Sunset at Sheba (12 page)

There were better places in the world than Plummerton West, she decided, and hopefully set her face to the future and the problem of achieving them.

It was without regret that she tossed the concertina into the water, watching the spreading circles of ripples moving swiftly, as though they swept the past away from her into a faded unreality as insubstantial as the dying wavelets.

The bony grey was waiting quietly by the stream, tethered to a thorn tree, wearing a device across its back which Sammy had constructed of rope and pieces of blanket. The parcels with which it was slung seemed to indicate a bleaker life but Polly felt no twinges of regret.

While she stood staring at the old horse, Sammy came scrambling along the river bank on the Argentine As he reached the cart, he plunged into the stream, sending the water flying, and stopped abruptly beside her.

‘Poll,’ he panted, ‘they’ve got south and west of us!’

Polly’s heart sank, all the warm enthusiasm of her daydreams lost in a twinge of fear. ‘I thought we’d thrown ‘em off,’ she said heavily.

‘So did I. But I rid in a big circle looking for a track, and I saw ‘em. The main party’s west of us, but there’s some horses to the south as well.’

‘What the hell are they up to?’ Polly snapped, her temper rising.

‘I dunno. I think they’re trying now to drive us over to German South-West. But we’ve made ‘em think a bit because we’ve got on the wrong side of ‘em.’

‘What are we going to do then?’ Polly asked. ‘I wish we could do something. I’m tired and I’m fed up with hiding.’

There was a sick sensation of disappointment in her heart, a conviction that somehow her newly-discovered ambitions were not to come to fruition.

Sammy was thinking, and when he raised his head, there was something in his eyes that withered the remaining hope in her. His face was calm and expressionless as he spoke, as though he had been thinking hard and had come to a decision that hadn’t been easy to make.

‘Polly,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m going to head back to Plummerton Sidings.’

Polly’s jaw dropped, and she stared at him for a moment, drained of emotion and emptied of ambition.

She brushed back a lock of hair from her face, her features devoid of enthusiasm, her eyes blank with a look of defeat.

‘Back?’ she said. ‘The way we came? After all we’ve been through?’

Sammy nodded, his gaze honest with the strength of his conviction. ‘We were wrong to come out here in the first place,’ he said.

‘Have you got the wind up or something?’ she demanded suddenly angry.

His eyes rested on hers, begging her to understand. ‘You know I haven’t,’ he said. ‘I mean, we should have gone to Plummerton and got it over with in the first place - not tried to dodge it.’ He gestured unhappily, as though he felt he was letting her down. ‘Maybe if they’d left us alone and let us go quietly to Kimberley,’ he went on, ‘I might have forgotten all about Willie Plummer. I was going to. God knows,
I’d
no reason to shop him. But this sort of thing kind of makes a man stubborn.’ His eyes seemed to grow oddly paler as the determination took hold of him. ‘They’re getting me mad now,’ he said. ‘I’m
not going
to be driven to German South-West. I’m not even going to Kimberley now.’

She stood staring at him, twisting a fold of her dress between her fingers, her eyes soft and tragic.

‘It’s my fault, Sammy,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t ever have persuaded you.’

‘Forget it, Poll,’ he said shortly. ‘I’d probably have changed me own mind, if you hadn’t changed it for me. But that’s finished with now. I’m going back.’

‘I thought they wanted you out of the way, Sammy.’

‘They do. They still do.’

‘Suppose they tried to knock you off, Sammy. They might have a go.’

Sammy’s face grew hard. ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ he said. ‘They’d better not try. Damn ‘em, they’ve tried everything short of pushing us off the edge of the earth. Well, they’ve brought it on themselves. They should have left us alone. I’m going right back to Plummerton and they can sort it out as it pleases ‘em!’ He paused. ‘I’ll see you safely to the Sidings and on your way, Polly,’ he ended flatly.

She gazed at him for a while. The exultation she had felt that they had put Plummerton behind them had died, and she could taste the acid sourness of disillusion. But Sammy’s face, with its pale ugly eyes determined, made her bite back her protest. She wiped her sweat-damp palms on her skirt.

‘That’s all right, Sammy,’ she said slowly. ‘We’ll go back to Plummerton.’

She tried to smile but managed only a twisted shadow across her lips. When she didn’t stir, he moved restlessly in the saddle.

‘We ought to get moving,’ he pointed out.

Polly was looking at the concertina in the water and, ignoring him, she waded out to it and picked it up, watching the bright streams fall from it.

‘Looks like I’m going to need it after all,’ she said heavily.

She laid it across the back of the little mare then, releasing her skirt so that it fell into the water and clung wetly round her ankles, she held the instrument in place with one hand and reached up for the reins with the other.

‘I’ll pick up a train to Kimberley from the Sidings,’ she said, knowing that once she returned, she probably never would.

Sammy was trying to read what was going on behind the fleeting expressions on her face, then he swung down from the saddle and pointed.

‘We’ll ride north from here,’ he said, ‘then turn east and see what happens.’

‘They’ll pick up the tracks, won’t they, Sammy? Same as before?’

He shrugged. ‘Mebbe,’ he said. ‘What’s the odds though? I’m not bothered much either way anymore. I’m going back. I’ve made up my mind.’

She scooped up her dripping skirt again and waded towards him, leading the grey mare.

Sammy was stuffing the last of the cartridges into his pockets now. He had on the old pepper and salt coat which was too small for him again, and she could see the pockets were stuffed full and heavy, and she guessed it was ammunition.

‘I could do with a bunk up,’ she suggested, eyeing the assorted packages draped from the mare. ‘It’s going to be awkward climbing up there with all the hardware in the way.’

As he moved beside her, she turned towards him and unable to stop herself, suddenly began to cry quietly.

‘It’s all gone wrong, Sammy,’ she said. ‘It’s all gone wrong!’

He put his arms round her, clumsily trying to comfort her, and for a moment she leaned against his chest, feeling sheltered and secure, then she pushed him away resolutely, knocking the tears from her cheeks with a clumsy hand, and put one foot in the stirrup. He helped her up and stood back, slowly rubbing his hands up and down the seat of his trousers.

She gave a ringing sniff. ‘Well, come on,’ she said loudly. ‘What are we waiting for?’

He started out of his trance and came to life. Stooping, he picked up his belongings and swung to the saddle of the Argentino.

‘It’s going to be faster from here on, Poll,’ he said. ‘But less comfortable.’

The old grey moved forward as Polly dug in her heels and Sammy nudged the Argentino after it. He glanced upwards at the limpid, diamond-clear sky beyond the stark branches of the white-thorn trees, his eyes squinting at the sun.

‘It’s going to be hot,’ he said.

The heat of the afternoon had closed down on them like an oppressive weight, the sky like a brass lid over the earth. They were moving more slowly now, as though even Kitto’s driving urgency had slackened under the boiling power of the molten sun, strung out in small bunches of two and three on either side of the cars, scattered by the greyish-black karroo bushes that got between them and broke up their formation.

The wide land was sloping down to where they could see the whitened branches of a belt of thorn trees, stark as bleached bones in the sun, and ahead of them Le Roux was casting long circles in an incredible trot that never seemed to waver, wheeling his horse backwards and forwards, constantly stopping to examine the ground. Here and there over the car bonnets, they could see the flattened strips of dust where the iron rims of cart wheels had pressed and the stirred earth between them where the horses had put their feet.

Winter, jolting around in the back of the Rolls-Royce, was watching the driver hanging on to the steering wheel to keep his seat as the vehicle swung and rolled to skirt the ragged karroo bushes, his teeth clamped, his head jerking as they traversed the rough ground. Behind them the dust plumed out for a mile or more and settled on the thorn trees, turning them to the same yellow-red as the earth. Clinging on with one hand, he wiped the sweat from his face with a soiled and dusty handkerchief, his eyes wearily sweeping the horizon ahead.

He could see Kitto just in front of the vehicle, on a horse again, impatient and eager, as he was every time the cars were slowed by poor ground, trying to wave instructions to Le Roux, who was pointing to the earth in front of him; then his eyes flew to the horizon again beyond the strip of thorn bushes and willows, as though he half-expected to see tiny fleeting figures, the scrap of movement that would tell him they had caught up at last with their quarry.

The horsemen, tired and unshaven after several days’ riding, were grumbling at the speed of the chase, complaining loudly about stiffness and soreness, and one of them kept looking anxiously down at his mount which had put its foot in a meerkat hole and was slightly lame. Tempers were growing rapidly shorter with every weary mile. They were all eager now to get it over and done with and return.

The tension had tightened as they had moved on after the storm, picking up the wheel tracks of the cart again with some difficulty, the land empty and silent beyond their own oasis of harsh sound, the thud of hooves and the tacketing roar of the engines as they pulled up the slopes.

With the contrariness of a romantic confronted with a lost cause, Winter found himself half hoping that they’d been given the slip completely, but he could tell from the way Le Roux kept his eyes glued to the ground that the trail had not grown cold.

The scout was riding far ahead now and had neared the thorn trees, ranging well into the distance, and Winter saw him disappear over the saddle of a ridge a mile away. Then he immediately reappeared and Winter saw he was right in among the trees. For a few minutes he was out of sight, then he reappeared, waving frantically and Winter was almost thrown out of the car as the driver turned and increased speed.

Suddenly, they were all of them elated and shouting, and Winter was startled to realise that the faces around him now wore expressions of delight and greed and the violent excitement of a mob. The horsemen, their emotions heightened by the frustration and the killing pace Kitto was setting, had lifted their mounts into a hard flat run, their hooves drubbing the earth, their tails streaming, and they were storming over the saddle of the ridge like a charge of cavalry, bunched together on either side of the cars, standing in their stirrups and even pressing ahead in their eagerness. Some of the men were cheering now and Kitto, in the lead, was lashing his horse with his crop, forcing it into a staggering gallop.

They swung over the last rise, crashing in and out among the thorn trees, then as they reached the top of the drift, Winter saw Le Roux appear in front of them, waving and starting to shout, and he saw the land fall away steeply, abruptly, in front of them, in a horrifying unexpected drop.

Romanis, on the wheel of the Napier which was leading, dragged it to the right and the high vehicle almost flung its crew out as it rolled heavily on its springs.

‘It’s a donga,’ he yelled. ‘Nearly didn’t see her!’

‘Christ, man,’ the Army Service Corps mechanic beside him shouted. ‘There’d have been hell to pay if we’d lost her!’

The horsemen on their right in a strung-out line, confronted by the swinging motorcar heading across their front, heaved on their reins and crashed together in a bunch, the horses jostling frantically.

‘Pas op,’
someone yelled. ‘Keep going! Keep going!’

A horse went down with a frightened scream, rolling down the bank and landing in a sheet of water, the rider, half-blinded by a branch which had hit him in the face, falling from the saddle with a flat splash.

Winter jumped out of the Rolls as it came to a stop, and ran with knees stiff and trembling with weariness, to where Romanis and the crew of the Napier were scrambling over the bank. Below in the stream, the horsemen had dismounted and were whooping around the abandoned cart, taking flying kicks at cooking pots and broken boxes. Romanis was laughing at a man standing waist-deep in the water, wearing a woman’s hat and a pair of long, cotton, lace-edged drawers, and another man was aiming heavy blows with a rifle butt at a battered trunk. Somehow, suddenly, there was violence in the air.

Then Kitto came scrambling along the bank, and was among them shouting and lashing out with the crop. ‘God damn it,’ he was yelling. ‘Get out of it! Get these men back, Romanis! Give Le Roux a chance, damn you!’

Romanis jumped into the water, yelling orders in his high voice, and the troopers pulled back, splashing downstream and wading heavy-footed through the pools. Kitto stared round at them and at the group who were sitting their horses in a restless half-circle, some on the bank, some standing fetlock-deep in the shallow river.

‘This operation’s going to be conducted as
I
want it,’ he roared. ‘By soldiers in a soldierly manner, and not by a bloody mob of hoodlums!’

He turned away abruptly and rode towards Le Roux. ‘What have you got, Le Roux? Let’s have it.’

Le Roux indicated the cape cart with its broken wheel standing just upstream, its scattered contents, and the few hoof prints in the clay; the abandoned cooking pots and clothes and the cardboard cartridge boxes strewn over rocks and under the thorn bushes. Then he urged his horse forward to the opposite bank, studying the ground carefully.

‘They’ve moved north-east along the stream,’ he said. ‘They’re using the two horses now. They’ll move faster.’ He grinned suddenly.
‘Ag,
she’ll have a sore backside when she squats down at night.
Magtig,
what a sight!’