Men of Men Read Free Page B

sunlight, a snowstorm of paper scraps, the decomposing corpses of stray kittens and unwanted dogs, the
scrapings from the cooking pots, the excrement of those too lazy to dig a latrine in the hard earth and screen it with a thatch of the silvery Karroo grass, and all the other unidentifiable offal
and castings with which ten thousand human beings without control or sanitary regulations had surrounded themselves.
    Zouga caught Aletta’s eyes and smiled at her reassuringly, but she did not return the smile. Her lips were set bravely, but her eyes were huge and brimming with tears that lapped at her
lower lids.
    They squeezed past a transport rider who had brought up a wagonload of goods from the coast, six hundred miles, and had set up shop from the tailboard of his wagon, displaying a sign on which he
had chalked up a price list:
    Candles – £1 a pkt
    Whisky – £12 a case
    Soap – 5/- a piece
    Zouga did not look back again at Aletta, the prices were twenty times higher than those prevailing at the coast. De Beer’s New Rush was probably at that moment the most
expensive spot on the surface of the globe. The remaining sovereigns in the wide leather money belt around Zouga’s waist seemed suddenly feather light.
    By noon that day they had found space to outspan the wagon on the periphery of the huge circular encampment. While Jan Cheroot, Zouga’s Hottentot retainer, drove the cattle away to find
grazing and water, Zouga hurriedly erected the heavy canvas tent, Aletta and the boys holding the guy ropes while he drove the pegs.
    ‘You must eat,’ Aletta mumbled, still not looking at him as she squatted over the smouldering cooking fire and stirred the cast iron stew pot that contained the remains of a
springbuck that Ralph had shot three days before.
    Zouga went to her, stooped and with his hands on her shoulders lifted her to her feet. She moved stiffly as an old woman, the long hard journey had taken a heavy toll of her frail body.
    ‘It will be all right,’ he told her, and still she would not look at him, perhaps she had heard that assurance too often. He cupped her chin and lifted her face, and the tears broke
at last and slid down her cheeks, leaving little runnels through the red dust that powdered her skin. The tears angered Zouga unreasonably, as though they were an accusation. He dropped his hands
and stepped back from her.
    ‘I will be back before dark,’ he told her harshly and, turning from her, he strode away towards the ruined silhouette of the Colesberg kopje which stood out starkly, even through the
stinking miasma of smoke and dust that hovered over the camp.
    Zouga might have been a wraith, a thing of air, invisible to human eyes. They hurried by him on the narrow track, or remained stooped over mill and cradle while he passed, without an inclination
of head or even a casual glance, an entire community living for one thing only, completely absorbed and obsessed.
    From experience Zouga knew there was one place where he might be able to establish human contact, and through it glean the information he so desperately needed. He was looking for a canteen that
sold hard liquor.
    Below the kopje there was an open space, the only one in the camp. It was roughly square in shape, bordered by shacks of canvas and iron, cluttered with the wagons of the transport riders.
    Zouga selected one of the shacks that grandly announced itself as ‘The London Hotel’ and on the same board advertised:
    Whisky 7/6. Best English Beer 5/- a schooner.
    He was picking his way across the littered, rutted market square towards it when ragged cheers and a bellowed chorus of ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ from the
direction of the kopje checked him. A motley band of diggers came stamping through the dust carrying one of their number upon their shoulders, singing and yelling, their faces brick red with dust
and excitement. They shouldered their way into the rickety bar ahead of Zouga, while from the other