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

Ralph signalled again. Then the winch growled, and the steel cable squealed in its sheaves. The heavy-laden skip ran on until it hit the striker blocks. Ralph and Bazo drove the jumper bars under it, and threw their full weight on them. The skip tipped over, and the load of gravel went roaring down the chute into the waiting cart.

Ralph looked up to see his father's encouraging smile and to hear his shouted congratulations.

"Well done, boy! Two hundred tons today!"

But the staging was deserted. Zouga had gone.

Zouga had packed a single chest, the chest that had belonged to Aletta and which had come up with her from the Cape. Now it was going back, and it was almost all that was going back.

Zouga put Aletta's Bible in the bottom of the chest, and with it her diary and the trinket box which contained the remaining pieces of her jewellery. The more valuable pieces had long ago been sold, to support the dying dream.

over these few mementoes he packed his own diaries and maps, and his books. When he came to the bundled pile of his unfinished manuscript, he paused to weigh it in his hand.

"Perhaps I shall find time to finish it now," he murmured, and laid it gently in the chest.

On top of that went his clothing, and there was so little of that, four shirts, a spare pair of boots, barely an armful.

The chest was only half-full, and he carried it easily down the steps into the yard. That was all that he was taking, the rest of it, the meagre furnishings of the bungalow he had sold to one of the auctioneers in Market Square. Ten pounds the lot. As Rhodes had predicted, he was leaving as he had come.

"Where is Ralph?" he demanded of Jan Cheroot, and the little Hotten tot paused in chaining the cooking-pot and black iron kettle onto the tailboard of the cart.

"Perhaps he stopped at Diamond Lil's. The boy has got a right to his thirst, he worked hard enough for it."

Zouga let it pass, and instead ran an appraising eye over the cart. It was the newest and strongest of the three vehicles he owned. One cart had gone with Louise Sint John, and she had taken the best mules, but this rig would get them back to Cape Town, even under the additional burden that he was planning to put into it.

Jan Cheroot ambled across to Zouga and took the other handle of the chest, ready to boost it up into the body of the cart.

"Wait," Zouga told him. "That first." And he pointed to the roughly-hewn block of blue mottled rock that lay below the camel-thorn tree.

"My mother -" Jan Cheroot gaped. "This I don't believe.

In twenty-two years I've seen you do some stupid crazy things Zouga strode across to the block of blue ground that Ralph had brought up from the Devil's Own and put his foot on it. "We'll hoist it up with the block and tackle."

He glanced at the sturdy branch above his head from which the sheave block and manila rope hung. "And we'll back the cart up under it."

"That's it!" Jan Cheroot sat down on the chest and folded his arms. "This time I refuse. Once before I broke my back for you, but that was when I was young and stupid."

"Come on, Jan Cheroot, you are wasting time."

"What do you want with that, piece of ugly bloody stone? With another piece of thundering nonsense."

"I have lost the bird, I need a household god."

"I have heard of someone putting up a monument to a brave man, or a great battle, but to put up a stone to stupidity," Jan Cheroot mourried.

"Back the cart up."

"I refuse, this time I refuse. I won't do it. Not for anything. Not for any price."

"When we get it loaded, you can have a bottle of smoke all to yourself to celebrate."

Jan Cheroot sighed, and stood up. "That's my price."

He shook his head and came across to stand beside Zouga. He glared at the block of blue stone venomously.

"But don't expect me to like it."

Zouga chuckled, for the first time in weeks, and in an unusual display of affection he put one arm around Jan Cheroot's shoulders.

"Now that you have something to hate again, just think how happy it will make you," he said.

"You have been drinking," Zouga said, and Ralph tossed his hat into the corner and agreed.

"Yes, I have had a beer or two." He went to the black iron stove and warmed his hands. "I would have had more, if I had had the money."

"i have been waiting for you," Zouga went on, and Ralph turned back to him truculently.

"i give you every hour of my day, Papa, let me have a little time at the end of it."

"i have something of great importance to tell you," Zouga nodded to the deal chair facing him. "Sit down, Ralph."

Zouga rubbed his eyes with forefinger and thumb as he collected his words. He had tried so often in the last days to find an easy way to tell Ralph that it was over, that they were destitute, that all that toil and heartbreak had been in vain, but there was no easy way. There were only the stark hard words of reality.

He dropped his hand, and looked at his son, and then slowly and carefully he told him, and when he had finished he waited for Ralph to speak. Ralph had not moved during the long recital, and now he stared at Zouga stonily.

Zouga was forced to speak again. "We shall leave in the morning. Jan Cheroot and I have loaded the number 2 wagon and we shall need all the mules, double team it's a long haul."

Again he waited, but there was still no reaction.

"You will be wondering where we are going and what we shall do. Well, once we get back to the Cape we still have the Harkness cottage."

"You gambled it all." Ralph spoke at last. "Without telling me. You, you, who are always preaching to me about gambling, and honesty."

"Ralph!"

"It wasn't yours, it belonged to all of us."

"You are drunk," Zouga said flatly.

"All these years I have listened to your promises. We shall go north, Ralph." He mimicked Zouga with a sudden savagery in his tone. "It's for all of us, Ralph. It's yours to share. There is a land waiting for us, Ralph. It will be yours as well as mine, Ralph., "It's not over, I still have the concession. When we get back to Cape Town-, "You, not me." Ralph's voice was flat, angry. "You go back to Cape Town. Go dream your old man's dreams. I am sick of them., "You dare to use that tone to me?"

"Yes, I dare. And by God, I'll dare more than that. I'll dare what you are too weak or afraid to dare"

"You insolent and stupid puppy!"

"You toothless old dog!"

Zouga threw himself half across the table, and his right arm lashed out. He caught Ralph open-handed across the face, and the crack of palm on flesh was stunning as a pistol shot.

Ralph's head snapped back, and then slowly he brought it upright again. "That," he said, "is the last time you will strike me, ever."

He stood up and strode towards the door, and there he turned. "Go dream your dreams I will go live mine out."

"Go then," said Zouga, and the scar on his cheek was glassy and white as ice. "Go and be damned to you., "Remember I took nothing with me, Papa, not even your blessing," said Ralph, and stepped out into the night.

Bazo woke instantly at the touch on his cheek, and reached for the assegai at his side, his eyes wide in the faint glow of the ashes. A hand closed on his wrist, holding his spear hand from the weapon, and a voice spoke softly above him.

"Do you remember the road to Matabeleland, O Prince of Kurnalo?"