gloom and the hiss of it like the sound of a goose's wing. Zouga rolled again flipping his body aside.
But the butt of the shotgun caught him.
It was only a touch, high in the shoulder, but it jerked his head so that his teeth clashed in his skull, and his right arm was instantly nerveless, numb from his shoulder to fingertips. The Colt revolver went flying from his grip, spinning away across the kitchen floor until it hit the far wall.
Instantly Hendrick turned to chase the pistol, and Zouga kicked out at the back of his knee, landing solidly with the heel of his boot.
Hendrick's leg folded under the blow, and he would have gone down but the wall was there to hold him. He fell against it, pinned for a moment by his crippled leg, and Zouga rolled to his feet.
He stabbed with his good left hand, feeling the solid shock of the Griqua's jawbone under his fist. Then again Zouga caught him with the left and heard the gristle in the beaky nose give with a crunch like chewing on a ripe apple, and the fresh blood from Hendrick's nostrils gave him a fierce joy.
He was going to beat this man to a bleeding pulp.
'Wait!' Hendrick shouted. 'Please! Don't hit me again.'
The appeal was so frantic, the terror on the Griqua's bloody face so pitiful, that even in his own cold killing anger, Zouga checked.
He stepped back and lowered his hands, and the Griqua hurled the empty shotgun at Zouga's face. It was completely unexpected, Zouga was off-guard, and even as he started to duck, Zouga knew it was too late, and he hated himself for a fool.
It felt as though somebody had slammed a door behind Zouga's eyes, and his vision was suddenly narrowed and dimmed with blood. He hurled himself forward, and dived again for the revolver. He got a hand on the barrel, and as he touched it the full weight of Hendrick's charging body crashed into his back, driving him into a heap against the doorjamb. But he still had a grip on the pistol barrel, and he struck out blindly using it like a club.
He felt the steel butt sock into flesh, and he hit again and again, some of the blows dying in the air, others thudding into the floor, but others cracking against bone.
He was sobbing and panting, blinded by his own blood, and for seconds he did not realize that Hendrick no longer clutched and tore at him.
Zouga shrank back against the wall and wiped the blood from his eyes. Then he peered like an old man through the red film. Hendrick was beside him. He was on his back, his arms flung wide as a crucifix and the blood snored and bubbled from his nostrils. He lay very still, his breathing the only sign of life.
Zouga lowered the pistol, and used the wall to hoist himself to his feet. He stood there swaying, his head hanging, the pistol dangling from his hand that was suddenly so weak that he could barely support its weight.
'Master Zouga!' Jan Cheroot dashed into the yard, panting from his run, carrying the Lee-Enfield rifle at high port across his chest, sweat streaking down from under his brimless pillbox infantry cap and his face crumpling with dismay as he saw Zouga's bloody torn face.
'You took your time,' Zouga accused him huskily, still clinging to the door for support. He had left Jan Cheroot with the rifle hidden in a ravine half a mile out across the dusty plain.
'I started running as soon as I heard the shots.'
Zouga realized that the fight had lasted only a few minutes, as long as it takes a man to run half a mile.
Jan Cheroot unslung the water bottle from his shoulder and tried to wash a little of the blood from Zouga's face.
'Leave that.' Zouga pulled away brusquely. 'See if there is a rope in the Bastaard's saddle bags, something to tie him, a knee halter, anything.'
There was a coil of braided rawhide rope on the pommel of the grey mare's saddle. Jan Cheroot hurried back with it and then paused in the door of the derelict shanty.
'I know him.' He stared at Hendrick Naaiman's bloody snoring face. 'I think I know him, but you made such a mess of him.'
'Tie him,' Zouga whispered, and drank from the water bottle. Then he unwound the silk scarf from around his throat and wetted it from the bottle before tenderly wiping away the blood and dust from his cuts and scratches.
The worst injury was in his hairline, where the breech of the broken shotgun had caught him; by the feel of it, it needed to be stitched.
Jan Cheroot was muttering insults and abuse at Hendrick Naaiman as he worked.
'You yellow snake.' He rolled the Griqua onto his back. 'You got shoes on your feet and pants covering your black arse, and you think you are a gentleman.'
He pulled Hendrick's arms up behind him and trussed them, quickly and expertly, at wrist and elbow.
'You'd give a vulture a bad name.' Jan Cheroot looped the rawhide around his ankles and pulled it up tight.
'Even the hyenas wouldn't eat dung alongside of you, my beauty.'
Zouga capped the water bottle and picked up the empty tobacco bag.
Then he hunted for the diamonds.
They had been kicked and scattered about the kitchen.
The eighth and last was the green dragon, dark and inconspicuous In one gloomy corner.
Zouga tossed the bag to Jan Cheroot, and he whistled as he peered into it.
IDB,' he muttered, his wrinkled brown face puckering into a sculpture of pure avarice. 'The yellow snake was
