The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 51
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After Lobengula's defeat and death, Wankie had brazenly set himself up as chieftain of the land between the Zambezi and the Gwaai rivers, and he demanded tribute of those who came to trade or hunt the elephant herds that had been driven into the bad lands along the escarpment of the Zambezi valley, where the tsetse fly turned back the horsemen and only the hardiest would go in on foot to chase the great animals.
Wankie was a handsome man in his middle age, open faced and tall, with the air of the chief he claimed to be, and he accepted the gift of blankets and beads that Ralph presented to him with no effusive gratitude, enquired politely after Ralph's health and that of his father, and brothers and sons, and then waited like a crocodile at the drinking place for Ralph to come to the real purpose of his visit.
"The stones that burn?" he repeated vaguely, his eyes hooded as he pondered, seeming to search his memory for such an extraordinary subject, and then quite artlessly he remarked that he had always wanted a wagon. Lobengula had owned a wagon, and therefore Wankie believed that every great chief should have one, and he turned on his stool and glanced pointedly at Ralph's six magnificent Cape-built eighteen-footers out spanned in the glade below the kraal.
"That damned rogue has the cheek of a white man," Ralph protested bitterly to Harry Mellow across the campfire. "A wagon, no less.
Three hundred pounds of any man's money." "But, darling, if Wankie can guide you, won't it be a bargain price?" Cathy asked mildly.
"No. I'm damned if I'll give in to him. A couple of blankets, a case of brandy, but not a three hundred pound wagon!"
"Damned right, Ralph," Harry chuckled. "I mean we got Long Island for that price " He was interrupted by a discreet cough behind him.
Bazo had come across silently from the other fire where the drivers and servants were bivouacked.
"Henshaw," he started, when Ralph acknowledged him. "You told me that we had come here to hunt buffalo to make trek ri ems from their hides." he accused. "Did you not trust me?" "Bazo, you are my brother." "You lie to your brothers?" "If I had spoken of the stones that burn in Bulawayo, we would have had a hundred wagons following us when we left town." "Did I not tell you that I had led my impi over these hills, chasing the same hairless baboon upon whom you now shower gifts?" "You did not tell me," Ralph replied, and Bazo moved on hastily from that subject. He was not proud of his campaign against Wankie, the only one during all the years that he had been and una of the "Moles" which had not ended in complete success. He still recalled the old king's recriminations, would that he could ever forget them.
"Henshaw, if you had spoken to me, we would not have had to waste our time and demean ourselves by parleying with this son of thirty fathers, this unsavoury jackal-casting, this-" Ralph cut short Bazo's opinion of their host, by standing up and seizing Bazo's shoulders.
"Bazo, can you lead us there? Is that what you mean? Can you take us to the stones that burn?" Bazo inclined his head, in assent. "And it will not cost you a wagon, either, "he replied.
They rode into a red and smoky dawn through the open glades in the forest. Ahead of them the buffalo herds opened to give them passage and closed behind them as they passed. The huge black beasts held their wet muzzles high, the massive slaty bosses of horn giving them a ponderous dignity, and they stared in stolid astonishment as the horsemen passed within a few hundred paces, and then returned unalarmed to graze. The riders barely glanced at them, their attention was fastened instead on Bazo's broad bullet-scarred back as he led them at an easy trot towards the low line of flat-topped hills that rose out of the forest ahead.
On the first slope they tethered the horses, and climbed, while above them the furry little brown klipspringer, swift as chamois, flew sure-footed up the cliffs and from the summit an old dog baboon barked his challenge down at them. Though they ran at the slope, they could not keep up with Bazo, and he was waiting for them halfway up on a ledge above which the cliff rose sheer to the summit. He made no dramatic announcement, but merely pointed with his chin. Ralph and Harry stared, unable to speak, their chests heaving and their shirts plastered to their backs with sweat from the climb.
There was a horizontal seam, twenty foot thick, sandwiched in the cliff face. It ran along the cliff as far as they could see in each direction, black as the darkest night and yet glittering with a strange greenish iridescence in the slanted rays of the early sun.
"This was the only thing we lacked in this land," Ralph said quietly. "The stones that burn, black gold now we have it all." Harry Mellow went forward and laid his hand upon it reverently, as though he were a worshipper touching the relic of a saint in some holy place.
"I have never seen coal of this quality in a seam so deep, not even in the Kentucky hills." Suddenly he snatched his hat off his head and with a wild Indian whoop threw it far out down the slope.
"We are rich! "he shouted. "Rich! Rich! Rich!" "Better than working for Mr. Rhodes?" Ralph asked, and Harry grabbed his shoulders and the two of them spun together in a yelling, stomping dance of jubilation on the narrow ledge, while Bazo leaned against the seam of black coal and watched them unsmilingly.
It took them two weeks to survey and peg their claims, covering all the ground beneath which the seams of coal might be buried. Harry shot the lines with his theodolite, and Bazo and Ralph worked behind him with a gang of axe men driving in the pegs and marking the corners with cairns of loose stones.
While they worked, they discovered a dozen other places in the hills where the deep rich seams of glittering coal were exposed at the surface.
"Coal for a thousand years," Harry predicted. "Coal for the railways and the blast furnaces, coal to power a new nation." On the fifteenth day the two of them traipsed back to camp at the head of their bone-weary gang of Matabele.
Victoria, deprived of her new husband for two weeks, was as palely forlorn as a young widow in mourning, but by breakfast the following day she had regained her fine high colour and the sparkle in her eyes as she hovered over Harry, replenishing his coffee cup and heaping his plate with slices of smoked wart hog and piles of rich yellow scrambled ostrich egg. Sitting at the head of the breakfast table set under the giant ms asa trees, Ralph called to Cathy. "Break out a bottle of champagne, Katie my sweeting, we have something to celebrate," and he saluted them with a brimming mug. "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a toast to the gold of the Harkness Mine and the coal of the Wankie field, and to the riches of both!" They laughed and clinked their mugs and drank the toast.
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