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

"Then let it be so, Bakela."

It was hard riding. They took the road that Ralph Ballantyne's wagons had recently pioneered from Fort Salisbury to Gubulawayo. They left all their furniture and possessions in the cottage outside the stockade of the king's kraal, and they rode light, with a blanket roll on the pommel of the saddle and a food bag on one of the spare horses that Jan Cheroot brought up behind on a lead rein.

Louise rode like a man, astride and uncomplaining, and on the fifth day, unexpectedly, they came up with Jameson's column in camp around the skeletal headgear of Iron Mine Hill, where the volunteers from Salisbury and Fort Victoria had joined up.

"Zouga, is that how Jameson is going to challenge Lobengula's impi?"

The little encampment looked pathetically inadequate.

There were two dozen wagons, and on the canvas tents of most of them Zouga could make out the insignia of Ralph's transport company. But he pointed to the corners of the laager.

,"Machine-guns," he said. "Six of them, and they are worth five hundred men each. They have field guns also, look at their emplacements."

"Oh Zouga, do you have to go with them?"

"You know that I do."

They rode down into the camp, and as they passed the pickets there was a hail that startled the sentries and made Louise's horse shy and skitter.

"Papa!" Ralph came hurrying from the nearest wagon.

"My boy." Zouga jumped down from the saddle, and they embraced happily. "I should have known you would be wherever there was something doing."

Louise bent from the saddle and Ralph brushed her cheek with his fine moustache.

"I still find it difficult to believe that I have a stepmother so young and beautiful."

"You are my favourite son," she laughed. "But I'd love you more if you could arrange a hot bath." From behind the canvas screen Louise kept calling for more buckets of hot water, and Zouga had to carry them from the fire and top-up the galvanized hip-bath in which she sat with her thick, dark braids piled on top of her head, glowing pinkly from the almost boiling water and taking full part in the conversation beyond the screen.

Ralph and Zouga sat at a camp table with a blue enamel pot of coffee and a bottle of whisky between them.

"We have six hundred and eighty-five men all in."

"I warned Rhodes that he would need fifteen hundred," Zouga frowned.

"Well, there are another five hundred volunteers under Major Goold-Adams ready to move off from Macloutsi."

"They would never get here in time to take a part in the fighting." Zouga shook his head. "What about lines of supply and reinforcements? What happens if we get into trouble with the Matabele?

What chance of a relieving force?"

Ralph grinned devilishly. "I am the whole commissariat, you don't think I would split the profits with anyone else, do you?"

"Re-supply? Relieving force?"

Ralph spread his hands in negation. "The doctor informs me that we don't need them. God and mister Rhodes are on our side."

"If it goes against us, it will be death and mutilation for every man, woman and child this side of the Shashi river. Lobengula's impis are mad for war now. Neither the king nor his indunas will be able to control them once they begin."

"That thought had occurred to me," Ralph admitted. "i have Cathy and Jonathan at Fort Victoria, packed and ready, old Isazi is with them and one of my best young men. I have fresh relays of mules posted all the way from Fort Vicky to the Shashi. The hour Jameson gives the word for the column to march, my family will be on their way south."

"Ralph, I am taking Louise to Fort Victoria. Can she stay with Cathy and leave with her?"

"Nobody asked me," Louise called from behind the screen, and there was an angry splash of water. "I took a vow, until death us do part, Zouga Ballantyne."

"You also vowed to love, honour and obey," Zouga reminded her, and winked at Ralph. "I hope you don't suffer the same insubordination from your wife."

"Beat them regularly and give them plenty of babies," Ralph advised. "Of course, Louise must go with Katie, but you had better leave for Fort Vicky right away, the Doctor is champing at the bit to settle Lobengula's hash."

He broke off, and gestured at a trooper who was hurrying towards their wagon across the laager. "And it looks as though he has heard of your arrival at last."

The trooper saluted Zouga breathlessly. "Are you Major Zouga Ballantyne, sir? Doctor Jameson asks you please to come to his tent at your earliest convenience."

Doctor Jameson jumped up from the travelling-desk and bustled across the tent to meet Zouga.

"Ballantyne, I was worried about you. Have you come directly from Lobengula? What are the chances? What force do you reckon he disposes?" He broke off and scolded himself with a deprecatory chuckle. "What am I thinking of. Let me get you a drink, man!"

He led Zouga into the tent. "You know General Sint John, of course -" And Zouga stiffened, his face expressionless.

"Zouga." Mungo Sint John lounged in a canvas camp chair, but he made no effort to rise or offer his hand.

"How long it is. But you are looking well. Marriage agrees with you, I have not had the opportunity to congratulate you."

"Thank you." Zouga nodded. Naturally he had known that Mungo was the Doctor's Chief of Staff, but still he was not ready for his anger and bitterness at the confrontation. This was the man who had kept Louise as a mistress, had held her tender precious body. He found that he was trembling, and he thrust the picture from his mind, but it was replaced instantly by the image of Louise as he had found her in the desert, her skin burned off her in slabs by the sun, and it was Mungo Sint John who had let her go and made no effort to follow her.

"I have heard that your wife is in camp with you -" Sint John's single eye glowed maliciously. "You must dine with me tonight; it will be gratifying to discuss old times."

"My wife has had a long, hard journey." Zouga kept his voice level; he did not want to give Mungo the satisfaction of knowing how angry he was. "And in the morning I am taking her into Fort Victoria."

"Good!" Jameson cut in briskly. "That suits my own plans, I need a trustworthy man to put a message on the telegraph line for mister Rhodes.

But now, Ballantyne, what is the news from Gubulawayo, and how do you rate our chances?"

"Well, Doctor Jim, Lobengula's ready for you, his young men are spoiling for a fight, and you have a scanty enough force here. in the ordinary way I would say that to take it into Matabeleland without reinforcements or a relieving force in the offing would be suicide.

However "However?" Jameson demanded eagerly.

"Four of Lobengula's regiments, those he sent against Lewanika, the king of the Barotse, are still on the Zambezi, and Lobengula will not be able to use them."

"Why not?"

"Smallpox," Zouga said. "It's broken out in those regiments, and he dare not recall them to the south. They can take no part in the fighting."

"Half the Matabele army out of it," Jameson exulted.

"That's a nudge from on high, Sint John, what do you think?

"I would say it's still a risk, a damnable risk. But think of the stake. A whole country to be won with all its lands and herds and gold. I'd say if we are ever to march, we must march now."