'Come on, Dirk. ' Archy chuckled, as he held her easily with one arm
around her waist. Uncertainly Dirk hesitated at the door, no longer
grinning.
'Come on, man. I'll hold her.' With a sudden swing of his arm Archy
hurled the girl face down on the bed, then jumped across to keep her
mouth smothered in the pillow. 'Come on, Dirk, use this!' With his
free hand Archy unbuckled the wide belt he wore. The leather was
studded with blunt metal spikes.
'Double it over!'
'Hell's teeth, Arch-you reckon we should?' Dirk still hesitated, the
belt hanging limply from his hands.
'You scared, or something?' And Dirk's mouth hardened at the gibe. He
stepped forward and swung the belt in a full overarm stroke across the
wriggling body. Hazel froze at the sting of it and she gasped
explosively into the pillow.
'That's the stuff-hold on a second!' Archy hooked his thumb into the
thin fabric of her chemise and ripped it down from the shoulder-blades
to the hem. Her fat woman's buttocks bulged through, dimpled and
white. 'Now, give it hell!'
Again Dirk lifted the heavy doubled leather, he stood poised like that
while a sensation of giddy power buoyed him upwards to the level of the
gods, then he swung his body down into the next stroke.
'He's unopposed,' Ronny Pye murmured, and beside him Garrick Courtney
stirred uneasily.
'Have you heard him speak?' Ronny persisted.
'No.
'He wants to throw in Natal with that bunch of Dutchmen up in the Free
State and Transvaal.
'Yes, I know.'
'Do you agree with him?'
Garry was silent, he seemed to be engrossed with the antics of the
small herd of foals in the paddock in front of them as they chased each
other on legs that seemed to have too many joints, clumsy in their
fluffy baby coats.
'I'm sending twenty yearlings up to the show sales in
Pietermaritzburg--should average about four, five hundred a head
because they're all first-class animals. Be able to let you have a
sizeable payment on the bond. ' 'Don't worry about that now, Garry. I
didn't come out here looking for money. ' Ronny offered his
cigar-case, and when Garry refused he selected one himself and began
preparing it carefully. 'Do you agree with this idea of a Union?'
'No.
'Why not?' Ronny did not look up from his cigar, he did not want to
show his eagerness prematurely.
'I fought them-Leroux, Niemand, Botha, Smuts. I fought them-and we
won. Now they're sitting up there in Pretoria calmly plotting to take
over the whole country-not just the Free State and Transvaal, but Natal
and the Cape as well. Any Englishman who helps them is a traitor to
his King and his country.
He should be put against the wall and shot.
