The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 90

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He kicked his horse into a gallop, and dragging the spare mounts on the lead-rein behind him, took the track up the side of the kopje towards the camp.

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.

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