When the Lion Feeds (23 page)

Well, theres gold, and I'd say it's payable gold. It's not nearly as rich as the one we panned at Dundee but that must have been a selected piece of the Leader Reef! He paused and looked seriously at Sean. I think it's worth a try. If the Leader Reef is there we'll find it and in the meantime we won't lose money by working the main reef. Sean picked up a pebble and tossed it into the stream in front of him. He was learning for the first time the alternate thrill and depression of gold sickness when one minute you rode the lightning and the next you dropped abruptly into the depths. The yellow tails in the pan had looked pathetically thin and undernourished to him. Supposing you're right and supposing we talk Candy into selling her claims, how do we go about it? That fourstamp mill looked a devilishly complicated and expensive bit of machinery to me, not the kind of thing you can buy over the counter in every dealer's store Duff punched his shoulder and smiled lopsidedly at him. You've got your Uncle Duff looking after you.

Candy will sell her claims, she trembles when I touch her, a day or two more and she'll be eating out of my hand. As for the mill . . . When i came out to this country I fell in with a rich Cape farmer whose lifelong ambition had been to have his own gold mine. He selected a ridge which in his undisputed wisdom as a grower of grapes he considered to be an ideal place for his mine. He hired me to run it for him, purchased a mill of the latest and most expensive vintage and prepared himself to flood the market with gold. After six months when we had processed vast quantities of assorted quartz, schist and earth and recovered sufficient gold to fit into a mouse's ear without touching the sides, my patron's enthusiasm was somewhat dampened and he dispensed with my invaluable service s and closed the circus down. I left for the diamond fields and as far as I know the machinery is still lying there waiting for the first buyer with a couple of hundred pounds to come and pick it up. Duff stood up and they walked back towards the tent.

However, first things first.

Do you agree that I should continue the negotiations with Mrs rautenbach? I suppose so. Sean was feeling more cheerful again. But are you sure your interest in Mrs Rautenbach is strictly line of duty?

Duff was shocked. Don't think for a minute that my intentions are anything but to further the interests of our partnership. You can't believe that my animal appetite plays any part in what I intend doing?

No, of course not, Sean assured him. I hope you can force yourself to go through with it. Duff laughed. While we are on the subject I think this is as good a time as any for you to develop a stomach ailment and retire to your lonely bed. From now on until we've got the agreement signed your boyish charm will be of no great value in the proceedings.

I'll tell Candy that you've given me authority to act on your behalf.

Duff combed his curls, put on the clothes that Mbejane had washed for him and disappeared in the direction of Candy's Hotel. Time passed slowly for Sean; he sat and chatted with Mbejane, drank a little coffee and when the sun went down retired to his tent. He read one of Duff's books by the light of the hurricane lamp but could not concentrate on it; his mind kept straying to thoughts of blonde hair. When someone scratched on the canvas door he leapt up with a confused hope that Candy had decided to come and deal with him direct. It was the coloured girl from the Hotel, her crinkly black hair at odds with what he had been thinking. Madame says she's sorry to hear about your sickness and to tell you to have two spoons of this, she told him and offered Sean the bottle of castor oil. Tell your mistress, thank you very much. Sean accepted the medicine and started to close the tent flapMadame told me to stay and make sure that you took two full spoons, I have to take the bottle back and show her how much you've had. Sean's stomach cringed.

He looked at the coloured girl standing resolute in the doorway, determined to carry out her instructions. He thought of poor Duff doing his duty like a man, he could do no less. He swallowed down the thick clinging oil with his eyes closed then went back to his book. He slept uneasily starting up occasionally to look at the empty bed across the tent. The medicine drove him out into the cold at half past two in the morning.

Mbejane was curled up next to the fire and Sean scowled at him. His regular contented snoring seemed a calculated mockery. A jackal yelped miserably up on the ridge, expressing Sean's feelings exactly, and the night wind fanned his bare buttocks.

Duff came home in the dawning. Sean was wide awake.

Well, what happened? he demanded.

Duff yawned. At one stage I began to doubt whether I was man enough.

However, it worked out to the satisfaction of all concerned. What a woman! He pulled off his shirt and Sean saw the scratches across his back.

Did she give you any castor oil? Sean asked bitterly.

I m sorry about that Duff smiled at him sympathetically. I tried to dissuade her, truly I did. She's a very motherly person. Most concerned about your stomachYou still haven't answered my question. Did you make any progress with the claims? Oh that -, Duff pulled the blankets up under his chin. We disposed of that early on in the proceedings. She'll take a down payment of ten pounds each on them and give us an option to buy the lot at any time during the next two years for ten thousand. We arranged that over dinner. The rest of the time was devoted, in a manner of speaking, to shaking hands over the deal.

Tomorrow afternoon, or rather this afternoon, you and I'll ride across to Pretoria and get a lawyer to write up an agreement for her to sign.

But right now I need some sleep. Wake me at lunch time. Goodnight, laddie. Duff and Sean brought the agreement back from Pretoria the following evening. It was an impressive four-page document full of in so much as and party of the first part. Candy led them to her bedroom and they sat around anxiously while she read it through twice.

She looked up at last and said, That seems all right but there is just one other thing. Sean's heart sank and even Duff's smile was strained.

It had all been too easy so far.

Candy hesitated and Sean saw with faint surprise that she was blushing.

It was a pleasant thing to see the peach of her cheeks turning to ripe apple and they watched it with interest, their tension lessening perceptibly. I want the mine named after me.

They nearly shouted with relief. An excellent idea! How about the rautenbach Reef Mine? Candy shook her head. I'd rather not he reminded of him, we'll leave him out of it Very well, let's call it the Candy deep. A little premature, I suppose, as we are still at ground level, but pessimism never pays, suggested Duff. Yes, that's lovely, Candy enthused, flushing again but this time with pleasure. She scrawled her name across the bottom of the document while Sean fired out the cork of the champagne which Duff had bought in Pretoria. They clinked glasses and Duff gave the toast To Candy and the Candy Deep, may one grow sweeter and the other deeper with each passing day. We'll need labour, about ten natives to start with. That'll be your problem, Duff told sean. It was the following morning and they were eating breakfast in front of the tent. Sean nodded but didn't try to answer until he had swallowed his mouthful of bacon. I'll get Mbejane onto that right away.

He'll be able to get us Zulus, even if he has to drive them here with a spear at their backs. Good, in the meantime you and I'll ride back to pretoria again to buy the basic equipment. Picks, shovels, dynamite and the like. Duff wiped his mouth and filled his coffee cup. I'll show you how to start moving -the overburden and stacking the ore in a dump.

We'll pick a site for the mill and then I'll leave you to get on with it while I head south for the Cape to see my farmer friend. God and. the weather permitting ours will be the second mill working on these fields.

They brought their purchases back from Pretoria in a small ox wagon.

Mbejane had done his work well. There were a dozen Zulus lined up for sean's approval next to the tent with Mbejane standing guard over them like a cheerful sheepdog. Sean walked down the line stopping to ask each man his name and joke with him in his own language. He came to the last in the line. How are you called? My name is Blubi, Nkosi. Sean pointed at the man's well-rounded paunch bulging out above his loincloth. If you come to work for me, we'll soon have you delivered of your child They burst out in delighted laughter and Sean smiled at them affectionately: proud simple people, tall and bigmuscled, completely defenceless against a well-timed jest. Through his mind flashed the picture of a hill in Zululand, a battlefield below it and the flies crawling in the pit of an empty stomach. He shut the picture out quickly and shouted above their laughter. So be it then, sixpence a day and all the food you can eat. Will you sign on to work for me? They chorused their assent and climbed up onto the back of the wagon. Sean and Duff took them out to the candy Deep and they laughed and chattered like children going on a picnic.

it took another week for Duff to instruct Sean in the use of dynamite, to explain how he wanted the first trenches dug and to mark out the site for the mill and the dump. They moved the tent up to the mine and worked twelve hours every day. At night they rode down to Candy's Hotel to eat a full meal and then Sean rode Home alone. He was so tired by evening that he hardly envied Duff the comfort of Candy's bedroom;

instead he found himself admiring Duff's stamina Each morning he looked for signs of fatigue in his partner but, although his face was lean and punt as ever, his eyes were just as clear and his lopsided smile just as cheerful. How you do it beats me, Sean told him the day they finished marking out the mill site.

Duff winked at him. Years of practice, laddie, but between you and me the ride down to the Cape Will be a welcome rest!

When are you going? Sean asked. Quite frankly I think that every day I stay on here increases the risk of someone else getting in before us.

Mining machinery is going to be at a premium from now on. You have got things well in hand now . . . What do you say? I was starting to think along the same lines, Sean agreed. They walked back to the tent and sat down in the camp chairs, from where they could look down the length of the valley. The week before about two dozen wagons had been outspanned around Candy's Hotel, but now there were at least two hundred and from where they sat they could count another eight or nine encampments, some even larger than the one around Candy's place.

Wood and iron buildings were beginning to replace the canvas tents and the whole veld was crisscrossed with rough roads along which mounted men and wagons moved without apparent purpose.

The restless movement, the dust clouds raised by the passage of men and beasts, and the occasional deep crump, crump of dynamite firing in the workings along the Banket, all heightened the air of excitement, of almost breathless expectancy that hung over the whole goldfleld.

I'll leave at first light tomorrow, Duff decided. Ten days, riding to the railhead at Colesberg and another four days by train will get me there. With luck I'll be back under two months. He wriggled round in his chair and looked directly at Sean. After paying Candy her two hundred pounds and with what I spent in Pretoria I've only got about a hundred and fifty left. Once I get to Paarl I'll have to pay out three or four hundred for the Mill, then I'll need to hire twenty or thirty wagons to bring it up here, say eight hundred pounds altogether to be on the safe side. Sean looked at him. He had known this men a few short weeks. Eight hundred was the average man's earnings for three years.

Africa was a big land, a man could disappear easily. Sean loosened his belt and dropped it onto the table; he unbuttoned the money pouch.

Give me a hand to count it out, he told Duff. Thanks, said Duff and he was not talking about the money. With trust asked for so simply and given so spontaneously the last reservations in their friendship shrivelled and died.

When Duff had gone Sean drove himself and his men without mercy. They stripped the overburden off the Reef and exposed it across the whole length of the Candy claims, then they broke it up and started stacking it next to the mill site. The dump grew bigger with every twelve-hour day worked. There was still no trace of the Leader Reef but Sean found little time to worry about that. At night he climbed into bed and slept away his fatigue until another morning called him back to the workings.

On Sundays he rode across to Francois's tent and they talked mining and medicines. Francois had an enormous chest of patent medicines and a book titled The Home Physician. His health was his hobby and he was treating himself for three major ailments simultaneously. Although he was occasionally unfaithful, his true love was sugar diabetes.

The page in The Home Physician which covered this subject was limp and grubby from the touch of his fingers.

He could recite the symptoms from memory and he had all of them. His other favourite was tuberculosis of the bone; this moved around his body with alarming rapidity taking only a week to leave his hip and reach his wrist.

Despite his failing health, however, he was an expert on mining and Sean picked his brain shamelessly. Francois's sugar diabetes did not prevent him from sharing a bottle of brandy with Sean on Sunday evenings. Sean kept away from Candy's Hotel, that shiny blonde hair and peach skin would have been too much temptation. He couldn't trust himself not to wreck his new friendship with Duff by another importunate affair, so instead he sweated away his energy in the trenches of the Candy Deep.