Did she give you any castor oil? Sean asked bitterly.
I m sorry about that Duff smiled at him sympathetically. I tried to dissuade her, truly I did. She's a very motherly person. Most concerned about your stomachYou still haven't answered my question. Did you make any progress with the claims? Oh that -, Duff pulled the blankets up under his chin. We disposed of that early on in the proceedings. She'll take a down payment of ten pounds each on them and give us an option to buy the lot at any time during the next two years for ten thousand. We arranged that over dinner. The rest of the time was devoted, in a manner of speaking, to shaking hands over the deal. Tomorrow afternoon, or rather this afternoon, you and I'll ride across to Pretoria and get a lawyer to write up an agreement for her to sign. But right now I need some sleep. Wake me at lunch time. Goodnight, laddie. Duff and Sean brought the agreement back from Pretoria the following evening. It was an impressive four-page document full of in so much as and party of the first part. Candy led them to her bedroom and they sat around anxiously while she read it through twice.
She looked up at last and said, That seems all right but there is just one other thing. Sean's heart sank and even Duff's smile was strained. It had all been too easy so far.
Candy hesitated and Sean saw with faint surprise that she was blushing. It was a pleasant thing to see the peach of her cheeks turning to ripe apple and they watched it with interest, their tension lessening perceptibly. I want the mine named after me.
They nearly shouted with relief. An excellent idea! How about the Rautenbach Reef Mine? Candy shook her head. I'd rather not he reminded of him, we'll leave him out of it Very well, let's call it the Candy Deep. A little premature, I suppose, as we are still at ground level, but pessimism never pays, suggested Duff. Yes, that's lovely, Candy enthused, flushing again but this time with pleasure. She scrawled her name across the bottom of the document while Sean fired out the cork of the champagne which Duff had bought in Pretoria. They clinked glasses and Duff gave the toast To Candy and the Candy Deep, may one grow sweeter and the other deeper with each passing day. We'll need labour, about ten natives to start with. That'll be your problem, Duff told Sean. It was the following morning and they were eating breakfast in front of the tent. Sean nodded but didn't try to answer until he had swallowed his mouthful of bacon. I'll get Mbejane onto that right away. He'll be able to get us Zulus, even if he has to drive them here with a spear at their backs. Good, in the meantime you and I'll ride back to Pretoria again to buy the basic equipment. Picks, shovels, dynamite and the like. Duff wiped his mouth and filled his coffee cup. I'll show you how to start moving -the overburden and stacking the ore in a dump. We'll pick a site for the mill and then I'll leave you to get on with it while I head south for the Cape to see my farmer friend. God and. the weather permitting ours will be the second mill working on these fields. They brought their purchases back from Pretoria in a small ox wagon. Mbejane had done his work well. There were a dozen Zulus lined up for Sean's approval next to the tent with Mbejane standing guard over them like a cheerful sheepdog. Sean walked down the line stopping to ask each man his name and joke with him in his own language. He came to the last in the line. How are you called? My name is Blubi, Nkosi. Sean pointed at the man's well-rounded paunch bulging out above his loincloth. If you come to work for me, we'll soon have you delivered of your child They burst out in delighted laughter and Sean smiled at them affectionately: proud simple people, tall and bigmuscled, completely defenceless against a well-timed jest. Through his mind flashed the picture of a hill in Zululand, a battlefield below it and the flies crawling in the pit of an empty stomach. He shut the picture out quickly and shouted above their laughter. So be it then, sixpence a day and all the food you can eat. Will you sign on to work for me? They chorused their assent and climbed up onto the back of the wagon. Sean and Duff took them out to the candy Deep and they laughed and chattered like children going on a picnic.
it took another week for Duff to instruct Sean in the use of dynamite, to explain how he wanted the first trenches dug and to mark out the site for the mill and the dump. They moved the tent up to the mine and worked twelve hours every day. At night they rode down to Candy's Hotel to eat a full meal and then Sean rode Home alone. He was so tired by evening that he hardly envied Duff the comfort of Candy's bedroom; instead he found himself admiring Duff's stamina Each morning he looked for signs of fatigue in his partner but, although his face was lean and punt as ever, his eyes were just as clear and his lopsided smile just as cheerful. How you do it beats me, Sean told him the day they finished marking out the mill site.
Duff winked at him. Years of practice, laddie, but between you and me the ride down to the Cape Will be a welcome rest!
When are you going? Sean asked. Quite frankly I think that every day I stay on here increases the risk of someone else getting in before us.
Mining machinery is going to be at a premium from now on. You have got things well in hand now... What do you say? I was starting to think along the same lines, Sean agreed. They walked back to the tent and sat down in the camp chairs, from where they could look down the length of the valley. The week before about two dozen wagons had been outspanned around Candy's Hotel, but now there were at least two hundred and from where they sat they could count another eight or nine encampments, some even larger than the one around Candy's place.
Wood and iron buildings were beginning to replace the canvas tents and the whole veld was crisscrossed with rough roads along which mounted men and wagons moved without apparent purpose.
The restless movement, the dust clouds raised by the passage of men and beasts, and the occasional deep crump, crump of dynamite firing in the workings along the Banket, all heightened the air of excitement, of almost breathless expectancy that hung over the whole goldfleld.
I'll leave at first light tomorrow, Duff decided. Ten days, riding to the railhead at Colesberg and another four days by train will get me there. With luck I'll be back under two months. He wriggled round in his chair and looked directly at Sean. After paying Candy her two hundred pounds and with what I spent in Pretoria I've only got about a hundred and fifty left. Once I get to Paarl I'll have to pay out three or four hundred for the Mill, then I'll need to hire twenty or thirty wagons to bring it up here, say eight hundred pounds altogether to be on the safe side. Sean looked at him. He had known this men a few short weeks. Eight hundred was the average man's earnings for three years. Africa was a big land, a man could disappear easily. Sean loosened his belt and dropped it onto the table; he unbuttoned the money pouch.
Give me a hand to count it out, he told Duff. Thanks, said Duff and he was not talking about the money. With trust asked for so simply and given so spontaneously the last reservations in their friendship shrivelled and died.
When Duff had gone Sean drove himself and his men without mercy. They stripped the overburden off the Reef and exposed it across the whole length of the Candy claims, then they broke it up and started stacking it next to the mill site. The dump grew bigger with every twelve-hour day worked. There was still no trace of the Leader Reef but Sean found little time to worry about that. At night he climbed into bed and slept away his fatigue until another morning called him back to the workings. On Sundays he rode across to Francois's tent and they talked mining and medicines. Francois had an enormous chest of patent medicines and a book titled The Home Physician. His health was his hobby and he was treating himself for three major ailments simultaneously. Although he was occasionally unfaithful, his true love was sugar diabetes.
The page in The Home Physician which covered this subject was limp and grubby from the touch of his fingers.
He could recite the symptoms from memory and he had all of them. His other favourite was tuberculosis of the bone; this moved around his body with alarming rapidity taking only a week to leave his hip and reach his wrist.
Despite his failing health, however, he was an expert on mining and Sean picked his brain shamelessly. Francois's sugar diabetes did not prevent him from sharing a bottle of brandy with Sean on Sunday evenings. Sean kept away from Candy's Hotel, that shiny blonde hair and peach skin would have been too much temptation. He couldn't trust himself not to wreck his new friendship with Duff by another importunate affair, so instead he sweated away his energy in the trenches of the Candy Deep.
Every morning he set his Zulus a task for the day, always just a little more than the day before. They sang as they worked and it was very seldom that the task was not complete by nightfall. The days blurred into each other and turned to weeks which quadrupled like breeding amoebae and became months. Sean began to imagine Duff giving the Capetown girls a whirl with his eight hundred pounds. One evening he rode south for miles along the Cape road, stopping to question every traveller he met and when he finally gave up and returned to the goldfields he went straight to one of the canteens to look for a fight. He found a big, yellow-haired German miner to oblige him. They went outside and for an hour they battered each other beneath a crisp Transvaal night sky surrounded by a ring of delighted spectators. Then he and the German went back into the canteen, shook each others bleeding hands, drank a vow of friendship together and Sean returned to the Candy Deep with his devil exorcized for the time being The next afternoon Sean was working near the north boundary of the claims, at this point they had burrowed down about fifteen feet to keep contact with the reef.
Sean had just finished marking the shot holes for the next blast and the Zulus were standing around him taking snuff and spitting on their hands before attacking the rock once more.
