A two-wheeled cart stood in front of the main door of the hut, two somnolent donkeys still in the traces, flicking their ears at the swarming black cloud of flies. The cart was piled with lumps of yellow earth, but the yard was deserted.
Incongruously there were a few straggling scarlet geraniums growing in galvanized one-gallon syrup cans on each side of the doorway. There were also dainty lace curtains in the single window, so freshly washed that they had not yet turned ochre red with dust, nor become speckled with the excrement of the swarming flies.
The touch of a woman was unmistakable, and to confirm Zouga's guess there was the faint but harrowing sound of a woman weeping from the open doorway.
As Zouga hesitated in the yard, disconcerted by the sounds of grief, a brawny figure filled the doorway and stood blinking in the sunlight, shading his eyes with a gnarled and dirt-ingrained hand.
"Who are you?" Jock Danby demanded, with unnecessary roughness.
"I spoke to you yesterday," Zouga explained, "up at the pit., "What do you want?" the digger demanded, showing no sign of recognition, his features screwed up in an truculence and something else, some other emotion which Zouga did not immediately recognize.
"You spoke of selling your briefies," Zouga reminded him.
Jock Danby's face seemed to swell and turn dark ugly red; the veins and cords stood out in his throat as he ducked his head down on the thickly muscled shoulders.
"You filthy bloody vulture," he choked, and he came out into the sunlight with the heavy irresistible crabbing rush of a gut-shot buffalo bull.
He was taller than Zouga by a head, ten years younger and fifty pounds heavier. Taken completely by surprise, Zouga was a hundredth part of a second late in ducking and spinning away from the man's charge. A fist like a cannon ball smashed into his shoulder, a glancing blow but with the force to send Zouga reeling to sprawl on his back across the sorting-table, scattering diamondiferous gravel across the dusty yard.
Jock Danby charged again, his swollen face working, his eyes mad, his thick stained fingers hooked as they reached for Zouga's throat. Zouga jack-knifed his legs, drawing himself into a ball, tense as the arch in an adder's neck at the moment before it strikes, and he drove the heels of his boots into the man's chest.
The breath whistled out of Jock Danby's throat, and he stopped in mid-charge as though hit in the chest with a double charge of buck-shot. His head and arms snapped forward, nerveless as a straw-man, and he flew backwards, crashing into the unbaked brick wall of the hut and beginning to slide down onto his knees.
Zouga bounded off the tabletop. His left arm was numb to the fingertips from the unexpected blow, but he was light on his feet as a dancer, and the quick rush of cold anger armed and strengthened him. He closed the gap between them with two swift strides and hooked Jock Danby, high in the side of his head just above and in front of his ear; the shock of the punch jarred his own teeth but sent the man spinning along the wall to slump on his knees in the red dust.
Jock Danby was stunned and his eyes were glazing over, but Zouga jerked him to his feet and propped him against the side of the cart, setting him up carefully for the next punch. His anger and outrage driving him on to revenge that unprovoked and senseless attack, Zouga shifted his weight, holding Jock Danby steady with his left hand and pulling back the right fist for a full-blooded swing.
Then he froze. He never threw the punch. Instead he stared incredulously. Jock Danby was blubbering like a child, his heavy shoulders shaking uncontrollably, tears greasing down the sunraddled cheeks into the dusty beard.
It was somehow shocking and embarrassing to see a man like this weep, and Zouga felt his anger swiftly extinguished. He dropped his fist and unclenched it at his side.
"Christ -" Jock Danby choked hoarsely. "What kind of man are you to try and make a profit of another man's grief !" Zouga stared at him, unable to answer the accusation.
"You must have smelt it, like a hyena or a fat bloody vulture."
"I came to make you a fair offer, that's all," Zouga replied stiffly. He took the handkerchief from his jacket pocket and handed it to Jock Danby. "Wipe your face, man," he ordered gruffly.
Jock smeared his tears and then studied the stained linen. "You didn't know then?"he whispered. "You didn't know about the boy?" He looked up and studied Zouga's face sharply and, seeing his answer, he handed back the handkerchief and shook his head like a spaniel shaking off the water from its ears, trying to steady his reeling senses. "I'm sorry," he grunted. "I thought somehow you had learned about the boy, and come to buy me out."
"I don't understand," Zouga told him, and Jock Danby started for the door of the shack.
"Come," he said, and led Zouga through the hot stuffy little front room. The chairs covered with dark green velvet were too bulky for the size of the room, and the family treasures, Bible and faded ancestral photographs, cheap cutlery and a porcelain dish commemorating the Queen's wedding to Prince Albert, were on display upon the central table.
in the door of the back room Zouga paused, and felt a sickening little lurch in the pit of his stomach. A woman knelt beside the bed. She had a shawl spread over head and shoulders. Her hands clasped before her face were roughened and reddened by the drudgery of labour over the diamond sorting-table.
She lifted her head and looked at Zouga in the doorway. She might once have been a pretty girl, but the sun had coarsened her skin and her eyes were swollen and reddened with grief. The wisps of hair that hung lankly from under the shawl were greasy and prematurely greyed.
After that one glance she lowered her head 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.
Zouga 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 Dariby'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.