As he rode, he thought once more that perhaps he should have listened to Aaron Fagan, perhaps he should have recruited a dozen other horsemen in Kimberley to go with him. But he knew that he would never have been able to abide the few hours that he would have needed to find good men. As it was, he had left Kimberley less than half an hour after he had received the telegraph from Toti just long enough to fetch his Winchester, fill the saddlebags with ammunition, and take the horses from Aaron's stables to the shunting-yard.
Before he turned the angle of the hill, he glanced back over his shoulder. The locomotive was already huffing back along the curve of the rails towards the south. Now, as far as he knew, he might be the only white man left alive in Matabeleland.
Ralph galloped into the camp. They had been there already. The camp had been looted, Jonathan's tent had collapsed, his clothing was scattered and trampled into the dust. 'Cathy,' Ralph shouted, as he dismounted. 'Jon-Jon! Where are you?' Paper rustled under his feet and Ralph looked down. Cathy's portfolio of drawings had been thrown down and had burst open, the paintings of which she was so proud were torn and crumpled. Ralph picked up one of them, it was of the lovely dark scarlet trumpet flowers of Kigeha africana, the African sausage tree. He tried to smooth out the rumpled sheet, and then realized the futility of that gesture.
He ran on to their living-tent, and ripped open the flap. Cathy lay on her back with her unborn child beside her. She had promised Ralph a daughter and she had kept her promise.
He fell on his knee beside her, and tried to lift her head, but her body had set into an awful rigidity, she was stiff as a carven statue in marble. As he lifted her, he saw the great cup-shaped depression in the back of her skull.
Ralph backed away, and then flung himself out of the tent.
'Jonathan,' he screamed. 'Jon-Jon! Where are you?' He ran through the camp like a madman. 'Jonathan! Please, Jonathan!' When he found no living thing, he stumbled into the forest up onto the slope of the kopie.
'Jonathan! It's Daddy. Where are you, my darling?' Dimly in his anguish he realized that his cries might bring the amadoda, as the bleat of the goat brings the leopard, and suddenly he wanted that to happen with all his soul.
'Come!' he yelled into the silent forest. 'Come on. Come and find me also!' And he stopped to fire the Winchester into the air, and listen to the echoes go bounding away down the valley.
At last he could run and scream no more, and he came up panting against the hole of one of the forest trees. 'Jonathan,' he croaked.
'Where are you, my baby?' Slowly he turned down and went down the hill.
He moved like a very old man.
At the edge of the camp, he stopped and peered shortsightedly at something that lay in the grass, then he stopped and picked it up. He turned it over and over in his hands, and then balled it into his fist.
His knuckles turned white with the strength of his grip. What he held was a headband of softly tanned mole-skin.
Still holding the scrap of fur in his hand, he went into the camp to prepare his dead for burial.
Robyn St. John woke to the soft scratching on the shutter of her bedroom, and she raised herself on one elbow.
'Who is it? 'she called. 'It is me, Nomusa.' 'Juba, my little Dove, I did not expect you!' Robyn slipped out of bed and crossed to the window. When she opened the shutter, the night was opalescent with moonlight, and Juba was huddled below the sill.
'You are so cold.' Robyn took her arm. 'You'll catch your death.
Come inside immediately. I'll fetch a blanket.' 'Nomusa, wait. 'Juba caught her wrist. 'I must go.' 'But you have only just arrived.'
'Nobody must know that I was here, please tell nobody, Nomusa.' 'What is it? You are shaking-' 'Listen, Nomusa. I could not leave you you are my mother and sister and friend, I could not leave you.' 'Juba-' 'Do not speak. Listen for a minute, 'Juba pleaded. 'I have so little time.' It was only then that Robyn realized that it was not the chill of night that shook Juba's vast frame. She was racked with sobs of fear and of dread.
'You must go, Nomusa. You and Elizabeth and the baby. Take nothing with you, leave this very minute. Go into Bulawayo, perhaps -you will be safe there. It is your best chance.' 'I don't understand you, Juba. What nonsense is this?' 'They are coming Nomusa. They are coming. Please hurry.
Then she was gone. She moved swiftly and silently for such a big woman, and she seemed to melt into the moon shadows under the spathodea trees. By the time Robyn had found her shawl and run down the veranda, there was no sign of her.
Robyn hurried down towards the hospital bungalows, stumbling once on the verge of the path, calling with increasing exasperation.
'Juba, come back here! Do you hear me? I won't stand any more of this nonsense!' She stopped at the church, uncertain which path to take.
'Juba! Where are you?' The silence was broken only by the yipping of a jackal up on the hillside above the Mission. It' was answered by another on the peak of the pass where the road to Bulawayo crossed the hills.
'Juba!' The watch-fire by the hospital bungalow had burned out.
She crossed to it, and threw on to it a log from the woodpile. The silence was unnatural. The log caught and flared. In its light she climbed the steps of the nearest bungalow.
The sleeping-mats of the patients were in two rows, facing each other down each wall, but they were deserted. Even the most desperately ill had gone. They must have been carried away, for some of them had been past walking.
Robyn hugged the shawl around her shoulders. 'Poor ignorant heathen,' she said aloud. 'Another witchcraft scare, they will run from their own shadows.'. She turned sorrowfully away, and walked through the darkness back towards the house. There was a light burning in Elizabeth's room, and as Robyn climbed the steps of the veranda, the door opened.
'Mama! Is that you?' 'What are you doing, Elizabeth?' 'I thought I heard voices.' Robyn hesitated, she did not want to alarm Elizabeth, but then she was a sensible child, and unlikely to go into hysteria over a bit of Matabele superstition.
'Juba was here. There must be another witchcraft scare. She ran off again.' 'What did she say?' 'Oh, just that we should go in to Bulawayo to escape some sort of danger.' Elizabeth came out onto the veranda in her nightdress, carrying the candle.
'Juba is a Christian, she doesn't dabble in witchcraft.'
Elizabeth's tone was concerned. 'What else did she say?' 'Just that,' Robyn yawned. 'I'm going back to bed.' She started along the veranda, and then stopped. 'Oh, the others have all run off. The hospital is empty. It's most annoying.' 'Mama, I think we should do as Juba says.'
'What do you mean by that?' 'I think we should go in to Bulawayo immediately.' 'Elizabeth, I thought better of you.' 'I have an awful feeling. I think we should go. Perhaps there is real danger.' 'This is my home. Your father and I built it with our own hands. There is no power on earth that will force me to leave it,' Robyn said firmly.
'Now go back to bed. With no help, we are going to have a busy day tomorrow.' They squatted in long silent ranks in the long grass below the crest of the hills. Gandang moved quietly down the ranks, stopping occasionally to exchange a word with an old comrade in arms. To revive a memory of another waiting before a battle of long ago.
It was strange to sit upon the bare earth during the waiting time.
In the old days they would have sat on their shields, the long dappled shields of iron-hard oxhide, squatting upon them not for comfort but to hide their distinctive shape from a watchful enemy until the moment came to strike terror into his belly and steel into his heart, squatting upon them also to prevent some young buck in the throes of the divine madness from prematurely drumming upon the rawhide with his assegai and giving warning of the waiting impi.
It was strange also not to be decked out in the full regimentals of the Inyati impi, the plumes and furs and tassels of cow-tails, the war rattles at ankle and wrist, the tall headdress that turned a man into a giant. They were dressed like neophytes, like un blooded boys, with only their kilts about their waists, but the scars upon their dark bodies and the fire in their eyes gave the lie to that impression.
Gandang felt himself choking with a pride that he once thought he would never experience again. He loved them, he loved their fierceness and their valour, and though his face was quiet and expressionless, the love shone through in his eyes.
They picked it up and gave it back to him a hundred times.
'Babo!' they called him in their soft deep voices. 'Father, we thought we would never fight at your shoulder again,' they said. 'Father, those of your sons who die today will be forever young.' Across the neck of the hills a jackal wailed mournfully and was answered from close at hand. The impi was in position, lying across the Khami hills like a coiled mamba, waiting and watchful and ready.
There was a glow in the sky now. The false dawn, that would be followed by the deeper darkness before the true dawn. The deep darkness that the amadoda loved and used so well.
They stirred quietly, and grounded the shaft of assegai between their heels, ready for the order. 'Up my children. It is the time of the spears.' This time the order did not come, and the true dawn flushed
