skills.
Ralph left Vicky to break the news of Cathy's death to her mother, gave Jon-Jon into Elizabeth's care and set off across the laager to find a member of the Siege Committee.
It was after dark when Ralph got back to the wagon. Surprisingly, there was a brittle air of festivity upon the town. Despite the terrible bereavements that most families had suffered, despite the threat of dark imp is gathering just beyond the walls of the laager, yet the cries of the children playing hide-and go-seek amongst the wagons, the merry notes of a concertina, the laughter of women and the cheerful blaze of the watch-fires might have been those of a picnic in happier times.
Elizabeth had bathed both Jonathan and Robert, so they glowed pinkly and smelled of carbolic soap, and now as they ate their dinner at the camp table, she was telling them a story that made their eyes big as marbles in the lamplight.
Ralph smiled his thanks at her, and summoned Harry Mellow with an inclination of his head.
The two men sauntered off on a seemingly casual circuit of the darkening laager. They walked with their heads close together, while Ralph told Harry quietly, 'The Siege Committee seem to be doing a good job. They have held a census of the laager already, and they reckon there are six hundred and thirty two women and children and nine hundred and fifteen men. The defence of the town seems to be on good footing, but nobody has yet thought of anything but defence. They were delighted to hear that their plight is known in Kimberley and Cape Town. I gave them the first news that they have had from outside the territory since the rising began 'Ralph drew on his cheroot 'and they seemed to think it was as good as a couple of regiments of cavalry on their way already. We both know that isn't so.' 'It will take months to get troops up here.' 'Jameson and his officers are on their way to England for trial, and Rhodes has been summoned to a court of inquiry.' Ralph shook his head. 'And there is worse news. The Mashona tribes have risen in concert with the Matabele.' 'Good God.' Harry stopped dead and seized Ralph's arm. 'The whole territory all at the same time? This thing has been carefully planned.' 'There has been heavy fighting in the Mazoe valley and in the Charter and Lornagundi districts around Fort Salisbury.' 'Ralph, how many have these savages murdered?' 'Nobody knows. There are hundreds of scattered farms and mines out there. We have to reckon on at least five hundred men, women and children dead.' They walked on in silence for a while. Once a sentry challenged them, but recognized Ralph.
'Heard you got through, Mr. Ballantyne are the soldiers coming?'
'Are the soldiers coming?' Ralph muttered, when they were past.
'That's what they all ask from the Siege Committee downwards.' They reached the far end of the laager and Ralph spoke quietly to the guard there.
'All right, Mr. Ballantyne, but keep your eyes open. Those murdering heathen are all over.' Ralph and Harry passed through the gateway into the town. It was utterly deserted. Everyone had been moved into the central laager. The thatch and daub shanties were dark and silent, and the two men walked down the centre of the broad dusty main street until the buildings petered out on either hand, they stopped and stood staring out into the scrubland. , 'Listen!' said Ralph. A jackal yipped down near the Umguza stream, and was answered from the shadows of the acacia forest out in the south.
'Jackal,'said Harry, but Ralph shook his head. 'Matabele!' 'Will they attack the town?' Ralph did not reply immediately. He was staring out into the veld, and he had something in his hands that he was teasing like a string of Greek worry beads. 'There are probably twenty thousand fighting bucks out there. They have got us bottled up here, and sooner or later, when they have massed their imp is and plucked up their courage, they will come. They will come long before the soldiers -can get here.' 'What are our chances?' Ralph wrapped the thing he held in his hand around one finger, and Harry saw it was a strip of drab fur. 'We have got four Maxim guns, but there are six hundred women and children, and out of the nine hundred men, half are not fit to hold a rifle. The best way to defend Bulawayo is not to sit in the laager and wait for them-' Ralph turned away and they went back along the silent street. 'They wanted me to join the Siege Committee, and I told them I did not like sieges.' 'What are you going to do, Ralph?' 'I am going to get together a small group of men. Those who know the tribe and the land, those who can shoot straight and talk Sindebele well enough to pass as natives and we are going to go out there in the Matopos Hills, or wherever else they are hiding, and we are going to start killing Matabele.' Isazi brought in fourteen men. They were all Zulus from the South, drivers and wagon-boys from the Zeederberg Company who had once worked for Rholands Transport, but had been stranded in Bulawayo by the rinderpest.
'I know you can drive an eighteen ox span,' Ralph nodded at the circle of their faces as they squatted around the fire passing the red tin of 'Wrights No. ! Best Snuff that Ralph had provided, from hand to hand. 'I also know that any one of you can eat his own weight in sadza maize porridge in one sitting, and wash it down with enough beer to stun a rhinoceros, but can you fight?' And Isazi answered for them all, using the patient tone usually reserved for an obtuse child.
'We are Zulu.' It was the only reply necessary. an Cheroot brought in six more, all of them Cape boys, with mixed Bushman and Hottentot blood, like Jan Cheroot himself.
'This one is named Grootboom, the big tree.' Ralph thought he looked more like a Kalahari Desert thorn bush dark, dry and thorny.
'He was a corporal in the Fifty-second Foot at Cape Town Fort. He is my nephew.' 'Why did he leave Cape Town?' Jan Cheroot looked pained.
'There was a dispute over a lady. A man had his gizzard slit. They accused my dear nephew of the bastardly deed.' 'Did he do it?' 'Of course he did. He is the best man with a knife that I know after me, 'Jan Cheroot declared modestly.
'Why do you want to kill Matabele?' Ralph asked him in Sindebele, and the Hottentot answered him fluently in the same language. 'It is work I understand and enjoy.' Ralph nodded and turned to the next man.
'It is possible that this one is even more closely related to me,' Jan Cheroot introduced him. 'His name is Taos, and his mother was a great beauty. She owned a famous shebeen at the foot of Signal Hill above Cape Town docks. At one time she and I were dear and intimate friends, but then the lady had many friends.' The prospective recruit had the flat nose and high cheekbones, the oriental eyes and the same waxen smooth skin as Jan Cheroot if he was one of Jan Cheroot's bastards and had spent his boyhood in Cape Town's notorious dock land then he should be a good man in a fight. Ralph nodded.
'Five shillings a day,' he said. 'And a free box to bury you in if the Matabele catch you.' Jameson had taken many hundreds of horses south with him, and the Matabele had swept the horses off the farms.
Maurice Gifford had already taken 160 mounted men down towards Gwanda to bring in any survivors who might be cut off on the outlying farms and mines, and still be holding out. While Captain George Grey had formed a troop of mounted infantry, 'Grey's Scouts', with most of the mounts that remained. The four mounts that Ralph had brought in with him were fine beasts, and he had managed to buy six more at exorbitant prices, 100 pounds for an animal that would have fetched 15 pounds on a good day at Kimberley market, but there were no others. He lay awake long after midnight under the wagon worrying about it while above him Robyn and Louise slept with the two girls and the children on the wagon truck under the canvas tent.
Ralph's eyes were closed, and a few feet away Harry Mellow was breathing deeply and regularly drowning out any small sounds. Yet even in his preoccupation, Ralph became aware of another presence near him in the darkness. He smelled it first, the taint of woodsmoke and cured animal furs and the odour of the fat with which a Matabele warrior anoints his body.
Ralph slipped his right hand up under the saddle he was using for a pillow, and his fingers touched the cheque red walnut butt of his Webley pistol.
'Henshaw,' whispered a voice he did not recognize, and Ralph whipped his left arm around a thick corded neck and at the same moment thrust the muzzle of the pistol into the man's body.
'Quickly,' he grated.. 'Who are you, before I kill you?' 'They told me you were quick and strong.' The man was speaking Sindebele.
'Now I believe it.' 'Who are you?' 'I have brought you good men and the promise of horses.' Neither of them had spoken above a whisper.
'Why do you come like a thief?' 'Because I am Matabele, the white men will kill me if they find me here. I have come to take you to these men.' Ralph released him carefully, and reached for his boots.
They left the laager and slipped through the silent deserted town.
Ralph had spoken only once more.
'You know that I will kill you if this is treachery.' 'I know it, 'replied the Matabele..
He was tall, as tall as Ralph but even heavier built, and once when he glanced back at Ralph the moonlight showed the silky sheen of scar tissue slashed across his cheek beneath his right eye.
In the yard of one of the last houses of the town, close to the open veld, yet screened from it by the wall that some house proud citizen had erected to protect his garden, there were twelve more Matabele amadoda waiting. Some of them wore fur kilts while others were dressed in ragged Western cast-offs.
'Who are these men?' Ralph demanded. 'Who
