The Sound of Thunder (57 page)

“This way, Dirk!” The two stewards standing on the pile of stones that marked the Theuniskraal boundary were waving and shouting wild encouragement. Dirk clouted the spurs into her and was off again, galloping along the ridge, sweeping past them and on towards the clump of gums three miles ahead.

“Catch him, Mike. Ride, man, ride!” Faint shouts behind him-and Dirk knew without looking back that Mike had reached the top and was chasing him. He rode on, grimly mourning the time lost on the ascent and hating both Sun Dancer and Michael for it. At this point he should have led by four hundred yards-not fifty.

Directly ahead now was the gorge through which the Baboon Stroom dropped down the escarpment, its side choked with dark green river bush. Dirk found the path and turned away from the skyline aiming upstream at the ford. Without grass to muffle them Sun Dancer’s hooves hammered in staccato rhythm on the hard-packed earth of the path, but also he could hear behind him like an echo the beat of other hooves-Michael was on to the path behind him. Dirk looked back under his own arm. Michael was so close that he could see the laughter lines creasing the corners of his mouth, and the mockery inflamed him.

“I’ll show him-l” And Dirk started with the whip again, cracking it across Sun Dancer’s flanks and shoulders so that she jumped forward with a new urgency. Down the steep bank of the river and out on to the white sandbank, he plunged with Grey Weather’s nose drawing level with his boot. Into the dark green water they rode abreast, throwing up a veil of spray that sparkled in the sunlight, slipping from their saddles to swim beside the horses through the deep, while the current moved them down towards the falls. Up into the saddles again the instant the horses found the bottom and splashed towards the far bank.

Out on to the sand, with water streaming from sodden clothing, shouting with excitement as they raced for the narrow path that climbed the far bank. First man on to it would hold the advantage.

I I Give way! I’m leading-give me way,” screamed Dirk furiously.

“Make your own way!” Michael laughed back at him.

“You bastard!” Dirk used his knees and reins to thrust Sun J Dancer’s shoulder into Michael, tying to force him clear.

“None of that! ” Michael warned him.

“You bastard-I’ll show you.”

They rode knee to knee now. Dirk sat up quickly and twisted his foot, placing his booted toe under Michael’s instep. With a sudden vicious lift of his leg he slipped Michael’s foot from the stirrup and threw him sideways. As he felt himself going over i Michael clutched desperately at the pommel, pulling the saddle with him so it slid on to Grey Weather’s flank and the shift of weight forced the horse to disengage and slew away from the path.

Michael went down on his shoulder into the sand and rolled with his knees drawn up against his stomach.

“That’s for you!” Dirk yelled in defiance as he went up the bank and out into the open veld again. Behind him in the riverbed Michael staggered to his feet, his wet clothing coated white with sand, and ran after Grey Weather who was trotting back towards the water with the saddle hanging under his chest.

“The dirty little swine. My God, if only Sean knew!” Michael caught the horse before it started to drink, wrestled the saddle on to his back again and clinched the girth.

“Now, I can’t let him win! ” He Jumped up on to Grey Weather and booted him towards the bank “I can’t let him win.”

Two hundred yards ahead Dirks shirt was a white blob against the brown grass. As he rounded the dip-tank and pointed Sun Dancer’s head at the ridge for the last leg, one of the stewards shouted: “What happened to Michael?”

“He fell in the river,” Dirk called back. “He’s finished!”

And his voice rang with triumph.

“He’s leading-Dirk’s leading! ” Sean stood on the Rolls with his glasses trained on the clump of gum-trees, and now he was the first to spot the tiny figure of the horseman as it showed on the crest of the escarpment.

“Where’s Michael?” Ruth asked.

“He can’t be far behind,” Sean muttered and waited anxiOusly for him to appear. He had fretted while he watched Dirk’s reckless ascent of the slope, and cursed him loudly for his brutal treatment of Sun Dancer. Then he had entreated him to get a bOOdY move on during the run along the ridge with Michael gaining steadily on him. When the two horsemen had veered away from the skyline to cross the Baboon Stroom they had disappeared from view and this was the first glimpse the spectators had received of either competitor since that moment.

“The little idiot’s riding too wide. I told him to cut the edge of the swamp-not ride round it altogether. ” “Where’s Michael?” Ruth repeated Sean swung the glasses back and scanned the crest with the first twinges of concern.

“Not showing yet-he must have run into trouble.”

“Do you think he’s all right? Has he been hurt?”

“How should I know?” Sean’s anxiety made him irritable, but immediately he was penitent and encircled Ruth’s waist with his arm.

“He can look after himself, that one. No sense fussing about him.”

Dirk was well down the slope now, leaving a thin trail of dust, for Sun Dancer skidded on her haunches most of the way,

“Still no sign of Michael?” Ruth moved restlessly against him.

“No. Not yet,” Sean grunted. “Dirk can afford to miss the swamp-he’s leading by a quarter of a mile.”

Suddenly a sigh of relief moved the crowd like a gust of wind through a field of wheat.

“There he is!”

“He’s coming straight down the slope.”

“He can’t make it unless he flies!”

Sean swung his glasses from Dirk to Michael and back, estiInating their spin and positions, allowing for Michael’s delay in the swamp, but setting against that the additional distance that Dirk had to cover.

“It’s going to be close-” he decided aloud. “Dirk’s got the edge, but it’s going to be very close.”

Ada did not see it that way. Dirk was leading and Dirk was going to win. She looked across at Garrick. He stood beside the finishing-post a hundred yards away, but even at that distance there was no mistaking the droop of his shoulders and the air of misery that surrounded him like an aura of defeat. Sun Dancer’s hooves were slashing his LIFE to threads.

Unable to bear it a moment longer, Ada jumped down from the carriage and ran through the crowd to where Sean stood like a triumphant colossus on the bonnet of the Rolls.

“Sean.” She reached up and touched his leg, but he was so engrossed he did not feel or hear her.

“Sean,” she shouted and tugged at his trouser-leg.

“Mother?” He turned vaguely to look down at her.

“I must talk to you,” Ada shouted above the sound of the crowd that was rising with excitement.

“Not now. They’re coming in to the finish-climb up here where you can see it. ” “Now. I must speak to you now. Come down this instant!”

Her tone shocked him, for a second he wavered and peered furtively back at the race. Then he shrugged with resignation and jumped down beside her.

“What is it? Please be quick-I don’t want to miss-” “I’ll be quick. ” Sean had never seen such a cold fury on her before. “I wanted to say that I never thought I’d see that day when I had nothing left for you but contempt. Thoughtless you’ve been often-but never downright merciless.”

“Mother, . He was bewildered.

“Listen to me. You set out to destroy your brother and you’ve done it. Well, I hope you have the pleasure of it. You’ve got Theuniskraal now. Enjoy it, Sean. Sleep well at night.”

“Theuniskraal! What do you mean?” He shouted at her now in his confusion. “I didn’t wager for the farm!”

“Ah, no,” Ada scoffed at him. “Of course you didn’t-you let Ronny Pye do that for you. ” “Pye? What’s he got to do with it?”

“Everything! He helped you plan it. He helped you provoke Garry into this stupidity. He holds the mortgage on Thetmiskraal.

“But . Slowly the enormity of it all began to shape up in Sean’s mind.

“You took his leg-now take Theuniskraal, but pay for it with my love.” She looked steadily into his eyes, but the pain was there clouding her own. “Good-bye, Sean. We won’t speak to each other again.” And she walked slowly away. She walked like an old woman at last, a tired and worn old woman.

Sean understood and began to run towards the finishing line.

He drove through the crowd like a shark through a shoal of sardines. Over their heads he saw the two horsemen galloping in across the field.

Dirk was leading, standing in the stirrups to thrash Sun Dancer with the whip. His black hair fluttered in the wind, and his shirt filthy with thrown mud. Under him the filly danced on flying hooves and the beat of them druninted above the rising roar of the crowd. Her body was black and shiny with sweat, and froth flew from her gaping pink mouth to form white lace on her chest and flanks.

Fifty hopeless yards behind her plunged the colt with Michael flogging his heels into him with despair. Michael’s face was twisted in an agony of frustration. Grey Weather was finished, his legs loose with exhaustion and his breath sawing hoarsely with each stride.

Sean tore his way through the press of bodies that lined the guide ropes. He reached the front rank and shouldered two women from his path. Then he stooped and ducked under the rope into the open.

Sun Dancer was almost up to him, hammering down in a crescendo of hooves, her head nodding with each stride.

Dirk! Stop her!” roared Sean.

“Pa! Pa! Get out of the way Dirk screamed back at him, but Sean sprang to intercept him.

“Pa! Sean was in front of him, crouching with arms extended. Too close to swing Sun Dancer’s head away from him, too late to stop her charge.

“Jump, girl, jump,” shouted Dirk and gathered the horse with his knees, feeling her respond with a bunching of her quarters; feeling her lift her forelegs against her chest and drive upwards in a high parabola. But sensing also the sluggishness of her exhausted body and knowing she had not gone high enough to clear Sean’s head.

An aching moment as Sun Dancer lifted clear of the ground, the horrified groan of the crowd as her forelegs smashed into Sean and she twisted in the air, falling. Dirk thrown, his stirrup leathers parting like whip cracks. Then all of them down together in the grass. Shrill screams of women in the crowd.

Sun Dancer struggling up again with a foreleg swinging loosely from the knee, whinnying in the pain of broken bone.

Sean on his back, his head twisted to the side and blood from his torn cheek dribbling into his nose and mouth so that his breathing snored hoarsely.

Dirk with the skin smeared from elbows and one cheek, crawling towards Sean, kneeling beside him, raising both hands clenched, hammering down with them so that his fists splattered the blood, beating them into the chest and slack, unconscious face of his father.

“Why did you? Oh, God, I hate you.” Shock and fury and despair.

“For you! You stopped me, you stopped me.”

Michael dragging Grey Weather down on his haunches, flinging from the saddle, running to them, holding Dirk’s arms, dragging him off, fighting him.

“Leave him, you little bastard.”

“He didn’t want me to. He stopped me. I hate him. I’ll kill him.

The crowd surging forward, flattening the guide ropes, two men helping Michael hold Dirk, the rest of them ringing Sean’s body.

The cries and questions.

“Where’s Doc Fraser?”

“Jesus, he’s badly hurt!”

“Catch that horse. Get a gun.”

“What about the bets?”

“Don’t touch him. Wait .

“Got to straighten his arm.

“Get a gun. For Christ sake, get a gun.”

Then a new silence on them, their ranks opening quietly and Ruth coming through to him running-Mbejane behind her.

“Sean.” She knelt beside him, clumsy in her pregnancy.

“Sean,” she began again, and the men about her could not look at her face.

-Mbejane, bring him to the car,” she whispered.

He slipped the monkeY-skin cloak from his shoulder and let it drop, stooped over Sean and lifted him. The great black muscles of his chest and arms swelled, and he stood with his legs braced wide against the weight.

“His arm, Nkosikazi. ” She arranged the hanging arm comfortably across his chest.

- “Bring him, ” she ordered and together they walked through the crowd. Sean’s head lolled against Mbejane’s shoulder like that of a sleeping child. Mbejane laid Sean gently on the back seat with his head in Ruth’s lap.

“My daddy,” Storm kept repeating, her face screwed up with horror at the blood and her tiny body trembling like that of a frightened rabbit.

“Will you drive us please, Michael?” Ruth looked up at him as he stood beside the Rolls. “Take us to Protea Street.”

With Mbejane loping alongside, the big car bumped across the field through the throng of anxious watchers, then swung on to the main road and moved away towards Ladyburg.

While about him the crowds scattered slowly and drifted to their carriages, Dirk Courtney stood alone and watched the Rolls disappear in its own blown dust.

Waves of reaction shivered up his legs and turned to heavy nausea in his gut. The open gravel rash on his face burned like acid spilled upon the skin.

“You’d better go in and have Doc Fraser put something on your face.” Coming from his carriage with a heavy service revolver, Dennis Petersen paused beside him.

“Yes,” Dirk answered dully, and Dennis walked on to where two native grooms held Sun Dancer. Unsteadily on three legs, but quiet now, she stood between them with her head hanging dejectedly.

Dennis touched the muzzle of the revolver to her forehead, and at the shot she recoiled violently and dropped, shuddering.

Her legs stiffened in one last convulsion, then she lay still.

Watching, Dirk shuddered in sympathy and then leaned forward to vent his nausea in the grass. It came up sour and scalding hot. He wiped it from his mouth with the palm of his hand, then he began to walk. Without direction, blindly, from the field towards the escarpment.

Over in his mind, keeping pace with his legs like the refrain of a marching song: He doesn’t want me. He doesn’t want me.