When The Lion Feeds Part 19

They've made a big strike at a place called Wit.w.a.tersrand just outside Pretoria. Of course, I don't put much store by these rumours cos you hear them all the time: diamonds and gold, gold and diamonds Charlie laughed and wiped his hands on his ap.r.o.n.

Anyway my friend says the Boers are selling licences to them as want to dig for the stuff. Thought I'd just get you to have a look. I'll take this with me, Charlie, and pan it in the inoming. Right now my friend and I are drinking. Sean opened his eyes the next morning to find the sun burning in through the window above his bed. He closed them again hurriedly and tried to remember where he was. There was a pain in his head that distracted him and a noise. The noise was a regular croaking rattle; it sounded as though someone was dying. Sean opened his eyes and turned his head slowly. Someone was in the bed across the room. Sean groped for a boot and threw it; there was a snort and Duff's head came up. For a second he regarded Sean through eyes as red as a winter sunset and then he subsided gently back into the blankets. Keep it down to a bellow, whispered Sean. You are in the presence of grave illness.

A long time later a servant brought coffee.

'Send word to my office that I am sick, commanded Duff. I have done so. The servant clearly understood his master. He went on, There is one outside who seeks the other Nkosi! He glanced at Sean. He is greatly worried IMbejane. Tell him to wait, said Sean.

They drank coffee in silence, sitting on the edge of their beds.

How did I get here? asked Sean. Laddie, if you don't know, then n.o.body does Duff stood up and crossed the room to find fresh clothing. He was naked and Sean saw that although he was slim as a boy his body was finely muscled.

My G.o.d, what does Charlie put in his liquor? complained Duff as he picked up his jacket.

He found the lump of rock in the pocket, brought it out and tossed it onto the packing-case that served as a table.

He regarded it sourly as he finished dressing then he went to the great pile of bachelor debris that filled one corner of the room. He scratched around and came out with a steel pestle-and-mortar and a battered black gold pan. I feel very old this morning, he said as he started to crush the rock to powder in the mortar. He poured the powder into the pan, carried it out to the corrugated iron water tank beside the front door and filled the pan from the tap.

Sean followed him and they sat together on the front step. Duff worked the pan, using a practised dip and swing that set the contents spinning like a whirlpool and slopped a little over the front lip with each turn. He filled it again with clean water.

Suddenly Sean felt Duff stiffen beside him. He glanced at his face and saw that his hangover had gone; his lips were shut in a thin line and his bloodshot eyes were fastened on the pan.

Sean looked down and saw the gleam through the water, like the flash of a trout's belly as it turns to take the fly. He felt the excitement p.r.i.c.kle up his arms and lift the hair on his neck.

Quickly Duff splashed fresh water into the pan; three more turns and he flicked it out again. They sat still, not speaking staring at the golden tail curved round the bottom of the pan. How much money have you got? Duff asked without looking up.

little over a thousand. As much as that. Excellent! I can raise about five hundred but I'll throw in my mining experience. Equal partners, do you agree? Yes. Then why are we sitting here? I'm going down. to the bank. Meet me on the edge of town in half an hour. What about your job? Sean asked.

I hate the smell of coal, the h.e.l.l with my job. What about Charlie? Charlie is a poisoner, the h.e.l.l with Charlie. They camped that night in the mouth of the pa.s.s with the mountains standing up before them. They had pushed the pace all that afternoon and the horses were tired they turned their tails to the wind and cropped at the dry winter gra.s.s.

Mbejane built a fire in the shelter of a red stone outcrop and they huddled beside it brewing coffee, trying to keep out of the snow-cold wind, but it came down off the mountains and blew a plume of sparks from the fire. They ate; then Mbejane curled up beside the fire, pulled his kaross over his head and did not move again until morning.

How far is it to this place? Sean asked. I don't know, Duff admitted. We'll go up through the pa.s.s tomorrow, fifty or sixty miles through the mountains, and then we'll be out into the high veld. Perhaps another week's riding after that. Are we chasing rainbows? Sean poured more coffee into the mugs.

I'll tell you when we get there Duff picked up his mug and cupped his hands around it. One thhing is certain that sample was stinking with gold. If there's much of that stuff around somebody's going to get rich. Us, perhaps? I've been on gold stampedes before. The first ones in make the killings. We might find the ground for fifty miles around as thick with claim pegs as quills on a porcupine's back.

Duff sipped noisily at his coffee. But we've got money, that's our ace in the hole. If we peg a proposition we've got capital to work it. If we're too late we can buy claims from the brokers. If we can't, well, there're other ways of getting gold than grubbing for it, a store, a saloon, a transport business, take your pick. Duff flicked the coffee grounds out of his mug. With money in your pocket you're somebody; without it anyone can kick you in the teeth. He took a long black cheroot out of his top pocket and offered it to Sean. Sean shook his head and Duff bit the tip from the cheroot and spat it into the fire. He picked up a burning twig and lit it, sucking with content. Where did you learn mining, Duff? Canada. The wind whipped the smoke away from his mouth as Duff exhaled. You've been around? I have, laddie. It's too d.a.m.n cold to sleep; we'll talk instead. For a guinea I'll tell you the story of my life. Tell me first, I'll see if it's worth it! Sean pulled the blanket up around his shoulders and waited. Your credit is good, agreed Duff. He paused dramatically. I was born thirty-one years ago, fourth and youngest son to the sixteenth Baron Roxby, that is, not counting the others who never made it to p.u.b.erty Blue blood, said Sean. Of course, just look at my nose. But please don't interrupt. Very early in the game my father, the sixteenth Baron, dispelled with a horsewhip any natural affection we may have owed him. Like Henry the Eighth he preferred children in the abstract. We kept out of his way and that suited everybody admirably. A sort of armed truce. Dear father had two great pa.s.sions in life: horses and women. During his sixty-two glorious years he acquired a fine collection of both. My fifteen-year-old cousin, a comely wench as I recall, was his last and unattained ambition. He took her riding every day and fingered her most outrageously as he helped her in and out of the saddle. She told me about it with giggles. However father's horse, a commendably moral creature, cut short the pursuit by kicking father on the head, presumably in the middlle of one of these touching scenes.

Poor father was never the same again. In fact so much was he altered by this experience that two days later, to the doleful clangour of bells and a collective sigh of relief from his sons and his neighbours who owned daughters, they buried him. Dufford leaned forward and prodded the fire.

It was all very sad. I or any of my brothers could have told father that not only was my cousin comely but she had the family sporting instincts developed to a remarkable degree After all who should know better than we?

We were her cousins and you know how cousins will be cousins. Anyway father never found out and to this day I feel guilty, I should have told him. He would have died happier... Do I bore you? No, go on. I've had half a guinea's worth already, Sean laughed.

Father's untimely decease made no miraculous changes in my life. The seventeenth Baron, brother Tom, once he had the t.i.tle was every bit as tight-fisted and unpleasant as father had been. There I was at nineteen on an allowance too small to enable me to pursue the family hobbies, gathering mould in a grim old castle forty miles from London, with the development of my sensitive soul being inhibited by the undiluted company of my barbaric brothers.

I left with three months advance allowance clutched in my sweaty palm and the farewells of my brothers ringing in my ears. The most sentimental of these was

"don't bother to write!

Everybody was going to Canada: it seemed like a good idea so I went too. I made money and spent it. I made women and spent them also, but the cold got to me in the end. Duff's cheroot had died; he re-lit it and looked at Sean.

It was so cold you couldn't urinate without getting frostbite on your equipment, so I began to think of lands trropical, of white beaches and sun, of exotic fruits and even more exotic maidens. The peculiar circ.u.mstances that finally decided me to leave are painful to recall and we will not dwell upon them. I left, to say the least, under a cloud. So here you see me freezing slowly to death, with a bearded ruffian for company and not an exotic maiden within a day's ride. 'A stirring tale, well told, applauded Sean.

One story deserves another, let's hear your tale of woe. Sean's smile slid off his face. Born and bred here in Natal. Left home a week or so ago, also in painful circ.u.mstances! A woman? asked Duff with deep compa.s.sion. A woman, agreed Sean. The sweet b.i.t.c.hes, sighed Duff. How I love them.

The pa.s.s ran like a twisted gut through the Drakensberg.

The mountains stood up sheer and black on each side of them, so they rode in shadow and saw the sun only for a few hours in the middle of the day. Then the mountains dropped away and they were out into the open.

Open was the word for the high veld. It stretched away flat and empty, gra.s.s and brown gra.s.s dwindling to a distant meeting with the pale empty sky. But the loneliness could not blunt the edge of their excitement: each mile covered, each successive camp along the ribbon road ground it sharper until at last they saw the name in writing for the first time. Forlorn as a scarecrow in a ploughed land the signpost pointed right and said, Pretoria, pointed left and said, Wit.w.a.tersrand.

The Ridge of White Waters, whispered Sean. It had a ring to it that name, a ring like a hundred millions in gold.

We're not the first, muttered Duff. The left-hand fork of the road was deeply scored by the pa.s.sage of many wagons.

No time to worry about that. Sean had the gold sickness on him now.

There's a little speed left in these makes, let's use it. It came up on the horizon as a low line above the emptiness, a ridge of hills like a hundred others they had crossed. They went up it and from the top looked down.

Two ridges ran side by side, north and south, four miles or so apart. In the shallow valley between they could see the flash of the sun off the swamp pools that gave the hills their name.

Look at them, groaned Sean.

The tents and wagons were scattered along the length of the valley and in between them the prospect trenches were raw wounds through the gra.s.s. The trenches were concentrated along a line down the centre of the valley.

That's the strike of the reef, said Duff, and we're too late, it's all pegged! How do you know? protested Sean. Use your eyes, laddie. It's all gone. There might be some they've overlooked These boys overlook nothing. Let's go down and I'll show you. Duff prodded his horse and they started down.

He spoke over his shoulder to Sean. Look up there near that stream, they aren't wasting time. They've got a mill going already. It's a four-stamp rig by the looks of it They rode into one of the Luger encampments of tents and wagons; there were women at work around the fires and the smell of food brought saliva jetting from under Sean's tongue. There were men also, sitting among the wagons waiting for their suppers.

I'm going to ask some of these characters what's going on here, said Sean. He climbed down off his horse and tossed the reins to Mbejane. Duff watched him with a wry grin as he tried in succession to engage three different men in conversation. Each time Sean's victim avoided his eyes, mumbled vaguely and withdrew. Sean finally gave up and came back to the horses.

What's wrong with me, he asked plaintively. Have I got a contagious clap? Duff chuckled. They've got gold sickness he said.You're a potential rival. You could die of thirst and not one of them would spit on you, lest it gave you strength to crawl out and peg something they hadn't noticed. He sobered We're wasting time. There's an hour left before dark, let's go and have a look for ourselves They trotted out towards the area of mauled earth. Men were working pick and shovel in the trenches, some of them lean and tough-looking with a dozen natives working beside them; others fat from an office stool, sweating and gritting teeth against the pain of blistered palms, their faces and arms burnt angry red by the sun. All of them greeted Sean and Duff with the same suspicious hostility.

They rode slowly towards the north and every hundred yards with sickening regularity they came across a claim peg with a cairn of stones around its foot and the sc.r.a.p of canvas nailed to it. Printed in crude capitals on the canvas was the owner's name and his licence number.

Many of the claims were as yet untouched and on these Duff dismounted and searched in the gra.s.s, picking up pieces of rock and peering at them before discarding them again. Then once more they moved on with sinking spirits and increasing exhaustion. They camped after dark on the open windy ridge and while the coffee brewed they talked.

We're too late. Sean scowled into the fire.

We've got money, laddie, just remember that. Most of these gentlemen are broke, they are living on hope, not beef and potatoes. Look at their faces and you'll see despair starting to show. It takes capital to work reef gold: you need machinery and money for wages, you have to pipe in water and pile rock, you need wagons and time. Money's no good without a claim to work, brooded Sean.

Stay with me, laddie. Have you noticed how many of these claims haven't been touched yet? They belong to speculators and my guess is that they are for sale. In the next few weeks you'll see the men sorted out from the boys! feel like packing up. This isn't what I expected. You're tired. Sleep well tonight and tomorrow we'll see how far this reef runs, then we'll start some scheming.

Duff lit one of his cheroots, and sucked on it: in the firelight his face was as punt as a Red Indian's. They sat on in silence for a while, then Sean spoke.

What's that noise? It was a dull torn-torn beat in the darkness. You'll get used to that if you stay around here much longer, said Duff. It's the stamps on that mill we saw from the high ground. It's a mile or so farther up the valley; we'll pa.s.s it in the morning.

They were on the move again before the sun was up and they came to the mill in the morning's uncertain light. The mill crouched black and ugly on the smooth curve of the ridge, defiant as a quixotic monster. Its jaws thumped sullenly as it chewed the rock; it snorted steam and screeched metallically.