'I might have to go as far north as the Shashi river,' Zouga snapped sarcastically, and Pickering nodded in agreement.
'Yes, you might.'
Zouga smiled thinly at the memory of his first lesson in digger labour relations, and now he settled his hat firmly and gathered up his reins.
'All right,' he muttered, 'let's go recruiting!' And he put his heels into the gelding's flanks and went lunging up the bank of the ravine onto the open plain.
The tribesmen were five hundred yards dead ahead, and he counted swiftly: sixteen of them, If he could take them all he could start back for New Rush in tomorrow's dawn. Sixteen men were sufficient to work the Devil's Own, and at that moment they had, for Zouga, the same value as a fifty-carat diamond. They were in single file, moving swiftly, the trotting gait of the fighting impis of Zulu, no women or children with them.
'Good,' grunted Zouga as the gelding stretched out under him, and he held him back in an easy canter as he glanced right.
Jan Cheroot was tearing across the plain, Jordan plugging along in his dust fifty strides behind. At this distance Jordan did not look like a child; they might have been a pair of armed riders, and Jan Cheroot was swinging wide, trying to get behind the little group of men, pinning them before they scattered, pinning them long enough for Zouga to get within hail.
Zouga glanced left and scowled as he saw that Ralph was at full gallop, leaning low over his horse's neck, brandishing the Martini-Henry rifle, and Zouga hoped it was still unloaded, wished that he had specially ordered Ralph not to show the rifle, and yet even in that moment of anger he experienced a little prickle of pride as he watched his son ride; the boy was born to the saddle.
Zouga checked the gelding again, bringing him down to a trot, giving his flank men time to complete the circle, and at the same time trying to reduce the dramatic effect of his approach. He knew that they would appear to the tribesmen to be an armed commando, their intentions warlike, and he tried to soften this by lifting his hat and waving it over his head.
Then suddenly Jan Cheroot was reining in, gesturing to Jordan to do the same. They had got behind the band, and opposite them, facing them across the wide circle, Ralph was wheeling his filly and bringing her up sharply on her hind legs, rearing and shaking out her mane theatrically.
In the centre the tribesmen had moved swiftly, and with the concerted action of trained fighting men.
They had dropped the rolled bundles of sleeping-mat, cooking-pot and leather grain bag that they had been carrying on their heads, and they had bunched into a defensive circle shoulder to shoulder, war shield overlapping war shield, while above them the steel of their assegais flicked little pinpricks of sunlight.
They did not wear the full regalia of their fighting regiments, the kilts of monkey tails, the cloaks of desert fox furs, the tall headdress of ostrich and widow-bird feathers they were travelling with weapons only; but the shields they presented to the approaching horseman and the glint of steel told Zouga all he wanted to know. The shields gave the tribe its name, the Matabele, the people of the long shields.
The little group of men who stood impassively in the sunlight and watched Zouga ride up were the finest warriors that Africa had ever spawned. Yet they were almost five hundred miles south of the borders of Matabeleland.
'I set for a covey of partridge,' Zouga smiled to himself, 'and I have trapped a brood of eagles.'
A hundred yards from the ring of shields, Zouga reined in; but the gelding, infected by the tension, fidgeted under him.
The long shields were made of dappled black and white oxhide, every regiment of the Matabele carried a distinctive shield.
Zouga knew that black dappled with white was the regimental colour of the Inyati, the Buffaloes Regiment, and again he felt a twist of nostalgia.
Once the induna who commanded the Inyati had been a friend; they had travelled together across the mimosaclad plains of Matabeleland; they had hunted together and shared the comfort of the same camp fires.
It was all so long ago, on his first visit to the land below the Zambezi river, but Zouga was carried back so vividly that it required an effort of will to shake off the memory.
He lifted his right hand, fingers spread in the universal gesture of goodwill.
'Warriors of Matabele, I see you,' he called to them, speaking their language as fluently as one of them, the words returning to his tongue readily.
He saw the small stir behind the war-shields, the shift of heads with which they greeted his words.
'Jordan!' Zouga called, and the child circled out and reined in his pony at Zouga's side. Now the difference in size between man and boy was apparent.
'See, warriors of King Lobengula, my son rides with me.' No man took his children to war. The ring of shields sank a few inches so Zouga could see the dark and watchful eyes of the men behind them; but as Zouga pushed the gelding a few paces forward, the shields were immediately lifted again defensively.
'What news of Gandang, induna of the Inyati Regiment, Gandang who is as my brother?' Zouga called again persuasively.
At the mention of the name one of the warriors could no longer contain himself, swept aside his shield and stepped from the ring of spears.
'Who calls Gandang brother?' he demanded in a clear firm voice, a young voice, yet with the timbre and inflection of one used to authority.
'I am Bakela, the Fist,' Zouga gave his Matabele name, and he realized that the warrior facing him was still a youth, barely older than Ralph. But he was lean and straight, narrow in the hips and with muscle in the shoulder and arms built up in the games of war. Zouga guessed he had probably already killed his man, washed his spear in blood.
