2

September 1872

The twelve oxen, six on either side of the long disselboom, strained up the tilted slopes leading from the town, around the western base of Table Mountain toward the Drakenstein Valley leading to Parow where the road would split, one branch leading westward to Milnerton and Caledon and eventually all the way to the Kalahari and Windhoek and the strange unknown lands beyond. Another branch led to Stellenbosch to the east and in time to Mossel Bay and to Durban on the Indian Ocean. The main trail—for it was little more than a trail—led north across the Karroo desert to Beaufort West and Bloemfontein, Kimberley, Pretoria, and beyond. Except that very few people other than hunters or adventurers ever went very far beyond Pretoria.

They left Riebeeck Square in tandem with three other ox wagons, all with different destinations, the four gradually spreading apart to give the dust between them a chance to settle. It was a vain maneuver; the dust was regenerated almost at once as faster mule trains and coaches passed them on the trail, their passengers looking down from their perches in superior fashion at the less fortunate ones trudging along beside the ox wagons. Behind them the city spread below in panorama with the wide bay beyond, gradually disappearing as they advanced around the spur of the mountain and up toward the valley with its orchards and farms. Barney took one last look at the lovely view and then turned to face the front, gritting his teeth at their slow pace. I must have picked the slowest bloody wagon in the entire bloody country, he thought almost savagely. Turtles could pass us, the rate we’re going! I should have taken the money Mr. Breedon offered; after all, he said he won it on me. But he shouldn’t have taken the money from Breedon and he knew it. It wasn’t his style and style was important to Barney Isaacs.

Andries, walking steadily along on the other side of the swaying wagon and glancing across the tightly drawn canvas at the scowling boy every now and then, could almost read Barney’s mind. He wants to run now, Andries thought; he can’t wait to get to the diamond fields. Well, it’s always that way at the start of a long trek; wait until we’re crossing the Karroo and he has more important things to worry about, like sore feet and keeping the wagon going. Then we’ll see how much of a rush the boy will be in. That will tell us quite a bit about this lad!

“We’ll get there, boy,” he said, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “Maybe faster than some.” And he cracked his sjambok over the ears of the oxen, who neither hurried their pace nor reduced it, as if they were well aware that Andries would never actually touch them with the thin, deadly whip.

Barney said nothing, but marched steadily along. Six hundred bloody miles to go, at what he guessed would only be ten or twelve miles a day, and that was if they were lucky. Two bloody months! There were mountains to cross, and rivers, and perhaps—although the proprietor of the rooming house had smiled faintly when he said it—angry tribes of natives. That last was probably nonsense, but the mountains weren’t, nor the rivers. Still, there was nothing for it but to accept it and hope he could make up the time in getting rich once he eventually reached Kimberley. If the bloody diamonds weren’t really all gone by then! But there was no purpose in thinking of that. Better to use the time on the long trek to some constructive and—

“ ‘I know not ’ow to tell thee ’oo I am; me name, dear saint, is ’ateful to meself—’” He caught Andries’ curious eyes upon him across the wagon. “Romeo and Juliet,” he said defensively. “It’s a play. Wrote by a bloke named Shakespeare.”

“Oh,” Andries said, and cracked his whip.

They paused at eleven in the morning, the sun high in the almost white sky. Andries brought the team from the trail and began to unhitch them. Barney stared. He thought he had noticed a commiserating look from Andries every now and then over the past hour.

“Look,” he said half angrily, “if yer stoppin’ because you think I’m beat, well, I ain’t. I can walk all day and then some!” Good God! Stopping at eleven in the morning after less than four hours on the way? The old man don’t look that tired and neither do the animals. At this rate we’ll never bloody get to Kimberley!

“Barney, boy,” Andries said calmly without stopping his out-spanning of the team, “let me tell you something about the Cape ox. You take him when he’s a bull calf and you castrate him—” He glanced at Barney. “You know what castrate means, boy?”

“Sure. You cut off his knockers.”

“More or less. Anyway, then he becomes a steer. Wait a few years and he becomes an ox. You castrate him to make him quieter and easier to work, but you owe him something for that. You owe yourself something, too, if you want a healthy animal.” He finished unhitching the final animal and watched it wander off to graze. He squatted down, tracing his finger in the soil a moment, watching the animals at their grazing, and then looked up at Barney. “Now,” he went on, “if you want the best from your oxen—if you don’t want them to lie down and die on you and leave you a long way to go and no way to carry your water or your mealies or your biltong—then you treat your animals right. You don’t work them more than eight hours a day, and six or seven is better, with a break at midday. An ox needs eight hours to graze and eight hours to sleep and chew his cud.” He suddenly smiled. “Probably work as well for a man if a man cared as much about himself or his Kaffirs as he does about his ox and his wagon.” He tilted his head, coming to his feet. “Come over here.”

Barney moved closer.

“Now, we’re going to be a fair spell on this trek,” Andries said, “and you might as well earn a bit of your keep. You saw me unspan the animals. Watch again in an hour when I span them again. Watch tomorrow. After that it will be your chore.” He smiled at Barney in an almost fatherly manner. “Now, go find some branches or some dried ox dung for a fire and we’ll have some tea.”

So he was going to learn to span and outspan oxen, and how to make a fire with dried cowshit, was he? You’re really startin’ at the bottom, Barney, me boy, he said to himself, and went out to find the branches or the dung.

They had been on the trail a week when one noon, over their tea and while the unspanned oxen grazed, Andries suddenly pointed. “Os,” he said.

Barney frowned. “Eh?”

“Ox,” Andries said, and pointed upward. “Hemel. Sky, or heaven. In Afrikaans. It’s a dialect, sort of, of Dutch.” He shrugged. “You seem to be so set on spending time in this country, you ought to learn the language.”

“Everybody talked English in Cape Town, an’ you talk English,” Barney pointed out logically.

“Not everybody speaks English, not even in the Cape. The farmers you’ll meet speak only Afrikaans. After all, less than a hundred years ago in southern Africa, nobody spoke English, and there were a lot of people here, even then. I think an hour every night before sleep, if we’re not too tired, would be good for a lesson. It wouldn’t hurt you a bit. Take your mind off all those diamonds you’re going to pick up in the street in Kimberley.” He made a chewing motion and pointed to the remains of some mealies. “Voedsel. Food. You’d better learn that word if you don’t want to go hungry someday, diamonds or no diamonds,” he added dryly, and pointed. “Let’s go. Os.”

“You said before sleep,” Barney said.

“This is extra,” Andries said, biting back a smile, and dug in his pocket for his after-meal pipe. “No extra charge. All right, let’s have it. Os.”

“Os” Barney repeated obediently. “Ox.”

The sky at night was clearer than Barney could ever remember; the millions of stars seemed almost within reach, pinpricks in a velvet dome seemingly hand-high. There was no moon to dissipate the sharpness of the starlight; in the far distance the shadows of mountains blocked out the edge of the sky. Barney lay beside the wagon, wondering that the oxen did not step on him as they moved about in the dark. Beside the dying fire a few feet away Andries was working on some tanned leather he had dug from the rear depths of the wagon; it seemed to Barney that the large wagon contained almost every necessity of life, in addition to the heavy crates of pumping machinery being taken to Dutoitspan, which Andries had told him was now a part of the new Kimberley. The older man finished whatever he had been doing with the leather and came to stand beside Barney.

“Got a decent hat for you, boy,” he said, and placed it on Barney’s chest. Barney no longer resented Andries calling him “boy.” “That derby of yours looks a bit out of place in the Karroo.”

They had been on the trail for three weeks and had become fast friends. Barney had become accustomed to his daily chores, to the endless walking, to his Afrikaans lesson each night, and had even come to understand that the small additional weight that he and Andries might have added to the wagon, were they to ride, would have been that much extra for the ox team, and would have cost them up to a mile a day, or as much as four or five extra days for the trip. He had also become accustomed to the tea and mealies and biltong, the dried maize and dried beef that served almost exclusively as their diet, supplemented by whatever bird or small animal Andries could bring down with his long gun, or by the rare decent meal served them as they came by some even rarer farm in that desolate country, the farther they came from the Cape and civilization. The land here was largely uninhabited, offering the barest minimum of forage for the animals; ahead of them during their day’s march the distant mountains seemed to maintain their position in the clear desert air, sometimes reflected from the flat pans, the shallow water holes that would be filled after a sudden desert downpour, and seemingly as quickly emptied either by the thirsty oxen or by evaporation under the hot sun.

On occasion they would be passed in the opposite direction by a mule train or coach filled with weary and discouraged passengers returning to Cape Town after failure in the diamond fields, or by an ox wagon with as many as twenty men inside and as many taking their turn walking silently beside it, making it back to the Cape and to decent amenities for those who still had a shilling in their purse. A rare horseman would also occasionally pass, although a single man with a single animal that far from civilization was taking a chance on being found together with his horse as mere bones bleached by the relentless sun, should they wander far from the trail and possible help. There were limits to the supplies one could carry in saddlebags, and a horse could not do on the slim forage that barely served for the oxen. And distances were great in that region, and the land inhospitable.

Barney sat up and tried on the hat. It fit loosely but he knew it would provide far better protection against the sun than the narrow-brimmed derby he had brought from home, a final concession to style from a mother worried that her youngest should not appear as gauche to the savages.

“Thanks,” he said gratefully, and grinned. “Harry won’t recognize me when I get there, I’ll look such a trekker.”

“Harry … Your brother, you said.”

“Right, me older brother by three years.” Barney smiled in remembrance. The memories seemed awfully far away here in the South African desert, almost as if he were recalling a distant place that did not really exist except in his mind, experiences he might have read of instead of having lived. “Him and me, we used to do lots of things together. Acrobats, we was, in the music halls. Songs and dance. You name it, if there was a shillin’ in it, we done it. Here, I’ll show you.”

He came to his feet, did a quick comio shuffle, a fast twist, and ended with a flip that tossed his new loose-fitting hat to one side. He picked it up, grinning, brushed it off and pushed it back onto his head. “We was called the Barnato Brothers, fast songs and patter, tumblers and clowns, and we was known all over the East End. That’s in London,” he added in case Andries did not know.

“Barnato Brothers?”

“Yeah. We got the name one night when Harry was takin’ his bow and the crowd started callin’ ‘Barney, too; Barney, too.’ We’d been lookin’ for a good name for the act, so after that night we called ourselves the Barnato Brothers.”

“It sounds as if you had a rather interesting childhood.”

“Yeah. Oh, we was always flat, y’know; we never had no brass, but we had fun. And I fought a lot, too.” He fell silent, recalling the many fights he had had, sometimes in the King of Prussia for a few bob, sometimes in an alley to keep from getting his head torn off, or to avenge some insult to his religion, or his clothes, or anything else an opponent chose to rile him with. But there was no point in trying to explain all that to Andries. “Boxin’, y’know.”

“And the acting?”

Barney felt his face get red. “That was just fer fun,” he said defensively. “I like the theater. I like the make-believe. I—” He tried to put it in a way the other man might understand, and not make fun of him. “I—I like the way the words sound, not like people was just talkin’, but, well—easier, like. Like they’d put some thought into the words, and not just sayin’ the first thing that come to mind. You know?”

“No.” Andries shrugged and took his pipe from his mouth. “I don’t know. I’ve never been in a theater in my life. When I was a child such things were forbidden; they still are in Boer country. Mockery, my mother said; it was mockery of God to pretend to be what you weren’t.”

Barney stared at him. “But didn’t you ever pretend when you was a young ’un? Like you was a hunter and the stick you was carryin’ was a gun, and you was goin’ to kill the biggest lion in the country? We even done that in London, and the only lions we got was in the Kensington zoo.”

“I didn’t have to,” Andries said dryly. “I got my first gun when I was nine and I killed my first lion when I was thirteen.” He changed the subject. “And now you’re off to get rich in the diamond fields, is that it?”

Barney wondered at the abrupt change of subject. He also wondered at the man’s tone. “Right,” he said, a bit mystified. “You know that.”

“Mind all made up?”

“Sure,” Barney said, and frowned at the very serious Andries. Then he thought he understood the other’s reason for questioning him. “Oh, I heard all them stories about how the diamonds was all run out, but I don’t believe that fer a minute. Me brother, he made it big up there and so’ll I. You wait and see.”

Andries sighed. He packed his pipe and lit it, drawing on it carefully as he chose his words.

“Barney, boy,” he said at last, puffing steadily, and paused to stare about him as if he could see what he was talking about in the moonless darkness. “I came out from Stellenbosch with my folks when I was eight years old. My mother, my father, two uncles, and the family of one of them; the other wasn’t married. We had over four thousand sheep with us, and five hundred cattle and horses. My folks wanted to get away from the English in the Cape, get away from their pagan ways. My father was a very religious man. He believed in every word of the Bible. Me—?” Andries shrugged. “Me, I don’t know what I believe in. I’ve been away from my people too long, maybe. I go back and forth from one place to another; I see mostly English towns. I’m used to the English. I know the English. Too well I know them! And I never wanted to be a farmer, anyway. Had a farm, hated it. Sold my farm to a cousin when I was twenty. Just took the wagon and the oxen. Oh, not these. That was many teams ago …”

He paused and stared into the surrounding darkness, puffing steadily, as if picturing the land as it had been thirty years before. Barney waited, curiously. He could not see where any of this had anything to do with diamonds or his going to look for them, but in the three weeks he had been trekking with Andries he had learned that the older man was almost always oblique in approaching any subject or problem.

“In those days,” Andries went on at last, “the land we passed over—the land we’re on now—had herds and herds of animals. You wouldn’t think so looking at it now, but there were. Wild sheep, wild horses, wildebeests, rhinoceros, giraffes. And natives—Hottentots, Bushmen. We had to fight to protect ourselves more than once, and to protect the farms and the animals once we had established ourselves.” His voice warmed with memory. “I fought side by side with Paul Kruger, when he was a full field cornet and second in command only to Scholtz, when we chased the Bechuana chief Secheli back into the bush. Kruger was wounded, wounded bad, but it didn’t stop him fighting. The natives thought he had to be some sort of a god because they couldn’t seem to kill him. And I fought with Paul Kruger the very next year when he went after the Kaffir chiefs Mapela and Makapaan in the Waterberg district near Makapaanspoort. That was a battle, believe me!” He paused and sighed. “It was all so different then …”

He fell silent. In the darkness there was only the sound of the oxen moving about as they grazed. Barney hesitated a moment and then cleared his throat. “About the diamonds—”

“Ah, the diamonds.” Andries looked at him, brought from his reverie. “I was about to tell you. This was a great land, this land we fought for. But now it’s all being thrown away. Diamonds are a curse, boy, don’t you know that? Can’t you see that? But of course you can’t…”

“A curse?”

“The worst curse there is, boy! They brought in the Uitlanders—the outsiders—yes, like you, boy. You’re a good boy, I like you, Barney, but wait until you’ve been here awhile. You’ll be like the rest.”

“And what’s wrong with the rest?”

“You’ll see. Wait until you see Kimberley. It was farmland, boy, decent farmland. The Vooruitzigt farm, and Bultfontein and Dutoitspan—good farms until the English came in and bought them up. Bought them up? Stole them, better said! Now what do you have in your so-called Kimberley? What the Uitlanders have brought in—brothels and whores and drunkenness and gambling. They brought in greed. They’ve made the price of everything so high the average Boer farmer can’t buy what he needs. I know; I often carry food, cases of it, not just machinery or iron. And crime? We didn’t know what crime was. Oh, an occasional Kaffir would get his hands on some whiskey someplace and maybe knife another, but now? Nobody is safe anymore. The diamonds are running out and the diggers are hungry and dangerous. Those young Boer lads have been tempted from the land by greed and have fallen into the ways of the wicked. This much of the Bible I still believe in. The average Boer farmer who lived peacefully with his Kaffir help before the diamonds, now suffers a hundred ways because of the cursed stones. His help has run off to work for the white outsiders in the diamond mines; his land has been sold for far less than it’s worth, because if he didn’t sell it the diggers would have dug it up anyway, with or without permission. His daughters are marrying the English, those that get married at all and don’t live in sin in the bars and hotels—”

“Aw, the English ain’t all that bad—” Barney began. He felt uncomfortable. In all the time he had known Andries, in all their many conversations around either the noon or the evening fire, he had never heard the other man speak with such passion, such vehemence. He wondered what had brought it on.

“You know nothing of the English, boy. You know nothing of any race where diamonds are concerned,” Andries said flatly. “Where the mines are now—the Colesberg Kopje, Dutoitspan, Bultfontein, De Beers—the place they call Kimberley now, even gave it an English name after they stole it—that was rightfully part of the Free State, Boer territory, and everybody knew it. Went right up to the banks of the Vaal River, twenty miles farther west. Always had been part of the Free State, ever since the treaty. Now what is it? A part of the Cape Colony, English, by as dirty a bit of politicking as you ever saw. And why? Because they found diamonds! If they’d have found ox shit in barrels they would have forced the Free State to take it if they had to bring guns to make them!”

He spat. Barney sat silent. At last Andries sighed. He tapped out his pipe and tucked it into a pocket.

“I hate to see happen to you what I know is going to happen,” he said quietly. There were several moments of silence. “Let’s get some sleep, boy,” Andries said, and bent to bank the fire, almost as if ashamed of his unexpected outburst.

It was three nights later. A sliver of a new moon curved low near the horizon; overhead dark clouds obscured the stars, threatening or promising rain before morning, depending upon one’s need for water or for comfort. Andries was stretched out under the wagon snoring lightly; the wagon’s rear canvas had been partially eased to form a pocket to catch whatever rain it might capture. Barney had decided to chance the possibility of a downpour in order to sleep near the dying fire and catch the final warmth of the fading coals. No longer a stranger to sleeping on the hard ground, he had come to welcome its comfort after a long day’s march.

There was the faint sound of a whinny edging itself through his sleep into his subconscious; it made him think of old man Feldman’s horse and wagon going the rounds of Petticoat Lane buying rags and glass, a comfortable memory momentarily bringing warm thoughts of London and home. But then he came awake, alert, a cold feeling settling upon him. They had no horse! He lay with his eyes barely slitted, feigning sleep, while he listened carefully. There was a repeat of the whinny, a slight, muffled admonition from someone, and then the sound of a horse being led away, out of earshot.

Barney opened his eyes slowly. By the light of the few remaining embers of the fire he could see someone silently climbing onto the rear portion of the wagon, reaching up to untie one of the hanging bags, one of the mealie or biltong carriers. Another man was fumbling with the cover over the crates of machinery, as if to determine what other booty might be taken. Barney felt a fury such as he could scarcely remember. Food and water were life in that desert, and the fact that the thieves probably needed both for their own survival meant little to him. Nor did the fact that there were at least three of them, probably walking, with the one horse to carry whatever they were able to steal. He sat up and then silently came to his feet, his leather hat in one hand, moving quietly toward the wagon. When he was within a few feet he paused, clearing his throat loudly, his fists clenched tightly.

“And just what in the bloody hell do y’think yer doin’?”

The man lifting the cover over the pumping machinery swung around, startled. A muttered curse and a knife suddenly glittered in his hand. The man at the rear of the wagon jumped down, coming around the tailpiece of the wagon to join his partner. Barney crouched slightly, trying to face both men at the same time, but concentrating principally on the man with the knife. It was not the first time a knife had been pulled on him in a fight, nor was it the first time he had been forced to take on more than one opponent at a time, although in the London slums it was usually possible to have a protecting wall at one’s back. Here there was just open space. Still, for some reason the thought of calling to Andries, fast asleep in the deep shadows beneath the wagon, did not even occur to him. This was his fight.

The man with the knife had crouched. His partner, grinning, stood away, interested in seeing his large partner take care of this undersized pipsqueak, wondering a bit where the others of the ox wagon might be, but assuming they had to be off somewhere visiting a farm, leaving this youngster to watch the wagon. Barney could almost read the mind of the second man, sneering at him from the shadows. All the better, he thought with satisfaction, this way I take ’em one at a time.

Now the man with the knife stepped in swiftly. Barney stepped back, easily avoiding the slashing movement. The man with the knife had expected this and he followed up Barney’s retreat with a sudden advance, bending forward at the same time, swinging the blade in a sweeping, curving motion. It was what Barney had hoped for; the force of the blade at that extension was minimal, as was the man’s grip on the haft. With a quick step toward the man, Barney swung the leather hat at the blade, catching the shining steel in the leather, twisting the hat savagely. The knife went flying, torn from the weakened grip, and the man was before him, now unarmed except for his fists. Now Barney stepped in, to the other man’s extreme surprise, unimpressed by the thief’s greater size, no longer furious but now cold, controlled. He slashed at the man with hard fists, stepping away from the wild lunges, coming in again and again to hammer at the man’s stomach and then, when the hands dropped automatically to protect the midsection, battering the confused bearded face, deaf to all sounds except his own breathing and the desperate labored panting of the other. He wondered why the others involved in the attempted robbery had not come to the help of the man he was beating so unmercifully, but there was no time to think of that if he wished to keep from being battered himself. And then the man’s hands dropped slightly, weary from all the missed blows, the wasted energy, and Barney stepped close and ended it with a swift blow to the jaw that sent the man’s head back and brought him to the ground unconscious.

Barney stepped back, prepared to take on the next one, only to find Andries with one thick arm tightly around the neck of each of two men, holding them painfully and securely, watching him with a faint smile on his face. A thin horse, its ribs showing, stood in the shadows, staring forlornly at the scene. Barney shook his head, trying to catch his breath. In the excitement of the fight he had given no thought to Andries. The big Boer suddenly brought together the two heads he had been holding; they banged together with a hollow thud. When he released the men they staggered a moment and then caught their balance, holding their aching heads. Andries pointed to the man on the ground.

“Out,” he said evenly. “Take him and go. Rob somebody else, but stay away from my wagon.” He watched the two men lift the unconscious man and drape him over the saddle of the horse; the horse winced under the load and stumbled slightly as he was led away. Andries watched them go with no pity at all in his hard eyes. “Bloody English,” he said, and spat. It had been the first time Barney had heard him swear. “A Boer would at least have asked for food before he tried to steal it!”

Barney was too tired to argue the point. He suddenly sat down on the ground, still catching his breath, and watched as Andries reached into the wagon where the intruder had untied the rawhide. He brought out his gun, checked it, and then retied the rawhide.

“From now on we keep watch,” he said. “Too many hungry diggers going back to Cape Town. We take turns. You go to sleep, now. I’ll stay awake.” He climbed up into the seat of the wagon and propped the gun against his knee. “Also, boy,” he added, “you fight good.”

“I told you I could fight,” Barney said.

“So you did,” Andries said with an enigmatic smile. “So you did…”

Each night after that they took turns staying awake and keeping watch, two hours awake and two hours asleep, alternating, but they had no more trouble on the trip. This pleased Barney very much as he had no idea if he would have used the gun even under provocation. He had never fired a gun and hoped he would never have to. Fortunately for the rest of the trip he was never put to the test. And as the mountains grew closer and larger, Barney suddenly wondered at the ability of the ox team, strong and willing as they were, to take the heavy wagon with its weighty load of machinery over them. He voiced his doubts to Andries. The big Boer smiled.

“If you can’t go through them, you’ve got to go over them. Right?” He laughed at Barney’s expression. He actually seemed to be looking forward to the mountains, to the challenge of them. “Don’t worry, boy,” he said reassuringly. “I’ve done it many times before, and so have many others.”

“With a load this heavy?”

Andries shrugged. “No, but we’ll get there. We may have to help by pushing in places. In places we may have to take a crate at a time, or maybe two or three, and unload again and go back for the others. But we’ll get you to Colesberg Kopje and your diamonds, don’t worry.”

“They call it Kimberley now,” Barney said.

“I know what they call it now, Englishman,” Andries said dryly, and cracked his whip over the ears of the oxen. And Barney wondered why he resented being called Englishman, especially by Andries, and particularly in that tone…

The mountains were crossed, and Barney would never forget the eight long and arduous days it took to cross them. The trail had been well marked by all the previous coaches and wagons that had made the trek, but few if any wagons had ever been as heavily loaded, and most of the other ox wagons that had made the crossing had many more men along to push and tug and help the oxen. But it was the oxen that Barney had to admire the most. They never allowed the load to drag them backward as mules or horses would have done; they simply set their great weight against the traces and held the wagon steady while Barney and Andries wrestled the lighter crates off before taking what load they could forward and upward.

And the nights, sleeping exhausted under the wagon, its wheels blocked by heavy stones or by the smaller crates of machinery, the oxen outspanned and stretched along the narrow trail searching the crevices of the rocks for forage, or stretching their necks as high as they could reach for the brambles that grew above them, and then lying quietly, chewing their cuds, as if they well remembered previous passages over steep mountain passes and knew that in time the mountains, with their scarce forage, would be behind them and eventually they would be on the higher plateau where Kimberley lay, with better grazing and pans with ample water as a reward for their labor struggling up and over the mountains.

And the briefer descent, no less dangerous, the oxen using their combined weight to brake the wagon, holding it from forcing them ahead of it, driven by the disselboom to which they were attached, until the wagon might twist on a curve and might spill its contents over the side of one of the deep ravines, possibly taking the wagon and them with it; with Andries alert on one side of the wagon and Barney equally alert on the other, watching the wheels and axles, judging the sway and the balance of the wagon, pulling stones from beneath the wheel rims before the wagon could tilt on them, possibly capsize. Kimberley and diamonds were temporarily forgotten; the only thing on Barney’s mind as he watched his side was the safe descent of the wagon to the broad plain they could now see below. The only thing to concentrate upon now was each foot, each yard, each wagon length, the inching wagon traversed.

And the day that it rained without pause, and the oxen lay without moving, and Andries and Barney sat beneath the wagon trying to avoid the sheets of water that swept in one side and then, when they moved, perversely shifted to the other side, so that they were soon drenched and made do with biltong, damp and tasteless, no possibility of tea in that downpour, hungry and uncomfortable—until Barney suddenly burst into song. “Oh, they’re shiftin’ Father’s grave to build a sewer—” and Andries smiled at him, and the day wasn’t half as bad as they both knew it was.

And then at last, at long last, they were on the plain, the mountains behind them, looming over them, and Barney, looking back, wondered how on earth they had ever managed to cross them. Ahead of them the plateau stretched as far as eye could see, puffy clouds like pillows drifting by above. And Barney was outspanning the oxen, the first time he had done so in over a week, since Andries had assumed that task on the narrow defiles of the mountain trails. There was no conversation between the two; they savored in silence the triumph of having completed the dangerous crossing with possibly the heaviest load ever to have made the trek, and with only a man and a boy to handle the job, and they were rightly proud and did not need to brag to each other of the accomplishment. Even the oxen seemed to know; they munched the increased forage happily, contentedly, seemingly aware of a job well done, a job no span of horse or mule could even have attempted.

And then the oxen were being inspanned and the long march continued. And Barney would not have traded the last eight days on the mountain for any experience he had ever had. Someday, he thought, I’ll be sittin’ with me grandkids before a fireplace and tellin’ them about how their old granddad crossed the Drakensberg Mountains with the heaviest load ever tried, a load no other man in his right mind would even have attempted, but it never frighted me, no, sir!

The thought made him laugh. Grandkids! Him! “Hoy!” he cried, and cracked the sjambok Andries had given him, being careful not to touch the oxen.

It was when they had been on the trail for the seventh week, the mountains now only the faintest outlines behind them and the flatlands of the northern Cape stretched before them, that they came upon the Beeses’ wagon. Gustave Bees had been a tailor in Simonstown, not far from Cape Point, and he was traveling with his wife and daughter. A well-meaning but rather indecisive man, Bees had been a failure as a tailor and had decided he had little to lose in making the attempt at the diamond fields. After all, an acquaintance from Muizenberg not far from Simonstown—and only a greengrocer at that, with hardly any trade at all—had come back from De Beers Old Rush with enough money from the diamonds he had dug to build himself a small hotel on the beach at St. James, and now he was set for life just renting rooms and selling food and drink to those who came to enjoy the False Bay surf. There was no reason, Bees had thought, why he should not do as well.

Unfortunately, even as Gustave Bees had been a failure as a tailor, he was equally great a failure in the trekking of an ox wagon over the almost seven hundred miles from Simonstown to Kimberley and the diamond fields. At the time Andries and Barney came upon the wagon, the Beeses’ oxen were merely standing in their traces, and there was no sign of the drover or any of his party. This was most unusual. Rather than merely bypassing the wagon and continuing, Andries did what he hoped others would do for him in like circumstances: he brought his team to a halt. He nodded to Barney to stay where he was, and approached the apparently deserted wagon, his eyes taking in the poor condition of the oxen waiting, still spanned to the disselboom, when the head of a very pretty girl poked itself from behind the canvas cover at the rear of the wagon. She saw Andries and called out.

“Sir!”

Andries walked closer, frowning. Barney stayed where he had been told to stay, his eyes admiring the girl. Their oxen stood in their traces, waiting. Andries came to the back of the wagon and looked up at the girl. “Yes, girl?”

“Sir, are you—do you—do you know anything about doctoring?”

Andries’ frown deepened. He knew as much as most on the trail about simple doctoring; a broken bone could be set and he carried with him some herbs to be put on suspicious insect bites. He could also purge both humans and oxen if need be. “What’s the trouble?”

The girl glanced inside of the canvas and then back at Andries. “It’s my ma—”

“And where’s your pa?”

The tail flaps of the canvas cover of the wagon had been pulled closed; a heavily bearded worried-looking face now parted them a bit farther to peer over the girl’s shoulder. It viewed Andries with suspicion for a moment; then the man seemed to realize he was in no position to refuse whatever help this stranger might be able to offer. “It’s my missus,” he said helplessly, his voice wavering slightly. “I don’t know what—”

Andries wasted no time. He hoisted himself inside the wagon, the man and the girl moving back to permit his entrance. The air inside the closed canvas was stifling, the smell of whatever medicine they had been using was overwhelming, sickening. Andries grimaced and threw open the tail flaps, tying them back, letting both fresh air and greater light enter. Bees made a tentative motion as if to prevent this intrusion of air with all its germs and dangers, but his daughter’s hand restrained him. Andries knelt at the pallet that had been stretched along the rear of the wagon. The woman there, he could see, had once been very beautiful, but now her face was lined with the years of toil, weary with the stress and pain of her illness, and with the seeming knowledge that the suffering of the years and the discomfort and distress of the long trip had been wasted. He touched her forehead; she was burning with fever. Suddenly she coughed, a deep raling cough, and turned her head to spit rust-colored sputum into a rag in her thin hand.

Andries looked up at the girl inquiringly, as if realizing she was the strong one in the family.

“She took sick a little over a week ago,” she said helplessly. “It started out what we thought was just a cold, you know, from the rain. We were all soaking, inspanning the oxen, but we had to get moving. We’ve been more than three months, so far … We gave her all the medicine we had. If you have any—?”

Andries sighed and looked down at the sick woman again. He was looking at pneumonia and he knew it. He had seen it before, several times on the trail and once in Bloemfontein Hospital, and unfortunately, each time a friend. One man had recovered, two had died. The doctor in Bloemfontein had said that maybe rest and good food might help, although he hadn’t sounded too sure of himself. God alone knew where this poor woman was going to get either rest or good food on this forlorn wagon! Some got better from the disease and nobody knew why. Others didn’t, and nobody knew why. It was the toss of a coin.

Andries came to his feet, considering options. They could, of course, outspan the oxen and give the poor woman some surcease from the jouncing of the wagon. On the other hand … He looked at Bees.

“The river’s only a few days ahead. There’s shade there and water for the oxen. And there are diggers near there, in the wet diggings. Some of them are bound to have horses. One of them could ride ahead to the dry mines for a doctor.”

“The river?”

Good God! Didn’t the poor fool even know where he was? Still, after three months on the trail it was quite possible he had no idea. “The Orange River. We’ll go with you if you need help.” Unspoken was the thought that little help could be offered a victim of the dread disease, other than a prayer and a sharp shovel to dig a deep grave.

“It’s just a simple cold,” Bees said, trying to draw comfort from a statement he didn’t believe himself. “A cold, you know? It’ll be better in a few days—” He stared at Andries hopefully, willing him to give him the answer he wanted, had to have. “A simple cold—”

Andries didn’t bother to contradict the man. “Better get started,” he said, and climbed down, walking to his own wagon. Barney looked at him questioningly.

“Sick woman,” Andries said succinctly. “Probably dying. We’ll stay with them, at least to the river.” He waited until he had seen Bees climb to the wagon seat and crack his whip inexpertly over his team, striking an ox and causing the wagon to jerk as the beast twisted in its traces from the sting of the whip; then the team brought itself together and started off, ragged at first but eventually pulling more evenly. Barney cracked his sjambok and started their team after the other, proud of how evenly the team worked. In the open space of the tied-back tail flaps of the wagon ahead he could see the girl bent over her mother’s pallet, tending the patient. God, she’s beautiful! Barney thought. Sixteen or seventeen at the most, with a lovely figure. And that face! Silky hair framing a complexion tanned by the days on the trek; pert nose, eyes set wide apart. He could not see the color of her eyes but he was sure they were as lovely as the rest of her. He walked along, beside the oxen, daydreaming.

They outspanned the oxen at dusk, Andries keeping his team on the trail for an extra several hours, thinking of the woman in the wagon ahead and the need to reach the river as soon as possible. With the two wagons angled for the night, Barney built a campfire in the space between, setting water on to boil for tea. They all ate in silence, and then the girl disappeared into her wagon to care for her mother. The men sat to one side, their pipes going, speaking in Afrikaans, although both the man and the girl had spoken English before. Barney felt out of things; he was about to doss down under the wagon when the girl climbed down and came to sit beside him. Her eyes, he could now see, were deep hazel, her mouth wide. Lovely! he thought.

“How’s your ma?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She’s burning with fever; she seems worse. She won’t eat a thing.” The girl swept her skirts beneath her unselfconsciously, changing her position, looking at Barney. “You’re very kind to come along with us.”

“The wagon belongs to Andries. It’s his decision.” Barney grinned. “I’m just along for the walk.”

Her eyes widened. “You walked? All the way?”

“Every foot. All the way from Cape Town.” He tried not to sound as if he were bragging; this girl didn’t look as if bragging would impress her. “We got a heavy load there, probably the heaviest load ever come over the mountains—” There went the bragging again. “We both been walkin’; we didn’t have no choice.” He looked at her, trying to sound as if he were merely making conversation. “You goin’ to Kimberley?”

“Bultfontein,” she said, “but that’s a part of Kimberley, isn’t it?”

“I guess it must be pretty close, anyways. Maybe we can see each other there—”

“Maybe.” She frowned and changed the subject. “They say the diamonds are all gone, run out. Some wagons we met going back told us.”

“Naw!” Barney tried to sound convincing. “Me brother’s hit it big in Kimberley and I’m goin’ to hit it big, too.” There he was, bragging again! He looked away and then back at her, trying to hide the open admiration in his eyes. “What—what’s yer name?”

“Fay. Fay Bees. What’s yours?”

“Barney Isaacs.”

Fay stared at him. “You’re a Jew?”

Despite himself a little belligerence crept into his voice. “That’s right. Why?”

“Nothing. I never met a Jew before. But I know they have names like Isaac, after the Bible. We use the biblical names for first names, not last.” Her answer was given so ingenuously, so innocently, that all belligerence disappeared; Barney was back to pure admiration. Fay was staring into the fire; then she looked up from it to study Barney. “What did you do before you came on the trek?”

Barney hesitated. Bragging was one thing, but telling the God’s honest truth was something else. “Me brother and me, we was entertainers, like. In the music halls, in the East End. That’s in London,” he added, and suddenly hoped that Fay Bees had no idea of what the East End of London was like. He went on hurriedly. “Songs and dances, see? Clownin’, acrobat stuff, tumblin’ …” She was looking at him with the faintest frown, not as though she doubted him, but rather as if she didn’t understand what he was talking about. “Acrobats, don’t y’know?” he asked. “Tumblin’ and such?”

She shook her head.

“Like this,” Barney said confidently, and came to his feet. He laid his hat to one side not to step upon it, flexed his knees, and did a back flip in place without touching his hands to the ground. Then, taking a forward step or two, he did a front flip, landing gracefully at Fay’s feet. She was looking at him with admiration; he felt his face getting red. The two men had also stopped their conversation and had been watching. “That’s what a acrobat does,” Barney said brusquely. “Things like this, too.” He made a comic face and went into a bit of his clown routine, staggering about as if he were drunk, dropping into a split and then sliding his feet together to come erect once again. Fay clapped her hands in appreciation. “Stuff like that, too,” Barney said in a tone that deprecated his performance. “Stuff to make people laugh.” He was about to sit down next to Fay when a thought came. It was a golden opportunity to impress the girl, one far too good to pass up. He not only had an audience, but one that was obviously an admiring one. “I also do recitations.”

“Recitations?”

“Yeah. From plays, y’know.” He looked at her, frowning, remembering Andries’ confession of never having seen a play. “You know what plays are? You ever seen one?”

“Oh, yes, of course. We aren’t strict like that. There was an amateur group in Simonstown. My mother belonged.”

“Good. Listen.” He began to strike a pose and then paused. “This is Mathias, in The Bells. You ever seen it?”

Fay shook her head. The men were still watching, but Barney only had eyes for the girl.

“This Mathias, he’s killed a bloke, see, a long time ago. Now he’s the mayor of the town and important, y’know? One day he goes to the theater and sees a mesmerist—he’s a bloke what puts people to sleep, only they’re really not asleep, see, like folks that walk in their sleep. Only they got to tell the truth when they’re like that, see? So this Mathias he goes home and he has this bad dream, see, where he dreams he’s in court for the killin’ and this mesmerist has put him to sleep and makin’ him tell the truth, and he’s tellin’ everybody about killin’ this bloke for his money, and everybody’s listenin’. Got that?”

Fay nodded her understanding. Barney struck his pose again, bent over like an old man.

“ ‘Yers, yers, I ’ave crossed th’ fields!’” Barney pointed off dramatically into the distance. “‘ ’Ere is th’ ol’ bridge an’ there below th’ frozen rivulet! ’Ow th’ dogs ’owl at Daniel’s Farm—’ow they ’owl! An’ ol’ Finck’s Forge—’ow brightly it glows upon th’ ’illock!’” He dropped his voice in preparation for the part where he actually does the killing, and then became aware that at least a portion of his audience was somewhat less than appreciative. Fay was laughing uncontrollably, tears rolling down her cheeks. Barney frowned. “What’s the matter?”

“That’s the funniest thing I ever heard in my life! I’m sure you and your brother must have been most successful in making people laugh! Is he as funny as you are? But—please go on.”

Barney clenched his jaw. “That wasn’t supposed to be funny!”

Fay’s laughter stopped abruptly. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” She was an honest girl and didn’t believe in lying needlessly. “But—well, it really was funny.”

“What was so funny about it?” Barney glowered. “I seen Sir Henry Irving do it a dozen times and nobody laughed or even felt like laughin’! And I was doin’ it just the same as him!”

Fay looked at him coolly. “Did this Sir Henry Whoever say, ‘Yers, yers, I ’ave crossed th’ fields’? Did he say, ‘’Ow the dogs ’owl’? Or did he say, ‘Yes, yes, I have crossed the fields.’ And did he say, ‘How the dogs howl’?”

“What’s the bloo— What’s the difference?”

“Apparently none to you, but a great deal to me. You make mistakes when you speak but nothing like when you’re doing your—well, your recitations.” She suddenly took pity on the boy standing so angrily before her. After all, he had been nice in trying to take her mind from her mother’s illness, and had even succeeded. She had never thought she would have been laughing that evening. “Why don’t you try saying, ‘How the dogs howl’?”

“Forget it,” Barney said abruptly, and turned away, looking over at the two men who had been silently watching the scene. Gustave Bees came to his feet, knocking out his pipe.

“Fay, bedtime. And look in on your ma.”

“Yes, Pa.” The girl came to her feet gracefully, brushing off her skirt. She looked toward Andries. “Good night, Mr. Pirow.”

“Good night, girl.”

She turned. “Good night, Barney.” She hesitated a moment as if to say something further, and then turned toward their wagon.

“Good night,” Barney said expressionlessly, and watched her go to the rear of the wagon and climb in. The tail flaps were loosened and swung shut, blocking his view of her.

Ah, well, Barney thought as he lay down near the fire and prepared to go to sleep; the poor girl is simply ignorant as to what constitutes good acting. It hasn’t anything to do with accents; even the words aren’t as important as how you say them. And the gestures, and the tone of voice. What could she possibly have learned in some small town called Simonstown in comparison with a great metropolis like London? Or from stumbling amateurs as compared with great men such as Sir Henry Irving? Anyway, how could she possibly have thought he was trying to be funny? Still, he thought as he drew his hat over his face to keep out the disturbing flicker of the campfire, she is really so lovely … ! And we’ll be together at least until we get to the river, and hopefully beyond that all the way to Kimberley, or Bultfontein, or whatever. He cradled his head on his arms.

Yes, yes, I have crossed the fields. Here is the bloody old bridge and there below the bloody frozen rivulet. How the bloody dogs howl at Daniel’s Farm—how they bloody howl! And bloody old Finck’s Forge—how brightly it glows upon the bloody hillock!”

Bloody ridiculous, he thought, and found himself drifting off, a bit resentful but not knowing exactly why, with Fay’s unearthly beauty the final thought that came before he was asleep.

The oxen picked up their speed without being induced to by the crack of the sjambok; they were approaching the river although it was still beyond sight. Fay had spent the day inside the Beeses’ wagon, placing damp rags on her mother’s burning forehead, cleaning up the unsightly sputum, trying to get her mother to eat. Barney kept his eyes on the tail flaps of the wagon ahead, occasionally getting a glimpse of Fay, his mind confused. Girls, as such, had never meant very much to him. Oh, there had been the usual fumbling with the barmaids at the King of Prussia; there were the girls that did and the ones that didn’t—and the ones that didn’t were usually ones one didn’t want to do it with, anyway—friends of the family, the ones wanting to get married and raise a bunch of kids right away. Look at his two sisters, both married, both with kids in their early teens, running loose in the East End, probably aiming for trouble if someone didn’t take a hand to them. That’s what marriage meant—kids and responsibilities and trouble.

The tail flaps of the wagon ahead parted; Fay dropped from the slow-moving wagon, waited until Barney had come up, and then fell in step beside him. It was as if her being beside him was the most natural thing in the world. Barney tried not to look at her.

“How’s your ma?”

Fay shrugged. “She won’t eat a thing. I tried soaking some mealies in water and getting her to drink it, but she won’t even do that.”

“We’ll be at the river soon,” Barney said encouragingly. “Andries says when the oxen pull like this the river’s getting close. Maybe when we get there—”

“Maybe. I hope,” Fay said, and walked alongside him, almost, he thought, as if they were man and wife. It was a warming thought, a disturbing thought. It was a stupid thought! Here he was—just what the proprietor of that doss house in Cape Town had called him—a boy! It was what Andries still called him most of the time—a boy! And without enough pounds in his purse to keep himself alive more than a few weeks in Kimberley if what they said about the place was true. What was he doing thinking about a girl?

And anyway, what would a girl like that want with someone like him? A short, far from good-looking Jew from the East End, and her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen? And assuredly Dutch Reformed, even if not the strictest, in the bargain. Keep yer head on straight, Barney me boy, he thought, before somethin’ comes along and knocks it orf! Keep your head on straight, Barney my boy, before something comes along and knocks it off! You’re getting silly, he thought, and then became aware that the oxen were pulling with greater force. In the distance the faint outline of a fringe of trees could now be seen, marking the edge of the river. Fay left his side to hurry to her own wagon to advise her mother they were nearing the river and a place where possible help might be available. She disappeared into the wagon for a moment and then Barney could hear her call out, the edge of terror in her voice.

“Pa!” Her head appeared through the tail flaps, tears starting to her eyes. “Barney! Mr. Pirow!”

Bees had brought his oxen to a halt, tying back the reins so the smell of water would not drive them on without permission. He hurriedly climbed through the wagon, stepping over the household furnishings they had brought, dropping down beside his wife’s pallet. Barney brought his team to a halt and ran forward. Andries was already there, up on the wagon, dragging back the flaps, tying them for better light. Fay stood staring, a look of horror on her face. Mrs. Bees lay there, her eyes open, a grimace upon her ravaged face, a trail of drying sputum running from the corner of her mouth, her hands clasped tightly, her breathing stopped.

They buried Emily Bees beside the river, far enough from the banks, as Andries explained it, so that the grave would not flood and be under water when the spring freshets brought the wide river to its high mark. They placed stones over it as a protection from animals, and Andries fashioned a rough cross from the straightest branches they could find on the trees bordering the river, binding the two halves with rawhide from his wagon. It was dark when everything had been done, and each pair retired without speaking, the evening campfire and meal jointly rejected without discussion.

And in the morning, when Andries to be helpful went to round up the Beeses’ oxen for inspanning, the man from Simonstown stopped him, shaking his head. His eyes were red from weeping and from lack of sleep; he seemed to have aged years in the night.

“I shall stay here a bit,” he said. “There’s no rush now to get to Bultfontein. There’s no rush now for anything. Besides,” he added, staring at the grave, “I want to make a better cross. With words on it.”

Andries nodded in understanding. “As you wish,” he said, and thought to himself that the Bees oxen could stand the extra forage near the river, as well as the extra rest and ample fresh water. It was a miracle that Bees had come this far; Emily Bees and Fay must have worked hard for this poor man. He waited until Barney had their own team inspanned and then shook hands with Bees. “Good luck.”

“Thank you for everything,” Bees said. “May God bless you.” He bit his lip to keep the tears from coming, but he could not keep the unevenness from his voice. “She was so beautiful,” he said, and bit his lip even harder.

“You still have Fay,” Andries said.

Bees stared at him without speaking, as if wondering at the other’s lack of understanding, and then climbed into his wagon, his shoulders shaking. The tail flaps dropped. Andries sighed and moved beside his own wagon, waiting until Barney could finish saying his good-byes to the girl. Andries waited patiently. Emily Bees must indeed have once been beautiful, he thought to himself, and wondered if his choice of never having married had been a wise one, of never having a wife like Emily Bees, or a son like Barney or a daughter like Fay. On the other hand, he had never known the pain that Gustave Bees was suffering at the moment. It was hard to know what was worth what. Everything was a trade-off.

He looked up from his thoughts, with the intent of hurrying Barney, and then stared as a wild scream came from the other side of the river. A terrified black had burst from the trees on the far bank and was floundering through the shallow river trying desperately to reach the other side. A moment later two horsemen, rifles in hand and accompanied by a pack of baying dogs, burst through the same fringe of trees and rode into the river after the struggling black. The dogs, momentarily held back by the water, ran excitedly back and forth along the bank, barking frantically and pausing every now and then to give great bays that echoed over the river. One of the horsemen bent low, easily lifting the small black figure under one arm, his other arm cradling his rifle. He wheeled his horse, joined the other horseman, and the two splashed from the river. On the bank, joined by the yelping pack of dogs, the two rode back into the trees, the black dangling helplessly, and disappeared.

The entire action had taken only a matter of seconds. Fay was frozen in horror while Barney automatically took a step forward as if to help the poor victim of the violence, and stopped at the edge of the water, staring across the river at the trees. The leafy branches there waved gently, the only remaining sign of the brutal passage of the men and dogs. There was a sudden salvo of rifle shots, a high-pitched terrified scream of desperation and pain, trailing into sudden silence.

Fay echoed the scream; the violence, after her mother’s death, was too much for her. She threw her arms around Barney’s neck and hid her face against his shoulder, holding him tightly. Barney’s arms tightened about the girl automatically, but his eyes sought Andries in startled nonunderstanding.

“A diamond thief,” Andries said, and tried to sound noncommittal about it, although inwardly he was seething. Like almost all Boers raised on the Bible, Andries had little feelings for the blacks; hadn’t the Bible sentenced them to be servants forever as the descendants of Ham? But Andries hated the violence that had come to his land with the advent of diamonds. Before diamonds the Kaffirs had been content to work the land for their Boer masters; now they were flocking to the mines and becoming thieves to boot. “They’ll cut him open, looking,” he said somberly, “and then leave what’s left as biltong for the vultures.”

Barney was staring at him over Fay’s bent head. “What!”

“You wanted Kimberley; you wanted the diamonds,” Andries said quietly, dryly. He looked up at the sun. “And we’d best be going. Your Kimberley is less than two days away.”

Barney looked at the head on his shoulder, reveling in the warm smell of Fay’s hair. The head was bent, making him realize again how short he was, that Fay was as tall as he was, actually a little taller. He suddenly wanted to turn the head around, to kiss those full lips, to somehow stop her trembling. He tightened his hold on her, but instead of responding Fay suddenly pulled away. She walked a bit unsteadily to her wagon and climbed in without looking back. The flaps fluttered at her passage and then closed. Barney turned. Andries was watching him.

“Let’s go,” Barney said expressionlessly, and cracked the sjambok.

They forded the shallow river without Barney looking back once. He hoped Fay was watching them, thinking of him, but he was fairly sure she was not. Why should she? Her reaching for him had been an automatic gesture, caused by the horrible and unexplainable cruelty they had witnessed, and by the sudden death of her mother. She would have turned to whoever had been standing beside her at the moment.

But despite that all-too-true fact, Barney knew he was in love. Oh, he knew he had no money and even if he had all the money in the world he could never hope to ever have anyone as lovely as Fay for his own. But he could be her friend, protect her from harm, and when she finally fell in love with a handsome man, he, Barney Isaacs would see that she got the man she had fallen in love with, no matter what sacrifices he had to make to see it done.

The thought almost brought tears to his eyes. But as dramatically romantic as he knew it to be, he also knew that now he had someone to work for, to be successful for, even though he himself would never be the one to benefit from his great love.

And Barney also was sure that despite the hardship of the desolate land, despite the violence he had just seen and which he was sure would not be the last violence he would see in that violent land, he had no fear of the future. Barney Isaacs had found his permanent home, he knew—Africa. He cracked the sjambok over the ears of the oxen, proud that he could come as close as Andries without touching a hair of their hides. And make as good a fire as the next one from ox dung… He smiled at the thought.