Do you know who they are?'
The foreman shrugged. 'The local Mashona chief is Matanka. His village is just the other side of the valley.
You can see the smoke from here., Ralph slipped his rifle out of its boot under his knee.
It was a magnificent new Winchester Repeater Model 1890 with his name engraved and chased with gold into the metal of the block. He levered a round into the breech.
'Let's go to see brother Matanka.'
He was an old man, with legs like a stork and a cap of pure white wool covering his head. He trembled with fear and fell on his knees before this furious young white man with a rifle in his hand.
'Fifty head,' Ralph told him. 'And next time your people touch the wires it will be a hundred.'
Ralph and his foreman cut the fattest cattle out of Matanka's herds and drove them ahead of them, up the escarpment and into the little white settlement of Fort Victoria which had grown up mid-way between the Shashi river and Fort Salisbury.
'All right,' Ralph told his foreman. 'You can take them from here. Turn them over to the auctioneer, we should get ten pounds a head for them.'
'That will cover the cost of replacing the wires fifty times over,' the foreman grinned.
'I don't believe in taking a loss when I don't have to,' Ralph laughed. 'Get on with you, I'll have to go down and square it with the gool doctor.'
Doctor Jameson's office, as administrator of the Charterlands of the British South Africa Company, was a wood and iron building with an untidily thatched roof directly opposite the only canteen in Fort Victoria.
'Ah, young Ballantyne,' Jameson greeted Ralph, and secretly enjoyed Ralph's frown of annoyance. He did not share the general high opinion of this youngster. He was too bumptious and too successful by a half, while physically he was all that Jameson was not; tall and broadshouldered, with a striking appearance and forceful Presence.
The wags were saying that one day Ralph Ballantyne would own the half of the Charterland that Rhodes did not already have his brand on. However, even Jameson had to grant that if you wanted something done, no matter how difficult, and if you wanted it done swiftly and thoroughly, and if you were prepared to pay top dollar, then Ralph Ballantyne was your man.
'Ah, Jameson.' Ralph retaliated by dropping the mousy little doctor's title from the greeting, and by turning immediately to the other man in the room.
'General Sint John.' Ralph flashed that compelling smile.
'How good to see you, sir! When did you get into Fort Victoria?'
Mungo Sint John limped across the room to take Ralph's hand, and his single eye gleamed.
'Got in this very morning.'
'Congratulations on your appointment, sir. We need a good soldier up here, the way things are going.' Ralph's compliment was an oblique jibe at Doctor Jameson's own military aspirations. Rhodes had very recently appointed Mungo Sint John as the Company's Chief of Staff. He would be under Jameson's administration, naturally, but would be directly responsible for police and military affairs in the Charterlands of Rhodesia.
'Did your men find the break in the wires?' Jameson interrupted them.
'Bangles, and bracelets,' Ralph nodded. 'That's what happened to the wires. I have given the local chief a lesson that I hope-will teach him to behave himself. I fined him fifty head of cattle.'
Jameson frowned quickly.
'Lobengula considers Matanka to be his vassal. He owns those cattle, the Mashona merely tend the herds on the king's behalf.'
Ralph shrugged. 'Then Matanka will have some explaining to do, and rather him than me, and that's the truth., 'Lobengula won't let this pass -' Jameson broke off, and the frown cleared. He began to pace up and down behind his desk with excited, hopping, bird-like steps.
'Perhaps,' he twitched at his scraggly little moustache, perhaps this is what we have been waiting for. Lobengula will not let it pass, nor, by God, will we.' He paused and looked at Ralph. 'How soon will you have the wires restored?'
'By noon tomorrow,' Ralph told him promptly.
'Good! Good! We must get a message through to your father at Gubulawayo. If he protests to Lobengula that his vassals are stealing Company property, and informs him that we have fined him in cattle, what will Lobengula do?'
'He will send an impi to punish Matanka.'
'Punish him'
'Cut his head off, kill his men, rape his women and burn his village.'
'Exactly.' Jameson punched his fist into his palm. 'And Matanka is on Company ground and under protection of the British flag. It will be our duty, our bounden duty, to drive off Lobengula's men.'
'War!' said Ralph.
'War,' agreed Sint John softly. 'Well done, young fellow.
This is what we have been waiting for.'
'Ballantyne, can you give me a tender to provide wagons and supplies for an expeditionary force, say five hundred men; we'll need twenty-five wagons, six hundred horses, when we drive for Gubulawayo.'
