Sunset at Sheba (16 page)

‘No need to be scared, Poll,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing they can do. Not a thing. Only’ - he paused - ‘maybe a bit of a prayer might help if you’re any good at it.’

She forced a twisted smile, then clutched him to her, her arms round his waist, her face against the rough material of the old salt and pepper coat.

‘I’ll pray, Sammy,’ she said. ‘I’ll pray tonight.’ She looked up at him. ‘What will they do, Sammy?’

He picked up a stone and tossed it down the slope. It landed in a flat puff of dust that drifted slowly away. ‘Wind’s coming from the west,’ he observed. He looked at her, shifting on his feet. ‘I don’t know what they’ll do, Poll,’ he went on. T don’t know at all. Only thing I know, I don’t trust that Kitto. I feel best up here with him around down there. There’s nobody better’n me with a rifle. And I know this land like a springbok does. That lot are city dwellers, for all their hosses and their guns, and one Boer was always better than ten Englishmen when it come to this sort of scuffling. And I’ve been brought up to the veld like any trek-Boer. Just trust me, Poll. Just try to trust me.’

She looked up at him, her eyes shining. ‘I trust you, Sammy,’ she said. ‘Oh, God, I trust you. I always did, I think.’

He smiled at her, then he pushed her gently aside and moved towards the rifles. Picking up the Mauser, he glanced along the sights and felt the weight of the weapon. Then he pointed with it out across the veld.

In the amazing clarity of the evening, she could see a thin layer of dust rising out of a shallow depression and striking sharply off towards the east at a speed that indicated antelope. Then behind, rising out of the same fall of ground but heading straight towards Sheba, another cloud of dust came, slower, heavier in a way that told them it was men and horses and motorcars.

‘We’ve got company, Poll,’ he said.

The scout cars arrived at Sheba just as the light was beginning to give way to the greyness of dusk. They were moving swiftly, the horsemen driving their jaded mounts hard to keep in sight of them.

The Rolls was in the lead, with Kitto in the front seat, fidgety and unable to keep his patience in check. Several times he had changed to horseback, ranging back and forth across the veld as though the straight course of the vehicles wasn’t sufficient for his restless energy, dragging a rifle from the saddle scabbard again and again and thumping his mount across the rump to urge it to greater speed. By the time they arrived at Sheba, he was back in the Rolls again, watching Le Roux as he hung over the dun-painted side, studying the hard earth of the veld which seemed to echo the roar of the engines and the clatter of small stones under the mudguards as they approached.

When they were almost past the kopje, Le Roux flung up his arm and shouted.

‘Pas op,’
he said. ‘We lost ‘em!’

The Rolls slid to a halt, its rear wheels locked, and seemed to shed men in all directions. The Napier, steaming badly, altered course to avoid them, then while they were all standing in a group, still feeling the motion of the cars as a sailor does when he steps ashore, the cavalrymen arrived, breaking into an unbalanced trot as the horses bumped each other. One of the animals swerved violently in the jostling, flinging its tired rider from the saddle. He swore as he hit the ground, then scrambled to his feet again, his face livid, lashing at the frightened animal with his hat in an outburst of the frustrated fury that had set lines of strain across all their features.

They were every one of them exhausted now and it was beginning to show in explosions of unexpected temper. The horses were worn out, their withers prominent after the pounding they had received, their ankles puffed with hard work. More than one of them limped badly and the complaints against Kitto’s hard driving were rising in a crescendo.

There had been a considerable amount of jeering from the hard-pressed horsemen as they had had to help construct fascines of brushwood to enable the cars to cross the deep courses of streams, or had had to haul the heavy vehicles up the steeper slopes or out of the soft dust of the hollows where they had sunk hub-deep, screaming in low gear. More than once there had been a short-lived scuffle as one of the Army Service Corps men, driven to an extremity of fury by the sarcasm, had flung himself at his tormentors, for the car crews were as jaded now as the riders, the drivers weary from the jolting that tore the steering wheels from their grip and left them with blistered bleeding hands.

As they spread out, waiting for Le Roux to examine the ground, they worked their stiff limbs and the Army Service Corps men wandered round their vehicles, gazing anxiously at them. Engine trouble and mechanical defects were beginning to develop after the miles of rough ground. They had been obliged to roar over the bad patches to avoid getting stuck, rushing at them at an unsafe speed for fear of having to call on the resentful horsemen, and rocking over the hummocks in a style that seemed fatal to the chassis. On one occasion, the front bracket of one of the Rolls’ springs had snapped and they had had to stop to jack it up, wedging it with baulks of timber on the running board and wiring the whole hurried job together; and time and time again the tyres, heated in the grinding low gear stretches, had burst, so that first one car and then the other had had to halt, their crews sweating under the repeated leverings and pumpings.

Now, as cigarettes were reached for and water-bottles were raised, the Napier driver unscrewed the cap of the vehicle’s water tank and the concentrated steam roared out.

‘Christ,’ he said, staring at the rising cloud, ‘we only want railway lines. We’ve got a big enough head of steam on to pull wagons as far as Jo’burg!’

Oblivious to the activity behind him and the angry muttering of men pushed too far by an over-zealous commander, Le Roux was still prowling round the foot of Sheba. Sitting on the running board of the Rolls, smoking a cigarette, Winter could see him studying the ground among the rocky shale.

‘They’ve turned off,’ he announced as Kitto approached him. ‘The tracks stop here.’ He turned and walked slowly back until he came to a saddle of rock which stretched from the foot of the kopje into the veld. Around it was broken stones and thin flat pebbles, and Le Roux knelt and examined the hard surface. Kitto watched him, knocking the dust from his clothes and out of his hair.

‘Came as far as here all right,’ Le Roux said, looking up.

He straightened and walked a little way to the north-east, staring at the ground.

‘That’s funny, man,’ he said uncertainly.

Winter saw him return to the flat table of rock and begin to walk to the west.

‘For God’s sake, put a jerk into it,’ Kitto said impatiently.

Le Roux had stopped again, ignoring him, then he turned and stared up at Sheba, whose battlemented summit towered above them into the saffron sky, grey-blue in the fading light.

‘I think they’re up there,’ he said. ‘The prints just
disappear
here.
Kyk daar!
Look!’

Kitto stared. ‘Up there? In the name of the good Lord Harry, man, they wouldn’t go up there!’

Le Roux stared round him again at the ground. ‘Only place they
could
go,’ he said.

‘Up there? Horses and all?’

‘And
the woman!’ Le Roux chuckled. ‘Calling for volunteers to go after ‘em?’ he asked.

‘You sure?’ Kitto demanded.

‘I’ll make sure.’

‘Well, look slippy,’ Kitto barked.
‘Mak gou, ek is baastig.
We can’t wait round here like mashers at a stage door. They’re a damn’ sight too near the Sidings now for my liking and I want it over and done with. So far we’ve ridden twice as far as he has and all we’ve done is make a damn’ big circle. My God, with two cars capable of doing sixty miles an hour we ought to be able to catch up with a kid on an old shaft horse!’

Le Roux’s square face was eager as he moved slowly in a half circle round the foot of the kopje, away from the horsemen, squatting by their blown mounts, glad of the chance of a rest. None of them spoke as they watched him work. One or two washed their dry mouths out with water from their canteens and spat, or wet their bandannas and wiped the dust from their stubbled faces. Several of them had taken their rifles from the saddle scabbards and one man, glancing nervously round and up at Sheba, slipped the safety catch off his weapon.

Winter stared up at the brooding bulk of the kopje in the failing light, like all of them oppressed by the silence, and he found himself wondering what lonely battles had taken place in the past on the silent amber-tinted crags.

Romanis approached him, his leather coat swinging, his goggles on his forehead, the dust on his face like a weird mask. ‘Bloody queer place, this,’ he observed uneasily.

Le Roux had walked back a little way now in the direction they had come from, then he approached the kopje again in a shambling run, following the tracks until he reached the flat slab of rock again. Once more, he glanced upwards, puzzled, then he stared at the ground and abruptly began to climb.

The report of the rifle came simultaneously with the metallic twang as a bullet struck the rock near his head. Winter saw the chips of stone fly into the air as Le Roux dropped flat on his face in an instinctive dive for safety, and the sharp whine came to his ears as the bullet ricocheted, buzzing angrily as its twisted shape went up in a tight singing lump of metal spinning out over their heads.

Within a second, before the echoes had finished rolling and clattering through the clefts and fissures of Sheba, the mounted men were all off their horses and crouching on the blind side of them, using them as shelter, clinging to the reins with one hand and feeling for the rifles in the scabbards with the other, eyes peering under necks and over saddles, their gaze straining upwards towards the spires of rock.

Winter found himself conspicuously and bewilderingly alone as the crews of the Napier and the Rolls crouched behind their vehicles, gripping their rifles, huddled in little groups behind the wheels.

‘Get down, you bloody fool,’ Romanis yelled from behind the Napier and Winter came to life at once and ran, doubled up, for the rocks. Diving into the dust behind a patch of scrub grass, he landed spread-eagled, his face close to the earth, breathing the dry hot smell of the soil, aware of the silence again, a deep new tremendous silence broken only by the chink of harness, and the click of metal shoes as the horses tossed their heads and tried to wheel and back, sniffing the excitement.

For a long time nobody spoke or moved, then Winter realised that Kitto was near him, also sprawled behind a rock, staring keenly at Sheba, his eyes suddenly bright. After a while, Romanis joined them, running bent double.

‘Hallo, Romanis,’ Kitto said and Winter saw he was grinning. ‘The fun’s begun!’

Romanis laughed. ‘Wouldn’t miss this for anything,’ he said. ‘By God, he’s a game little bastard, Jew or not! - game as a pebble!’

Kitto lifted his head slightly and shouted to Le Roux just in front of them on the first slopes.

‘You were right,’ he said. ‘Can you see ‘em?’

The scout, on his knees now behind his rock, waved his hand in a sign of negation.

‘Keep under cover, boys,’ Kitto called to the crouching men behind him, ‘and keep your eyes open. You should be able to spot him if he fires again.’

He ducked from his rock and ran stooping for the foot of Sheba to join Le Roux. Then he turned and sat with his back to the rocks and shouted his orders. ‘Tell off your horse-holders,’ he yelled. ‘The rest of you take cover!’

Winter scrambled from behind the patch of grass and dived into shelter alongside Kitto.

‘Kitto, surely to God you’re not going to go up there after him. Offy said no violence.’

Kitto swung sharply round. ‘You politicians are always good at thinking up situations for soldiers to deal with,’ he said, ‘but you always start bleating when things go wrong and we lose our tempers.’

While they were still staring angrily at each other, their faces only a foot apart, a faint voice came down to them from above.

‘I wasn’t shooting to hurt anybody then,’ it said. ‘But if any of you tries to interfere with me, I shall.’

Kitto’s face darkened as he gazed up the slope.

‘Samuel Isaac Schuter,’ he shouted, as though making a formal announcement, ‘you’re a damned renegade! You’ve fired on His Majesty’s troops in time of war. I’m going to fire back.’

‘I bet you haven’t seen me yet!’

‘I’ve got thirty-odd men here who say I
will.’

‘And I’ve got the slope in my favour and a good rifle that says you’re wrong.’

Winter grabbed at Kitto’s arm. ‘Kitto, what in the name of God are you up to? Offy didn’t say you’d to shoot the boy.’

Kitto pulled his arm away irritably. Suddenly, he could see quite simply where his duty lay. It had crossed his mind several times in the last few difficult days that the death of Sammy Schuter was the only safe solution to the problem Willie Plummer’s stupidity had raised but it had always been one which he could never have reconciled to his sense of honesty. Now, however, there was no longer any question of right and wrong. He was on surer ground and could put politics and politicians safely aside.

The minute Sammy Schuter had pulled the trigger up there on the slopes of Sheba, his course had become clear. The situation could now be resolved outside the dubious issues of humanity and without any stain on his honour. He was a soldier and he was at war.

‘If Offy hasn’t the guts to do what’s necessary,’ he said sharply, his face still turned towards the summit of Sheba, ‘then I have.’

‘You’ll make a martyr of him,’ Winter pointed out. ‘Let me go up there and talk to him.’

‘It’s too late for that now.’ Kitto was still staring at Sheba, not taking his eyes off the ground in front and above where his enemy lay. ‘We’re committed. He’s perpetrated an act of war.’

‘Fabricius will call Offy a murderer if he finds out about this.’

‘He’ll
never
find out. It’ll be finished within an hour.’

‘Kitto, for God’s sake, there’s a woman up there!’