Sunset at Sheba, page 13
They were every one of them exhausted now and it was beginning to show in explosions of unexpected temper. The horses were worn out, their withers prominent after the pounding they had received, their ankles puffed with hard work. More than one of them limped badly and the complaints against Kitto’s hard driving were rising in a crescendo.
There had been a considerable amount of jeering from the hard-pressed horsemen as they had had to help construct fascines of brushwood to enable the cars to cross the deep courses of streams, or had had to haul the heavy vehicles up the steeper slopes or out of the soft dust of the hollows where they had sunk hub-deep, screaming in low gear. More than once there had been a short-lived scuffle as one of the Army Service Corps men, driven to an extremity of fury by the sarcasm, had flung himself at his tormentors, for the car crews were as jaded now as the riders, the drivers weary from the jolting that tore the steering wheels from their grip and left them with blistered bleeding hands.
As they spread out, waiting for Le Roux to examine the ground, they worked their stiff limbs and the Army Service Corps men wandered round their vehicles, gazing anxiously at them. Engine trouble and mechanical defects were beginning to develop after the miles of rough ground. They had been obliged to roar over the bad patches to avoid getting stuck, rushing at them at an unsafe speed for fear of having to call on the resentful horsemen, and rocking over the hummocks in a style that seemed fatal to the chassis. On one occasion, the front bracket of one of the Rolls’ springs had snapped and they had had to stop to jack it up, wedging it with baulks of timber on the running board and wiring the whole hurried job together; and time and time again the tyres, heated in the grinding low gear stretches, had burst, so that first one car and then the other had had to halt, their crews sweating under the repeated leverings and pumpings.
Now, as cigarettes were reached for and water-bottles were raised, the Napier driver unscrewed the cap of the vehicle’s water tank and the concentrated steam roared out.
‘Christ,’ he said, staring at the rising cloud, ‘we only want railway lines. We’ve got a big enough head of steam on to pull wagons as far as Jo’burg!’
Oblivious to the activity behind him and the angry muttering of men pushed too far by an over-zealous commander, Le Roux was still prowling round the foot of Sheba. Sitting on the running board of the Rolls, smoking a cigarette, Winter could see him studying the ground among the rocky shale.
‘They’ve turned off,’ he announced as Kitto approached him. ‘The tracks stop here.’ He turned and walked slowly back until he came to a saddle of rock which stretched from the foot of the kopje into the veld. Around it was broken stones and thin flat pebbles, and Le Roux knelt and examined the hard surface. Kitto watched him, knocking the dust from his clothes and out of his hair.
‘Came as far as here all right,’ Le Roux said, looking up.
He straightened and walked a little way to the north-east, staring at the ground.
‘That’s funny, man,’ he said uncertainly.
Winter saw him return to the flat table of rock and begin to walk to the west.
‘For God’s sake, put a jerk into it,’ Kitto said impatiently.
Le Roux had stopped again, ignoring him, then he turned and stared up at Sheba, whose battlemented summit towered above them into the saffron sky, grey-blue in the fading light.
‘I think they’re up there,’ he said. ‘The prints just disappear here. Kyk daar! Look!’
Kitto stared. ‘Up there? In the name of the good Lord Harry, man, they wouldn’t go up there!’
Le Roux stared round him again at the ground. ‘Only place they could go,’ he said.
‘Up there? Horses and all?’
‘And the woman!’ Le Roux chuckled. ‘Calling for volunteers to go after ‘em?’ he asked.
‘You sure?’ Kitto demanded.
‘I’ll make sure.’
‘Well, look slippy,’ Kitto barked. ‘Mak gou, ek is baastig. We can’t wait round here like mashers at a stage door. They’re a damn’ sight too near the Sidings now for my liking and I want it over and done with. So far we’ve ridden twice as far as he has and all we’ve done is make a damn’ big circle. My God, with two cars capable of doing sixty miles an hour we ought to be able to catch up with a kid on an old shaft horse!’
Le Roux’s square face was eager as he moved slowly in a half circle round the foot of the kopje, away from the horsemen, squatting by their blown mounts, glad of the chance of a rest. None of them spoke as they watched him work. One or two washed their dry mouths out with water from their canteens and spat, or wet their bandannas and wiped the dust from their stubbled faces. Several of them had taken their rifles from the saddle scabbards and one man, glancing nervously round and up at Sheba, slipped the safety catch off his weapon.
Winter stared up at the brooding bulk of the kopje in the failing light, like all of them oppressed by the silence, and he found himself wondering what lonely battles had taken place in the past on the silent amber-tinted crags.
Romanis approached him, his leather coat swinging, his goggles on his forehead, the dust on his face like a weird mask. ‘Bloody queer place, this,’ he observed uneasily.
Le Roux had walked back a little way now in the direction they had come from, then he approached the kopje again in a shambling run, following the tracks until he reached the flat slab of rock again. Once more, he glanced upwards, puzzled, then he stared at the ground and abruptly began to climb.
The report of the rifle came simultaneously with the metallic twang as a bullet struck the rock near his head. Winter saw the chips of stone fly into the air as Le Roux dropped flat on his face in an instinctive dive for safety, and the sharp whine came to his ears as the bullet ricocheted, buzzing angrily as its twisted shape went up in a tight singing lump of metal spinning out over their heads.
Within a second, before the echoes had finished rolling and clattering through the clefts and fissures of Sheba, the mounted men were all off their horses and crouching on the blind side of them, using them as shelter, clinging to the reins with one hand and feeling for the rifles in the scabbards with the other, eyes peering under necks and over saddles, their gaze straining upwards towards the spires of rock.
Winter found himself conspicuously and bewilderingly alone as the crews of the Napier and the Rolls crouched behind their vehicles, gripping their rifles, huddled in little groups behind the wheels.
‘Get down, you bloody fool,’ Romanis yelled from behind the Napier and Winter came to life at once and ran, doubled up, for the rocks. Diving into the dust behind a patch of scrub grass, he landed spread-eagled, his face close to the earth, breathing the dry hot smell of the soil, aware of the silence again, a deep new tremendous silence broken only by the chink of harness, and the click of metal shoes as the horses tossed their heads and tried to wheel and back, sniffing the excitement.
For a long time nobody spoke or moved, then Winter realised that Kitto was near him, also sprawled behind a rock, staring keenly at Sheba, his eyes suddenly bright. After a while, Romanis joined them, running bent double.
‘Hallo, Romanis,’ Kitto said and Winter saw he was grinning. ‘The fun’s begun!’
Romanis laughed. ‘Wouldn’t miss this for anything,’ he said. ‘By God, he’s a game little bastard, Jew or not! - game as a pebble!’
Kitto lifted his head slightly and shouted to Le Roux just in front of them on the first slopes.
‘You were right,’ he said. ‘Can you see ‘em?’
The scout, on his knees now behind his rock, waved his hand in a sign of negation.
‘Keep under cover, boys,’ Kitto called to the crouching men behind him, ‘and keep your eyes open. You should be able to spot him if he fires again.’
He ducked from his rock and ran stooping for the foot of Sheba to join Le Roux. Then he turned and sat with his back to the rocks and shouted his orders. ‘Tell off your horse-holders,’ he yelled. ‘The rest of you take cover!’
Winter scrambled from behind the patch of grass and dived into shelter alongside Kitto.
‘Kitto, surely to God you’re not going to go up there after him. Offy said no violence.’
Kitto swung sharply round. ‘You politicians are always good at thinking up situations for soldiers to deal with,’ he said, ‘but you always start bleating when things go wrong and we lose our tempers.’
While they were still staring angrily at each other, their faces only a foot apart, a faint voice came down to them from above.
‘I wasn’t shooting to hurt anybody then,’ it said. ‘But if any of you tries to interfere with me, I shall.’
Kitto’s face darkened as he gazed up the slope.
‘Samuel Isaac Schuter,’ he shouted, as though making a formal announcement, ‘you’re a damned renegade! You’ve fired on His Majesty’s troops in time of war. I’m going to fire back.’
‘I bet you haven’t seen me yet!’
‘I’ve got thirty-odd men here who say I will.’
‘And I’ve got the slope in my favour and a good rifle that says you’re wrong.’
Winter grabbed at Kitto’s arm. ‘Kitto, what in the name of God are you up to? Offy didn’t say you’d to shoot the boy.’
Kitto pulled his arm away irritably. Suddenly, he could see quite simply where his duty lay. It had crossed his mind several times in the last few difficult days that the death of Sammy Schuter was the only safe solution to the problem Willie Plummer’s stupidity had raised but it had always been one which he could never have reconciled to his sense of honesty. Now, however, there was no longer any question of right and wrong. He was on surer ground and could put politics and politicians safely aside.
The minute Sammy Schuter had pulled the trigger up there on the slopes of Sheba, his course had become clear. The situation could now be resolved outside the dubious issues of humanity and without any stain on his honour. He was a soldier and he was at war.
‘If Offy hasn’t the guts to do what’s necessary,’ he said sharply, his face still turned towards the summit of Sheba, ‘then I have.’
‘You’ll make a martyr of him,’ Winter pointed out. ‘Let me go up there and talk to him.’
‘It’s too late for that now.’ Kitto was still staring at Sheba, not taking his eyes off the ground in front and above where his enemy lay. ‘We’re committed. He’s perpetrated an act of war.’
‘Fabricius will call Offy a murderer if he finds out about this.’
‘He’ll never find out. It’ll be finished within an hour.’
‘Kitto, for God’s sake, there’s a woman up there!’
Kitto turned his narrow face towards Winter again. ‘Dammit, this is war,’ he snapped.
‘This is a lynching.’
‘Don’t be so bloody spineless!’ Kitto lost his temper. ‘If a German fired at us, we’d be fully entitled to fire back and kill him. Anybody who fires on the King’s men in wartime becomes an enemy immediately and we’re quite within our rights to finish him off.’ He jerked on to his side in the dust to stare at Winter. ‘Thirty years ago,’ he said, T thought I might reach the highest rank in the British Army. Then things went wrong. I got the medals but none of the rank. Maybe I made a few mistakes in the last war. I don’t know. But I’m not going to make any mistakes in this one. I’ve got my duty to do and I’m going to do it.’
‘My God,’ Winter said helplessly, ‘the messes that have been made by people who had to do their duty! You’re another damn’ De Wet. You’ve got pride and patriotism all confused.’
Kitto was gesturing irritably now, impatient at what to him had become an arid intellectual brawl. ‘He fired on us,’ he said, as though that ended the argument, ‘and we’re reacting in the only possible way - by firing back.’
In spite of himself, Winter knew that he was right, and that his own arguments carried no conviction. Kitto’s sense of justice was just too much for him. He could feel himself beating his head against a brick wall.
‘Dammit, Winter,’ Kitto was saying with frosty self-righteousness, ‘what right have you to elect yourself as the conscience of the mob? It was your suggestion in the first place that we follow him.’
‘It was wrong,’ Winter said hopelessly. ‘You know it was. I know it was now. I never dreamed he could be manoeuvred into this damnable position! My God, Kitto, I think you’re going to murder that boy just to satisfy your own ego!’
Kitto turned away. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘But I do know that it would probably be best for all concerned.’
Nobody was moving and there was no sign of life on the high sides of Sheba.
Men were crouched behind every rock, staring upwards in the fast-fading light, their rifles in front of them. The Kaffirs had taken the horses round to the shelter of Babylon and the two motorcars had jolted out of sight without any attempt from the boy on Sheba to stop them.
Kitto was crouching behind his rock with Le Roux and Romanis, staring at a watch he had dragged from his pocket.
‘Are you going on with this murder?’ Winter demanded.
‘I’ll give him five minutes to come out.’
‘You know he’ll never come out.’
Kitto nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said calmly, ‘I know.’
‘I believe you want it that way.’
Kitto gestured angrily, surprised that Winter didn’t see it his way. ‘Of course I do, man,’ he said. ‘How else can it end? I couldn’t ever have taken the damned boy back to Plummerton.’
He lifted his head and shouted, his words echoing back off the sides of Sheba.
‘This is Kitto speaking, Schuter. Hector Stark Kitto. You’d better come out, or we’ll come and get you!’
The voice came back to them, thin and disembodied, hidden among the clefts of rock.
‘I’m waiting.’
‘I’ll give you five minutes. I’m timing from now.’
Again there was silence for a while, then they heard the boy’s voice once more, faint but steady.
‘I’d stay where you are, if I was you. Next time, I’m shooting to hit somebody.’
‘I hope he does,’ Kitto murmured. ‘We wouldn’t miss one or two of that damned rabble down there and it would give me the best excuse I could wish for.’
He crouched below his rock, studying the men waiting behind him. Their faces were keen and fierce, the faces of men with nothing to lose.
‘Can you see him, Romanis?’ he asked.
Romanis peered upwards through his binoculars, half-covered by a patch of thorn. ‘Not a wink of the filthy little bounder,’ he said.
‘Can’t you tell where he is by his voice?’
‘Not a chance.’
‘Never mind,’ Kitto nodded. ‘We’ll go in anyway.’
He raised his binoculars to his eyes and swept the rocky slopes above him.
‘Stand by,’ he called out. ‘Wait for the signal.’
He raised his eyes to the hill. ‘Time’s up, Schuter,’ he shouted. ‘We’re coming.’
‘I’m waiting.’ The reply floated down again, faintly contemptuous and taunting; and Kitto waved and started to scramble from behind his rock.
Someone started to cheer and two dozen men made for the kopje. When the first of them reached the slope, his hat flew off as a shot rang out, and went spinning backwards among the rocks, its owner dropping flat into shelter in alarm. Another man, his rifle across his chest, was spun round as a bullet smacked into the stock, shattering it, sending him sprawling on his back in a puff of dust.
The man immediately behind him, a great ginger-haired giant, leapt over him and went on scrambling up the slope, swearing heavily, his long legs carrying him well ahead of the others, ahead of Kitto even. For a long time, there was no sound from above and Winter began to think that the show of force had frightened the boy, then as the red-haired man reached the top of a boulder and paused to cheer his friends on, another shot rang out.
It was as though Sammy Schuter had needed time to make up his mind to kill.
The red-haired man seemed to be lifted bodily off the rock, bent back like a pulled bow, then he crashed back on to the slope below, his heels drumming, and rolled down into the hollow at their feet, drawing painful rattling breaths in his throat.
Immediately, it seemed as though Sheba was stricken with silence again. With three of their number down, the rest of the men dived for shelter and the shouting died away. For a second, Kitto stood on the slope, seeing his force melt away behind him, then he too dived for safety and scrambled back to where Winter and Romanis lay with a couple of other men.
‘Mr Kitto,’ Le Roux called, ‘Fred’s dead!’
‘The bastard’s using a Martini-Henry!’ A shout went up from the huddle of figures round the body, a howl of rage that demanded revenge.
‘Soft-nosed bullets!’
‘The dirty Jew! By Christ, he’ll pay for this!’
There were a few more angry yells, then the men fell silent, even the bunched soldiers round the corpse seeming to have no tongues left. Sheba descended again into the brooding stillness from which their arrival had only just lifted it.
Kitto was the first to recover, undisturbed by the disaster, staring to the crest of Sheba again with his binoculars. ‘Romanis,’ he said briskly, ‘send the sergeant here, and get that man down. We’re stuck for the night, it seems. We’ll have another try at first light in the morning with every available man. The advantage’s with us. It’s easier to shoot up than down and we can be halfway up the slope before he spots us. As soon as it’s dark enough to move, we’ll back off and move a couple of men to the north side to watch, in case they try to escape in the night.’
Romanis nodded and for a long time they continued to stare at Sheba, muttering together.
Around them, the soldiers were huddled in little groups behind the rocks. One of them was dragging the body of the ginger-haired man into shelter by the feet, his jacket rolling up round his arms as it snagged on the small stones.
