'When do you expect to march?'
'Before the rains.' Jameson was decisive. 'If we go, then we'll have to finish it before the rains break.,'
'I will have a tender for you by the time the telegraph is reopened tomorrow., Ralph jumped down from the saddle and tossed his reins to the groom who came running.
Although it was only a temporary lodging which Ralph used on his infrequent visits to check the progress of his construction gangs, his transport stages and his trading posts, yet it was the grandest house in Fort Victoria, with glass in the windows and insect mesh screening the doors.
His spurs clattered on the steps as he stormed up onto the verandah, and Cathy heard him and came running with the baby on her hip.
'You are home so soon,' she cried delightedly, rebuttoning her bodice from the feeding.
'Couldn't stay away from you two.' He laughed and smacked a kiss on her mouth, then snatched the baby from her and tossed him high.
'Do be careful.' Cathy hopped anxiously to try and take him back, but Jonathan gurgled joyously and kicked with excitement, and a trickle of milk reappeared and ran down his chin.
'Mucky little devil.' Ralph held him high and sniffed at his son.
'Both ends at once, by God. Here, Katie.' He handed the infant to her and held her around the waist.
'We are going to Gubulawayo,' he said.
'Who?' She looked up at him in confusion.
'Sint John and the good doctor and I, and when we get there B.S.A. shares will go to five pounds. Last price I heard before the wires were cut was five shillings. The first message that goes out tomorrow is my buying order to Aaron Fagan, for fifty thousand British South Africans!'
Bazo's impi came sweeping down out of the western forests, silent as shadows and murderous as wild hunting dogs.
'Kill that dog Matanka,' the king had ordered. 'Kill him and all his men.' And Bazo caught them in the dawn, as the first of them came out of their huts yawning and rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and then they chased the young girls cackling and shrieking like hens amongst the huts, and roped them in bunches.
'And all his men,' had been the king's order, and some of Matanka's men were working for the white men, at the Prince Mine, one of the very few paying gold reefs in Mashonaland. They were breaking and carrying the rock.
'Do not interfere,' Bazo told the mine overseer. 'This is the king's business. No white man will be hurt, that is the king's order.'
And they chased the Mashona labourers into the crushing plant and stabbed them as they hid under the sorting-tables.
They came racing down the telegraph line, five hundred red shields. The Mashona wiremen were unwinding the huge drums and stringing the shining strands.
'No white men will be hurt,' Bazo shouted as he let his young men run. 'Stand aside, white men.' But now Bazo was mad with blood and boastful with the killing fever. 'This is not for you, white men. Not yet, white men, but your day will come.'
They dragged the Mashona down from the telegraph poles, and bayed about them like hounds tearing a fox to pieces, while the Mashona screamed to their white masters for protection.
'Bring in the cattle, all Matanka's cattle,' the king had ordered, and Bazo's men swept the Mashona pastures, and drove the sprawling multi-coloured herds back into the west in the clouds of their own dust; and with the herds were mingled some of the white men's cattle, for one beast looks like another, and the marks burned by hot iron into the hide meant nothing to the Matabele warriors.
It was all done so swiftly that Jameson had to ride hard with his band of hastily assembled volunteers to catch them before they reached the frontier of the Charterland.
He had thirty-eight men with him, and when he saw the horsemen, Bazo turned back and with the massed warriors at his back he greeted Jameson.
'Sakubona, Daketela! I see you, Doctor! Fear not, by the king's orders no white man will be molested.'
But the volunteers bunched their horses, and there was the snick of breech blocks and the rattle of bolts as they loaded. Thirty-eight against five hundred, and they were jumpy and white-faced.
The little doctor spurred forward, and Ralph murmured to Sint John: 'By God, the man is a bantam cock, and he'll get us all into it yet.'
But Jameson showed no agitation as he stood in the stirrups and called: 'Men of Matabele, why have you crossed the border?'
'Hau, Daketela!'Bazo answered him with mock astonishment. 'What border is this you speak of? Surely this land, all of it, belongs to Lobengula. There are no borders.'
'The men you have slaughtered are under my protection.'
'The men we killed were Mashona,'Bazo replied scornfully. 'And the Mashona. are Lobengula's dogs, to kill or keep as he wishes.' i'm 'The cattle you have stolen belong to my people.'
'All the Mashona cattle belong to the king.'
Then Sint John shouted over him, 'Careful, Jameson, there is treachery here, watch those men on your left.'
Some of Bazo's men had pressed forward, the better to see and to hear. A few of them were armed with ancient Martini-Henry rifles, probably those with which Rhodes had paid the king for his concession.
