'Boy, you wouldn't be running a ringer, would you!
'Fess up now.' Lennox looked sternly into Ralph's eyes, and Ralph dropped them.
'You don't want to go up before the Diggers' Committee, do you?
The shame you would bring on your daddy.
It might break his heart.'
it might not break Zouga Ballantyne's heart, but it would certainly break Ralph's head.
Miserably Ralph shook his head. 'Very well then, mister Lennox. It's Inkosikazi, she grew a new leg. I thought I'd get better odds, but, I'll withdraw her now. I'll go tell mister Cohen I lied.'
Barry Lennox leaned so close that his lips touched Ralph's ear and the smell of fine old cognac on his breath almost overpowered him.
'You don't do anything so stupid, Ralph, my lad. You fight your fancy, and if she wins there will be a special treat for you. That's a promise. Barry Lennox will, see you right, and then some. Now, if you will excuse me, I've got some business to attend to.' Lennox twirled his cane and drove a wedge into the crowd with his bowfronted belly.
Chaim Cohen climbed up onto the disselboom of the nearest wagon to the arena and began chalking up the draw on a greenruled board, and the bookmakers craned for the matchings and then began calling their odds for each bout.
'Threes on mister Gladstone in the first.'
'Dreadnought even money. Buttercup fives in the second.'
Ralph waited as bout after bout was drawn, and each time that Inkosikazi's name was omitted his nerves stretched tighter. There were only ten bouts, and mister Cohen had finished chalking the ninth already.
'Bout number 10,' he called as he wrote. 'This is a biblical match, gentlemen and ladies, a diamondiferous bout straight out of the Old Testament.' Chaim Cohen used the adjective 'diamondiferous' to describe anything from a thoroughbred horse to a fifteen-year-old whisky. 'A pure diamondiferous match, the one and only, the great and deadly, Goliath!' There was a burst of applause and whistles of approval. Goliath was the champion spider of the diamond fields, with twelve straight kills to her credit. 'Matched against your favourite is a pretty little newcomer, Salome!'
The name was greeted with indifference as the punters scrambled to get money onto the champion.
'I'm giving tens on Salome,' called one desperate bookie as he tried to stem the flow of wagers. They were taking Goliath at odds on, and Ralph shared his distress.
Leaden-footed he traipsed back to the alleyway.
Kamuza had heard the draw announced.
'Give us back the sixteen queens,' he greeted Ralph; but the demand stung Bazo: 'Inkosikazi will drink her blood 'The other is a giant 'Inkosikazi is quick, fast as a mamba, brave as a honey badger.'
Bazo chose the most fearless and indomitable fighters of the veld as comparisons for his fancy.
They argued while the sudden roar of voices from the Square signalled the beginning of the first bout, and the squeals of the ladies told that the kill had been swiftly made.
They argued fiercely, Bazo becoming so agitated that he could no longer sit still. He leapt up and began to giya, the challenge dance of the Matabele warrior preparing for battle.
'Thus Inkosikazi sprang, and thus she drove her assegai into the chest of Nelo,'Bazo shouted, as he imitated the death stroke of his fancy; but the Matabele always found difficulty in pronouncing the letter 'R', and the Roman Emperor's was mutilated in the recounting of the battle.
'You must decide,' Ralph broke in on his heroics, and Bazo abruptly ended his giya and looked at Kamuza.
In matters of money Kamuza was without question the leader of the group, just as Bazo was in all else.
'Henshaw,' Kamuza asked gravely. 'Are you risking your four queens against this monster?'
'Inkosikazi is risking her life,' Ralph replied, without hesitation. 'And I am risking my money for her.'
'So be it, then. We will follow you.'
There were only minutes left before the tenth bout of the afternoon. Already Chaim Cohen was upending his schooner of beer and, considerably refreshed, wiping the froth from his whiskers. At any moment he would climb back onto the wagon and call for the handlers to bring their fighters to the arena for the final bout.
Ralph still had five sovereigns to place.
'You said twelves,' he argued desperately with the ferret-eyed bookmaker in the flowing Ascot tie.
'if you are betting your own fancy, then it's tens.'
'That's welshing.'
'Life is all a welsh,' the bookie shrugged. 'Take it or leave it.'
'All right, I'll take it.' Ralph snatched the slip and pushed towards the circle of wagons, and once again found his way blocked by the grand belly of Barry Lennox.
'Are you betting her yourself?'
'With everything I've got, sir.'
'That's all I wanted to know, Ralph me boy.' And he strode to the nearest bookmaker, pulling his purse from his hip pocket just as Chaim Cohen crowed from his perch on the wagon.
