Men of Men - Smith Wilbur (онлайн книга без txt) 📗

"Back! Fall back!" Wilson was shouting, and the horses were all rearing and plunging. The fire was, most of it, flying overhead. As always, the Matabele had raised their sights to the maximum; but there must have been a hundred or more of them hidden in the shrub and random bullets were scoring.

One of the troopers was hit in both eyes, the bridge of his nose shot away. He was reeling in the saddle, clutching his face with blood spurting out between his fingers.

His number two spurred in to catch him before he fell, and with an arm around his shoulder led him at a gallop back along the trail.

Young Dillon's horse was hit in the neck, and he was thrown in the mud, but he came up with his rifle in his hands, and Clinton yelled at him as he galloped back.

"Cut off your saddle-bags. You'll need every round in them, lad."

Clinton came in for the pick-up, but Wilson rode him off like a polo player.

"Your moke's half done, Padre. He'll not carry two. Get on with you!"

They tried to make a stand in the thicket where they had spent the night, but the hidden Matabele riflemen crept in so close that four of the horses went down, kicking and struggling, exposing the men who had been standing behind them, firing over their backs, and three of the men were hit. One of them, a young Afrikander from the Cape, had a pot-leg slug shatter the bone above his right elbow. The arm was hanging on a tattered ribbon of flesh, and Clinton used the sleeves of his shirt to make a sling for it.

"Well, Padre, we are for it now, and that's no mistake." The trooper grinned at him, white face speckled with his own blood, like a thrush's egg.

"We can't stand here" Wilson called. "Two wounded to a horse and a man to lead them. They'll go in the centre with those who have lost their own horses. The rest of us will ride in a box around them."

Clinton helped the young Afrikander up onto the grey's back, and one of the lads from Borrow's volunteers up behind him. The sharp slivers of his shin bone were sticking out of the meat of his leg.

They started back slowly, at the pace of the walkers, and from the thickets beside the track the muskets banged and smoked; but the Matabele were all of them well hidden. Clearly, they were taking no chances, even with this tiny band of thirty-odd men.

Clinton walked beside the grey, holding the good leg of the wounded man to prevent him slipping from the saddle. He carried the two rifles belonging to the wounded men slung over his shoulder.

"Padre!" Clinton looked up to find Wilson above him.

"We have three horses that are fresh enough to try a run for the river. I have ordered Burnham and Ingram to try and get back to the main camp and warn Sint John of our predicament. There is one horse for you. They will take you with them., "Thank you, Major," Clinton answered without a moment's hesitation. "I am a sailor and a priest, not a horseman; besides, I rather think I have work to do here.

Let somebody else go., Wilson nodded. "I expected you to say that." He pushed his horse to a trot and went up to the head of the dismal little column. Minutes later, Clinton heard the quick beat of flying hooves and he looked up to see three horsemen wheel out of the straggling line and plunge into the brush that surrounded them.

There was a chorus of angry yells and the low humming "Jee!" as the Matabele tried to head them, but Clinton saw their hats bobbing away above the low bush and he called after them.

"God speed you, boys! Then, as he trudged on in the mud that was balling to the soles of his riding boots, he began silently to pray.

On the outside of the column, another horse fell, throwing its rider over its head, and then lunged up again to stand on three legs, shivering miserably in the rain, its off-fore hanging limply as a sock on a laundry line.

The trooper limped back, drawing his revolver from its webbing holster, and shot the animal between the eyes.

"That's a wasted bullet," Wilson called clearly. "Don't waste any more."

They went on slowly, and after a while Clinton became aware that they were no longer following the wagon tracks. Wilson seemed to be leading them gradually more towards the east, but it was hard to tell, for the sun was still hidden by low, grey cloud.

Then abruptly the column stopped again, and now for the first time the insistent banging of muskets from hidden skirmishers in the mopani scrub was silenced.

Wilson had led them into a lovely parklike forest, with short, green grass below the stately mopani trees. Some of these trees stood sixty feet high and their trunks were fluted and twisted as though moulded from potter's clay.

They could see deep into the forest, between the widely spaced trunks. There, directly ahead of the patrol, stretched across their front, waited the army of Lobengula. How many thousands, it was impossible to tell, for their rearguard was hidden in the forest; and even as the little band of white men stared at their host, the likela began, the "surrounding" which had been the Zulu way ever since great Chaka's time.

The "horns" were being spread, the youngest and swiftest warriors running out on the flanks, their naked skins burning like black fire through the forest. A net around a shoal of sardines, they were thrown out until the tips of the horns met to the rear of the band of white men and again all movement ceased.

Facing the patrol was the "chest of the bull", the hard and seasoned veterans; when the "horns" tightened, it was the "chest" that would close and crush, but now they waited, massed rank upon rank, silent and watchful.

Their shields were of dappled black and white, their plumes were of the ostrich, jet black and frothing white, and their kilts of spotted civet tails. In their silence and stillness, it was not necessary for Wilson to raise his voice above conversational tones.

"Well, gentlemen. We will not be going any farther not for a while anyway. Kindly dismount and form the circle."

Quietly the horses were led into a ring, so that they stood with their noses touching the rump of the one ahead. Behind each horse, his rider crouched with the stock of his rifle resting on the saddle, aiming across at the surrounding wall of silent, waiting black and white dappled shields.

"Padre!" Wilson called softly, and Clinton left the wounded whom he was tending in the centre and crossed quickly to his side.

"I want you here to translate, if they want to parley."

"There will be no more talking," Clinton assured him, and as he said it the massed ranks of the "chest" parted and a tall induna came through. Even at a distance of two hundred paces, he was an imposing figure in his plumes and tassels of valour.

"Gandang," said Clinton quietly. "The king's halfbrother."

For long seconds Gandang stared across at the circle of rain-streaked horses and the grim, white faces that peered over them, and then he lifted his broad assegai above his head. It was almost a gladiatorial salute, and he held it for a dozen beats of Clinton's heart. Then his voice carried clearly to where they waited.

"Let it begin!" he called, and his spear arm dropped.

Instantly, the horns came racing in, tightening like a strangler's grip on the throat.

"Steady!" Wilson called. "Hold your fire! No bullets to waste, lads! Hold your fire, wait to make sure."

The blades came out of the thongs that held them to the grip of the shields with a rasping growl, and the war chant rose, deep and resonant: Jee! Jee!"And now the silver blades drummed on the dappled rawhide, so that the horses stamped and threw their heads.