See, there are the marks of my fire, this is my camp.
The smile went out of Sean's voice. Look around you, Boer, there is the whole of Africa. Take your pick, anywhere except where I am sitting. But this is my place. Jan Paulus flushed a little. I always camp at the same place when I return along a spoor.
The whole temper of their meeting had changed in a few seconds. Jan Paulus stood abruptly and went to his horse. He stooped and tightened the girth, hauling so savagely on the strap that the animal staggered off balance.
He flung himself onto its back and looked down at Sean.
move your wagons he said, I camp here tonight. Would you like to bet on that! Sean asked grimly.
We'll see! Jan Paulus flashed back.
We certainly shall, agreed Sean.
The Boer wheeled his horse and rode away. Sean watched his back disappear among the trees and only then did he let his anger slip. He rampaged through the laager working himself into a fury, pacing out frustrated circles, stopping now and then to glare out in the direction from which the Boer's wagons would come, but under all the external signs of indignation was his unholy anticipation of a fight. Kandhla brought him food, hurrying along behind him with the plate. Sean waved him away impatiently and continued his pugnacious patrol. At last a trek whip popped in the distance and an ox lowed faintly, to be answered immediately by Sean's cattle. The dogs started barking and Sean crossed to one of the wagons on the north side of the laager and leaned against it with assumed nonchalance. The long line of wagons wound out of the trees towards him. There were bright blobs of colour on the high box seat of the lead wagon.
Women's dresses! Ordinarily they would have made Sean's nostrils flare like those of a stud stallion, but now his whole attention was concentrated on the larger of the two outriders. Ian Paulus cantered ahead of his father, and Sean, with his fists clenched into bony hammers at his sides, watched him come. Jan Paulus sat straight in the saddle; he stopped his horse a dozen paces from Sean and shoved his hat onto the back of his head with a thumb as thick and as brown as a fried sausage; he tickled his horse a little with his spurs to make it dance and he asked with mock surprise, What, Rooi Nek, still here?
Sean's dogs had rushed forward to meet the other pack and now they milled about in a restrained frenzy of mutual bottom-smelling, stiff-limbed with tension, backs abristle and legs cocking in the formal act of urination. Why don't you go and climb a tree? You'll feel more at home there, Sean suggested mildly. Oh! so? Jan Paulus reared in his stirrups. He kicked loose his right foot, swung it back over his horse's rump to dismount and Sean jumped at him. The horse skittered nervously, throwing the Boer off balance and he clutched at the saddle. Sean reached up, took a double handful of his ginger beard and leaned back on it with all his weight.
Jan Paulus came over backwards with his arms windmilling, his foot caught in the stirrup and he hung suspended like a hammock, held at one end to the plunging horse and at the other by his chin to Sean's hands. Sean dug his heels in, revelling in the Boer's bellows.
Galvanized into action by Sean's example, the dogs cut short the ceremony and went at each other in a snarling snapping shambles; the fur flew like sand in a Kalahari dust- storm.
The stirrup-leather snapped; Sean fell backwards and rolled to his feet just in time to meet Ian Paulus's charge.
He smothered the punch that the Boer bowled overarm at him, but the power behind it shocked him; then they were chest to chest and Sean felt his own strength matched. They strained silently with their beards touching and their eyes inches apart. Sean shifted his weight quickly and tried for a fall, but smoothly as a dancer Jan Paulus met and held him. Then it was his turn; he twisted in Sean's arms and Sean sobbed with the effort required to stop him. Oupa Leroux joined in by driving his horse at them, scattering the dogs, his hippo-hide sjambok hissing as he swung it. Let it stand! you thunders, give over, hey! Enough, let it stand! Sean shouted with pain as the lash cut across his back and at the next stroke Jan Paulus howled as loudly. They let go of each other and massaging their whip-weals retreated before the skinny old white-beard on the horse.
The first of the wagons had come up now and two hundred pounds of woman, all in one package, called out from the box seat, Why did you stop them, Oupa? No sense in letting them kill each other. Shame on you, so you must spoil the boys fun. Don't you remember how you loved to fight? Or are you now so old you forget the pleasures of your youth? Leave them alone!
Oupa. hesitated, swinging the sjamhok and looking from Sean to Jan Paulus. Come away from there, you old busybody, his wife ordered him. She was solid as a granite kopje, her blouse packed full of bosom and her bare arms brown and thick as a man's. The wide brim of her bonnet shaded her face but Sean could see it was pink and pudding-shaped, the kind of face that smiles more easily than it frowns. There were two girls on the seat beside her but there was no time to look at them. Oupa had pulled his horse out of the way and Jan Paulus was moving down on him. Sean went up on his toes, crouching a little, preoccupied with the taste he had just had of the other's strength, watching Jan Paulus close in for the mAin course and not too certain he was going to be able to chew this mouthful.
Jan Paulus tested Sean with a long right-hander but Sean rolled his head with it and the thick pad of his beard cushioned the blow; he hooked Jan Paulus in the ribs under. his raised arm and Jan Paulus grunted and circled awayForgetting his scruples, Oupa Leroux watched them with rising delight. It was going to be a good fight. They were well matched, both big men, under thirty, quick and smooth on their feet. Both had fought before and that often; you could tell it by the way they felt each other out turning just out of reach, moving in to offer an opening that a less experienced man might have attempted and regretted, then dropping back.
The fluid, almost leisurely pattern of movement exploded. Jan Paulus jumped in, moving left, changed direction like the recoil of a whip lash and used his right hand again; Sean ducked under it and laid himself open to Jan Paulus's left. He staggered back from its kick, bleeding where it had split the flesh across his cheek-bone, and Jan Paulus followed him eagerly, Ins hands held ready, searching for the opening. Sean kept clear, instinct moving his feet until the blackness faded inside his head and he felt the strength in his arms again. He saw Jan Paulus following him and he let his legs stay rubbery; he dropped his hands and waited for Jan Paulus to commit himself. Too late Jan Paulus caught the cunning in Sean's eyes and tried to break from the trap, but clenched bone raked his face. He staggered away and now he was bleeding also.
They fought through the wagons with the advantage changing hands a dozen times. They came together and used their heads and their knees, they broke and used their fists again. Then locked chest to chest once more they rolled down the steep bank into the river bed of the Limpopo. They fought in the soft sand and it held their legs, it filled their mouths when they fell and clung like white icing-sugar to their hair and beards. They splashed into one of the pools and they fought in the water, coughing with the agony of it in their lungs, floundering like a pair of bull hippos, their movements slowing down until they knelt facing each other, no longer able to rise, the water running from them and the only sound their gasping for air.
Not sure whether the darkness was actuality or a fantasy of fatigue, for the sun had set by the time they were finished, Sean watched Jan Paulus starting to puke, retching with a tearing noise to bring up a small splash of yellow bile. Sean crawled to the edge of the pool and lay with his face in the sand. There were voices echoing in his ears and the light of a lantern, the light was red filtered through the blood that had trickled into his eyes.
His servants lifted him and he hardly felt them. The light and the voices faded into blackness as he slipped over the edge of consciousness.
The sting of iodine woke him and he struggled to sit up but hands pushed him down. Gently, gently, the fight is over. Sean focused his one eye to find the voice. The pinkness of Ouma Leroux hung over him. Her hands touched his face and the antiseptic stung him again. He exclaimed through puffed lips. So! just like a man OumA chuckled. Your head nearly knocked off without a murmur but one touch of medicine and you cry like a baby. Sean ran his tongue round inside his mouth; one tooth loose but all the others miraculously present. He started to lift his hand to touch his closed eye but Ouma slapped it down impatiently and went on working over him. Glory, what a fight! She shook her head happily. You were good, kerel, - you were very good. Sean looked beyond her and saw the girl. She was standing in shadow, a silhouette against the pale canvas. She was holding a basin. Ouma turned and dipped the cloth in it, washing out the blood before she came back to his face. The wagon rocked under her weight and the lantern that hung from the roof swung, lighting the girl's face from the side. Sean's legs straightened on his cot and he moved his head slightly to see her better. Be still, jong, Ouma commanded. Sean looked past her at the girl at the full serene line of her lips and the curve of her cheek. He saw the pile of her hair fluff up in happy disarray and then, suddenly, penitent, slide down behind her neck, curl over her shoulder and hang to her waist in a plait as thick as his wrist. Katrina, do you expect me to reach right across to the basin each time? Stand closer, girl She stepped into the light and looked at Sean. Green, laughing almost bubbling green was the colour of her eyes. Then she dropped them to the basin. Sean stared at her, not wanting to miss the moment when she would look up again.
My big bear, Ouma spoke with grudging approval.
Steal our camp site, fight my son and ogle my
