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

"Gold?" demanded Jim Thorn. "What gold?"

Kamuza stepped back into the scrub, picked up the leather grain bag, and carried it to them.

Will Daniel was laughing excitedly as he pulled out the little canvas bags. They jingled softly in his hands.

"By God, that's the sweetest music I ever heard!"

"What will you do, white men?" Kamuza demanded.

"Will you take the gold to your chief?"

"Don't fret yourself, my friend." Will Daniel clapped him delightedly on the shoulder. "It will go to the right person, you have the word of William Daniel hisself on it."

Jim Thorn was unbuckling his saddle-bags and stuffing the canvas sacks into it.

"Christmas and my birthday all in one," he winked at Will.

"White men, will you turn and go back to Gubulawayo, now?" Kamuza called anxiously.

"Don't worry about it another minute," Will assured him, and ferreted a loaf of hard bread out of his own saddle-bag. "Here's a present for you, bonsela, present, you understand?" Then to Jim. "Come on, mister Thorn, it's Mister I'll be calling you now that you are rich."

"Lead on, mister Daniel," Jim grinned at him, and they spurred past Kamuza, leaving him standing in the muddy pathway with the mouldy loaf of bread in his hands.

Clinton Codrington came slipping and sloshing along the bank of the Shangani river. The lowering clouds were bringing on the night prematurely, and the forests on the far bank were dank and gloomy.

The thunder rumbled sullenly, as though boulders were being rolled across the roof of the sky, and for a few seconds the rain spurted down thickly and then sank once more to a fine drizzle. Clinton shivered and pulled up the collar of his sheepskin coat as he hurried on to where the Maxim carts stood at the head of the column.

There was a tarpaulin draped between the two carts and beneath it squatted a small group of officers. Mungo, Sint John looked up as Clinton approached.

"Ah, parson!" he greeted him. Mungo had learned that this address irritated Clinton inordinately. "You took your time." Clinton did not reply; he stood hunched in the rain and none of the officers made room for him beneath the canvas.

"Major Wilson is going to make a reconnaissance across the river with a dozen men. I want you to go with him to translate, if he meets any of the enemy."

"It will be dark in less than two hours," Clinton pointed out stolidly.

"Then you had best hurry."

"The rains will break at any minute," Clinton persisted.

"Your forces could be split "Parson, you bother about brimstone and salvation let us do the soldiering." Mungo turned back to his officers. "Are you ready to go, Wilson?"

Allan Wilson was a bluff Scot, with long, dark moustaches and an accent that burred with the tang of heather and highlands.

"You'll be giving me detailed orders then, sir?" he demanded stiffly. There had been ill-feeling between him and Sint John ever since they had left Gubulawayo.

"I want you to use your common sense, man," Sint John snapped. "If you can catch Lobengula, then grab him, put him on a horse, and get back here. If you are attacked, fall back immediately. If you let yourself be cut off, I will not be able to cross the river to support you with the Maxims until first light, do you understand that?"

"I do, General." Wilson touched the brim of his slouch hat. "Come on, Reverend," he said to Clinton. "We do not have much time."

Burnham and Ingram, the two American scouts, led the patrol down the steep bank of the Shangani. Wilson and Clinton followed immediately behind.

Clinton's lanky, stooped frame, in the scuffed sheepskin jacket and with a shapeless stained hat pulled down over his ears, looked oddly out of place in the middle of the uniformed patrol of armed men. As he came level with Mungo Sint John, standing on the top of the bank with his hands clasped behind his back, Clinton bent low from the saddle of his borrowed horse and said, so quietly that only Mungo heard him, "Read "1 Samuel, chapter eleven, verse fifteen." Then Clinton straightened, gathered the old grey gelding with which he had been provided by the Company, and the two of them went sliding untidily down the cutting in the steep bank which the Matabele had dug to take Lobengula's wagons across.

At this point, the Shangam river was two hundred yards across, and as the little patrol waded the deepest part of the channel, the muddy waters reached to their stirrup irons. They climbed the far bank and almost immediately were lost from view in the dripping woods and poor light.

Mungo Sint John stood for many minutes, staring across the river, ignoring the fine, drizzling rain. He was wondering at himself, wondering why he had sent such a puny force across the river, with only hours of daylight left. The priest was right, of course, it would rain again soon. The heavens were leaden and charged with it. The Matabele were in force. The priest had seen the Inyati impi under its old and crafty commander, Gandang, escorting the wagons away from Gubulawayo.

If he were going to reconnoitre the lie of the land beyond the river, then he knew that he should have used the last of the daylight to ford his entire force. It was the correct tactical disposition. That way the patrol could fall back under the protection of the Maxims at any time during the night, or he could go forward to relieve them if they ran into trouble.

Some demon had possessed him when he gave the orders. Perhaps Wilson had finally irritated him beyond all restraint. The man had argued with him at every opportunity, and had done his best to subvert Mungo's authority amongst the other officers, who resented the fact that he was an American over British officers. It was mostly Wilson's fault that this was such an unhappy and divided little expedition. He was well rid of the overbearing and blunt Scotsman, he decided. Perhaps a night spent in company with the Inyati regiment would take some of the pepper out of him; and he would be a little more tractable in the future, if there was a future for him. Mungo turned back to the sheltering tarpaulin strung between the gun carriages.

Suddenly a thought struck him, and he called down the line. "Captain Borrow."

"Sir?

"You have a Bible, don't you? Let me have it, will you?"

Mungo's batman had a fire going, and coffee brewing in the shelter, and he took Mungo's coat to dry and.

spread a grey woollen blanket over his shoulders as Mungo squatted beside the fire and paged slowly through the little leather-bound, travel-battered Bible.

He found the reference and stared at it thoughtfully: And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die.

Mungo wondered that he was still capable of surprising himself. There were still strange places in his soul that he had never explored.

He took a burning stick from the fire and lit his cigar, then plunged the glowing red of the brand into the black coffee to enhance the taste of the brew.

"Well, well, Parson!" he murmured aloud. "You have a sharper instinct than I ever gave you credit for."

Then he thought Of Robyn Codrington, trying to consider his feelings objectively, and without passion.

"Do I love her?" he asked, and the answer was immediate.

"I have never loved a woman, and by God's grace, I never will."

"Do I want her, then?" And again there was no hesitation. "Yes, I want her. I want her badly enough to send anybody who stands in my way to his death."