'Saddle up,' Zouga ordered, and they scrambled to their horses.
Zouga swung up onto the bay gelding and glared sternly at Ralph.
'Now you do what you are told, or I'll warm your tail feathers for you, young man.'
He swung the horse's head and pointed it down the ravine, while behind his back Ralph grinned at Jan Cheroot conspiratorially, his face flushed with excitement, and the little Hottentot closed one eyelid briefly but kept his flat wrinkled oriental features expressionless.
Zouga had chosen the kopje with care; from it a ravine meandered out across the plain in an approximate east to west direction, and he followed it now, slouching in the saddle to keep his head below the level of the banks and keeping the gelding down to a walk so as not to raise dust.
After half a mile he removed the wide-brimmed hat from his head and raised himself cautiously in the stirrups until his eyes were just above the bank, and he darted a quick glance into the north and then immediately ducked down again.
'Station here,' he told Ralph. 'And don't move until I do.'
They moved on down the ravine, while Zouga placed Jan Cheroot and Jordan side by side in a bend of the ravine where the bank had collapsed and formed an easy ramp up which they could launch their charge.
'Keep Jordie close,' Zouga cautioned Jan Cheroot, and swung the gelding around with the saddlery creaking as the animal turned in the narrow gut of the ravine; then Zouga trotted back until he was in the centre. of the waiting line, and there he halted and contained his impatience, glancing up repeatedly at the lowering sun.
There would probably not be another chance for many days, and each day was vital for those untended claims.
Zouga jerked the rifle from the leather bucket at his knee, selected a cartridge from the bandolier around his waist and slipped it into the breech. Then he returned the weapon uncocked to the bucket. It was merely a precaution, but he had no means of knowing what manner of men those approaching figures were.
Even if their intentions were peaceable, and their ultimate object identical to Zouga's own, yet they would be armed and nervous, so nervous that they had avoided the road from the north and were travelling over the open veld. They were in company for defence, and Zouga knew they would have been harassed often along the way, by black men and white: the black men trying to rob and cheat them of their meagre possessions, the white men of something infinitely more valuable, their right to contract their labour to the highest bidder.
On the day that Zouga thanked Neville Pickering for his tuition and began preparing to work the Devil's Own claims for his personal account, he had faced the problem that was already wracking the entire sub-continent.
Only black men could stand the conditions of physical labour in the diggings. Only black men would work for a wage that made the diggings profitable, and even that beggarly wage was many times more than the Boer f armers of the surrounding backveld republics could afford to Day.
The diamond diggings had denuded the countryside of labourers for five hundred miles around; and the Boers resented that as fiercely as they resented the nest of adventurers and fortune seekers that the diggings supported.
The diamonds had caused an upheaval in the Boers' traditional way of life; not only were the miners threatening the supply of cheap labour, which only just allowed a diligent and frugal farmer to eke out a living for himself and his family from the savage land, but the diggers were doing something else that from the Boer point of view was unforgivable, that went against all their deeply held beliefs and threatened not just their livelihood but their very physical existence.
The diamond diggers were paying the black tribesmen with guns. The Boers had fought the tribes at Blood River and Mosega, they had stood to the laager in ten thousand threatening dawns, the favourite hour of attack. They had seen the smoke rising from their burning homesteads and crops, they had ridden out on commando on the spoor of their stolen herds, and they had buried the pale coipses of their children, the blood drained from the frail bodies through the gaping and terrible wounds of the assegai. They had buried them at Weenen, the Place of Weeping, and at other accursed and abandoned grave sites across the land.
The payment of black men with guns went against every one of their instincts; it flew full in the face of their laws and offended the memories of their dead heroes.
For these reasons Boer commandos from the little backveld republics were sweeping the land and patrolling the lonely roads from the north to try and prevent the tribesmen reaching the diggings and instead press them to work upon the land.
However, five shillings a week and a musket at the end of a three years' contract were a lure that brought the tribesmen, on foot, against a hundred hazards, on a journey of hundreds of miles, daring the commandos and all else, to reach the diggings.
They came in their hundreds, but still not enough of them arrived to fill those hungry diamond pits. In vain Zouga and Jan Cheroot had ridden the workings. Every black man was signed on contract, and jealously guarded by his employer.
Zouga had told Jan Cheroot, 'We'll offer seven shillings and sixpence a week.'
They signed five men that same day at the higher wage, and the next day there were a dozen deserters waiting outside Zouga's camp, eager for the new coin.
Before Zoug2. could sign them, Neville Pickering sauntered up. 'Official visit, old man,' he murmured apologetically. 'As a member of the jolly old Diggers' Committee, I have to tell you the rate is five shillings not seven and six.' When Zouga opened his mouth to protest, Pickering smiled easily and held up his hand.
'No, Major. I'm sorry. It's five shillings, and not a penny more.'
Zouga was already in no doubt about the sweeping powers of the Diggers' Committee. An edict from the elected body was enforced firstly by a warning, then a beating, and finally by the full aggression of the entire community of diggers which could end in a burning or even a lynching.
'What do I do for a gang, then?' Zouga demanded.
'You do what we all do; you go out and find a gang, before another digger or a Boer commando grabs them.'
