and some sheep. See here! The small wagon has returned towards the colony, but the four great wagons have gone on into the wilderness.'
'Whose wagons are these?' Koots asked him.
'In all the colony there are few burghers rich enough to boast five wagons. One of those is Klebe, the father of Somoya.'
'I do not understand.' Koots shook his head.
Goffel explained: 'It seems that while Bakkat and Somoya led us on a chase through the mountains, Klebe came here to the Gariep with these wagons. When Somoya had stolen our horses and knew we could follow him no further, he came back here to meet his father.'
'What of the small wagon that went back towards the colony?' Koots wanted to know.
Xhia shrugged. 'Perhaps after he had given the great wagons to his son, Klebe returned to the Cape.' Xhia touched the wheel marks with his toe. 'See how deeply the wheels have bitten into the earth. They are heavily laden with goods.'
'How does Xhia know all this?' Koots demanded.
'Because I am Xhia, with eyes like the moon, that sees all.'
'That means the little bastard is guessing.' Koots lifted his hat and wiped the sweat from his balding pate.
'If we follow the wagons Xhia will give you proof,' Goffel suggested. 'Or if he does not, you will shoot him and save yourself the cattle you promised him.'
Koots replaced his hat. Despite his forbidding expression he felt more confident of eventual success than at any time since they had left the colony.
It is plain to see that they are carrying much cargo, Koots thought. It may be that those wagons are worth almost as much as the bounty money itself. He looked towards the heat- shimmering horizon where the tracks led. Out there, there is no civilized law. Head money or cargoes, one way or the other I smell a sweet profit in this.
He dismounted and inspected the wagon tracks more closely, giving himself time to think. 'How long since the wagons passed this way?'
Goffel referred the question to Xhia.
'Some months. It is not possible to say more than that. But wagons travel slowly, while horsemen travel fast.'
Koots nodded to Goffel. 'Good, very good! Tell him to follow, and find proof of who these wagons belong to.'
They found proof a hundred leagues further and twelve days later. They came to a place where one of the wagons had run into an ant bear hole and been badly damaged. A number of the spokes in one of the front wheels had been shattered. The travellers had camped for some days at the site of the accident, making repairs to the wagon. They had whittled and shaved new spokes, and discarded the damaged ones.
Xhia retrieved one of the broken pieces from where it had been thrown into the grass. He cackled with triumph. 'Did not Xhia tell you this truth and that truth? Did you believe him? No! You did not believe him, you stupid white maggot.' He brandished the broken spar. 'Know now, once and for all time, white man, that Xhia sees all and knows all.' He brought the fragment of the spoke to Koots and showed him the design that had been burnt into the wood with a branding iron. 'Do you know this picture?' he demanded.
Koots grinned wolfishly and nodded with recognition.
It was the stylized picture of a cannon, a long nine-pounder on its carriage. In the ribbon below it were the letters CBTC. Koots had seen the same design on the flag that flew above the go down at High Weald, and on the pediment above the front wall of the main building. He knew that the initials stood for Courtney Brothers Trading Company.
He called his troopers and showed them the fragment of wood. They passed it from hand to hand. They all knew the design. The entire population of the colony was less than three thousand souls, and within its boundaries everyone knew everything about everyone else. After Governor van de Witten himself, the Courtney brothers were the richest, most influential men in the colony. Their coat-of-arms was almost as well known as that of the VOC. The brothers emblazoned it on all their possessions, their buildings, ships, wagons. It was the seal they used on their documents and the brand on their horses and livestock. There was no longer any doubt of the identity of the wagon train they were following.
Koots looked over his band, and picked out Richter. He tossed him the broken spoke. 'Corporal, do you know what that is you are holding?'
'Yes, Captain, sir. It's a wheel spoke.'
'No, Corporal!' Koots told him. That is thousands of guilders in gold coin in your hand.' He looked from the two white faces, Oudeman and Richter's, to the yellow and chocolate ones of Xhia and Goffel and the other Hottentots. 'Do any of you still want to go home? Unlike that miserable bastard Le Riche, this time I will let you take your horse when
you leave. The reward money is not all that we will win. There are four wagons also, and a herd of domestic animals. Even Xhia will win more than the six head of cattle I promised him. The rest of you? Do any of you want to go home, yes or no
They grinned at each other, like a pack of wild hunting dogs with the smell of a wounded quarry in their nostrils, and shook their heads.
'Then there is the girl. Would any of you black bastards like to play with a white girl with golden hair?'
They burst into laughter at the suggestion, lewd and loud.
'I must apologize, but one of you will not have that pleasure.' He looked them over thoughtfully. There was one Hottentot trooper whom he would be pleased to see the back of. His name was Minna, and he had a squint. This gave him a sly, villainous expression, which Koots had realized reflected accurately his true nature. Minna had sulked and whined ever since leaving the colony, and he was the only one of the troop who was exhibiting no enthusiasm for following the tracks of Jim Courtney's wagons.
'Minna, you and I are brothers of the warrior blood,' Koots placed his arm around the man's shoulders, 'so it grieves me sorely that we must part. However, I need a good man and true to carry a message back to Colonel Keyser at the castle. I have to let him know of the success of our expedition. You, my dear and stalwart Minna, are the man for that job. I shall ask the colonel to reward you handsomely. Who knows? You may have some gold braid upon your sleeve, and gold in your pocket from this day's work.'
Koots hunched over his grubby notebook for almost an hour as he composed the message. He knew that Minna was illiterate. After extolling his own achievements in the conduct of the expedition the final paragraph of his report to Colonel Keyser read, 'The trooper who carries this message, Johannes Minna, lacks any soldierly virtues. It is my respectful recommendation that he be stripped of rank and privilege and discharged from the Company service without benefit of pension.'
And that, he thought, with satisfaction, when he folded the message, takes care of any obligation I might have to share the bounty with Minna when I bring Jim Courtney's head back to the colony. 'You have only to follow the wagon tracks, and they will lead you back to the Cape of Good Hope,' he told Minna. 'Xhia says it is less than ten days' ride.' He handed the message and the broken wagon spoke to Minna. 'Give these both to Colonel Keyser in person.'
Minna leered and went with alacrity to saddle his horse. He could hardly believe his good fortune in escaping this dreadful journey, and being offered a reward for doing so.
The days sped by much faster than the slow turning of the wagon wheels. It seemed that the hours were too short for them to enjoy in full measure all the wonders they saw, or to savour the adventures, great and small, that they encountered each day. Were it not for the journal that Louisa kept with such dedication they would soon have lost track of those golden days. She had to nag at Jim to keep his promise to his father. He made the solar observations of their position only when she insisted that he do so, and she recorded the results.
Jim was more reliable with the gold pans and he tested the sands of every river they crossed for the precious metal. On many occasions he found a bright yellow tail of metallic dust around the rim of the pan, but his excitement was short-lived when he tested it with hydrochloric acid from the gold-finder's chest, and the yellow metal bubbled and dissolved. 'Iron pyrites! Fool's gold!' he told Louisa bitterly. 'How old Humbert would laugh at me as a dupe.' But the disappointment and bitterness did not last long, and within hours Jim's enthusiasm would have fully regenerated. His boyish optimism was one of the things Louisa found endearing about him.
Jim looked for signs of other human presence, but there was little evidence of this. Once they found the tracks of wagon wheels preserved in the sterile crust of a salt pan, but Bakkat declared them to be very old indeed. Bakkat's concept of the passage of time was different from that of the European mind, so Jim pressed him further. 'How old is very old, Bakkat?'
'These tracks were made before you were born, Somoya,' he told Jim. 'The man whose wagon made them is probably dead of old age.'
There were other, fresher signs of human existence. These were of Bakkat's own people. Wherever they found a rock shelter or cave in the side of a hill or kopje, there were usually whimsical, vividly coloured paintings decorating the rock walls, and fairly recent hearths on which charcoal fragments showed how the little people had cooked their quarry, and discarded the bones on the midden piles nearby. Bakkat was able to recognize which clans of the tribe had passed this way by the symbols and styles of the
