Sunset at Sheba (19 page)

The sky was already saffron yellow in the east when Polly woke up, drenched with dew. To her surprise, she found she had both blankets over her, and she felt round in sudden terror for Sammy. Then she saw him sitting behind one of the rocky krantzes, holding the Mauser, his eyes calm with the bland blankness of a dog in the sun, the same controlled fatalistic expression on his face that she’d seen often on the faces of the backveld Kaffirs, unmoved and faintly touched with boredom.

She sat up, turning eagerly towards him, then she remembered with horror the events of the previous evening, the picture of the big raw-boned ginger man spread-eagled against the plain, teetering backwards, and finally crashing to the rocks, the red stain spreading across his smashed chest, and she drew her feet up under her and pulled the blankets tighter round her, staring at Sammy, sick and confused.

Sammy had opened the Mauser now and was cleaning it. As she watched, still in the blankets, she saw him pick up the bullets, wipe them on his shirt and reinsert them. Then he laid the weapon down, wiping the barrel carefully.

As he picked up the Henry, he saw her staring at him. ‘Dirty rifle’s dangerous,’ he commented. ‘Kicks like a mule. Might even burst.’

He made no attempt to move towards her, to touch her, or even to explain himself, as though he understood that nothing he said would ever make any difference. His eyes had returned to the floor of the veld as he worked and he was picking up the cartridges by the feel of them, his fingers moving over the breech mechanism and sighting arrangements with a deft certainty. He cleaned each bullet carefully, as he had done with the Mauser, then he laid the weapon on a rock in front of him.

Below him, a scant half-mile away, he could see the shadows beginning as the sun appeared over the horizon, long dark shadows on a red-gold veld. As the light improved, he caught a movement beyond the rocks of Babylon, and saw a man stand up, smoking a short clay pipe, then another and another. Imagining Sammy to be farther to the west than he was, they thought themselves unseen.

He lifted the Mauser, fingering it, sighting on each of them in turn to get the feel of the gun. Then he noticed Polly watching him and he glanced briefly at her again.

‘Should be starting again soon,’ he said unemotionally. ‘Reckon we’d better eat something.’

Still keeping one eye on the veld below, he rummaged in the saddle bags for the biltong, and passed her a twisted piece of dried meat that looked like an old root. He threw the water bottle after it.

‘Chicken and champagne,’ he said.

As she took it from him, he lay down flat on his face again among the rocks, watching the shadows shortening on the veld below. Then a man ran from behind the pile of rocks that formed the end of Babylon and dived headlong into shelter at the bottom of Sheba, and Polly saw Sammy lift the Mauser and push it forward. Another man ran from shelter and took up his position behind a rock, and Sammy again lifted the Mauser and laid it down again, waiting. In the quiet patience of his silent stare there was something of a cat waiting for a bird to move within killing distance. From being a civilised human being he had become just as much a part of the veld as the animals he had hunted, as cautious and as cruel, knowing only the law of survival and the power of the strong.

Another and yet another man had found a place among the rocks at the foot of Sheba but he continued to hold his fire. He had set out a row of bullets alongside him and she knew well from what she had seen of him that he could use them all and not miss with any of them.

Then a rifle popped somewhere below them, strangely small in the vastness of the plain, and she ducked as the echoes went rolling round the krantzes. The bullet struck a boulder away to their left and went whining up into the air, and she lay with her face among the dusty grass, sick and petrified with fear.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ Sammy said, unmoved, his position unchanged, his eyes unwinking. ‘They don’t even know where we are.’

He didn’t move a muscle as the firing increased and even Polly eventually lifted her head as she realised it was all directed well to their left.

‘They’ll be coming any minute,’ Sammy said flatly. ‘This is just to make us keep our heads down.’

She saw his face had suddenly tightened as he stared down and as she scrambled to her knees and peered between a crack in the rocks, a car appeared over the fold of ground, trailing its long plume of red-yellow dust. It was a bright yellow vehicle, square and heavy, its paint and brasswork dulled with dirt. The men at the foot of Sheba, preoccupied with their shooting, clearly didn’t notice it as it pulled to a stop in full view of Sammy, and she saw the door flung open in a flash of yellow as the rising sun caught it, then there were two men running towards the base of Sheba where the soldiers were concealed.

They made no effort to hide themselves, the biggest of them, a broadly-built man with a moustache, lumbering heavily as though he were unused to exercise.

Polly watched him start to scramble among the rocks, waving his arms and shouting. For a moment, he disappeared, then he reappeared again, higher up, still scrambling ahead, turning round and waving to the others, shouting all the time.

Her throat constricted as Sammy leaned forward and adjusted the sights of the Mauser and she put her hands over her eyes, unable to watch.

Sammy pushed the rifle forward and slowly the sights came into line. Through the V of the backsight he could see a small triangle of grey which was the big man’s jacket. The foresight moved up slowly, then it paused for a tiny instant of time as Sammy steadied his breathing, and took the first pull of the trigger. The soldiers had risen from behind their rocks now and appeared to be cheering and waving too and Sammy’s finger began to tighten on the trigger.

Then Polly screamed. Drawn by a horrified fascination that wouldn’t let her shut her eyes, she had been staring through her fingers at the men below again, and it struck her suddenly that the heavily-built man wasn’t cheering the others on, as she had thought, but was trying to reach a position in front of them where he could be seen, and that his gestures were not of encouragement but of discouragement. He was waving to the men around him to stay where they were and then she realised that his shouts were orders to withdraw.

Then it dawned on her who he was, and as he paused by a rock where she saw the bright gleam of a strip of yellow bandanna, she shrieked out.

‘Sammy, no - it’s Mr Plummer!’

They had risen to their knees, crouching, as Kitto waved; tensed, waiting for his signal to move forward, all of them feeling glad to get on with it, willing to take a chance to get the job done; and none of them saw Plummer come up behind them.

They had been so engrossed with what they were doing, with shooting and keeping their heads out of sight, with shouting instructions and advice to each other, they had never noticed the Daimler arrive, the shots and the clatter of stones rolling down the first slopes of Sheba drowning the sound of the engine.

The first they saw of Plummer was as he passed them, running, half-turned towards them, ungainly, scrambling awkwardly up the slope, his big body clumsy on the difficult surface.

‘Get back,’ he was shouting. ‘Get back, you lot of madmen!’

He was waving frantically, his face purple with exertion.

‘Kitto,’ he was shouting, ‘call them off! I’ll have no more killing!’

Romanis was standing up now, waving his arms. ‘Get down,’ he shrieked. ‘Get down, man!’

As Plummer turned, they rose to their feet in surprise, as though to follow him, and at once they heard the thump of a bullet striking home and immediately afterwards the report of a rifle, which ran menacingly round the half-circle of Sheba’s rocks.

Plummer had stopped dead, his arms still wide in protest, balanced on top of a rock he had mounted so he could be seen. They saw the stain start immediately in the centre of his chest, and for a second he drew a few painful breaths that made the blood throb out of his lungs and ooze through the linen of his shirt. The anger in his face had changed to surprise, as though he couldn’t believe what had happened.

They were all standing up now, heedless of the rifle above them, all of them staring at Plummer. His hat fell off and he took a staggering step backwards, his eyes directing a worn reproachful gaze towards them; then with his arms still open wide as though he were diving, he plunged backwards over the edge of the rock and dropped almost flat.

He landed directly in front of Kitto and Romanis and slid sideways down the slope, his arms and legs spread-eagled, until his body was stopped by a small boulder. Still indifferent to the rifle above, they left their cover and crouched over him.

He was still conscious, his blue eyes open and gazing upwards, though there was dust now on the staring pupils. His restless fingers were picking aimlessly at the pebbles, and a strange whispering rose in his throat.

Whether or not he recognised them, it was hard to say, but after a while he opened his mouth and spoke slowly and firmly to them.

‘Don’t use me to start a vendetta,’ he said. ‘There must be no spirit of revenge.’

Then his head rolled back, and Romanis began to feel under the blood-soaked jacket. Kitto shook his head.

‘That’s no good, Romanis,’ he said sharply. ‘He’s dead.’

He looked up, his face at first shocked, then slowly becoming suffused with anger. As he looked round, it dawned on him they were all out from behind cover and that the deadly rifle up there on the slopes was still unsubdued.

‘Get down, damn you,’ he roared, coming to life at once. ‘Get down!’

The heads bobbed out of sight quickly, and Kitto and Romanis pulled Plummer’s body into the shade alongside them, the blood blackening the dust as it moved. Slowly Romanis stripped off his jacket and laid it over the dead face.

The sour sickly smell of blood was still in their nostrils when they heard a scrambling of feet on the stones behind them, and they looked round just as Hoole dropped alongside them, his pince-nez lopsided, his face white with shock.

‘Offy? Is he - ?’

‘Offy’s dead,’ Kitto said in a harsh flat voice.

‘By God,’ Hoole said. ‘The swine shot him. Just as he was trying to save him too.’

‘Save him?’

‘He’d come to call it all off. Winter came in last night and Offy came at once. He was hoping to stop the whole business. He talked of it all the way.’

He moved the jacket gingerly and stared with horror at the grey shrunken face, then up at the rocky slopes of Sheba. ‘I don’t know now - ‘ he ended uncertainly.

Kitto’s mouth closed tight. ‘There’ll be no calling it off now,’ he snapped. ‘Offy’s not going to go unavenged.’

Romanis broke in. ‘Offy said no vengeance,’ he pointed out.

‘Offy was always too soft-hearted.’ Kitto’s eyes were sharp and glittering. ‘By God, man, you don’t think we’re going to let him get away with this, do you? Offy was a KBE. He was Administrator of Dhanziland. He brought
all
this area under the Crown. We annexed it together. He raised a regiment of horse for the Government in 1899 and paid for it out of his own pocket. He was raising another one now. He made Plummerton West and Plummerton Sidings, and many other places besides. There’ll be a lot of weeping when they hear about this.’

He stopped, as though he’d run out of elaborate praises. ‘It might have been called off yesterday,’ he said. ‘It might have been called off this morning. But not now. No damn’ Sheeny renegade’s going to get away with this. It’s become our duty now to hang that bloody murderer as high as we can get him.’

Hoole looked at him, and then at the body and the spatters of blood seeping into the greedy earth. He took off his spectacles and began to polish them nervously.

‘Vengeance won’t do him much good,’ he said uneasily. ‘It won’t even save his companies. This time tomorrow, they’ll be manoeuvring for control of his shares.’ He looked up nervously. ‘I never did like this affair,’ he said. ‘I was against it from the start. I said so.’

Kitto was tapping his boot with his riding crop, his dark angry eyes flickering about him.

‘We’ve got to get him down from here,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to give him a decent burial.’

‘Here?’ Hoole looked up. ‘Won’t they want him back in Plummerton?’

‘How do you propose to take him back?’ Kitto demanded hotly. ‘Slung across a saddle like a common thief? We’ll get him below. Anybody got a white handkerchief? I wonder if that bastard up there will accept a flag of truce.’

Hoole shook out a neatly-ironed square and Romanis tied it to the barrel of his rifle. For a while he waved it to and fro over the rock, but there was no indication of whether it had been seen or not from above. Kitto stood up abruptly, impatiently, waiting for the shot.

‘Get up, Romanis,’ he snapped. ‘Stop cowering down there like a savage! You’ve been a soldier, haven’t you? Stand

up!’

Romanis stood up uncertainly and Kitto nodded towards the body.

‘Take his legs, man. We’ve got to get him down. Hoole, stay here. It’s safer. Keep an eye on things for me. I’ll be back in a moment then we’ll try to carry the place.’

Ignoring the possibility of further shooting, they started down the slope, stumbling under the weight of the body, the slow-dripping blood making poppy splashes in the dust as they walked. Though Romanis kept flinging glances over his shoulder towards Sheba, Kitto’s back was straight. On any other battlefield, he would have won them both a medal.

They laid Plummer down alongside the wagons, watched by the goggle-eyed Kaffirs whose chatter had been completely silenced. They all of them knew him. They knew him as the man who had subdued the tribes of Dhanziland, and had destroyed the power of Madewayo in the last century; of M’buladhanzi to the East, and his son Jeremiah. They knew him as the man who had brought them prosperity, giving them work where before they had quietly starved with their thin cattle on the veld round the original Madurodorp. They knew him as the Great Father, who had played fairer, after he had conquered them, than anyone else they knew, they knew him as Bright Hair and Red Neck and by half a dozen other names they had given him. But above all, they knew him as the man who had gathered all the strings of power in Plummerton and all the wide country around into his thick fingers and held them firmly and fairly and without corruption.