Men of Men - Smith Wilbur - Страница 27

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Mixed with the diggers were all the loafers of New Rush, the transport riders and merchants; even the kopie-wallopers had closed their offices for the meeting.

This was something that affected all their futures directly.

"Let's have a look at the little brighter," somebody yelled out at the back of the crowd, and there was a menacing growl of agreement.

"Right, let's see him."

Zouga stood beside the tall back wheel of the wagon, hemmed in by the press of bodies, and he glanced at Ralph who stood at his shoulder.

"He no longer had to look down at his son, their eyes were on a level.

"I'll go up and face them" Ralph whispered huskily.

Under the dark tan" his skin was grey and his eyes dark green and worried. He knew as well as Zouga did how grave was his position: he was to be tried by a mob that was angry and vindictive and mostly filled with cheap liquor.

The collapse of the roadway had destroyed the value of their claims. They could no longer get the gravel out; their claims were isolated, cut off from ground level, and they were spoiling to place the blame and extract vengeance. That vengeance would be brutal.

Ralph put one hand on the spokes of the wagon wheel, ready to climb up onto the wagon body where the dozen members of the Committee were already waiting.

"Ralph." Zouga stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"Wait here."

"Papa-" Ralph began to protest quietly, the fear still dark in his eyes.

"Stay" ZOUGA repeated softly, and vaulted up onto the wagon body lightly.

He nodded briefly to the members of the Committee and then turned to face the mob. He was bare-headed, his beard catching the sunlight and jutting accessibly as he placed his clenched fists on his hips and" set his feet easily apart.

"Gentlemen," he said, and his voice carried clearly to the last row of the crowd, "my son is only sixteen years old. I am here to answer for him."

"If. he's old enough to kill six men, then he's old enough to face the music himself."

"He killed nobody," Zouga answered coldly. "If you look to place the blame, then put it on the rain. Go down to the pit, and you will see where it undercut the bank "

"He started fighting" the shaggy-headed accuser bellowed. "I saw him use his whip on Mark Sanderson , "There is a fight on one of the causeways every hour of every day," Zouga shot at him. "I've seen you throwing punches out there, and getting your arse whipped at that."

There was a ripple of laughter, a lightening of the mood, and Zouga took his advantage.

"In the name of all that's holy, gentlemen, there is not one of us here who does not protect his rights. My son was doing that, against a man older and stronger than himself, and if he's guilty for that, then so are all of you."

They liked that, liked being told they were tough and independent, proud of being hard fighters and hard livers.

"Are you telling me that one boy with a trek whip brought down the number 6 causeway all on his own? If so, then I'm proud that boy is my son."

They laughed again, and on the wagon behind Zouga the tall blond untidily dressed man with the cleft chin and pale blue eyes smiled thoughtfully and murmured to the Committee member beside him.

"He's good, Pickling," using Neville Pickering's familiar nickname. "He talks as well as he writes, and that's well enough."

"No, gentlemen," Zouga changed pace. "That causeway was a death-trap, ready to go off before the first gravel bucky went out on it Friday morning. The collapse was nobody's fault; we had just dug too deep, and there was too much rain."

Heads were nodding now, their expressions concerned and grave as Zouga went on.

"We are too deep on the New Rush, and unless we work out a new system of getting the stuff out of our claims, then there are going to be a lot more dead men for us to bury."

Zouga glanced down as one of the diggers shouldered his way through the crowd and climbed up onto the disselboom of the wagon.

"Now you pay attention, you bunch of dirt-hounds," he yelled.

"The chair acknowledges Mister Sanderson," Neville Pickering murmured sarcastically.

"Thanking you, Guv." The digger lifted his battered Derby hat, finery that he had donned especially for this meeting, then turned and scowled at the crowd. "This nipper of Zouga Ballantyne's is going to be a bad one to mess with, and a good one to have at your side when things get hard." Still scowling, he turned and called to Ralph. "You come up here, young Ballantyne."

Still pale and worried, Ralph hung back, but rough hands pushed him forward and hoisted him onto the wagon.

The digger had to reach up to put his arm around Ralph's shoulder.

"This boy could have let me drop into the pit like a rotten tomato, and squash the same way when I hit the bottom." He made a vaguely obscene squelching sound with his lips to illustrate his own demise. "He could have run and left me, but he didn't."

"That's "cause he's young and stupid," someone called.

"If he had any sense he'd have given you a shove, you miserable bastard."

There was a hubbub of cheers and hooted derision.

"I'm going to buy this boy a drink," announced Sanderson belligerently.

"That will be some sort of record. You ain't never bought nobody a drink yet."

Sanderson ignored them haughtily. "Just as soon as he turns eighteen, I'm going to buy him a drink."

The meeting started to break up in a storm of friendly catcalls and laughter, the diggers streaming away across the square to the canteens.

It was obvious to even the most bloody-minded of them that there wasn't going to be a lynching, and hardly any of them bothered to wait for the Committee's verdict. it was more important to get a good place at the bar.

"Which doesn't mean we approve of your behaviour, young man," Pickering told Ralph severely. "This isn't Buitfontein or Dutoitspan. Here on New Rush we try to set an example to the other diggings. In future, do try and behave like a gentleman. I mean fists are one thing, but whips-" He raised one eyebrow disdainfully and turned to Zouga. "If you have any ideas about how we are going to work the number 6 area now that the causeway has gone, we'd like to hear them, Major Ballantyne."

Hendrick Naaiman would have called himself a "Bastaard", and would have used the term with a deep sense of pride. However, the British Foreign Office had found the word awkward, possibly the double "A" in the spelling offended the proper order of official correspondence and treaties, especially if one of those treaties should ever be laid for signature before Queen Victoria. So the nation was now referred to as Griqua, and the land on which New Rush stood was renamed Griqualand West, a definition which made it easier for Whitehall to champion old Nicholaas Waterboer, the Bastaard captain's claim to the area, over that of the Boer presidents of the backveld republics which also claimed the area as part of their dominions.

It was remarkable how before the discovery of the bright stones nobody, and especially not Great Britain, had shown the slightest interest in this desolate and and plain, no matter what it was called.

In Hendrick Naaiman's veins flowed the rich intermingled blood of numerous peoples.

Its basis was that of the Hottentot the sturdy goldenskinned, dark-eyed people who had met the first Portuguese circumnavigators of the globe when they stepped onto the gleaming white beach sands of Good Hope.

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