onto his chest again. 'They are big girls now. How old are they?' 'Eighteen.' She wrinkled her nose as his damp, curly chest hairs tickled it. 'But, ' 'Old maids, already.' 'My own sisters you wouldn't use them?'
'They never get to meet decent young men at Khami. Your mother frightens them all off.' 'You are awful, Ralph Ballantyne.' 'Would you like a demonstration of just how awful I can be?' She considered that for a moment, and then, 'Yes, please, 'she giggled softly. 'one day I will be riding with you,' Jonathan said. 'Won't I, Papa?' 'One day, soon,' Ralph agreed, and ruffled the child's dark curling head. 'Now I want you to take care of your mother while I am away, Jon-Jon.' Jonathan nodded, his face pale and set, the tears grimly restrained.
'Promise?' Ralph squeezed the small warm body that he held on his lap, and then he stooped from the saddle and stood the child beside Cathy, and Jonathan took her hand protectively, though he did not reach to her hip.
'I promise, Papa,' he said, and gulped, staring up at his father on the tall horse.
Ralph touched Cathy's cheek lightly with his fingertips. 41 love you,' she said softly.
'My beautiful Katie.' And it was true. The first yellow rays of sunlight in her hair turned it into a bright halo and she was serene as a madonna, in the deep fastness of their love.
Ralph spurred away, and Harry Mellow swung his horse in beside him. It was a fine red thoroughbred from Mr. Rhodes'private stable, and he rode like a plainsman. At the edge of the forest both men turned to look back. The woman and child still stood at the gate of the stockade.
'You are a lucky man,' Harry said softly.
'Without a good woman, there is no today, and without a son there is no tomorrow,' Ralph agreed. he vultures were still hunched in the tree-tops, although the bones of the lions had been picked clean and scattered across the stony ground of the ridge. They had to digest the contents of their bloated bellies before they could soar away, and their dark misshapen bodies against the clear winter sky guided Ralph and Harry the last few miles to the ridge of the Harkness claims.
'It looks promising,' Harry gave his guarded judgement that first night as they squatted beside the camp fire. 'The country rock is in contact with the reef You could have a reef that continues to real depth, and we have traced the strike for over two miles. Tomorrow I will mark out the spots where you must sink your prospect holes.'
'There are mineralized ore bodies right across this country,' Ralph told him. 'The continuation of the great gold crescent of the Witwatersrand and Pilgrims Rest and Toti gold fields curves right across here-' Ralph broke off. 'But you have the special gift, I have heard them say you can smell gold at fifty miles.' Harry dismissed the suggestion with a deprecating wave of his coffee mug, but Ralph went on, 'And I have the wagons and capital to grubstake a prospecting venture, and to develop the finds that are made. I like you, Harry, I think we would work well together, the Harkness Mine first, and after that, who knows, the whole bloody country, perhaps.' Harry started to speak, but Ralph put a hand on his forearm to stop him.
'This continent is a treasure chest. The Kimberley diamond fields and the Witwatersrand ban ket side by side, all the diamond and gold in the one bucket who would ever have believed it?' 'Ralph.' Harry shook his head. 'I have already thrown in my lot with Mr. Rhodes.' Ralph sighed, and stared into the flames of the fire for a full minute.
Then he relit the stump of his dead cheroot, and began to argue and cajole in his plausible and convincing way. An hour later as he rolled into his blanket, he repeated his offer.
'Under Rhodes you will never be your own man. You will always be a servant.' 'You work for Mr. Rhodes, Ralph.' 'I contract to him, Harry, but the profit or loss is mine. I still own my soul.' 'And I don't,' Harry chuckled.
'Come in with me, Harry. Find out what it feels like to bet your own cards, to calculate your own risks, to give the orders, instead of taking them. Life is all a game, Harry, and there' is only one way to play it, flat out.' 'I'm Rhodes' man.' 'When the time comes, then we will talk again,' Ralph said and pulled the blanket over his head.
Within minutes his breathing was slow and regular.
In the morning Harry marked the sites for the prospect bores with cairns of stone, and Ralph realized how cunningly he was quartering the extended line of the reef to pick it up again at depth. By noon Harry had finished, and as they up-saddled, Ralph made a swift calculation and realized it would be another two days before Cathy's twin sisters could arrive at the base camp from Khami Mission.
'Seeing that we have come so far, we should make a sweep out towards the east before turning back. God knows what we could find more gold, diamonds.' And when Harry hesitated, 'Mr. Rhodes will have gone on to Bulawayo already. He'll be holding court there for the next month at least, he won't even miss you.' Harry thought for a moment, then grinned like a schoolboy about to bunk his classes to raid the orchard. 'Let's go' he said.
They rode slowly, and at each river course they dismounted to pan the gravel from the bottom of the stagnant green pools. Wherever the bedrock outcropped above the overburden of earth, they broke off samples. They searched out the burrows of ant-bear and porcupine, and the nests of the swarming white termites to find what grains and chippings they had brought up from depth.
On the third day, Harry said, 'We've picked up a dozen likely shows of colour. I particularly liked those crystals of beryllium, they are a good pointer to emerald deposits.' Harry's enthusiasm had increased with each mile ridden, but now they had reached the end of the outward leg of their eastward sweep, and even Ralph realized that it was time to turn back. They had been out five days from the base camp, they had exhausted their coffee and sugar and meal, and Cathy would be anxious by now.
They took one last look at the country that they must leave unexplored for the time being.
'It's beautiful,' Harry murmured. 'I have never seen a more magnificent land. What is the name of that range of hills?' 'That's the southern end of the Matopos.' 'I have heard Mr. 'Rhodes speak of them. Aren't they the sacred hills of the Matabele?' Ralph nodded.
'If I believed in witchcraft-'he broke off and chuckled with embarrassment. 'There is something about those hills.' There was the first rosy flush of the sunset in the western sky, and it turned the smooth polished rock of those distant brooding hills to pink marble, while their crests were garlanded with fragile twists of cloud coloured by the softly slanting rays to ivory and ashes.
'There is a secret cave hidden in there where a witch who presided over the tribes used to live. My father took in a commando and destroyed her at the beginning of the war against Lobengula.' 'I have heard the story, it is one of the legends, already.' 'Well, it's true.
They say-' Ralph broke off and studied the tall and turreted range of rock with a thoughtful expression. 'Those are not clouds, Harry,' he said at last. 'That's smoke. Yet there are no kraals in the Matopos.
It could be a bush-fire, but I don't think so, it's not on a broad front.' 'Then where is the smoke coming from?' 'That is what we are going to find out,' Ralph replied, and before Harry could protest, he had started his horse, and was cantering across the plains of pale winter grass towards the high rampart of bare granite that blocked off the horizon.
Matabele warrior sat aloof from the men who swarmed about the earthen kilns. He sat in the A meagre shade of a twisted cripple-wood tree. He was lean, so that the rack of his ribs showed through the covering of elastic muscle under his cloak. His skin was burned by the sun to the deep midnight black of carved ebony, and it was glossed with health, like the coat of a race-trained thoroughbred, blemished only by the old healed gunshot wounds on his chest and back.
He wore a simple kilt and cloak of tanned leather, no feathers nor war rattles, no regimentals of fur nor plumes of marabou stork upon his bared head. He was unarmed, for the white men had made roaring bonfires of the long rawhide shields and carried away the broad silver assegais by the wagon-load, they had confiscated also the Martini-Henry rifles with which the Company had paid King Lobengula. for the concession to all the mineral wealth beneath this land.
On his head the warrior wore the head ring of the and una it was of gum and clay, woven permanently into his own hair and black and hard as iron. This badge of rank announced to the world that he had once been a councillor of Lobengula, the last king of the Matabele. The simple ring declared his royal bloodline, the Zanzi blood of the Kumalo tribe, running back pure and unbroken to old Zululand, a thousand miles and more away in the south.
Mzilikazi had been this man's grandfather, Mzilikazi who had defied the tyrant Chaka and led his people away towards the north.
Mzilikazi, the little chief who had slaughtered a million souls on that terrible northward march, and in the process had become a mighty emperor, as powerful and cruel as Chaka had ever been. Mzilikazi, his grandfather, who had finally brought his nation- to this rich and beautiful land, who had been the first to enter these magical hills and to listen to the myriad weird voices of the Umlimo, the Chosen One, the witch and oracle of the Matopos.
Lobengula, son of Mzilikazi, who ruled the Matabele after the old king's death, had been the young man's blood uncle. It was Lobengula who had granted him the honours of the and una head ring and appointed him commander of one of the elite fighting imp is But now Lobengula was dead, and the young and una impi had been blown to nothing by the
