A Time for Courage (42 page)

Across the bare cracked earth, through the gate, he could see that Baralong was still tied to the wagon wheel. His back was wet with blood which did not show as the fox’s had shown against the white snow. It had dripped to the ground which was now stained with dull red patches. There was movement now; he saw Baralong’s head lift slightly and the men turn as they heard him pass through the gates, but then they looked back to his mate again and now he heard the murmur of their voices. Harry walked faster now, breathing rapidly from the ride, from disgust and rage. He pushed Frank aside and the men who ringed the wheel. Flies were on Baralong’s back, he could see them moving, hear their hum and he wanted to vomit.

He walked to his friends and his legs were steady and so was his voice as he said to the white man who wore a slouch hat and no jacket and still panted as he held the whip, ‘I’ll take over now.’ He took the whip and laid it against the wagon, gently so that it would not fall and now there really was silence from the crowd. He must be careful, he knew that. Harry undid the leather thongs which tied the black hands wide to the rim of the wheel and he said nothing but worked in time with the gasping breath of Baralong, seeing the fish as it lay on the bank and his father’s dark hands as he crushed its head.

As Baralong slid face forward to the ground Harry picked up his shirt, his jacket, and slung them over his shoulder and then he took his friend’s warm wet body. He scarcely felt the weight as he heaved him over his shoulder too, but he did not touch his back. He was very careful not to touch his back. He was very careful with these men too.

He moved through the crowd until Frank stood in front of him and there was dislike in his face and a strange excitement.

‘Where are you going with your mate, Harry?’ he challenged.

Harry stopped and turned. ‘Nobody beats my mate but me,’ he said. ‘I can do it better. That’s where I’m going now.’

He pushed past Frank, past his disappointment and his eyes which spoke to him. He listened to the cheers as he eased Baralong over Kim’s saddle and he walked now along the track, away from the fence which was beating back the heat, away from the men and the system. Away from Frank whose eyes had told him that he wanted to kill this white man who was breaking the rules, for Harry knew now that Frank had, for that brief moment, seen into his mind. The ground was hot beneath his feet and he felt stones sharp through the leather. Out of sight of the men he stopped and tried to move Baralong so that he was sitting in the saddle but he groaned and said, ‘No, Harry.’

So Harry left him as he was, hanging over the saddle, his head limp, blood running through his hair and falling to the ground, the flies in a cloud on and above his back. Harry did not stop until he reached the zinc shed; neither did he speak, for what could he say? He put Baralong on a sheepskin in the triple canvassed wagon which was still in the shed. He bathed his back with salt water and the gasps turned to whimpers.

‘Lie still,’ Harry said. ‘We leave tonight.’ For he knew that he could not stay one more day in this place, with these people.

Baralong lay on his stomach but now lifted his head, his lips moving, his words a mere whisper.

‘We cannot. They will come after us.’

Harry shook his head, pressing his friend’s arm. Christ, he hoped not.

When the moon came up Harry tied Kim to the tailboard of the wagon and Baralong’s horse too. He had spent money today on a spare team of horses so he tied them at the back too. He packed the medicine chest which held his letters and his rope, dropping it in his haste, taking a deep breath, calming himself before he packed guns for shooting game, provisions he had collected before the sun went down and many cans of water and then urged in the dog he had bought a year ago. He looked again at the route which Sam had sent for Simon’s homestead. Once he was there he would be able to think more clearly about his next step.

‘They will follow, Harry. I have not been searched,’ Baralong whispered again, pulling Harry close so that he could hear the words.

‘Perhaps they won’t,’ Harry answered, his voice calm. ‘And how will they know where we are?’ His fists were clenched and his nails dug into the palms of his hands.

Nothing mattered now but leaving here, taking his friend before they did any more to him. Anger was still deep within him but he knew that fear was there too and he looked at the guns.

Rain came that night but just enough to damp down the dust, not enough to bog the wheels in mud, and Harry could have wept with relief for now it would not be so easy for anyone to follow them. They travelled all night and all the next day, switching the teams around, then resting during the following night, though Harry did not rest much but listened and looked. They did not light a fire. They did the same for the next three days, two of which were wet and so still the dust was laid.

On the fourth day they saw a Karroo
dorp
in the distance but skirted the tin-roofed houses, not wanting the Boers of the township to see them, not wanting them to tell those who came after them; if anyone did come after them.

‘They probably won’t come anyway,’ Harry called through to Baralong but he did not know if his friend was conscious yet. He looked again at the letter from Sam and it was good to have in his hand paper that had come from somewhere other than this place. It was good to see his uncle’s handwriting. It made him seem less lonely, less frightened.

And so on and on they travelled and Harry could see no one behind them. On the fifteenth day he felt the tension begin to ease in his shoulders and that night he slept for four hours at a stretch and did not start at every sound, even laughing when the dog barked at a dassie instead of straining every nerve, listening for horses approaching. By the nineteenth day Baralong’s back was beginning to heal and on the twentieth Harry saw in the distance the kopje, the raised mound which Sam had remembered Simon writing about. It lay just to the south of the homestead, the letter said, and he felt excitement and relief surge as they drew closer. He could see the pile of round stones which stood high against the flat green and red landscape. Short grass sprouted amongst the earth, rejuvenated by the rains. Baralong came out on to the seat when he called.

Baralong looked at the kopje. ‘A man in the compound says that to the east of this kopje lies the Orange River, some days away by foot. If the rains come it will fill and take boat. If men come we can go there.’

‘They haven’t come though, Baralong. Surely they won’t now?’ Harry said, looking over his shoulder.

Baralong said nothing, just looked back the way they had come. Harry felt Sam’s map in his hand. No, they would not come. Not now. They didn’t know where he was, did they? Frank wouldn’t remember the existence of the homestead, let alone the direction, and why would he think Harry would make for it anyway? The dry winds would have hidden their tracks by now, wouldn’t they? He shook his head. No, they wouldn’t come now. He felt safer somehow now that he was near a place that had known his uncle; that now belonged to him.

He drew a deep breath and pointed to the map which Sam had drawn. ‘We should be just north of this.’

It was another day before Harry saw the homestead but it was not until the sun had moved across the sky and it was afternoon that they were close enough to see the stone-walled sheep-kraals and the kaffir huts, broken with the thatch half-gone. Harry drove the horses on towards the square red-bricked building with the thatched roof and he pulled his hat down to protect his eyes from the fierce light which was reflected from the walls. He was tired, his arms ached and his hands were blistered from the reins but he was here at last, on property which he owned.

He tied the reins to the brake and jumped down on to his land. He turned and took Baralong’s arm, taking his weight, easing him to the ground so that his back did not bleed again. When night came they had already housed the wagon in the zinc-roofed wagon shed and emptied the pots and the kettle into the main room of the house. The noise of cicada insects had filled the daylight hours and Harry realised that this had been the only sound. There was no wire singing, no men chanting, no engines steam hauling, and it felt good.

Inside there were blackened beams and hanging from these were old bits of harness; there was a pile of mealie sacks in one corner but that was all. They brewed up the kettle in the fireplace. A ladder led up to an old loft but Harry threw down the sheepskins on the mud floor. He felt less trapped down here. Baralong picked his up and took it to the door and began to walk across to a kaffir hut.

‘Come back, you sleep here. We are partners now,’ Harry called. He threw two potatoes on the fire and the smell of their cooking filled the room. He cooked up salted mutton, brewing the tea when the kettle boiled and brought it to Baralong who sat cross-legged on a sheepskin.

‘Thank you, Harry,’ he said.

Harry nodded and turned to get his own.

‘Thank you for saving me from the search,’ Baralong continued, but Harry did not want to listen for that had been easy. He should have stayed and faced them, changed them, stood up for what he believed in but he had not.

That night he put the dog by the door to sleep for she had good ears and Baralong still feared that they would come. He looked at the guns by the door but would he ever use one? There had been so much brutality, it made him feel sick.

They rode the homestead land the next day where sheep had once grazed and Baralong shot a dassie and so they had rabbit that night.

In the morning Harry rode back along the boundaries and sat on Kim looking at the land, at its flat, scrubbed earth, and over to the east where the Orange would run if the rains came. Kim shifted beneath him, snorting and easing his weight from foot to foot. Had Simon ridden here, Harry thought, looking to the west and back behind him. He rode on, round the western boundary, past well-fleshed thorn milk-bushes revitalised by the sparse rain which had fallen. He quartered the area until darkness fell because he had decided that here was as good a place as anywhere to start his search for diamonds, despite Barry’s words in the Johannesburg bar so long ago about the farm being good only for ostriches. After all, it gave them a respite, gave Baralong’s back a chance to grow strong again. The next three days he quartered the western section and then as more days passed he covered the land to the south and the north. There had been no sign so far of alluvial beds.

‘So perhaps Barry was right,’ he said to Baralong that night as they sat wrapped up in the sheepskins before the dying fire in the hearth. ‘But it’s worth trying the last section, though so far I haven’t found any evidence to indicate diamonds. I just have a feeling somehow, and besides, we can move on soon if necessary.’

He watched as Baralong nodded, rising with an easy movement, holding the sheepskin round him as he checked the window again. Harry looked at the dog but there had been no sign from her of danger, she lay quietly, her head on her forelegs, eyes watching as Baralong returned, her tail thumping on the hard earth floor.

‘Try and relax, Baralong. The mining company has more important things to think of, like profits and day-to-day running of the mines.’ But he wasn’t sure whether or not he believed his own words. He knew he must hurry with his surveying and move soon if there was really no hope here.

In the morning he approached the house from the east, standing up in his stirrups, traversing the ground with shaded eyes. Up and down he rode seeing it from one angle and then another and as morning turned to noon he at last saw the marginally lower fall of the land this side as it ran on well beyond the house. Drawing closer he saw a strip which just might once, long ago, have been a dried-up stream and if it was it meant an alluvial bed; it meant decomposed yellow ground; it meant diamonds.

Harry pulled in Kim and looked again. He turned in his saddle shading his eyes, looking to where the Orange must be, far away over the horizon, tree-lined and dug out by early diggers. Then back again to the house, to the land and that strip of sunken earth which could only be seen from where he was now positioned. He felt the reins in his hands, worn, sweat-stiffened and looked again. He couldn’t be sure, that was the devil of it but by God, maybe there was a change. He tightened his hands on the leather, dug his heels into Kim’s sides, feeling the excitement which he hardly dared voice because he could be wrong. He rode back then, quickly, urging Kim on, calling to Baralong and as he reached the house Baralong came out, throwing a gun at Harry, running to his horse.

‘Where are men?’ he called and his voice was loud and fierce.

For a few moments Harry had forgotten that they were perhaps the hunted and he shouted, ‘It’s all right, Baralong, it’s not them.’ He laughed as his friend turned, his face puzzled. ‘It’s the land. I think there’s an old water course, an old sloot.’

Baralong walked back, his face still confused.

‘Alluvial plains hold diamonds. Look at the banks of the Orange, the first diggers staked their claims along its banks. Come on, man.’ He pointed back to Baralong’s horse. ‘We’ll go and see.’ He had kept his voice calm, he sounded in control, but inside he was not for this was so important to them both.

They dug in the sandy soil for at least a month at the point which Harry thought most likely and now it was colder and their fingers were stiff as they shovelled gravel and earth which was yellow and decomposed as alluvial ground should be but which so far held no diamonds. How long should they try? This was the question which Harry asked himself endlessly. How much time could they afford to waste? It was June now, the middle of winter and they had to find gems before their provisions ran out. They had to find them if either of them were to have a future. They had to find them before the men came, if they came.

They worked until Harry thought his back would break and his hands would never heal. He thought of the kaffirs toiling in the great hole, hour upon hour and then sleeping behind fences, and knew that his hardship could never be as great. After all, this was their piece of land, for it was Baralong’s as much as his now, and so his hands hardened with the unaccustomed labour. Sometimes it rained and the coolness of winter made each day easier than it might have been. But at the end of another two weeks they had found no diamonds.