Men of Men - Smith Wilbur (книги бесплатно без txt) 📗
That night there was a deputation of four troopers led by Will Daniel and Jim Thorn.
"The boys have all voted, skipper. We will take a hundred for the lot." Will grinned ingratiatingly. "There's not one of us have the price of a drink to celebrate when we get home, and you have that money belt around your belly. it must be damned heavy by now, and no good it will do you if a Matabele sniper puts a bullet in your back."
The smile was still on Will's face, but the threat was naked in his eyes. If Zouga did not buy their land grants, it might be a bullet in the back. They would divide up the contents of his money belt anyway.
Zouga considered defying the big ugly sergeant, but there were fifteen of them. The gold in his belt could be his death warrant. He was in enough danger from the Matabele.
"I have seventy-five sovereigns in my belt," he said grimly.
"Fine," Will agreed. "You've got yourself a bargain, Major."
Zouga wrote out a contract of land grant sale on the back page of his message pad, and twelve of them signed it. Will Daniel and two other illiterates made their marks, and then they squabbled over the division of the gold sovereigns from Zouga's belt. Zouga was relieved to be rid of them, and as he returned the pad to his saddlebag, he realized abruptly that, if those grants were valid, then Will Daniel was right. He had got a bargain. He decided that when he rejoined Jameson's column, he would buy up all the other grants that were on offer from any of the rootless drifters who wanted to sell for the price of a bottle of whisky.
Zouga had forgotten just how intense were the peculiar brooding silences of the magical Matopos hills. The silence was a thing of weight and substance that made their spirits quail. No bird twittered or danced upon a twig in the dense undergrowth that pressed in upon the narrow path, and no breeze reached into the depths of the granite-sided valleys.
The silence and the heat wcighed even upon the hard and unsusceptible men who followed Zouga in single file. They rode with their rifles held across their laps, their eyes narrowed against the glare from the sparkling chips of mica in the granite walls, watchful and anxious, the dense dark green bush about them charged with a nameless menace.
At times the narrow game trails they were following pinched out or ended abruptly in the gut of a valley, and they were forced to retrace their route and try another; but always Zouga kept working south and west. Then, on the third day, he was rewarded.
He cut the broad beaten road that led from Gubulawayo to the hidden valley of the Umlimo. It was wide and smooth enough for Zouga to spur his horse into a canter. At Zouga's orders, his troopers had muffled their equipment, and put leathers over the hooves of their mounts, so the only sound was the creak of saddlery and the occasional brush and whip of an overhanging branch.
The earlier uneasiness was gone now, and they leaned forward in their saddles, eager as hunting dogs on the leash with a hot scent in their nostrils. Jameson had promised them a bonus of twenty guineas each and all the loot that they could carry away from the valley of the Umlimo.
Zouga began to recognize landmarks that he passed.
There was a pile of rocks, the largest of them the size of Sint Paul's dome, and three others, graded down in size, all of them weathered to almost perfect spheres and balanced one upon the other, and he knew they would reach the entrance to the valley before noon. He halted the patrol and let them snatch a quick meal standing at their horses" heads as he went down the line checking their equipment and assigning each of them a separate task.
"Sergeant, you and trooper Thorn are to stay close behind me. We will be the first through the pass and into the valley. There is a small village in the centre of it, and there may be Matabele amongst the huts. Don't stop for them, even if there are warriors with them, leave them for the others. Ride straight on to the cave at the end of the valley; we must find the witch before she can escape."
"This witch, what does she look like, skipper?"
"I am not sure, she may be quite young, probably naked."
"You leave "er to me, mate." Jim Thorn grinned lasciviously and nudged Will, but Zouga ignored him.
"Any woman you find in the cave will be the witch.
Now don't be put off by the sound of wild animals, or strange voices, she is a skilled ventriloquist." He went on, giving precise details, and ended grimly: "Our orders are harsh, but they may eventually save the lives of many of our comrades by breaking the morale of the Matabele fighting impis., They mounted again, and almost immediately the road began to narrow so that the branches brushed their stirrups as they passed, and Zouga's horse stumbled in a narrow stream, clumsy with the leathers over its hooves.
Then he was through and he looked up the sheer granite cliff that blocked their way. The entrance to the passage through the rock was a dark vertical cleft and high above it a thatched watch-hut was perched in a niche of the granite. [ As he stared up at it, Zouga saw an indistinct movement on the ledge.
"Look out above!" Even as he yelled, a dozen black men appeared on the lip of the cliff, and each of them hurled a bundle of what looked like staves out over the edge.
They scattered as they fell, and the steel sparkled as the weighted heads dropped, points first, towards them.
There was a fluting sound in the air all around them, soft as swallows" wings, then the rattle of steel against rock and the thud of the points into the earth beneath the hooves of the horses.
One of the steel-headed javelins caught a trooper in the side of his neck, driving down behind the collar bone, deep into one lung so that when he tried to scream the blood gagged him and bubbled out over his chin. His horse reared and whinnied wildly, and he fell backwards out of the saddle; and then all was milling, shouting confusion on the narrow track.
Through it Zouga craned to watch the ledge, and saw the defenders lining the lip again, each with another bundle of javelins on his shoulder. Zouga dropped his reins and used both hands to aim his rifle vertically upwards.
He emptied the magazine, firing as rapidly as he could pump cartridges into the breech, and though his aim was spoiled by the dancing horse under him, one of the men on the ledge arched over backwards with his arms windmilling wildly and then fell free, writhing and twisting and shrieking in the air until he hit the rock in front of zouga's horse, and his screams and struggles ceased abruptly.
The rest of the men on the ledge scattered away, and Zouga waved the empty rifle over his head.
"Forward! he yelled. "Follow me!" And he plunged into the forbidding crevice that split the cliff vertically from base to crest.
The passage was so narrow that his stirrup irons struck sparks from the rock walls on each side of him, but he looked back and saw Will Daniel pounding along behind.
He had lost his slouch hat. His bald head was washed with sweat, and he was grinning like a hungry hyena as he reloaded his rifle from the bandolier across his chest.
The passage turned sharply, and the white sand that floored it splashed up under the hooves, and the mica chips sparkled even in the gloom. Ahead of Zouga a tiny freshet of clear water fountained from the rock, and his horse gathered its front feet under its chest and jumped the stream easily; then suddenly they burst out from the narrow passage, back into the sunlight again.
The hidden valley of the Umlimo lay in a green basin below them, the little village of huts at its centre; and in the base of the cliff beyond it, a mile or so away, Zouga could make out the low entrance of the cavern, dark as the eye cavity in a bleached skull. It was all exactly as he remembered it.
