The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 72

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The veld through which he rode was silent now, and almost empty.

It chilled Ralph so that his expression was gloomy and his thoughts dark. Where several months ago his father's herds of plump multicoloured cattle had grazed, the new grass was springing up again dense and green and untrodden, as though to veil the white bones with which the earth was strewn so thickly.

Only Ralph's warning had saved Zouga Ballantyne from complete financial disaster. He had managed to sell off some small portion of his herds to Gwaai Cattle Ranches, a BSA Company subsidiary, before the rinderpest struck King's Lynn, but he had lost the rest of his cattle, and their bones gleamed like strings of pearls amongst the new green grass.

Ahead of Ralph amongst the mimosa trees was one of his father's cattle-posts, and Ralph stood in the saddle and shaded his eyes, puzzled by the haze of pink dust which hung over the old stockade. The dust had been raised by hooves and there was the sharp crack of a trek whip, a sound that had not been heard in Matabeleland for many months.

Even at a distance, he recognized the figures silhouetted upon the railing of the stockade like a pair of scraggly old crows.

"Jan Cherood" he called as he rode up. "Isazi! What are you two old rogues playing at?" They grinned at him delightedly, and scrambled down to greet him.

"Good Lord!" Ralph's astonishment was unfeigned as he realized what the animals in the stockade were. The curtains of thick dust had hidden them until this minute. "Is this how you spend your time when I am away, Isazi? Whose idea is this?" "Bakela, your father's." Isazi's expression instantly became melancholy. "And it is a stupid idea." The flat sleek animals were striped in vivid black and white, their manes stiff as the bristles in a chimney-sweep's broom.

"Zebras, by GodV Ralph shook his head. "How did you round them up?" "We used, up a dozen good horses chasing them," Jan Cheroot explained, his leathery yellow features wrinkled with disapproval.

"Your father hopes to replace the trek oxen with these dumb donkeys. They are as wild and unreasonable as a Venda virgin. They bite and kick until you get them in the traces and then they lie down and refuse to pull." Isazi spat with disgust. it was manifest folly to try to bridge in a few short months the vast gap between wild animal and domesticated beast of burden. It had taken millennia of selection and breeding to develop the doughty courage, the willing heart and strong back of the draught bullock. It was a measure of the settlers" desperate need for transport that Zouga should even make the attempt.

"Isazi." Ralph shook his head. "When you have finished this boy's game, I have man's work for you at the railhead camp." "I will be ready to go with you when you return," Isazi promised enthusiastically. "I am sick to the stomach with striped donkeys." Ralph turned to Jan Cheroot. "I want to talk to you, old friend. "When they were well beyond the stockade, he asked the little Hottentot, "Did you put your mark on a Company paper saying that we had pegged the Harkness claims in darkness?" "I would never let you down," Jan Cheroot declared proudly. "General St. John explained to me, and I put my mark on the paper to save the claims for you and the major." He saw Ralph's expression, and demanded anxiously, "I did the right thing?" Ralph leaned out of the saddle and clasped the bony old shoulder. "You have been a good and loyal friend to me all my life." "From the day you were born," Jan Cheroot declared.

"When your mama died, I fed you, and held you on my knee." Ralph opened his saddlebag, and the old Hottentot's eyes gleamed when he saw the bottle of Cape brandy.

"Give a dram to Isazi," Ralph told him, but Jan Cheroot clasped the bottle to his bosom as though it were a firstborn son.

"I wouldn't waste good brandy on a black savage," he declared indignantly, and Ralph laughed and rode on towards the homestead of King's Lynn.

Here there was all the bustle and excitement that he had expected.

There were horses that Ralph did not recognize in the paddock below the big thatched house, and amongst them the unmistakable matched white mules of Mr. Rhodes" equipage. The coach itself stood under the trees in the yard, its paintwork asparkle and harness-wear carefully stacked on the racks in the saddle-room beside the stables. Ralph felt his anger flare up when he saw it. His hatred burned like a bellyful of cheap wine, and he could taste the acid of it at the back of his throat. He swallowed hard to control it as he dismounted.

Two black grooms ran to take his horse. One of them unstrapped his blanket-roll, his saddlebags and rifle scabbard, and ran with them up towards the big house. Ralph followed him, and he was halfway across the lawns when Zouga Ballantyne came out onto the wide stoep, and with a linen table-napkin shaded his eyes against the glare. He was still chewing from the luncheon table.

"Ralph, my boy. I didn't expect you until evening." Ralph ran up the steps and they embraced, and then Zouga took his arm and led him down the veranda. The walls were hung with trophies of the chase, the long twisted horns of kudu and eland, the gleaming black scimitars of sable and roan antelope, and guarding each side of the double doors that led into the dining-room were the immense tusks of the great bull elephant that Zouga Ballantyne had shot on the site of the Harkness Mine. These heavy curved shafts of ivory were as tall as a man standing on tiptoe could reach, and thicker than a fat lady's thigh.

Zouga and Ralph passed between them into the dining room. Under the thatch it was cool and dark after the brilliant white glare of noon. The floor was of hand-sawn wild teak, and the roof beams of the same material. Jan Cheroot had made the long refectory table and the chairs with seats of leather thonging from timber cut on the estate, but the glinting silver was from the Ballantyne family home at King's Lynn in England, a tenuous link between two places of the same name and yet of such dissimilar aspect.

Zouga's empty chair was at the far end of the long table, and facing it down the long board was the familiar massive brooding figure that raised his shaggy head as Ralph came in from the stoep.

"Ah, Ralph, it's good to see you." It amazed Ralph that there was no rancour in either Mr. Rhodes" voice or eyes. Could he have truly put the dispute over the Wankie coal fields out of his mind, as though it had never happened? With an effort, Ralph matched his own reaction to the other man's.

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