Men of Men (11 page)

Henry steadied himself, poised with his right arm held back at full stretch and then he threw the thorn stick, cartwheeling it low over the ground so that it slammed into the back of
Jordan’s knees, the thorns ripping the soft bare skin, raising deep parallel scratches as though from the slash of a cat’s claws.

Jordan’s legs folded under him and he went down, sliding on his belly, the wind driven from his lungs as he hit the baked earth of the pathway. Before he could raise himself, Douglas
landed with all his weight between Jordan’s shoulder blades and shoved his face, cheek down, against the ground, while Henry snatched up the thorn branch and danced about them, looking for an
opening, the branch held in both hands above his head.

‘His hair first,’ gasped Douglas, choking with laughter and his own excitement. ‘Hold his head.’

Henry dropped the cane and stooped over Jordan, grabbing a double handful of the fine curls and leaning back against it with all his weight so that Jordan’s neck was stretched out. Douglas
was still perched between Jordan’s shoulder blades. Pinning him against the earth and brandishing the open clasp knife, he told his twin, ‘Hold him still.’ The fine golden hair
was stretched like the strings of a violin and Douglas hacked at it.

It came away in tufts in Henry’s fists, some of it cut through, some of it torn out at the roots, like feathers from the carcass of a slaughtered chicken, and he threw it high in the air,
shouting with laughter as it sparkled in the sunlight.

‘Now you will be a boy!’

All the resistance went out of Jordan. He lay crushed against the earth, shaken only by his own sobs, and Henry grabbed another handful of his curls.

‘Cut closer,’ he ordered his twin, and then shrieked with shock and pain.

The thin tapered end of a rhinoceros-hide riding whip curled with a snap around the seat of Henry’s breeches, over the fresh bruises raised by the Reverend Gander’s Malacca cane, and
Henry shot erect clutching at his own buttocks with both hands and hopping up and down on the same spot.

A hand closed on the collar of his shirt and he was yanked into the air and held suspended, kicking, a foot above the ground, still clutching the seat of his breeches that felt as though they
were filled with live coals.

His brother looked up from his seat on Jordan’s back. In the excitement of tormenting the smaller boy, neither of the twins had heard or seen the horseman. He had walked his horse around
the bend in the footpath between the gravel heaps and come across the squirming yelling knot of small bodies in the middle of the path. He recognized the twins immediately; they had earned quick
notoriety on the diggings, and it had taken only another second to guess the cause of the commotion, to understand who were the attackers and who the victim.

Douglas was quick to realize the changed circumstances as he looked up at his twin, dangling like a man on the gallows from the horseman’s fist. He scrambled to his feet and darted away,
but the horseman turned his mount with his heels and, like a polo player, cut backhanded with the long rhino-hide sjambok, and the agony of it paralysed Douglas. But for the thick canvas breeches
it would have opened his skin.

Before he could begin to run again the horseman stooped in the saddle, seized his upper arm and lifted him easily. On each side of the horse, the twins wriggled and whimpered with the sting of
the lash and the rider looked down at them thoughtfully.

‘I know you two,’ he told them quietly. ‘You are the Stewart brats, the ones who drove old Jacob’s mule into the barbed wire.’

‘Please, sir, please,’ blubbered Douglas.

‘Keep quiet, boy,’ said the rider evenly. ‘You are the ones that cut the reins on De Kock’s wagon. That cost your daddy a penny, and the Diggers’ Committee would
like to know who set fire to Carlo’s tent then—’

‘It weren’t us, Mister,’ Henry pleaded. It was clear they both knew who their captor was, and that they were truly afraid of him.

Jordan crawled to his knees and peered up at his rescuer. He must be somebody very important – perhaps even a member of the committee he had mentioned. Even in his distress Jordan was awed
by that possibility. Ralph had explained to him that a committee member was something between a policeman, a prince and the ogre of the fairy tales which their mother used to read to them.

Now this fabulous being looked down at Jordan as he knelt in the pathway, with his cheek smeared with dust and tears, his shirt torn and the buttons dangling on their threads, while the backs of
his knees were criss-crossed with bloody welts.

‘This little one is half your size,’ the horseman said. His eyes were blue, a strange electric blue – the eyes of a poet – or of a fanatic.

‘It was just a game, sir,’ mumbled Henry; the collar of his shirt was twisted up under his ear.

‘We didn’t mean nothing, Mister.’

The horseman transferred that glowing blue gaze from Jordan to the two wriggling bodies in his hands.

‘A game, was it?’ he asked. ‘Well, next time I catch you playing your games, you and your father had better have a story for the committee, do you hear me?’

He shook them roughly. ‘Do you understand me clearly?’

‘Yes, sir—’

‘So you enjoy games, do you? Well then, here is a new one, and we shall play it every time you so much as lay a finger on a child smaller than you are.’

He dropped them unexpectedly to earth, and before the twins could recover their balance had cut left and right with the sjambok, starting them away at a run, and then he cantered easily along
behind them for a hundred yards or so, leaning from the saddle to flick the whip at the back of their legs to keep them at their best speed. Then abruptly he let them go and wheeled the horse,
cantering back to where Jordan stood trembling and pale in the pathway.

‘If you are going to fight, then one at a time is the best policy, young man,’ said the rider and stepped down easily from the stirrup and threw the reins over his shoulder as he
squatted on his haunches facing Jordan.

‘Now where does it hurt most?’ he asked.

It was suddenly terribly important to Jordan that he did not appear a baby. He gulped noisily as he fought his tears, and the man seemed to understand.

‘Good fellow,’ he nodded. ‘That’s the spirit.’ And he drew a cotton handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the muddy tears.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Jordie – Jordan,’ he corrected himself and sniffed noisily.

‘How old are you, Jordan?’

‘Almost eleven, sir.’

The sting of his injuries and of his humiliation began to recede, to be replaced by a warm flood of gratitude towards his rescuer.

‘Spit!’ ordered the horseman, proffering the handkerchief, and Jordan obeyed, dampening a corner of the cloth with his saliva.

The man turned him with a hand on his shoulder, and with the handkerchief cleaned the bloody lines on his legs. It was perfunctory treatment, and the man’s touch was masculine and
ungentle, but Jordan was powerfully reminded of his mother by the attention, and that empty place inside him ached so that he almost began weeping again. He held back the tears, and twisted his
neck to watch the man work on his injured legs.

The fingers were square and powerful, but a little uncoordinated. The nails were big and strong and even, cut short, with a pearly translucent lustre. The back of his hands were covered with
fine golden hairs that caught the sun.

The man glanced up from his task at Jordan. His face was fair, the skin was smooth-shaven and unblemished except for the small fine moustache. His lips were full, high-coloured, sensual. His
nose was large, but not too large for the big round head and the thick waves of light-brown hair.

He was young, probably ten years older than Jordan, though he had such a powerful presence, such a sense of maturity and of power seemed to invest him, that he appeared much older.

Yet there was something else about him that seemed to contradict the first appearance. The high colour in his lips and cheeks was not the flush of health and the open air life. It was a shade
hectic, and though the skin was unlined, there were the subtle marks of suffering and pain at the corners of his eyes and mouth, while behind that penetrating gaze, that compelling intensity, there
was a tragic shadow, a sense of sadness that was perhaps only readily apparent to the uncomplicated view of a child.

For a moment the man and the boy looked into each other’s eyes, and something twisted almost painfully deep in Jordan’s soul, a sweet pang – gratitude, puppy love, compassion,
hero-worship – it was all of those and something else for which he would never have words.

Then the man stood; he was tall and big built, over six foot in his riding boots, and Jordan only reached as high as his ribs.

‘Who is your father, Jordan?’ And Jordan was grateful that he did not use the diminutive. The rider nodded at his reply.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have heard of him. The elephant hunter. Well, then, we had best get you home.’

He stepped up into the stirrup and from the saddle reached down, took Jordan by the arm and swung him up onto the horse’s rump. Jordan sat sideways, and as the horse started forward, he
put both arms round the rider’s waist to balance himself.

Jan Cheroot came hurrying from the sorting-table as they trotted into Zouga’s camp, and when the rider reined in, he reached up and lifted Jordan down.

‘He has been in a fight,’ the rider told Jan Cheroot. ‘Put a little iodine on his cuts, and he’ll be all right. The boy has spirit.’

Jan Cheroot was obsequious, almost cringing, far from his usual acerbic and cynical self. He seemed to be rendered speechless by the direct and startling gaze of the big man on the rangy horse.
He held Jordan with one hand and with the other lifted the old regimental cap from his head and held it against his chest, nodding in servile agreement with the orders the man gave him.

The rider transferred his steady gaze back to Jordan, and for the first time he smiled.

‘Next time pick on somebody your own size, Jordan,’ he advised, took up the reins and trotted out of the camp without looking back.

‘You know who that was, Jordie?’ Jan Cheroot asked portentously, staring after the rider and not waiting for Jordan’s reply. ‘That’s the big boss of the
Diggers’ Committee, that’s the most important man on New Rush, Jordie—’ he paused theatrically, and then announced, ‘That’s Mr Rhodes.’

‘Mr Rhodes.’ Jordan repeated the name to himself, ‘Mr Rhodes.’ It had a heroic sound to it, like some of the poetry that his mother had read to him. He knew that
something important had just happened in his life.

E
very member of Zouga’s family found his place in the work, almost as though a special niche had been reserved for each of them: Jan Cheroot
and Jordan at the sorting-table, the Matabele
amadoda
in the open diggings, and, naturally there was only one place for Ralph – in the diggings with them.

So they found the stones; they won them from the tiny squares of ground in the depths of the growing pit, and carried them to the surface in the swinging buckets, and carted them out along the
rotten crumbling roadways which each day became more dangerous and they washed and sieved them, until at last Jan Cheroot or Jordie could pounce upon them on the sorting-table.

Then in the evening there might be three or four of Zouga’s Matabele workmen waiting under the camel-thorn tree beside Zouga’s tent.

‘Let me see,’ Zouga would grunt, and with a deal of showmanship the man would unknot a scrap of grubby cloth to display a chip of stone or a small transparent crystal.

These were the ‘pick-ups’ from the claims. As the Matabele handled the stuff, shovelling it and emptying the leather buckets, a glitter or shine of a pebble might catch their eye
– and there was a reward for a diamond ‘picked-up’ and handed in.

Most of these ‘pick-ups’ were not veritable diamonds, for they took anything that sparkled, or anything pretty and unusually coloured. They brought in agate and quartz, feldspar and
rock crystal, jasper and zircons – and once in a while a diamond; and then for each diamond, large or small, clear or discoloured, Zouga would hand over a golden sovereign from his dwindling
hoard and add the diamond to the contents of the little chamois leather drawstring bag that he carried buttoned into his breast pocket, and which was under his pillow when he slept at night.

Then each Saturday morning, while Jan Cheroot and the two boys gathered around the camp table under the camel-thorn tree beside the tent, Zouga would carefully tip the contents of the leather
bag onto a sheet of clean white paper, and they examined and discussed the week’s recovery; and always Zouga tried to cover his disappointment, tried to ignore the nauseating bite of worry in
his guts as he looked at the tiny, discoloured and flawed diamonds which the Devil’s Own so reluctantly yielded up.

Then with the chamois bag buttoned into his pocket once again, his riding boots freshly waxed and polished by Ralph, his frayed shirt collar neatly darned and the buttons replaced by Jordan, and
the gelding curried to a gloss by Jan Cheroot, Zouga would ride into the settlement, putting on the best face he could muster, smoking a cigar to show how little he really needed the money, and he
would hitch the gelding at the door of the first diamond-buyer’s galvanized iron shack.

‘The Devil’s Own.’ The first kopje-walloper was a Hollander, and his accent was difficult to understand, but Zouga’s brave show did not deceive him, and he sucked his
teeth and shook his head dismally over Zouga’s offering. ‘The Devil’s Own,’ he repeated. ‘It killed five men, and broke three others. Jocky Danby was lucky to get out
at the price you paid him.’

‘What’s your offer?’ Zouga asked quietly, and the buyer prodded the scattering of tiny stones.

‘You want to see a real diamond?’ he asked, and without waiting for Zouga’s reply, swivelled his chair and opened the iron safe on the wall behind his desk.

Reverently he unfolded a square of white paper and displayed the beautiful flashing crystal, almost the size of a ripe acorn.