hot baths and a log fire in the hearth on those crisp frosty nights of the Kalahari winter, even paraffin refrigerators manufacturing heavenly ice for the sundowner whisky in the fierce summer heat. The traffic on the road was heavy, the regular convoy under Gerhard Fourie carrying out fuel and stores had cut deep ruts in the soft earth and churned up the crossings in the dried riverbeds, and worst of all the gauge of the tyres of the big Ford trucks was wider than that of the yellow Daimler so that she had to drive with one wheel in the rut and the other bouncing and jolting over the uneven middle ridge.

Added to all this it was high summer and the heat was crushing. The metal of the Daimler's coachwork could raise blisters on the skin, and they were forced to halt regularly when the water in the radiator boiled and blew a singing plume of steam high in the air. The very heavens seemed to quiver with blue fire, and the far desert horizons were washed away by the shimmering glassy whirlpools of heat mirage.

If only they could make a machine small enough to cool the air in the Daimler, she thought, like the one in the railway coach, and then she burst out laughing. nens: I must be getting soft! She remembered how, with the two old Bushmen who had rescued her, she had travelled on foot through the terrible dune country of the Namib and they had been forced to cover their bodies with a plaster of sand and their own urine to survive the monstrous heat of the desert noons.

Why are you laughing, Mater? Shasa demanded.

just something that happened long ago, before you were born. 'Tell me, oh please tell me. He seemed unaffected by the heat and the dust and the merciless jolting of the chassis.

But then why should he be? She smiled at him. This is where he was born. He too is a creature of the desert.

Shasa took her smile for acquiescence. Come on, Mater.

Tell me the story. Pourquoi pas? Why not? And she told him and watched the shock in his expression.

Your own pee-pee? He was aghast.

That surprises you? She mocked him. Then let me tell you what we did when the water in our ostrich-egg bottles was finished. Old O'wa, the Bushman hunter, killed a gemsbok bull with his poisoned arrow and we took out the first stomach, the rumen, and we squeezed out the liquid from the undigested contents and we drank that. It kept us going just long enough to reach the sip-wells. Mater! That's right, cheri, I drink champagne when I can, but I'll drink whatever keeps me alive when I have to., She was silent while he considered that, and she glanced at his face and saw the revulsion turn to respect.

What would you have done, cheri, drunk it or died? she asked, to make sure the lesson was learned.

I would have drunk, he answered without hesitation, and then with affectionate pride, You know, Mater, you really are a crackerjack. It was his ultimate accolade.

Look! She pointed ahead to where the lion-coloured plain, its far limits lost in the curtains of mirage, seemed to be covered with a gauzy cinnamon-coloured veil of thin smoke.

Centaine pulled the Daimler off the track and they climbed out onto the running-board for a better view.

Springbok. The first we have seen on this trip. The beautiful gazelle were moving steadily across the flats, all in the same direction.

There must be tens of thousands. The springbok were elegant little animals with long delicate legs and lyre-shaped horns.

They are migrating into the north, Centaine told him.

There must have been good rains up there, and they are moving to the water. Suddenly the nearest gazelles took fright at their presence and began the peculiar alarm display that the Boers called pronking'. They arched their backs and bowed their long necks until their muzzles touched their fore hooves, and they bounced on stiff legs, flying high and lightly into the shimmering hot air while from the fold of skin along their backs they flashed a flowing white crest of hair.

This alarm behaviour was infectious and soon thousands of gazelle were bounding across the plain like a flock of birds. Centaine jumped down from the running-board and mimicked them, forking the fingers of one hand over her head as horns and with the fingers of the other showing the crest hair down her back. She did it so skilfully that Shasa hooted with laughter and clapped his hands.