have you been? I have waited so long for you to come home.' Juba set down the heavy load she carried balanced on her head, and came lumbering to meet her.

'Nomusa!' She was weeping as she hugged Robyn to her. Great fat oily tears slid down her cheeks and mingled with the sweat and mud on Robyn's face.

'Stop crying, you silly girl,' Robyn scolded her lovingly. 'You will make me start. just look at you! How skinny you are, we will have to feed you up! And who is this?' The black' boy dressed only in a soiled loincloth came forward shyly.

'This is my grandson, Tungata Zebiwe.' 'I did not recognize him, he has grown so big.' 'Nomusa, I have brought him to you so that you can teach him to read and to write.' 'Well, the first thing we will have to do is give him a civilized name. We shall call him Gideon and forget that horrible vengeful name.' 'Gideon,' Juba repeated. 'Gideon Kumalo. And you will teach him to write?' 'We have a lot of work to do first,' Robyn said firmly. 'Gideon can go into the mud puddle with the other children and you can help me pack the moulds. We have to start all over, Juba, and build it all up from the beginning again.' 'I admire the grandeur and loneliness of the Matopos, and therefore I desire to be buried in the Matopos on the hill which I used to visit and which I called the 'View of the World' in a square to be cut in the rock on the top of the hill and covered with a plain brass plate with these words thereon. 'Here lie the remains of CECIL JOHN RHODES'.' So when at last the pumping of his diseased heart ceased, he came to Bulawayo once more along the railroad that Ralph Ballantyne had laid. The special saloon coach in which his coffin rode was draped with purple and black, and at each town and siding along the way, those whom he had called 'my Rhodesians' brought wreaths to pile upon the casket. From Bulawayo the coffin was taken on a gun carriage into the Matopos Hills and the pure black bullocks that drew it plodded slowly up the rounded egg-shaped dome of granite that he had chosen.

Above the open sepulchre stood a tripod gantry, with block and chain at the peak, and around it a dense throng of humanity. elegant gentlemen, uniformed officers, and ladies with black ribbons on their hats. Then, farther out, there stretched a vast black sea of half-naked Matabele, twenty thousand come to see him go down into the earth. At their head were the indunas who had met him near this same hill to treat for peace. There were Gandang and Babiaan and Somabula, all of them very old men now.

Gathered at the head of the grave were the men who had replaced them in real power, the administrators of the Charter Company, Milton and Lawley, and the members of the first Rhodesian Council. Ralph Ballantyne was amongst them with his young wife beside him.

Ralph's expression remained grave and tragic as the coffin was lowered on its chains into the gaping tomb, and the bishop read aloud the obituary that Mr. Rudyard Kipling had composed. 'It is his will that he look forth Across the world he won, The granite of the ancient north, Great spaces washed with sun. There shall he patient take his seat (As when the death he dared) And there await a people's feet In the paths that he prepared.' As the heavy brass plaque was lowered into position, Gandang stepped out of the ranks of, the Matabele, and lifted one hand.

'The father is dead,' he cried, and then in a single blast of sound, like the thunder of a tropical storm, the Matabele nation gave the salute they had never given to a white man before.

'Bayete!' they shouted as one man. 'Bayete!' The salute to a king.

The funeral crowds dispersed, slowly, seemingly reluctantly. The Matabele drifted away like smoke amongst the valleys of their sacred hills, and the white folk followed the path down the face of the granite dome. Ralph helped Elizabeth over the uneven footing, and he smiled down at her.

'The man was a rogue, and you weep for him,' he teased her gently.

'It was all so moving,' Elizabeth dabbed at her eyes. 'When Gandang did that-2

'Yes. He fooled them all, even those he led into captivity. Damn me, but it's a good thing they buried him in solid rock and put a lid on him, or he would have squared the devil and got out of it at the last moment.' Ralph turned her out of the stream of people, of mourners who were following the path.

'I told Isazi to bring the carriage round to the back of the hill, we don't want to be caught in the crush.' Under their feet the. granite was painted a vivid orange with lichen, and the little blue-headed lizards scuttled for cover in the crevices and then glared at them with their throats throbbing and the cockscomb crests of the monstrous heads fully erect. Ralph paused on the lower slope of the dome, where a twisted and deformed rusasa tree had found precarious purchase in one of the crevices and he looked back up at the peak.

'So he's dead at long last, but his Company still governs US. I have work to do yet, work that may take the rest of my life Then abruptly and uncharacteristically, Ralph shivered, although the sun was blazing hot.

'What is it, my dear?' Elizabeth turned to him with quick concern.

'Nothing,' he said. 'Perhaps I just walked over my own grave.'

Then he chuckled. 'We'd best go down now before Jon-Jon drives poor Isazi completely out of his mind.' He took her arm and led her down to where Isazi had parked the carriage in the shade, and from a hundred paces they picked up the piping of Jonathan's questions and speculations, each punctuated with a demanding. 'Uthini, Isazi? What do you say, Isazi?' And the patient reply. 'Eh-heh, Bawu. Yes, yes, little Gadfly.'

PART TWO.

The Land-Rover turned off the black-topped road, and as soon as it hit the dirt track, the pale dust boiled out from under its back wheels. It was an elderly vehicle, the desert-coloured paintwork was scored and scratched by thorn and branch down to the bare metal. Rock and sharp shale had bitten chunks of rubber out of the heavily lugged tyres.

The doors and the top were off and the cracked windshield lay flat on the bonnet, so that the wind swept over the two men in the front seat. Behind their heads stood the gun-rack. The forks, lined with foam rubber, held a formidable battery of weapons. two semi-automatic FN rifles, sprayed with dun and green camouflage paint, a short 9mm Uzi submachine-gun with the extra long magazine clipped on ready for instant use, and, still in its canvas slip-cover, a heavy Colt Sauer 'Grand African' whose.458 magnum cartridge could knock a bull elephant off its feet. From the uprights of the gun-rack dangled haversacks containing spare clips and magazines, and a damp canvas water bottle

They swung harmoniously with each jolt and lurch of the Land-Rover.

Craig Mellow drove with his foot jamming the accelerator to the floorboards. Though the vehicle's body clattered and banged loosely, he had always serviced and tuned the engine himself, and the speedometer needle pressed against the stop pin at the end of the dial.

There is only one way to go into an ambush, and that is flat out. Get through it as fast as possible, remembering always that they usually laid it out at least half a kilo metre deep. Even at 150 K's an hour, that meant receiving fire for twelve seconds. In that time a good man with an AK 47 can get off three magazines of thirty rounds each.

Yes, the way to go in was fast but, of course, a land mine was a beast of an entirely different colour. When they boosted one of those sweethearts with ten kilos of plastic, it kicked you and your vehicle fifty feet in the air and shot your spine out through the top of your skull. So although Craig lounged comfortably on the hard leather seat, his eyes scoured the road ahead. This late in the day there had been traffic through ahead Of him, and he drove for the diamond tracks -in the dust, but he watched for an extraneous tuft of grass, an old cigarette packet or even a pat of dried cow-dung that could conceal the marks of a dig in the road. Of course, this close to Bulawayo he was in more danger from a drunken driver than from terrorist activity, but it was wise to nurture the habit.

Craig glanced sideways at his passenger, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The man swivelled in his seat and reached into the cool box in the back. He brought out two cans of Lion beer with the dew on them, and while he did so, Craig flicked his attention back to the road.

Craig Mellow was twenty-nine years old, although the floppy thatch of dark hair blowing all over his forehead, the innocent candour of his hazel eyes, and the vulnerable slant to his wide gentle mouth gave him the air of a small boy who expects to be unjustly reprimanded at any moment. He still wore the embroidered green shoulder flashes of a ranger in the Department of Wildlife and Nature Conservation on his khaki bush- shirt.

Beside him Samson Kumalo pulled the tabs off the beer cans. He wore the same uniform, but he was a tall Matabele with a deep intelligent forehead and a hard smood-shaven lantern jaw. He ducked as a spurt of froth flew from the cans, and then handed one of them to Craig and kept one for himself. Craig saluted him with his can and swigged a mouthful, then licked the white moustache from his upper lip, and put the Land-Rover to the twisting road up the Khami hills.

Before they reached the crest, Craig dropped the empty can into the plastic trash-bag that hung from the dash, and slowed the Land-Rover, looking for the turn-off.

Tall yellow grass hid the small faded sign.

KHAMI ANGLICAN MISSION Staff Cottages. No through road.

It was at least a year since Craig had last driven this road and he almost missed it.

'Here it is!' Samson warned him, and he swung sharply onto the secondary track. It jinked through the forest, then came abruptly to the long straight avenue of spathodea

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