Men of Men - Smith Wilbur - Страница 62

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"You are right, of course." Rhodes" piping voice stifled them all into respectful silence. "That pale brute is a flying devil and the lady rides like a witch, we have all seen that."

"The scar on Zouga's cheek turned pale pink, and there was a sudden green glint in his eye; but the smile stayed on his lips.

"That fancy high-stepper moves well on the flat, I grant you, but over the course I would choose she would be lucky to finish, let alone win., "You'll ride then?" They were clamouring again immediately.

"No, gentlemen. That's my final word."

Long after the others had left, the three of them sat on: Pickering, Rhodes and Zouga. The sun had set, and just the orange glow of the fire lit their faces. The first bottle of cognac was empty and Pickering had opene another. Now Rhodes was staring into his mug, and spoke without lifting his eyes.

"So, Major, at last you are ready to sell, and I ask myself a question, a simple little question, why?"

Zouga did not reply, and after a moment Rhodes lifte his head.

"Why, Major?"he repeated. "Why now suddenly?"

Zouga found that the lie he had prepared would not come to his lips.

He was dumb, but he held the gaze of those pale blue eyes, and it was Rhodes who broke the silence.

"I have trusted very few men in my life," and involu tarily his eyes flickered to Pickering and then back to Zouga, "but now, Major, you are one of them."

He picked up the cognac bottle and spilled a little of the honey-dark liquor into Zouga's mug.

"Once you were offered a hundred thousand pounds: illicit diamonds, and you couldn't bring yourself to take them." Rhodes was speaking so softly that Zouga had to lean forward to catch the words. "Yesterday your son brought up the first hunk of blue ground from the Devils Own, and still you could not bring yourself to lie."

"You knew!" Zouga whispered, and Rhodes nodded and then sighed.

"By God, I wish I knew more like you." He shook the big curling head and his voice was becoming brusque and businesslike. "Once I offered you five thousand poun for your claims. All right, I will make the same price, "and he lifted one meaty hand to still Zouga, "Wait! Listen to the rest of it, before you thank me. the"

bird goes with the claims."

"What?" For a moment Zouga did not understand.

"The stone bird, the statue. It becomes part of the deal "Damn it!"Zouga half rose from the log on which he was sitting.

"Wait!"Rhodes stopped him again. "Listen, before you refuse," and Zouga sank back. "You'll ride for it."

Zouga shook his head, not understanding.

You'll ride against this woman, Sint John, on her terms, and if you win you keep the claims and the bird and my five thousand., The silence stretched out for a full minute, and then Zouga asked with a harsh gravelly sound in the back of his throat: "And if I lose?"

"You yourself have said there is little chance of that," Rhodes reminded him.

"And if I lose?" Zouga persisted.

"Then you leave these fields as you came, with nothing."

Zouga looked away to the horse standing at the edge of the shadows. He had named him Tom, after a friend, the old hunter who had first told Zouga about the land to the north and how to reach it, Tom Harkness, now dead these many years.

The horse was part of Zouga's dream of the north, the mount that would carry him back to Zambezia. Zouga had selected him with more care than a man usually gives to choosing his wife, and beauty was the last thing he looked for.

Tom was a mixture of many bloodlines, the wide nostrils and big chest of the Arab for staying power, the sturdy legs and sure feet of the Basuto, the canny eye and hammer head of a wild Mustang, the heart and strength of an English hunter. However, Tom was a drab unrelieved dun-colour. His coat was long and thick, brushed but not curried, protection from the night frost and the noon sun, from flying pebbles thrown by frantic hooves of the quarry in a stem chase or from the zip of red-tipped "wait-a-bit" thorns.

Tom had proved that the intelligent gleam in his eye was no illusion. He learned swiftly and well. He learned to stand when the reins were dropped on his neck, giving his rider both hands for the rifle, and he remained stonestill while gunfire crashed about his head, only the twitching of his ears signalling his consternation.

When Zouga took him out into the open veld to continue his training Tom displayed nimble feet on the rocky slopes of the kopje and a buffalo skin through the thorn bush; he learned to hunt, and seemed to enjoy it the way a good polo pony revels in the crack of the bamboo root and the riotous chase.

He seemed instinctively to understand stalking, keeping his own body between Zouga and the game, angling off his approach, never heading directly at the quarry, and the herds of springbuck let the seemingly riderless horse walk up into easy rifle shot. Then Tom would carry the freshly killed carcass on his back, without shying and fussing about the blood.

Tom was ugly, with a Roman nose, ears a little too long, legs a little too short, and he ran with an awkward hump-backed gait, which he could keep up all day, over any ground.

He was an incorrigible thief. Jordan's vegetable garden had to be fenced, but still Tom left tufts of his drab hair on the spikes of the barbed wire. He had a trick of plucking the carrots out of the ground with a delicate grip between his square white teeth, and then knocking the earth off them against his forehooves.

He learned to push open the kitchen window and reach the fresh loaves of bread that were cooling on the marble sink, and once when Jan Cheroot left the door to the storeroom off the latch, Tom got in and ate half a bag of sugar, at twenty shillings a pound.

However, he would follow like a dog, and when ordered he would stand for hours, and Zouga, who was not sentimental about animals, had come to love him.

Zouga looked back from the horse to the young man across the log fire.

"Agreed," he said without emphasis. "Do we need to have further witnesses?"

"I don't think so, Major," said Rhodes. "Do you?"

"At the gun the competitor will ride out to the first flag-" Neville Pickering was the steward-in-chief, and his voice through the speaking trumpet carried to every member of the huge Sunday crowd that spilled out across the dry veld below the Magersfontein hills.

"At the first red flag they will fire upon the standing targets. When they have demolished all four targets to the satisfaction of the stewards, they will be free to round the second yellow flag, and thereafter to return to the finish line." He pointed to the twin poles each with its crown of coloured bunting. "The first rider to pass between them will be declared the winner."

Pickering paused and drew fresh breath before going on.

"Are there any questions?"

"Would you recite the rules, please, mister Pickering," Louise Sint John called. She looked like a child on the great glistening pale stallion's back. She was walking him in circles, leaning forward to pat his neck for the crowds had made him nervous. He was chewing the light snaffle and sweating in dark patches on the rippling muscled shoulders.

"There are no other rules, ma'am." Pickering answered her loudly enough for those at the back of the crowd to hear.

"No rules, barging and fouling?"

"There are no fouls, ma'am," Pickering replied. "Though if one of you deliberately shoots an opponent, he or she might have to face criminal charges, but not disqualification."

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