Men of Men - Smith Wilbur (книги бесплатно без txt) 📗

At that moment a merciful little breeze came in through the doorway and turned her slowly on the rope to face the altar, so that Zouga could see only her lustrous golden hair which had come down and now hung to her waist. That was still beautiful.

Cathy Ballantyne had never known such happiness as the months spent in the British South Africa Company camp on the Macloutsi river.

She was the only woman among nearly seven hundred men, and a favourite of all of them. They called her "Missus", and her presence was eagerly sought at every social activity with which officers and men diverted themselves during the long term of waiting.

The harsh conditions of camp life might have daunted another newly married girl of her age, but Cathy had known no others, and she turned the hut of daub and thatch that Ralph built for her into a cosy retreat with calico curtains in the glassless windows and woven grass native mats on the earth floor. She planted petunias on each side of the doorway, and the troopers of the column vied for the honour of watering them. She cooked over an open fire in the lean-to kitchen, and her invitations to dine were eagerly sought after by men who subsisted on canned bully beef and stamped maize meal.

She glowed with all the attention and excitement, so that from being merely pretty, she seemed to become beautiful, which made the men cherish her the more.

Then, of course, she had Ralph, and she wondered some nights as she lay awake and listened to his breathing, how she had ever lived without him.

Ralph had the rank of major now, and he told her with a wink and an irreverent chuckle, "We are all colonels and majors, my girl. I'm even thinking of making old Isazi a captain." But he looked so handsome in his uniform with frogged coat and slouch hat and Sam Browne belt, that she wished he would wear it more often.

With each day Ralph seemed to her to become taller, his body more powerful and his energy more abundant.

Even when he was away down the line hustling up the wagons, setting up the heliograph stations, or meeting with the other directors of the British South Africa Company in Kimberley, she was not lonely. Somehow his presence seemed always with her, and his absence made anticipation of his return a sort of secret joy.

Then suddenly he would be back, galloping into camp to sweep her up and toss her as high as if she were a child, before kissing her on the mouth.

"Not in public," she would gasp and blush. "People are watching, Ralph."

"And turning green with envy," he agreed, and carried her into the hut.

When he was there, everything was a breathless whirl.

He was everywhere with his long assured stride and merry infectious laugh, driving his men along with a word of encouragement or of banter, and occasionally with sudden murderous black rages.

His rages terrified her, although they were never directed at her; and yet at the same time they excited her strangely. She would watch him with fearful fascination as his face swelled and darkened with passion, and his voice rose into a roar like a wounded bull. Then his fists and boots would fly and somebody would roll in the dust. A Afterwards she felt weak and trembly, and she would hurry away to the hut and draw the curtains and wait.

When he came in, he would have that savage look on his face that made something flutter in the pit of her stomach, and it took all her will not to run to him, but to wait for him to come to her.

"By God, Katie my girl," he said to her once as he leaned on his elbow over her, the sweat still glistening on his naked chest, and his breathing as rough as though he had run a race, "you may look like an angel, but you could teach the devil himself a trick or two."

Though she prayed afterwards for strength to control the wanton sensations and cravings of her body, the prayers were perfunctory and lacked real conviction, and that lovely smug and contented feeling just would not go away.

With Ralph it was excitement all the time, day and night, when they were alone and when they were in company. She loved to watch the deference with which other men treated him, rich and famous men older than he was like Colonel Pennefather and Doctor Leander Starr Jameson, who were the leaders of the column. But then, she told herself, so they should. Ralph was already a director of the Chartered Company, mister Rhodes" British South Africa Company, and when he sat down at the boardroom table in the De Beers building, it was in the company of lords and generals and of mister Rhodes himself, though Ralph grinned and told her wickedly, "Great men, Katie, but not one of them whose feet don't stink in hot weather, same as mine."

A "You are awful, Ralph Ballantyne," she scolded, but she felt all puffed up with pride when she overheard two troopers talking of him and one said: "Ralph Ballantyne, there's a man for you, and no mistake."

Then at night, after they had made boisterous unashamed love, they would talk in the darkness, sometimes through most of the night, and his dreams and plans were the more enchanting for she knew that he would make them come true.

Her personal rapture was heightened by the mood of the seven hundred men around her, and each day's restraint as they waited for the word to move off increased the tension which gripped them all. Ralph's oxen brought up the guns, two seven-pounders, and the artillery fired shrapnel over the deserted veld beyond the camp, while the watchers cheered them as the fleecy cotton pods of smoking death opened prettily in the clear dry air.

The four Maxim machine-guns were unpacked from their cases and de-greased, and then, on a memorable day, the monstrous steam engine came chugging into the encampment, dragging behind it the electric generator and the naval searchlight which would be just another precaution against night attack by the Matabele hordes.

That night as she lay in his arms, Cathy asked Ralph the question they were all asking one another.

"What will Lobengula do?"

"What can he do?" Ralph stroked her hair, the way he might caress a favourite puppy. "He has signed the concession, taken his gold and guns, and promised Papa the roa d to Mashonaland."

"They say he has eighteen thousand men waiting across the Shashi."

"Then let them come, Katie, my lass. There are not a few amongst us who would welcome the chance to teach King Ben's buckaroos a sharp lesson."

"That's a terrible thing to say," she said without conviction.

"But it's the truth, by God."

She no longer chided him when he blasphemed so lightly, for the days and ways of Khami Mission seemed to be part of a fading dream.

Then one day, early in July of 1890, the mirror of a heliograph winked its eye across the dusty, sun-washed distances. It was the word for which they had waited all these months. The British Foreign Secretary had at last approved the occupation of Mashonaland by the representatives of the British South Africa Company.

The long ponderous column uncoiled like a serpent.

At its head rode Colonel Pennefather in company uniform, and at his right hand the guide Frederick Selous, whose duty it would be to take the column wide of any Matabele settlements, to cross the low malarial lands before the rains broke and to lead them up the escarpment to the sweet and healthy airs of the high plateau.

The Union Jack unfurled above their heads and a bugler sounded the advance.

"Heroes every one of them," Ralph grinned at Cathy.

"But it's up to the likes of me to see our heroes through."

His shirtsleeves were rolled high on his muscled arms and a disgracefully stained hat was cocked over one eye.