Men of Men - Smith Wilbur - Страница 74

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All right," she said again.

"Does that mean you will lend me the money?"

"Yes."

"I don't know what to say." He leaned towards her, young and glowing and eager. "Lil, I just don't,"

"Then don't say anything until you have heard my terms." She smiled thinly, without lifting her upper lip.

"Twenty percent per annum. interest on the loan."

"Twenty percent!" he gasped. "In God's name, that's usury, Lily!"

"Exactly," she told him primly. "But let me finish.

Twenty percent interest and half the profits."

"And half, Lil, that's not usury, that's highway robbery."

"Right again," she agreed. "At least you are bright enough to recognize it."

"Can't we just -" he started desperately.

"No, we cannot. Those are my terms." And Ralph remembered Scipio, his falcon, with her beautiful pouting breast and fierce cold eyes.

"I accept," he said, and though she did not smile with her lips, her eyes were suddenly soft and merry.

"Partners," she murmured, and placed her plump white hand on his forearm. His muscles were lean and sinewy, the skin brick-coloured from the sun. She stroked it slowly, sensually.

It only remains to seal our bargain," she told Ralph.

"Come!" She slid her hand down his arm and twined her fingers into his.

She led him through the stained-glass doors, and when she drew the velvet corded curtains it was cool and dark in the room. She turned back to him and reached up to unbutton his shirt at the throat. He stood still while she worked her way down slowly to his belt buckle, and then she placed one hand, palm down, upon his naked right breast.

"Ralph," her voice was a husky tremor. "I want you to do something for me."

"What is it?" he asked, and she stood on her tiptoes, placed her lips against his ear and told him in a whisper.

She felt him begin to pull back from under her hand.

"Partners?" she asked, and he hesitated a moment longer and then stooped and picked her up, one arm behind her knees, and carried her to the wide brass bed with the patchwork quilt.

"You will find it less arduous than hunting elephant on foot in the fly," she told him, and it was dark enough in the room for her not to worry about the missing tooth.

She lifted her arms above her head, opened her mouth and chuckled in delicious anticipation.

"The good thing about life, dearie, is that you can have whatever you want, just as long as you are willing to pay the price," she told him, still chuckling.

"These are not bullocks," Bazo told Ralph. "Each one is the son of a snake mated with the ghost of a Mashona dog."

They were all strong oxen, big-boned, heavy in the shoulder, with wide straight horns for strength and even yellow teeth, hand-picked by Bazo, who was a Matabele and loved cattle, had lived with the great herds since he was old enough to toddle after the calves.

However, Bazo was not a trek man. He had never worked an eighteen-foot wagon, with an eight-thousand pound "load aboard. He had never tried to put twentyfour trek oxen into the traces.

The entire Matabele nation owned only a pair of wheeled vehicles, and those belonged to King Lobengula. To Bazo cattle were a store of wealth, a source of meat and milk, they were not draught animals. The closest that either he or Ralph had ever come to putting a team into the traces was working the little two-wheel gravel carts.

Ralph had assumed that the oxen he had purchased were trained and amiable, but within minutes of his and Bazo's first attempt to get them into span, the animals sensed their incompetence and became as spooky and wild as hunted buffalo.

it took two hours of wild chasing across the bleak grasslands beyond the town limits, two hours of running and cursing and whip-cracking to bring the bullocks together and get the yokes upon their necks. Half of them were badly winded by then and promptly lay down, and the others backed out and turned their great homed heads towards the load, tangling the trek chain and plunging the entire span into chaos.

The excitement had brought out most of the loafers and idlers from the canteens on Market Square, though they had enough forethought to bring their bottles with them. They formed an appreciative and jovial audience, greeting each new effort by Bazo and Ralph with delighted guffaws and facetious advice.

Bazo wiped the sweat from his face and chest, and looked broodingly down the dusty road to town.

"Soon Bakela will hear of this and come to see our disgrace," he said.

Ralph had not seen his father since that stormy night, but he had visited Jordan in his tiny office next door to mister Rhodes in the magnificent new Central Diamond Company building on De Beers Street.

Perhaps Zouga Ballantyne had not yet recovered from the shock of being deserted by both his sons, but Jordan said that he had not yet left for Cape Town.

The thought of his father witnessing this humiliating scene brought dark blood to Ralph's face, and he fired the long trek whip, at least that was one trick he had learned, and bellowed at the span.

"Nkosana!" There was a salutation at the level of Ralph's elbow, the mild tone belied by the mocking title.

"Nkosi'was a chief, and'nkosana was the condescending diminutive, usually reserved for a little white boy, an untried child.

Ralph turned and glared at the speaker, who went on to explain in the same condescending tone. "Only one beast in ten will pull in front." He pointed out one of the oxen. "That one there is a lead ox.

Any man who knows oxen can see that with both his eyes closed."

He was a little black gnome, not as tall as Ralph's shoulder. His face was wrinkled and lined like that of a very old man, his eyes were mere slits in the merry smiling folds, but his cap of woolly hair and his little goatee beard were unmarred by a single strand of grey, and his teeth were even and white, the teeth of a man in his full flowering.

On his head was the polished black ring of the induna, and about his waist was a kilt of wild cat tails. Over that he wore a threadbare military-type tunic from which all insignia and buttons had been stripped, leaving small punctures in the fabric, some of which had enlarged into rents from which the lining peaked coyly. In the pierced lobe of one ear, he carried an ivory snuff-box, and in the other lobe a snuff spoon of the same material and a toothpick of porcupine quill. The language he used was lose to Matabele, but it preserved the ancient intonvery classic word structures of Zululand.

an So when Ralph asked Zulu?" the question was redundant, and the littl man shot a contemptuous glance at Bazo "Pure Zulu, not the treacherous house of Kumalo, of the traitor Mzilikazi who denied a king and whose blood is now so watered by Venda and Tswana and Mashona that they can no longer tell you if an ox grows horns on its head or on its testicles."

Bazo bridled instantly. "Hark!" He cocked his head. "Do I hear a small baboon barking his boasts from the top of the kopies?"

The little Zulu grinned at him mirthlessly, and took the stock whip from Ralph's sweaty hands. Then he walked to the tangled span with a jaunty step.

He touched the big black ox on the neck. "Hau, Sathan!" he greeted him, and at the same time baptized him "Devil".

The great ox rolled one eye at him, seemed to recognize his assurance and immediately quietened. The little Zulu loosed him and took him forward, talking to him easily in a bizarre mixture of Zulu, English and the Cape Dutch taal, and chained him into the lead position.

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