Men of Men Read Online Free PDF

ribbon in it, and her body was slim as a
young girl’s. The candlelight flattered her, smoothing out the lines of sickness and worry. He remembered how lovely she had been.
    She lifted the lid of the trunk, took something from the interior and brought it to him. It was a small cask with an ornate brass lock. The key was in the lock.
    ‘Open it,’ she said.
    In the candlelight he saw that the cask contained two thick rolls of five-pound notes, each bound up with a scrap of ribbon, and a draw-string pouch of dark green velvet. He lifted out the pouch
and it was heavy with gold coin.
    ‘I was keeping it,’ she whispered, ‘for the day it was really needed. There is almost a thousand pounds there.’
    ‘Where did you get this?’
    ‘My father, on our wedding day. Take it, Zouga. Buy that claim with it. This time we will make it all right. This time is going to be all right.’
    I n the morning the purchaser came to claim the wagon. He waited impatiently while the family moved their meagre possessions into the bell
tent.
    Once Zouga had removed the cots from the tented half of the wagon body he was able to lift the planking from the narrow compartment over the rear wheel truck. Here the heavier goods were stored
to keep the vehicle’s centre of gravity low. The spare trek chain, the lead for moulding into bullet, axe heads, a small anvil – and then Zouga’s household god which he and Jan
Cheroot strained to lift from its padded bed and lower to the ground beside the wagon.
    Between them they carried it to the tent and set it upright against the far screen of the bell tent.
    ‘I’ve lugged this rubbish from Matabeleland to Cape Town and back,’ complained Jan Cheroot disgustedly as he stood back from the graven birdlike figure on its stone plinth.
    Zouga smiled indulgently. The Hottentot had hated that ancient idol from the very first day they uncovered it together in the overgrown ruins of an ancient walled city, a city they had stumbled
on while hunting elephant in that wild untamed land so far to the north.
    ‘It’s my good-luck charm,’ Zouga smiled.
    ‘What luck?’ Jan Cheroot demanded bitterly. ‘Is it luck to have to sell the oxen? Is it luck to live in a tent full of flies amongst a tribe of white savages?’ Muttering
and mumbling bitterly, Jan Cheroot stamped out of the tent and snatched up the halters of the two remaining horses to take them down to water.
    Zouga paused for a moment in front of the statue. It stood almost as high as his head on its slim column of polished green soapstone. Atop the column crouched a stylized bird figure on the edge
of flight. The cruel curve of the falcon beak fascinated Zouga, and in a habitual gesture he stroked the smooth stone and the blank eyes stared back at him inscrutably.
    Zouga opened his lips to whisper to the bird, and at that moment Aletta stooped into the triangular opening of the tent and saw what he was doing.
    Quickly, almost guiltily, Zouga dropped his hand and turned to face her. Aletta hated that stone image even more bitterly than did Jan Cheroot. Now she stood very still. Her arms were filled
with a pile of neatly folded linen and clothing – but her eyes were troubled.
    ‘Zouga, must we have that thing in here?’
    ‘It takes up no room,’ he told her lightly, and came to take her burden from her, place it on the truckle bed, and then turn back to take her in his arms.
    ‘I will never forget what you did last night,’ he told her, and felt the rigidity go out of her body. She swayed against him and lifted her face to his. Once again he felt his chest
squeezed with compassion as he saw the lines of sickness and worry at the corners of her eyes and mouth, saw the grey patina of fatigue on her skin.
    He bowed his head to kiss her lips, feeling awkward at such unaccustomed demonstration of affection; but at that moment the two boys burst into the tent, raucous with laughter and excitement and
dragging between them a stray puppy on a