Men of Men - Smith Wilbur - Страница 8
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The two claims were deserted, the leather bucket and rope coils abandoned, a pick handle standing upright with its point driven into the earth far below the level of the roadway.
There was a big bearded digger working the adjoining claim, and he scowled up in response to Zouga's hail.
"What you want?"
"I'm looking for Jock Danby."
"Well, you are looking in the wrong place."
The man turned and aimed a kick at the nearest labourer. "Sebenza, you black monkey!"
"Where will I find him?"
"Other side of Market Square, behind the Lord Nelson."
The man answered offhandedly without turning his head.
The dusty pitted open square was as littered with filth as the rest of the settlement, and crowded with the wagons of the transport riders and the carts of farmers who had come in to sell milk or produce and of the water sellers, peddling the precious stuff by the bucket.
The Lord Nelson was stained red dusty canvas over a wooden frame. Three of the previous night's drinkers were laid out like embalmed corpses in the narrow alley beside the canteen, while the single bar-room was already filling with the early morning customers.
A pariah-dog sniffed the breath of one of the unconscious drunks, and recoiled with shock before slinking away to raid the open drum that served as a rubbish bin behind the shack.
Zouga stepped over the sprawling bodies and gingerly made his way into the noisome slum beyond. He had to make half a dozen further enquiries until he found Jock Danby's hut. So obsessed were the diggers with their own race for the hidden glitter of wealth, and so transient the population of the diggings, that a man seemed to know only the names of his immediate neighbours. It was a community of strangers, every man caring only for himself, completely uninterested in the other human beings about him, except in as much as they could either hinder or help him in his quest for the bright stones.
Jock Danby's hut was hardly distinguishable from a thousand others. Two rooms built of adobe bricks and covered with thatch and tattered canvas. There was a lean-to at one end, with a smoking cooking fire on which stood a sooty black three-legged pot.
In the cluttered dusty yard stood the inevitable diamond sorting-table, a low structure with sturdy wooden legs, the top covered with a sheet of flat iron which was scoured shiny bright by the diamondiferous pebbles that had brushed over the surface. The wooden scrapers lay abandoned on the table top, and a heap of sieved and washed gravel formed a glittering pyramid in the centre of the table.
A two-wheeled cart stood in front of the main door of the hut, two somnolent donkeys still in the traces, flicking their ears at the swarming black cloud of flies. The cart was piled with lumps of yellow earth, but the yard was deserted.
Incongruously there were a few straggling scarlet geraniums growing in galvanized one-gallon syrup cans on each side of the doorway. There were also dainty lace curtains in the single window, so freshly washed that they had not yet turned ochre red with dust, nor become speckled with the excrement of the swarming flies.
The touch of a woman was unmistakable, and to confirm Zouga's guess there was the faint but harrowing sound of a woman weeping from the open doorway.
As Zouga hesitated in the yard, disconcerted by the sounds of grief, a brawny figure filled the doorway and stood blinking in the sunlight, shading his eyes with a gnarled and dirt-ingrained hand.
"Who are you?" Jock Danby demanded, with unnecessary roughness.
"I spoke to you yesterday," Zouga explained, "up at the pit., "What do you want?" the digger demanded, showing no sign of recognition, his features screwed up in an truculence and something else, some other emotion which Zouga did not immediately recognize.
"You spoke of selling your briefies," Zouga reminded him.
Jock Danby's face seemed to swell and turn dark ugly red; the veins and cords stood out in his throat as he ducked his head down on the thickly muscled shoulders.
"You filthy bloody vulture," he choked, and he came out into the sunlight with the heavy irresistible crabbing rush of a gut-shot buffalo bull.
He was taller than Zouga by a head, ten years younger and fifty pounds heavier. Taken completely by surprise, Zouga was a hundredth part of a second late in ducking and spinning away from the man's charge. A fist like a cannon ball smashed into his shoulder, a glancing blow but with the force to send Zouga reeling to sprawl on his back across the sorting-table, scattering diamondiferous gravel across the dusty yard.
Jock Danby charged again, his swollen face working, his eyes mad, his thick stained fingers hooked as they reached for Zouga's throat. Zouga jack-knifed his legs, drawing himself into a ball, tense as the arch in an adder's neck at the moment before it strikes, and he drove the heels of his boots into the man's chest.
The breath whistled out of Jock Danby's throat, and he stopped in mid-charge as though hit in the chest with a double charge of buck-shot. His head and arms snapped forward, nerveless as a straw-man, and he flew backwards, crashing into the unbaked brick wall of the hut and beginning to slide down onto his knees.
Zouga bounded off the tabletop. His left arm was numb to the fingertips from the unexpected blow, but he was light on his feet as a dancer, and the quick rush of cold anger armed and strengthened him. He closed the gap between them with two swift strides and hooked Jock Danby, high in the side of his head just above and in front of his ear; the shock of the punch jarred his own teeth but sent the man spinning along the wall to slump on his knees in the red dust.
Jock Danby was stunned and his eyes were glazing over, but Zouga jerked him to his feet and propped him against the side of the cart, setting him up carefully for the next punch. His anger and outrage driving him on to revenge that unprovoked and senseless attack, Zouga shifted his weight, holding Jock Danby steady with his left hand and pulling back the right fist for a full-blooded swing.
Then he froze. He never threw the punch. Instead he stared incredulously. Jock Danby was blubbering like a child, his heavy shoulders shaking uncontrollably, tears greasing down the sunraddled cheeks into the dusty beard.
It was somehow shocking and embarrassing to see a man like this weep, and Zouga felt his anger swiftly extinguished. He dropped his fist and unclenched it at his side.
"Christ -" Jock Danby choked hoarsely. "What kind of man are you to try and make a profit of another man's grief !" Zouga stared at him, unable to answer the accusation.
"You must have smelt it, like a hyena or a fat bloody vulture."
"I came to make you a fair offer, that's all," Zouga replied stiffly. He took the handkerchief from his jacket pocket and handed it to Jock Danby. "Wipe your face, man," he ordered gruffly.
Jock smeared his tears and then studied the stained linen. "You didn't know then?"he whispered. "You didn't know about the boy?" He looked up and studied Zouga's face sharply and, seeing his answer, he handed back the handkerchief and shook his head like a spaniel shaking off the water from its ears, trying to steady his reeling senses. "I'm sorry," he grunted. "I thought somehow you had learned about the boy, and come to buy me out."
"I don't understand," Zouga told him, and Jock Danby started for the door of the shack.
"Come," he said, and led Zouga through the hot stuffy little front room. The chairs covered with dark green velvet were too bulky for the size of the room, and the family treasures, Bible and faded ancestral photographs, cheap cutlery and a porcelain dish commemorating the Queen's wedding to Prince Albert, were on display upon the central table.
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