life like, Jock?'
'You know what they call an optimist here? 'Jock asked.
'It's somebody who believes that things can't get any worse.' He bellowed with laughter and slapped his bare hairy thigh. 'No. I'm kidding. It's not too bad. As long as you don't expect the old standards, if you keep your mouth shut and stay away from politics, you can still live a good life probably as good as. anywhere in the world.'
'The big farmers andlanchers how are they doing?'
'They are the elite. The government has come to its senses. They've dropped all that crap about nationalizing the land. They've come to face the fact that if they are going to feed the black masses, then they need the white farmers. They are becoming quite proud of them: when they get a state visitor a communist Chinese or a Libyan minister they give him a tour of white farms; to show him how good things are looking.' 'What about the price of land?'
'At the end of the war, when the blacks first took over and were shouting about taking the farms and handing them over to the masses, you couldn't give the land away.' jock gargled with his whisky. 'Take your family company for instance, Rholands Ranching Company that includes all three spreads: King's Lynn, Queen's Lynn and that big piece of country up in the north bordering the Chizarira Game Reserve your uncle Douglas sold the whole damned shooting match for quarter of a million dollars.
Before the war he could have asked ten million.'
'Quarter of a million.' Craig was shocked. 'He gave it I , away.
'That included all the stock prize Afrikander bulls and breeding cows, the lot,' Jock related with relish. 'You see, he had to get out.
He had been a member of Smith's cabinet from the beginning and he knew that he would have been a marked man once the black government took over. He sold out to a Swiss-German consortium, and they paid him in Zurich. Old Dougie took his family, and went to Aussie. Of course, he already had a few million outside the country, so he could buy himself a nice little cattle station up in Queensland. It's us poor buggers with every.
thing we have tied up here that had to stay.'
'Have another drink,' Craig offered, and then steered Jock back to Rholands Ranching.
'What did the consortium do with Rholands?'
'Cunning bloody Krauts!' Jock was slurring a little by now. 'They took all the stock, bribed somebody in government to give them an export permit and shipped them over the border to South Africa. I hear they sold for almost a million and a half down there. Remember, they were the very top breeding-stock, champions of champions. So they cleared over a million, and then they repatriated their profit in gold shares and made another couple of million.'
'They stripped the ranches and now they have abandoned them?' Craig asked, and Jock nodded weightily.
'They're trying to sell the company, of course. I've got it on my books but it would take a pile of capital to restock the ranches and get them going again. Nobody is interested. Who wants to bring money into a country which is tottering on the brink? Answer me thad'
'What is the asking price for the company?' Craig enquired airily, and Jock Daniels sobered miraculously, and fastened Craig with a beady auctioneer's eye.
'You wouldn't be interested?' And his eye became beadier. 'Did you really make a million dollars out of that book?'
'What are they asking?' Craig repeated.
'Two million. That's why I haven't found a buyer. Lots of the local boys would love to get their paws on that grazing but two million. Who the hell has that kind of money in this country-' 'Supposing they could be paid in Zurich, would that make a difference to the price?' Craig asked.
'Do a Shana's armpits stink! 'How much difference?'
'They might take a million in Zdrich.'
'A quarter of a million?'
'No ways, never not in ten thousand years,' jock shook his head emphatically.
'Telephone them. Tell them the ranches are over-run with squatters, and it would cause a political boo, ha to try and move them now. Tell them they are running goats on the grazing, and in a* ear's time it will be a desert. Point 'y out they will be 'getting their original investment out intact. Tell them the government has threatened to seize all land owned by absentee landlords. They could lose the lot.'
'All that is true,' jock grumped. 'But a quarter of a million! You are wasting my time.'
'Phone them.'
'Who pays for the call?'
'I do. You can't lose, Jock.' Jock sighed with resignation. 'All right, I'll call them.'
'When?'
'Friday today no point in calling until Monday.'
'All right, in the meantime can you get me a few cans of gas? 'Craig asked.
'What do you wants gas for?'
'I'm going up to the Chizarira. I haven't been up there for ten years. If I'm going to buy it, I'd like to look at it again.'
'I wouldn't do that, Craig. That's bandit country.' IThe polite term is political dissidents.'
'They are Matabele bandits,' Jock said heavily, land they'll either shoot your arse full of more holes than you can use, or they will kidnap you for ransom or both.'
'You get me some gas and I'll take the chance. I'll be back early next week to hear what your pals in Zurich have to say about the offer.' t was marvelous country, still wild and untouched no fences, no cultivated lands, no buildings protected from the influx of cattle and peasant farmers by the tsetse-fly belt which ran up from the Zambezi valley into the forests along the escarpment.
On the one side it was bounded by the Chizarira Game Reserve and on the other by the Mzolo Forest Reserve, both of which areas were vast reservoirs of wildlife. During the depression of the 1930s, old Bawu had chosen the country with care and paid sixpence an acre for it. One hundred thousand acres for two thousand five hundred rids. 'Of course, it will never be cattle country,' he told pou Craig once, as they camped under the wild fig trees beside a deep green pool of the Chizarira river and watched the sand-grouse come slanting down on quick wings across the Ac setting sun to land on the sugar-white sandbank beneath the far bank. 'The grazing is sour, and the tsetse will kill anything you try to rear here but for that reason it will always be an unspoiled piece of old Africa.' The old man had used it as a shooting lodge and a retreat. He had never strung barbed, wire nor built even a shack on the ground, preferring to sleep on the bare earth under the spreading branches of the wild fig.
Very selectively Bawu had hunted here elephant and lion and rhinoceros and buffalo only the dangerous game, but he had jealously protected them from other rifles, even his own sons and grandsons had been denied hunting rights.
'It's my own little private paradise,' he told Craig, 'and I'm selfish enough to keep it like that.' Craig doubted that the track through to the pools had been used since he and the old man had last been here together ten years before. It was totally overgrown, elephant had pushed mopani trees down like primitive road-blocks, and heavy rains had washed it out.
'Eat your heart out, Mr. Avis,' said Craig, and put the sturdy little Volkswagen to it.
However, the front-wheel drive vehicle was light enough and nippy enough to negotiate even the most unfriendly dry river-beds, although Craig had to corduroy the sandy bottoms with branches to give it purchase in the fine sand. He lost the nick half a dozen times, and only found it after laboriotaly casting ahead on foot.
He hit one antlbear hole and had to jack up the front end to get out, and half the time he was finding ways around the elephant road-blocks. In the end he had to leave the Volkswagen and cover the last few miles on foot.
He reached the pools in the last limmering of daylight.
He curled up in the single blanket that he had filched from the motel, and slept through without dreaming or stirring, to wake in the ruddy magic of an African dawn.
He ate cold, baked beans out of the can and brewed coffee, then he left his pack and blanket under the wild figs and went down along the bank of the river.
On foot he could cover only a tiny portion of the wide wedge of wild country that spread over a hundred thousand acres, but the Chizarira river was the heart and artery of it.
What he found here would allow him to judge what changes there had been since his last visit.
Almost immediately he realized that there were still plenty of the more common varieties of wildlife in the forest: the big, spooky, spiral-homed kudu went bounding away, flicking their fluffy white tails, and graceful little impala drifted like roseate smoke amongst the trees. Then he found signs of the rarer animals. First, the fresh pug marks of a leopard in the clay at the water's edge where the cat had drunk during the night, and then, the elongated teardrop-shaped spoor and grape like droppings of the magnificent sable antelope.
For his lunch he ate slices of dried sausage which he cut with his clasp-knife and sucked lumps of tart white cream of tartar from the pods of the baobab tree. When he moved on he came to an extensive stand of dense wild ebony bush, and followed one of the narrow twisting game trails into it. He had gone only a hundred paces when he came on a small clearing in the midst of the thicket of interwoven
