leg! snarled Fergus. We're fighting for a new world. The commander opened his mouth to protest again and Fergus swung the revolver sideways, slashing the barrel into his face, snapping out the front teeth from his upper jaw, and crushing the lip into a red wet smear. The man dropped to his knees, and Fergus strode among his men. We'll siege the Brixton ridge now, and after that Johannesburg. By tonight, we'll have the red flag flying on every public building in town. Onward, comrades, nothing will stop us now. The Transvaal Scottish detrained at Dunswart Station that same morning to march in and seize the mining town of Benoni, which was under full control of the Action Committee's commandos, but the strikers were waiting for them.
The advancing troops were caught in flank and rear by the cross-fire from hundreds of prepared positions, and fought hard all that day to extricate themselves, but it was late afternoon when, still under sniping fire, they were able to retrain at Dunswart.
They carried with them three dead officers and nine dead other rankers. Another thirty were suffering from gunshot wounds, from which many would later die.
From one end to the other of the Witwatersrand, the strikers were on the rampage. The Action Committee controlled that great complex of mining towns and mining properties that follows the sweep of the gold-bearing reef across the bleak African veld, sixty miles from Krugersdorp to Ventersdorp, with the city of Johannesburg at its centre.
it is the richest gold-bearing formation yet discovered by man, a glittering treasure house, the foundation stone of the prosperity of a nation, and now the strikers carried the red flag across it at will, and at every point the force of law and order reeled back.
Every police commander was loath to initiate fire, and every constable loath to act upon the order when it did come. They were firing upon friends, countrymen, brothers.
In the cellars of the Fordsburg Trade Union Hall they were holding a kangaroo court; a traitor was on trial for his life.
Harry Fisher's huge bulk was clad now in a military style bushjacket, with buttoned patch-pockets, over which he wore a bandolier of ammunition. On his right arm was a plain band of red cloth, but his unkempt black hair was uncovered, and his eyes were fierce.
His desk was a packing case, and Helena MacDonald stood behind his stool. She had cropped her hair as short as a man's, and she wore breeches tucked into her boots, and the red irmband on her tunic. Her face was pale and gaunt, her eyes in deep plum-coloured sockets were invisible in the bad light, but her body was tensed with the nervous energy of a leashed greyhound with the smell of the hare in its nostrils.
The accused was a storekeeper of the town, with pale watery eyes behind the steel-rimmed spectacles which he blinked rapidly as he watched his accuser. He asked to be connected with police headquarters in Marshall Square! Just a minute, Helena interrupted. You are on the local telephone exchange, is that right? Yes, that's right. I am Exchange Supervisor! The woman looked like a schoolteacher, iron-haired, neatly dressed, unsmiling. Go on. I thought I'd better listen in, you know, see what he was up to. The storekeeper was wringing white bony hands, and chewing nervously on his lower lip. He looked at least sixty years old with the pale silver fluff of hair standing up comically from his bald pink pate. Well, when he started giving them the details of what was happening here, I broke the connection. What exactly did he say? Fisher demanded. He said that there was a machine gun here. He said that? Fisher's expression was thunderous. He transferred his glare to the storekeeper, and the man quailed.
My boy is in the police, he's my only boy, he whispered, and then blinked back the tears from the pale eyes. That's as good as a confession, said Helena coldly, and Fisher glanced over his shoulder at her and nodded.
Take him out and shoot him, he said.
The light delivery van bumped along the overgrown track and stopped beside the old abandoned No. 1 shaft on the Crown Mine's property. It had not been used for twelve years, and concrete machinery slabs and the collar of the shaft were thick with rank grass that grew out of the cracks in the concrete and covered the rusted machinery.
Two men dragged the storekeeper to the dilapidated barbed-wire fence that protected the dark black hole of the shaft. No. 1 shaft was fifteen hundred feet deep, but had flooded back to the five-hundred-foot level. The warning notices on the barbed-wire fence were embellished with the skull and cross-bones device.
Helena MacDonald stayed at the wheel of the delivery van. She lit a cigarette and stared ahead, waiting without visible emotion for the executioner's shot.
The minutes passed, while the cigarette burned down between her fingers, and she snapped impatiently when one of the armed strikers came to the side window of the van. What's keeping you? Begging your pardon, missus, neither of us can do it. What do you mean? Helena demanded. Well, the man dropped his eyes. Old Cohen's been selling me my groceries for ten years now. He always gives the kids a candy bar when they go in -With an impatient exclamation, Helena opened the van door and stepped out. Give me your revolver, she said, and as she strode to where the second striker guarded the old storekeeper she checked the load and spun the chamber of the pistol.
Cohen started to smile, a mild ingratiating smile as he peered at her face myopically, then he saw her expression and the pistol in her hand.
He dropped to his knees, and he began to urinate in terrified spurts down the front of his baggy grey flannel trousers.
When Helena parked the van in the street behind the market buildings, she was aware immediately of a new charge of excitement in the air. The men at the sandbagged windows called out to her, Your old man's back, missus. He's down in the cellar with the boss! Fergus looked up from the large-scale map of the East Rand over which he and Harry Fisher were poring. She hardly recognized him.
He was sooty and grimed as a chimney sweep, and his eyelashes had been burned away, giving him a bland startled look. His eyes were bloodshot and there were little wet beads of dirty mucus in the corners.
Hello, luv, he grinned wearily at her. What are you doing here, comrade? she demanded. You are supposed to be at Brixton ridge.
Harry Fisher intervened, Fergus has taken the ridge.
He's done fine work, really fine work. But now we have been granted a stroke of really good fortune What is it? Helena demanded. Slim jannie Smuts is on his way from Cape Town. That's bad news, Helena contradicted coolly. He's coming by road, and he's got no escort with him, Harry Fisher explained. Like a lover, right into our arms, grinned Fergus, and spread his own arms wide. There were dark splotches of dried blood on his sleeves.
