Men of Men by Wilbur Smith Read Free Book Online

again and her lips moved silently as she prayed.
    A child lay upon the bed, a boy no older than Jordan. His eyes were closed, his features very pale, bloodless as candlewax, but infinitely peaceful. He was dressed in a clean nightshirt, his
limbs neatly arranged, the hands folded on his chest.
    It took Zouga a full minute to realize that he was dead. ‘The fever,’ whispered Jock at Zouga’s side. He broke off and stood dumb and massive as an ox awaiting the
butcher’s stroke.
    Z ouga took Jock Danby’s cart down to Market Square and purchased a dozen rough-sawn planks of lumber, paying the transport rider’s
price without haggling.
    In the dusty yard in front of Danby’s shack he stripped to his shirtsleeves and planed the raw planks, while Jock sawed and shaped them. They worked in silence except for the whicker of
plane and saw.
    The rough coffin was ready before noon, but as Jock lifted his son’s body into it Zouga caught the first whiff of corruption; it happens very swiftly in the African heat.
    Jock’s wife rode on the battered cart with the coffin and Zouga walked beside Jock Danby.
    The fever was ravaging the camp. There were two other carts already at the burial ground, a mile beyond the last tents on the Transvaal road, each surrounded with a silent knot of mourners; and
there were graves ready dug, and a grave-digger to demand his guinea.
    On the way back from the burial ground Zouga stopped the cart in front of one of the canteens that fronted the market square, and with the remaining coins in his pocket he bought three bottles
of Cape brandy.
    He and Jock sat facing each other on the over-stuffed green velvet chairs, with an open bottle and two tumblers on the table between them. The tumblers were embossed with cheery gold
letters:
    The Queen, God Bless Her.
    Zouga half-filled the tumblers and pushed one across to Jock.
    The big man studied the contents of the tumbler, holding it in his huge fists between his knees, hunching his shoulders and drooping his head.
    ‘It was so quick,’ he muttered. ‘Yesterday evening he ran to meet the cart, and rode home on my shoulder.’ He took a swallow of the dark liquor and shuddered. His voice
was husky as he went on. ‘He was so light. No meat on his little bones.’
    They drank in unison.
    ‘There was a jinx on me from the moment I drove my first peg on these bloody claims.’ Jock shook his great shaggy head. ‘I should have stayed on the river-diggings, like Alice
told me.’
    Outside the single lace-covered window the sun was already setting, a lurid red show through the dust clouds; and as the gloom gathered in the room, Alice Danby came through and placed a smoky
hurricane lantern on the table between them and followed it with two bowls of Boer-meal porridge swimming in a thin and oily mutton stew. Then she disappeared silently into the back room and, from
time to time during the long night, Zouga heard her gentle sobs through the thin dividing wall.
    In the dawn Jock Danby lolled in the green velvet armchair, his shirt open to the navel and his hairy stomach bulging out of it. The third bottle was half empty.
    ‘You are a gentleman,’ Jock slurred unevenly. ‘I don’t mean a swell or a toff but a bloody gentleman, that’s what you are.’
    Zouga sat upright, grave and attentive; except for a slight reddening of his eyes he seemed totally unaffected by the night’s drinking.
    ‘I wouldn’t want to wish the Devil’s Own on a gentleman like you.’
    Zouga said quietly, ‘If you’re going, you have to sell to someone.’
    ‘They’re jinxed, those two claims,’ mumbled Jock. ‘They’ve killed five men already, they’ve broken me, they’ve given me the worst year of my life.
I’ve seen men on each side of me pull big stones; I’ve seen them become rich – while me—’ he made a drunken gesture that encompassed the sordid little shack,
‘look at me.’
    The canvas that screened the connecting doorway was jerked aside and