Sunset at Sheba (28 page)

‘Sammy! This is Winter!’ He was horrified to hear his voice come out only in a croaking whisper. ‘Come down here, for God’s sake!’

He was lying on a sharp-edged stone which dug into his back, but the effort of thinking about it seemed too exhausting and he let it slip from his mind with relief...

With a start and a groan he came back to consciousness from a dark world of peace, back to torment where spinning things of flame-coloured red whirled before his eyes, where a growing thirst and a dreadful agony wrapped him about with iron pinions.

Dimly, he realised he had failed. He had failed Offy and killed him. He had failed Sammy, and now he had failed Polly, to whom he had wanted to give so much. Like so many others, he had the gift of thinking correctly and acting hopelessly wrongly. In fact, he thought in a haze of pain, they had
all
thought correctly and acted wrongly. Offy had been right in principle but wrong in his methods, as indeed so was Kitto, with his stern belief that Sammy’s survival was more dangerous to the country than his death. They had all planned correctly but they were all losers in the end, every one of them, because of a simple inexorable fact that behind every action, every event, there had been an unseen, unmentioned and unconsidered being called God.

If only Willie Plummer hadn’t acted so stupidly, if only it hadn’t been Sammy Schuter with his skill and courage and cunning who’d been involved, if only he hadn’t broken his word and turned south instead of heading west, if only they hadn’t all distrusted him and followed, if only they hadn’t chivvied him until he had turned round on them like an angry dog, if only the politicians and the would-be savers of humanity hadn’t failed to take into account the individuals in their plans. There were so many ifs which had become facts, building up one upon another until the outcome had become as inevitable as the next morning’s daylight.

Through his numbed meanderings, Winter heard a faint murmur of disturbed earth, and a pebble rolled down near his ear and finished with a click as it bounced against the rock by which his head rested.

He forced his eyes open and in the faint light that came from the stars, he saw a figure standing above him. As tall as a steeple it seemed, and beyond it towering away to the heavens themselves was the ragged summit of Sheba.

‘Sammy, old boy,’ he said weakly, ‘I brought the rescue party.’

Sammy knelt beside him, laying the rifle down.

‘You asked for it, Mr Winter,’ he said fiercely, and the voice came booming out at Winter from what seemed a hollow tunnel full of echoes, rising and falling as it came in uneven woolly tones. ‘They
all
asked for it. I never wanted to shoot nobody, but they made me. It was them or me.’

‘That’s all right, that’s all right!’ Winter gasped the words and struggled to sit up, clarity returning to his mind. ‘Pull me out of this bloody rabbit hole, for God’s sake!’

Sammy knelt by his feet and Winter felt his strong fingers round his ankles.

‘If they hadn’t forced me, Mr Winter, I wouldn’t have shot.’

‘Yes, I know. But never mind that now. For God’s sake, get me out! Your bloody bullet tossed me in here. Where’d you learn to shoot like that?’

Sammy’s face came nearer, blurred and indistinct, and Winter struggled to focus his eyes on it.

‘I didn’t know it was you, Mr Winter. Honest I didn’t.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up, and get on with it!’

Sammy’s fingers tightened on his ankles and Winter felt himself being dragged out of the humiliating situation in the crevasse. As his shattered shoulder bumped over the sharp-edged stone in the middle of his back, he choked dryly on a scream, but bit it off short as he remembered the waiting men below, already alerted by the shot.

Sammy came nearer, kneeling by Winter’s side, uneasy, sensing that things were not as they should be.

‘Mr Winter,’ he said, ‘what were you doin’ crawling about on Sheba like that? You ought to have known I’d shoot.’

‘I did, you bloody fool! Now shut up and listen to me.’

‘I didn’t ask to kill anybody - not even Mr Plummer.’

Winter wrenched his eyes round. ‘For the love of God, stop indulging in self-sympathy,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t want pity, man. I knew what I was doing and so, I suppose, did Offy Plummer.’ He gasped as the pain tore at him with iron-clawed fingers, then he patted his pocket with his left hand. It was a clumsy, awkward movement, for he found his arm wouldn’t do quite what he intended it to do, and he was fighting all the time to get his breath against the tearing pain that seemed to stop everything inside him as it dragged at him.

‘Listen, Sammy, you know that clump of mimosa out there by the stream. You must have noticed it. You’ve been staring at it for two days now -’

‘Look, Mr Winter, there’s no need to talk -’

‘In the name of Christ,’ Winter said weakly, ‘shut up and listen if you want to get off Sheba alive. I’m trying to help you. Be quiet and listen.’

Although the boy knelt beside him, Winter could see him only faintly, but he was silent at last and not full of stumbling excuses and apologies.

‘Listen, Polly’s there among those mimosas waiting for you -’

‘Polly -!’ There was anger and contempt in the boy’s voice, and Winter stirred weakly.

‘Yes, Polly,’ he said. ‘By God, that’s a good woman - you don’t know how good! And she’s waiting for you. Don’t start blaming her for running away. Women do funny things, boy, as you’ll learn when you’re a bit older. She was probably scared. She’d never seen killing before. She’s there among the mimosas -’

‘What’s she - ?’

‘Don’t interrupt, for God’s sake! I can’t go over it all again. It’s too damn’ painful! Listen, she’s got two horses. One each for you. She’s got food and forage. Go to her as fast as you can. You can get out that far in the dark without being seen. Nobody’ll follow you. They’ll be too busy. De Wet’s out again and they’ll never waste two or three days chasing you now. Go south-west, as hard as you can. Get out towards the Flats. You’ll be all right. But, for God’s sake, keep to the south! I should hate you to run into De Wet after all the blasted trouble I’ve taken on your behalf. Now, get going. Take your gun, but for God’s sake, only use it from now on to get meat. And don’t stop till you reach safety.’

‘What about Polly?’

‘She’s going with you.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, why do you think? Why do you think she’s willing to wait all night in those damn’ mimosas in case you come? Now that you’ve blown a hole in me, she’ll probably think I’ve failed, and go back. But I don’t think so. She’s not the type. You’re luckier than I’ve ever been. She’s tough and good and honest in spite of everything, and she deserves something better than you.’

‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’

‘Feel in my pockets, man. Empty ‘em. There’s as much food in ‘em as I could get in. There are cartridges for the Mauser. It
is
a Mauser, isn’t it? Take your water bottles and fill ‘em at the stream as you go. Don’t take anything else, though, nothing that’ll hold you up. Polly’s got all you’re likely to want. She’s got money, blankets, everything I could find. You’ll be all right if you go now.’

Sammy leaned over him, dimmer somehow now. Winter could feel the blood running through his fingers as they clutched his broken shoulder and he winced once or twice as the boy emptied his pockets quickly, jerking at his body in his nervous hurry.

When he had finished, Sammy paused, staring at Winter. ‘I ought to get you down there,’ he said. ‘Or somewhere where you can call for help.’

Winter turned his head away. ‘Don’t talk damn’ silly. It’d give the game away at once.’

‘Well, let me make you comfortable.’

‘You’ll be better advised to cut and run for it while you can, and stop wasting your time with me.’

‘But that’s an awful bad wound -’

‘ “ ‘Tis
not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door”.’
Winter paused before he finished. ‘
“But ‘tis enough”,’
he concluded quietly.

‘Mr Winter, let me just -’

‘In the name of God, man,’ Winter croaked, ‘go!’

The boy straightened up and Winter saw him slip away up into the heavens again, up among the battlemented crags of Sheba.

‘As a matter of fact, Mr Winter,’ he said slowly, ‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t be much good whatever I did.’

‘I know that, you fool!’

‘I’m - I’m sorry, Mr Winter.’

‘Oh, keep your bloody condolences!’

‘I’ll go then now.’

Winter nodded, his face towards the rocks. He knew the boy was still standing alongside him, still watching him with those curious glittering eyes of his which were so deadly sharp behind a rifle.

‘Are you still there?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Mr Winter. But I’m going now.’

‘Give Poll my love.’

‘You’re a toff, Mr Winter.’

‘That’s what Poll said. I think there must be something in it, after all.’

He sensed the boy move away then, and heard the stones disturbed faintly by those soft veldschoen-clad feet of his, and he felt hysterically like laughing as he remembered his own clumsy efforts to move quietly.

As the little sounds died away, the pain came again, worse than ever now that his job was done and he had nothing to take his mind off it. He wanted to cry out with the agony of it, but he bit his lips feverishly, to hold back the cries.

He awakened after what seemed like a long sleep, feeling nothing and hearing nothing, silent, sunk in the deep sad loneliness of approaching death. At first he thought the day had come, for it seemed much lighter suddenly, then he realised it was only his imagination and that in actual fact he couldn’t see much at all, that he was already standing with one foot on the other side of death.

He seemed to be looking down now from far up above, seeing the jagged slopes of Sheba in a brilliance of light, the veined granite rocks and the little valleys, and the scatter of equipment where Sammy had fought them all off so courageously. Beyond, there was the patch of mimosa and the thread of the stream, dark amber where it was stained by its iron-stone bed, and black where the rocks shone under the stars. In his imagination, he could see two small shapes heading out over the veld, two horses, two lonely people, heading westwards and never stopping...

He was in darkness again now, a rising darkness, opaque and unpierceable like floodwater rising in a cellar. For a while he stared, unmoving, absorbed. There seemed to be no sensation anywhere except for that fierce burning that extended down the whole of his right side, but even that was growing insubstantial now, and there was little else left except the mist...

Sunrise at Sheba. It came in a faint creeping violet tinge of light in the east across the pure clear morning, throwing a purple haze over the land, touching hollows of the veld where the night mists still hung about. Then the purple turned to grey, a deep lavender grey that began to paint their faces with glowing light, and finally, the first hint of day reached the topmost spires of Sheba.

They had all been up and about some time now and Kitto, irritable and nervous, had had Sergeant Hadman and his gun crew standing by the little pom-pom long before it was light. The armoured car stood on its own in the shelter of the rocks, its gunner gripping the spade handle of the Lewis gun, his jaw clamped tight, his eyes moving backwards and forwards from the slopes of Sheba to where Kitto stood.

The fires had burned to flat beds of grey ashes now, touched in the centre with crimson, and the tent was down and packed. Nobody had known just why Kitto had insisted on striking camp with the first light, before the job was done, but it didn’t exist anymore now and the horses were saddled up and waiting. The Kaffir cooks were packing the lorry after their before-daylight breakfast, and the motorcars were standing in a row facing to the north, their engines warmed, and ready to go.

The wind had dropped and the last curls of smoke from the fires drifted to the east as the greyness touched the horses and men and machines with weary light.

The troopers were sprawled among the rocks at the foot of Sheba, their rifles in front of them, their eyes exploring the folds and crags of the slope in front, searching for the one from which the bullet might come which would stop them in their tracks. But they were all eager now. After the waiting of the previous day, they were all anxious to get it over and done with, and though most of them were decent men there was vengeance in the souls of all of them. Somehow, this ridiculous one-sided skirmish had lost the cold impersonality of a bigger battle. Here, they were all involved - each and every one of them - in the humiliation they had suffered in their defeat, and there was none of them who felt much mercy.

‘Watch us put the kibosh on him this morning,’ they were saying to each other.

The niceties of right and wrong and blame didn’t dwell in their minds much. They had been hit and they were going to hit back. It was a natural military attitude and one that no one could quarrel with. Their only concern now was in seeing the affair brought to an end, not to inquire into the
ifs
and
whys
of it. They would be able to contemplate the battlefield when it was all over, with its splinter-scarred rocks, the yellow-green lyddite stains, and without doubt, they confidently expected, the body of their enemy, without having to answer the questions, ‘Whose fault was it? Who started it? Could it have been avoided?’ They were only doing their duty.

Kitto, Napoleonic in his strapped and buckled authority, draped with binoculars and compasses and revolver, the short crop in his hand, watched the first touch of light reach the peaks of Sheba and run down the slopes, and his eyes fastened on the two spire-like rocks where they had decided Sammy Schuter was hiding. He turned quickly, looking for Winter, thinking he might wish to watch, then he realised he had seen neither him nor the woman, Polly Bolt, since the previous night, and he wondered briefly where they were. Probably done a bunk, he thought casually. He’d heard some talk of a couple of horses going missing during the night and he wondered vaguely if Winter had ratted on them, and the woman had ratted on her gentleman friend up on Sheba and they had run away together.