Men of Men - Smith Wilbur - Страница 19

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Jordan's legs folded under him and he went down, sliding on his belly, the wind driven from his lungs as he hit the baked earth of the pathway. Before he could raise himself, Douglas landed with all his weight between Jordan's shoulder blades and shoved his face, cheek down, against the ground, while Henry snatched up the thorn branch and danced about them, looking for an opening, the branch held in both hands above his head.

"His hair first," gasped Douglas, choking with laughter and his own excitement. "Hold his head."

Henry dropped the cane and stooped over Jordan, grabbing a double handful of the fine curls and leaning back against it with all his weight so that Jordan's neck was stretched out. Douglas was still perched between Jordan's shoulder blades. Pinning him against the earth and brandishing the open clasp knife, he told his twin, "Hold him still." The fine golden hair was stretched like the strings of a violin and Douglas hacked at it.

It came away in tufts in Henry's fists, some of it cut through, some of it torn out at the roots, like feathers from the carcass of a slaughtered chicken, and he threw it high in the air, shouting with laughter as it sparkled in the sunlight.

"Now you will be a boy!"

All the resistance went out of Jordan. He lay crushed against the earth, shaken only by his own sobs, and Henry grabbed another handful of his curls.

"Cut closer," he ordered his twin, and then shrieked with shock and pain.

The thin tapered end of a rhinoceros-hide riding whip curled with a snap around the seat of Henry's breeches, over the fresh bruises raised by the Reverend Gander's Malacca cane, and Henry shot erect clutching at his own buttocks with both hands and hopping up and down on the same spot.

A hand closed on the collar of his shirt and he was yanked into the air and held suspended, kicking, a foot above the ground, still clutching the seat of his breeches that felt as though they were filled with live coals.

His brother looked up from his seat on Jordan's back.

In the excitement of tormenting the smaller boy, neither of the twins had eard or seen the horseman. He had walked his horse around the bend in the footpath between the gravel heaps and come across the squirming yelling knot of small bodies in the middle of the path.

He recognized the twins immediately; they had earned quick notoriety on the diggings, and it had taken only another second to guess the cause of the commotion, to understand who were the attackers and who the victim.

Douglas was quick to realize the changed circumstances as he looked up at his twin, dangling like a man on the gallows from the horseman's fist. He scrambled to his feet and darted away, but the horseman turned his mount with his heels and, like a polo player, cut backhanded with the long rhino-hide sjambok, and the agony of it paralysed Douglas. But for the thick canvas breeches it would have opened his skin.

Before he could begin to run again the horseman stooped in the saddle, seized his upper arm and lifted him easily. On each side of the horse, the twins wriggled and whimpered with the sting of the lash and the rider looked down at them thoughtfully.

"I know you two," he told them quietly. "You are the Stewart brats, the ones who drove old Jacob's mule into the barbed wire."

,"Please, sir, please," blubbered Douglas.

"Keep quiet, boy," said the rider evenly. "You are the ones that cut the reins on De Kock's wagon. That cost your daddy a penny, and the Diggers" Committee would like to know who set fire to Carlo's tent then," "It weren't us, Mister," Henry pleaded. It was clear they both knew who their captor was, and that they were truly afraid of him.

Jordan crawled to his knees and peered up at his rescuer. He must be somebody very important, perhaps even a member of the committee he had mentioned.

Even in his distress Jordan was awed by that possibility.

Ralph had explained to him that a committee member was something between a policeman, a prince and the ogre of the fairy tales which their mother used to read to them.

Now this fabulous being looked down at Jordan as he knelt in the pathway, with his cheek smeared with dust and tears, his shirt torn and the buttons dangling on their threads, while the backs of his knees were crisscrossed with bloody welts.

"This little one is half your size," the horseman said.

His eyes were blue, a strange electric blue, the eyes of a poet, or of a fanatic. "It was just a game, sir," mumbled Henry; the collar of his shirt was twisted up under his ear.

"We didn't mean nothing, Mister."

The horseman transferred that glowing blue gaze from Jordan to the two wriggling bodies in his hands.

"A game, was it?" he asked. "Well, next time I catch you playing your games, you and your father had better have a story for the committee, do you hear me?"

He shook them roughly. "Do you understand me clearly?"

"Yes, sir "So you enjoy games, do you? Well then, here is a new one, and we shall play it every time you so much as lay a finger on a child smaller than you are."

He dropped them unexpectedly to earth, and before the twins could recover their balance had cut left and right with the sjambok, starting them away at a run, and then he cantered easily along behind them for a hundred yards or so, leaning from the saddle to flick the whip at the back of their legs to keep them at their best speed. then abruptly he let them go and wheeled the horse, cantering back to where Jordan stood trembling and pale in the pathway.

"If you are going to fight, then one at a time is the best policy, young man," said the rider and stepped down easily from the stirrup and threw the reins over his shoulder as he squatted on his haunches facing Jordan.

"Now where does it hurt most?" he asked.

It was suddenly terribly important to Jordan that he did not appear a baby. He gulped noisily as he fought his tears, and the man seemed to understand.

"Good fellow," he nodded. "That's the spirit." And he drew a cotton handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the muddy tears.

"What's your name?"

Jordie, Jordan," he corrected himself and sniffed noisily.

How old are you, Jordan?"

"Almost eleven, sir."

The sting of his injuries and of his humiliation began to recede, to be replaced by a warm flood of gratitude towards his rescuer.

"Spit!"ordered the horseman, proffering the handkerchief, and Jordan obeyed, dampening a corner of the cloth with his saliva.

The man turned him with a hand on his shoulder, and with the handkerchief cleaned the bloody lines on his legs. It was perfunctory treatment, and the man's touch was masculine and ungentle, but Jordan was powerfully reminded of his mother by the attention, and that empty place inside him ached so that he almost began weeping again. He held back the tears, and twisted his neck to watch the man work on his injured legs.

The fingers were square and powerful, but a little uncoordinated. The nails were big and strong and even, cut short, with a pearly translucent lustre. The back of his hands were covered with fine golden hairs that caught the sun.

The man glanced up from his task at Jordan. His face was fair, the skin was smooth-shaven and unblemished except for the small fine moustache. His lips were full, high-coloured, sensual. His nose was large, but not too large for the big round head and the thick waves of lightbrown hair.

He was young, probably ten years older than Jordan, though he had such a powerful presence, such a sense of maturity and of power seemed to invest him, that he appeared much older.

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