The road back was cut. He was chancing it all on the yellow gravel and the road northwards.
"Zouga, you promised," Aletta whispered when the buyer came to Zouga's camp to collect the oxen. "You promised that in one week -" Then she fell silent when she saw his face. She knew that expression. She drew the two boys to her and held them close.
Jan Cheroot went to each of the animals in turn and whispered to them as tenderly as a lover, and his stare was reproachful as he turned to Zouga while the span was led away.
Neither man spoke, and at last Jan Cheroot dropped his gaze and walked away, a slight, bare-footed, bowlegged little gnome.
Zouga thought he had lost him, and he felt a rush of distress, for the little man was a friend, a teacher and a companion of twelve years.
It was Jan Cheroot who had tracked his first elephant, and stood shoulder to shoulder with him as he shot it down. Together they had marched and ridden the breadth of a savage continent. They had drunk from the same bottle and eaten from the same pot at a thousand camp fires. Yet he could not bring himself to call him back. He knew that Jan Cheroot must make his own decision.
He need not have worried. When "dop" time came that evening, Jan Cheroot was there to hold out his chipped enamel mug. Zouga smiled and, ignoring the line that measured his daily ration of brandy, he filled the mug to the brim.
"It was necessary, old friend," he said, and Jan Cheroot nodded gravely. "They were good beasts," he said. "But then I have had many fine beasts go from my life, fourlegged and two-legged ones." He tasted the raw spirit.
"After a little time and a dram or two, it does not matter so much."
Aletta did not speak again until the boys were asleep in the tent.
"Selling the oxen and the wagon was your answer," she said.
"It cost a guinea a day to water them, and the grazing has been eaten flat for miles about."
"There have been three more deaths in the camp. I counted thirty wagons leaving today. It's a plague camp."
"Yes." Zouga nodded. "Some of the claim holders are getting nervous. A claim that I was offered for eleven hundred pounds yesterday was sold for nine hundred today."
"Zouga, it's not fair to me or the children," she began, but he interrupted her.
"I can arrange a passage for you and the boys with a transport rider. He has sold his stock and he leaves in the next few days. He will take you back to Cape Town."
They undressed in darkness and silence, and when Aletta followed him into the hard narrow cot the silence continued until he thought she had fallen asleep. Then he felt her hand, smooth and soft, touch his cheek lightly.
"I am sorry, my darling." Her voice was as light as her touch, and her breath stirred his beard. "I was so tired and depressed."
He took her hand and held the tips of her fingers to his lips.
"I have been such a poor wife to you, always too sick and weak when you needed someone strong." Timidly she let her body touch his. "And now when I should be a comfort to you, I do nothing but snivel."
"No," he said. "That's not true." And yet over the years he had resented her often enough for just those reasons.
He had felt like a man trying to run with shackles on his ankles.
"And yet I love you, Zouga. I loved you the first day I laid eyes on you, and I have never ceased to love you."
I love you too, Aletta," he assured her, yet the words came automatically; and to make up for the lack of spontaneity, he placed his arm around her shoulders and she drew closer still and laid her cheek against his chest.
"I hate myself for being so weak and sickly," she hesitated, "for not being able to be a real wife any more."
"Shh! Aletta, do not upset yourself."
I will be strong now, you will see."
"You have always been strong, deep inside."
"No, but I will be now. We shall find that capful of diamonds together, and afterwards we shall go north." He did not reply, and it was she who spoke again. "Zouga, I want you to make love to me, now."
"Aletta, you know that is dangerous."
"Now," she repeated. "Now, please." And she took his hand down and placed it under the hem of her nightdress against the smooth warm skin of her inner thigh. She had never done that before, and Zouga found himself shocked but strangely aroused, and afterwards he was filled with a deep tenderness and compassion for her that he had not felt for many years.
When her breathing had become regular once more, she pulled his hands away gently and slipped out of the cot.
Leaning on one elbow he watched her light the candle and then kneel by the trunk that was lashed to the foot of the cot. She had plaited her hair with a 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."
In 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.