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

Then the mare came down from her high prancing dance, and she flattened immediately into full gallop.

She flew at the gateway in the milkwood hedge, and Pickering was dragged after her, his ankle trapped in the steel of the stirrup, his body slithering and bouncing loosely across the earth.

As the mare swerved to take the gap in the hedge, Pickering was flung into the hedge, and the white thorns, each as long as a man's forefinger, were driven into his flesh like needles.

Then he was plucked away, out into the open ground, sledging over rocky earth, striking and flattening the small wiry bushes as the mare jumped them, his body totally relaxed and his arms flung out behind him.

One moment the back of his head was slapping against the earth, and the next his ankle had twisted in the stirrup and he was face down, the skin being smeared from his cheeks and forehead by the harsh abrasive earth.

Jordan found himself racing after him, his breath sobbing with horror, calling to the mare.

"Whoa, girl! Steady, girl!"

But she was maddened, firstly terrified by the wind and the flirt of canvas into her face, and now by the unfamiliar weight that dragged and slithered at her heels.

She reached the slope of the trailing dumps and swerved again, and this time, mercifully, the stirrup leather parted with a twang. Freed of her burden, the mare galloped away down the pathway between the dumps.

Jordan dropped on his knees beside Pickering's inert crumpled body. He lay face down; the expensive broadcloth was ripped and dusty, the boots scuffed through to white leather beneath.

Gently, supporting his head in cupped hands, Jordan rolled him onto his back, turning his face out of the dust so that he could breathe. Pickering's face was a bloodied mask, caked with dust, a flap of white skin hanging off his cheek, but his eyes were wide open.

Despite the complete deathlike relaxation of his arms and body, Pickering was fully conscious. His eyes swivelled to Jordan's face, and his lips moved.

Jordie," he whispered. "I can't feel anything, nothing at all. Numb, my hands, my feet, my whole body numb."

They carried him back in a blanket, a man at each corner, and laid him gently on the narrow iron-framed cot in the bedroom next door to Rhodes" own room.

Doctor Jameson came within the hour, and he nodded when he saw how Jordan had bathed and dressed his injuries and the arrangements he had made for his comfort.

"Good. Who taught you?" But he did not wait for an answer. "Here!" he said. "I'll need your help." And he handed Jordan his bag, shrugged out of his jacket and rolled his sleeves.

"Get out," he said to Rhodes. "You'll be in the way here."

It took Jameson only minutes to make certain that the paralysis below the neck was complete, and then he looked up at Jordan, making sure that he was out of sight of Pickering's alert, fever-bright eyes, and he shook his head curtly.

"I'll be a minute," he said. "I must speak with mister Rhodes."

"Jordie," Pickering whispered painfully, the moment Jameson left the room, and Jordan stooped to his lips.

"It's my neck, it's broken."

"No."

"Be quiet. Listen." Pickering frowned at the interruption. "I think I always knew, that it would be you. One way or the other, it would be you He broke off, fresh sweat blistered on his forehead, but he made another terrible effort to speak. "I thought I hated you. But not any more, not now. There is not enough time left for hate."

He did not speak again, not that night, nor the following day. But at dusk when the heat in the tiny ironwalled room abated a little, he opened his eyes again and looked up at Rhodes. It was frightening to see how low he had sunk. The fine bones of forehead and cheeks seemed to gleam through the translucent skin, and his eyes had receded into dark bruised cavities.

Rhodes leaned his great shaggy head over him until his ear touched Pickering's dry white lips. The whisper was so light, like a dead leaf blown softly across a roof at midnight, and Jordan could not hear the words, but Rhodes clenched his lids closed over his pale blue eyes as though in mortal anguish.

"Yes," he answered, almost as softly as the dying man.

"Yes, I know, Pickling."

When Rhodes opened his eyes again they were flooded with bright tears, and his colour was a frightening mottled purple.

"He's dead, Jordan," he choked, and put one hand on his own chest, pressing hard as though to calm the beat of his swollen heart.

Then quite slowly, deliberately, he lowered his head again, and kissed the broken, torn lips of the man on the iron-framed cot.

Zouga thought the voice was part of his dream, so sweet, so low, and yet tremulous and filled with some dreadful appeal. Then he was awake, and the voice was still calling, and now there was a light tap on the window above the head of his bed.

"I'm coming," Zouga answered, as low as he was called.

He did not have to ask who it was.

He dressed swiftly, in total darkness, instinct warning him not to light a candle, and he carried his boots in his hand as he stepped out onto the stoep of the cottage.

The height of the moon told him that it was after midnight, but he barely glanced at it before turning to the figure that leaned against the wall beside the door.

"Are you alone?" he demanded softly. There was something in the way the figure slumped that frightened him.

"Yes." The distress, the pain, were clear in her voice now that they were so close.

"You should not have come here, not alone, missis Sint John."

"There was nobody else to turn to."

"Where is Mungo. Where is your husband?"

"He is in trouble, terrible, terrible, trouble."

"Where is he?"

"I left him out beyond the Cape crossroad."

For a moment her voice choked on her, and then it came out with a forceful rush.

He's hurt. Wounded, badly wounded."

"Her voice had risen, so that she might rouse Jan Cheroot and the boys. Zouga took her arm to calm and quieten her, and immediately she fell against him. The feel of her body shocked him, but he could not pull away.

"I'm afraid, Zouga. I'm afraid he might die." It was the first time she had used his given name.

"What happened?"

"Oh God!" She was weeping now, clinging to him, and he realized how hard-pressed she was. He slipped his arm around her waist and led her down the verandah.

In the kitchen he seated her on one of the hard deal chairs, and then lit the candle. He was shocked again when he saw her face. She was pale and shaking, her hair in wild disorder a smear of dirt on one cheek and her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot.

He poured coffee from the blue enamel pot at the back of the stove. It was thick as molasses. He added a dram of brandy to it.

"Drink it."

She shuddered and gasped at the potent black brew, but it seemed to steady her a little.

"I didn't want him to go. I tried to stop him. I was sick of it.

I told him I couldn't take it any more, the cheating and lying. The shame and the running, "

"You aren't making sense," he told her brusquely, and she took a deep breath and started again.

"Mungo went to meet a man tonight. The man was going to bring him a parcel of diamonds, a parcel of diamonds worth one hundred thousand pounds. And Mungo was going to buy them for two thousand."

Zouga's face set grimly, and he sat down opposite her and stared at her. His expression intimidated her.