The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur (читаем бесплатно книги полностью .txt) 📗

Once in the middle of the morning when they halted unexpectedly, Centaine climbed down from the Ford and impatiently hurried up to the head of the convoy. The lead truck had hit a spring-hare burrow and broken a half-shaft. Lothar and the driver were working on it, and Lothar had stripped off his shirt. He had his back to her and did not hear her come up.

She stopped abruptly when she saw the pale muscles of his back bulging as he pumped on the jack-handle, and she stared fascinated at the ugly purple scar where the Luger bullet had torn out of his back. How close it must have come to his lung! She felt quick sharp remorse and turned away, the angry words that had been on her lips left unspoken, and she went softly back to her place at the end of the column.

When at last on the eighth day the mountain appeared ahead of them, floating on its glistening lake of mirage like some great ark of orange stone, Centaine stopped and climbed up on to the bonnet of the Ford, and as she stared at it, she relived a hundred memories and found herself swayed by many conflicting emotions, borne up on the joy of homecoming and at the same time crushed down by the leaden burden of grief and doubt.

Lothar roused her from her reverie; he had come back from the head of the column without her even seeing him.

You have not told me exactly where you wish me to take you. To the lion tree, she told him. To the place where you found me. The marks of the beast's claws were still slashed into the trunk of the mopani, and its bones were scattered in the grass, beneath it, white as stars and shining in the sun.

Lothar worked with his construction gang for two days to establish a permanent camp for her. He built a private stockade of mopani poles around the solitary tree and piled Thorn branches against the exterior wall of the stockade to reinforce it and make it proof against predators.

He dug a screened latrine pit connected to the stockade by a tunnel of poles and woven Thorn branches, and then he set up Centaine's tent in the centre of the stockade, shaded by the mopani, and built an open hearth for her camp fire in front of it. At the entrance to her stockade he constructed a -heavy timber gate and a guard house.

Swart Hendrick will sleep here, always within call, he told Centaine.

At the edge of the forest, two hundred paces from her camp, he built another larger stockade for the servants and labourers, and when it was all finished, he came to Cen .

tame again. I have done all that is necessary. She nodded. Yes, you have completed your side of the bargain, she agreed. Come back in three months time, and I will complete my side.

He left within the hour in the second truck, taking only the black driver with him and sufficient water and gasoline for the return journey to Windhoek.

As they watched the truck disappear into the mopani, Centaine said to Swart Hendrick, I will wake you at three o'clock tomorrow morning. I want four of the construction men to come with us. They must bring their blankets and cooking pots, and rations for ten days The moon lit their way as Centaine led them up the narrow valley to the cavern of the bees. At the dark entrance, she explained where she was going to take them, and Swart Hendrick translated for those who could not understand Afrikaans.

There is no danger if you remain calm and do not run But when they heard the deep hum resound through the cavern, the labourers backed out hurriedly, threw down t their loads and got ere into a mutinous, sullen bunch.

Swart Hendrick, tell them they have a choice, Centaine ordered. They can either follow me through or you will shoot them, one at a time. Hendrick repeated this with such relish, and unslung his Mauser in such workmanlike fashion, that they hurriedly gathered up their loads again and crowded up behind Centaine. As always, the transit of the cavern was nerve-racking but swift, and as they filed out into the secret valley, the moon was silvering the mongongo grove and polishing the high surrounding cliffs.

There is much work to do, and we will live here, in this valley, until it is finished. That way you will only have to pass through the place of the bees one more time.

That is when we leave. Abraham Abrahams had instructed Centaine in every aspect of pegging a mining claim. He had written out a sample notice for her and showed her how to set it up.

With a steel measuring tape he had demonstrated the trick of squaring a claim across the diagonals, and how to overlap each claim slightly so that there were no holes to give a claim-jumper a toehold.

Still it was hot, exhausting and monotonous work.

Even with the four labourers and Swart Hendrick to help her, Centaine had to make every measurement herself and write out each claim notice and attach it to the claim posts of Mongongo timber that they set up ahead of her.

At dusk every evening, Centaine dragged herself wearily down to the thermal pool in the subterranean grotto and soaked away her sweat and the aches of her body in the steaming waters. She was already starting to feel the drag of her advancing pregnancy. She was bigger this time and it seemed harder and more wearying than Shasa's pregnancy had been, almost as though the foetus sensed her feeling towards it, and was responding vindictively. Her back ached particularly viciously, and by the end of the ninth day she knew that she could not continue much longer without a rest.

However, the bottom land of the valley was crisscrossed with neat lines of claim pegs, each standing on its little cairn of stones. The gang had by now become accustomed to the work and it was going more quickly.

One more day, she promised herself, and then you can rest. On the evening of the tenth day it was done. She had pegged out every square foot of the valley bottom.

Pack up, she told Swart Hendrick. We are going out tonight. And as he turned away, Well done, Hendrick, you are a lion and you can be Sure I will remember that on pay day. Hard work shared had made them companions.

He grinned at her. If I had ten wives as strong as you, and who worked like you, missus, I could sit in the shade and drink beer all day long. That is the nicest compliment anyone ever Paid me, she replied in French, and found just enough strength left for a short, breathless laugh.

Back in Lion Tree Camp Centaine rested for a day and then the next morning settled down at her camp table in the mopani shade and filled in the claim forms. This was also monotonous and demanding work, for there were claims to process, and every number had to be transposed from her notebook and then fitted into her sketchmap of the valley. Abraham Abrahams had explained to her just how important this was, for each claim would be scrutinized by the government mining inspector and his surveyor and a careless error could invalidate the entire property.

It was another five days before she placed the last completed form on the pile and then bundled them into a brown paper package and sealed them with wax.

Dear Mr Abraham she wrote, please file the accompanying claims with the mining office in my name and deposit the claim deeds with the Standard Bank in Windhoek to the account over which you hold my power of attorney.

I would be grateful if you could then make enquiries for the most eminent independent mining consultant available.

Make a contract with him to survey and evaluate the property which is the subject of these claims and send him to me here by return of the vehicle which brings you this letter.

When the vehicle returns to me, please see that it is loaded with the stores I have listed below and pay for these from my account.

One final favour. I would be most grateful if, without disclosing my whereabouts, you would be good enough to telegraph Colonel Garrick Courtney at Theuniskraal to make enquiry of my son, Michel, and my companion, Anna Stok.