The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur (чтение книг txt) 📗
"Did you get the telegraph I sent you from Bulawayo, Mac?" he demanded without wasting time on greetings.
"No, Mr. Ballantyne." The Scot shook his dusty curls. "Not a word from the north in five days they say the lines are down, longest break I've heard of." "Damn it to hell," Ralph swore furiously, to cover his relief. "I wanted you to hold a truck for me." "If you hurry, Mr. Ballantyne, sir, there is an empty string of trucks going back today." Five miles further on Ralph reached the railhead. It was crossing a wide flat plain dotted with thorn scrub. The boil of activity seemed incongruous in this bleak, desolate land on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. A green locomotive buffed columns of silver steam high into the empty sky, shunting the string of flat-topped bogies to the end of the glistening silver rails. Teams of singing black men, dressed only in loincloths, but armed with crowbars, levered the steel rails over the side of the trucks and as they fell in a cloud of pale dust, another team ran forward to lift and set the tracks onto the teak sleepers.
The foremen levelled them with cast4 on wedges and the hammer boy followed them, driving in the steel spikes with ringing blows. Half a mile back was the construction headquarters. A square sweat box of wood and corrugated iron that could be moved up each day. The chief engineer was in his shirtsleeves, sweating over a desk made of condensed-milk cases nailed together.
"What is your mileage?" Ralph demanded from the door of the shack.
"Mr. Ballantyne, sir," the engineer jumped up. He was an inch taller than Ralph, bull-necked and with thick hairy forearms, but he was afraid of Ralph. You could see it in his eyes. It gave Ralph a flicker of satisfaction, he was not trying to be the most popular man in Africa. There was no prize for that. "We didn't expect you, not until the end of the month." "I know. What's your mileage?" "We have had a few snags, sir." "By God, man, do I have to kick it out of you?"
"Since the first of the month," the engineer hesitated. He had proved to himself that there was no profit in lying to Ralph Ballantyne.
"Sixteen miles." Ralph crossed to the survey map, and checked the figures. He had noted the beacon numbers of the railhead as he passed.
"Fifteen miles and six hundred yards, isn't sixteen," he said.
"No, sir. Almost sixteen." "Are you satisfied with that?" "No, sir." "Nor am I." That was enough, Ralph told himself, any more would decrease the man's usefulness, and there wasn't a better man to replace him, not between here and the Orange river.
"Did you get my telegraph from Bulawayo?" "No, Mr. Ballantyne. The lines have been down for days." "The line to Kimberley?" "That is open." "Good. Get your operator to send this." Ralph stooped over the message pad and scribbled quickly.
"For Aaron Fagan, attorney at law, De Beers Street, Kimberley.
Arriving early tomorrow 6th. Arrange urgent noon meeting with Rough Rider from Rholand." Rough Rider was the private code for Roelof Zeederberg, Ralph's chief rival in the transport business.
Zeederberg's express coaches plied from Delagoa to Algoa Bay, from the gold fields of Pilgrims Rest to Witwatersrand, to the railhead at Kimberley.
While his telegraph operator tapped it out on the brass and teak instrument, Ralph turned back to his engineer.
"All right, what were the snags that held you up, and how can we beat them?" "The worst is the bottle-neck at Kimberley shunting, yards."
For an hour they worked, and at the end of it the locomotive whistled outside the shack. They went out, still arguing and planning.
Ralph tossed his saddlebag and blanket-roll onto the first flat car, and held the train for ten minutes longer while he arranged the final details with his engineer.
"From now on you will get your hardware faster than you can nail it down," he promised grimly, as he vaulted up onto the bogie and waved at the driver.
The whistle sent a jet of steam spurting into the dry desert air, and the locomotive wheels spun and then gripped with a jolt, and the long string of empty cars began to trundle southwards, building up speed rapidly. Ralph found a corner of the truck out of the wind, and rolled into his blanket. Eight days" ride from the Lupani river to the railhead. It had to be some sort of record.
"But there is no prize for that either," he grinned wearily, pulled his hat over his eyes and settled down to listen to the song of the wheels over the ties. "We have got to hurry. We have got to hurry." And then just before he fell asleep, the song changed. "The cattle are dying. The cattle are dead," sang the wheels over and over again, but even that could not keep him awake one second longer.
They pulled into the shunting-yards at Kimberley, sixteen hours later. It was just past four in the morning.
Ralph jumped down off the bogie as the locomotive slowed for the points, and with his saddlebags slung over his shoulder, trudged up De Beers Street. There was a light on in the telegraph office and Ralph beat on the wooden hatch until the night operator peered out at him like a barn owl from its nest.
"I want to send an urgent telegraph to Bulawayo." "Sorry, mate, the line is down." "When will it be open again?" "God knows, it's been out for six days already." Ralph was still grinning as he swaggered into the lobby of Diamond Lil's Hotel.
The night clerk was new. He did not recognize Ralph. He saw a tall lean sunburned man, whose stained and dusty clothing hung loosely on him. That wild ride had burned off all Ralph's excess flesh. He had not shaved since leaving the Lupani, and his boots were scuffed almost through the uppers by the brushing of the thorn scrub as he had ridden through it. Locomotive soot had darkened his face and reddened his eyes, and the clerk recognized a drifter when he saw one.
