Sand and Diamonds By Victor Rousseau Read online

  Action Stories, September, 1926

  Like ghosts of the night, Rawlins and Simons, of the Bechuanaland Mounted, melted forever into the ominous maw of Ngami

  IEUTENANT CONNELL, of the

  “What is your theory, then? Who sent

  Bechuanaland Mounted Police, South

  that wire from Johannesburg in Rawlins’s

  L Africa, frowned as Sergeant Luke name, and who sent that one from Cape Town, Evans stepped into the office of the barracks

  signed Simons, telling us that he was sailing1

  at Boskop.

  “Read that, Evans!” He tossed

  for England? What is there in the Ngami

  a telegram across the table to the sergeant,

  district?” he went on, without waiting for the

  who picked it up and read:

  sergeant’s answer to his first question.

  “Sand, baboons, thorn scrub, and

  Kiss Boskop good-bye for me. Not thirst.”

  coming back. Johannesburg’s as fine as ever.

  “You’re right, Evans. You know the

  Rawlins.

  district as well as it can be known. A lot of it

  is included in that enormous block of land that

  The sergeant raised his eyebrows.

  old Duplessis holds, but it’ll never see any

  “You think Rawlins has deserted the

  humans except a few wandering Bushmen.

  Force, too, sir, like—”

  Still, it’s in our district, and—”

  “Like Simons? What do you think,

  He paused. “You don’t think Rawlins

  Evans? You knew Simons and Rawlins and Simons quit because they didn’t want to intimately. Each of them was sent to patrol the

  patrol the desert, do you, Evans? You know

  Ngami district. A week or two later each of

  the natives have queer stories about its being

  them sends an impudent wire in turn, peopled by ghosts, and so on. Of course that announcing his desertion.”

  wouldn’t have scared our men. Still, when a

  “I don’t believe either of them man’s been riding week after week with only deserted, sir, or sent that wire.”

  thirst for a companion...

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  2

  “I want you to go up there at once,”

  wide streets criss-crossing each other at right

  Connell finished abruptly. “Report back to me

  angles, lined with one-story brick buildings

  after you’ve thoroughly covered the district.

  roofed with galvanized iron; stores, old

  Try to get on the tracks of Simon and Rawlins,

  clothes shops, and “ice-cold drinks”

  that’s to say, learn whether they actually went

  emporiums devoted to the native trade.

  to the Ngami or not. And don’t you send me a

  All about lay the half-desert country, at

  wire from down country telling me that present a uniform brown, though when the you’ve deserted, because I won’t believe it.”

  rains began—if they began—it would be

  He grinned at Evans, who grinned transformed almost overnight into an expanse back at him. No one would believe that of

  of emerald. The spruits would run water, the Sergeant Evans, with five wounds and half-a-empty dams and cisterns would be brimming,

  dozen medals gained on the battlefields of

  crops would be sown—if the rains came.

  France.

  Boskop was on the fringe of the desert.

  “You’d best start right away,” Usually the four months’ downpour continued Connell. “And when you reach old

  materialized in Boskop. Sometimes it did not.

  Duplessis’s farm stop in and pay him your

  It never rained in the Ngami country, over

  respects. We’ve got to keep in with him, beyond the fringe of kopjes on the horizon, or however much he hates us.”

  only enough to maintain the stunted thorn

  Evans was just at the door when scrub that dotted the land like the wool fibres Connell called after him:

  on a native’s head.

  “I wish we could get hold of old Pete

  That was Luke’s destination, a land

  Flanagan. If any man knows the Ngami from

  where no one lived except the wandering

  end to end it’s Pete. Haven’t heard anything of

  Bushman and his cousin, the baboon. A few

  him of late, have you, Evans?”

  had traversed it, among them Pete Flanagan,

  “Haven’t seen or heard of him for the oldest and most sanguine diamond months, Lieutenant. I s’pose he’s off looking

  prospector in the district. According to Pete,

  for more of those diamond mines.”

  the Ngami region was thickly sprinkled with

  The other nodded, and Evans left the

  diamond “pipes,” the volcanic outlets in which

  office. His preparations were simple, and the stones were made. Pete’s volubility had occupied almost no time at all. Into his saddle-long since been discouraged, and nowadays it

  bags he stuffed a few tins of bully beef, a

  was only under the stimulus of a few drinks

  quantity of flour, a small bottle of effervescent that he would repeat the old story for the

  saline, as a substitute for yeast, and a roll of

  amusement of his entertainers. For some time

  sun-dried beef, biltong, of the appearance and

  past nothing had been seen of the old man.

  consistency of blackened sole-leather. In

  Diamonds had been found near

  addition he took tea, matches, sugar, salt, and

  Boskop. Twenty miles away two men, Hart

  a quantity of compressed vegetables. He had

  and Van Reenen, had found stones two years

  also a double billy, for cooking, two large

  before. A rush had followed, but the supply

  water-flasks, and, besides his service revolver,

  had proved to be only a single pocket.

  a carbine, grounded in the leather bucket that

  Hart was the district money-lender,

  was suspended from the off side of his saddle.

  and had his hands on everything negotiable.

  Three miles down-hill from the police

  Van Reenen was his chief satellite, an

  post lay the settlement of Boskop. It consisted

  adventurer who was probably wanted under

  of the usual large market square, common to

  various aliases in many parts of the country.

  all South African towns, and three or four

  Sergeant Luke rode through Boskop,

  Sand and Diamonds

  3

  past the line of stores, with their crowds of

  The sudden impulse was killed by the

  chattering natives pawing over the second-

  flash of reason.

  hand clothes and bargaining with the

  “Maybe,” Luke answered non-

  gesticulating proprietors; past the market committally. “I hear Van Reenen’s left town,”

  square, with its few teams of longhorns he continued casually.

  inspanned to heavy Dutch wagons, out into

  Hart guffawed. “Oh, yes, after big

  the land beyond. Just on the other side of the

  game, sergeant. Him and old Duplessis have

  town was Jacob’s Hotel
, Hart’s headquarters.

  gone after a herd of springbok out in the

  On

  the

  stoep Sergeant Luke saw Hart

  Ngami.”

  sitting, tilted back in his chair, his thumbs in

  This speech gave Luke food for

  his armholes. Though it was not yet noon he

  thought. Prodigious herds of these antelopes

  was already drunk. He sprawled there, a migrate periodically through the desert drunken blotch in the sun, fanned by a regions, armies of several hundred thousand Sechuana boy with a palm leaf. Upon the little

  sometimes covering hundreds of miles on

  table at his elbow stood a bottle of whiskey,

  those strange treks that are the peculiar and a tumbler, half-full.

  characteristic of this animal. Luke knew that

  Seated beside him, leaning forward old Duplessis’s passion for hunting was and gesticulating, was “Baldy” Smith, one of

  almost on a par with his hatred of

  Hart’s crowd, and one of the hard characters

  Englishmen—one of his two dominant

  left stranded in Boskop after the diamond rush

  passions, in fact.

  had petered out and the disgruntled

  Still Luke also was aware that Hart and

  prospectors had removed to other haunts.

  Duplessis were at odds. Hart held a mortgage

  Inside the store adjacent to the hotel

  on the old man’s lands and was pressing him

  Sergeant Luke saw the mean, wizened face of

  hard. Three thousand morgen—six thousand

  Jacobs as he bent over a roll of cloth from

  acres of the old Dutchman’s holdings—were

  which he was measuring a short yard for a

  fair ranching land, and worth all that Hart had

  colored woman.

  advanced on the total, composed

  “Hello, Sergeant!” called Hart from his

  preponderatingly of thorn scrub. Duplessis

  chair, as Luke rode up. “Looks like you’re

  had acted queerly in going off hunting with

  starting off on patrol somewhere. Going to

  the associate of his bitterest enemy.

  meet Rawlins, I suppose, and bring him back

  “So?” Luke commented. “Well, so

  with you?”

  long, Hart.”

  Luke saw the furtive glance that

  He touched the reins and the stocky

  “Baldy” Smith shot at the other. Hart’s gross

  Basuto pony set off upon his tireless gait,

  face assumed an expression of infantile known as the “triple,” which bore a close blandness.

  resemblance to that of a rocking-chair.

  For the first time the idea came into

  Hart and Baldy watched him till he had

  Luke’s brain that Hart might know something

  disappeared below the dip of the road. Jacobs

  about the two troopers’ disappearance. But

  came out of the store and joined them. The

  though the police had proved a thorn in Hart’s

  three broke into guffaws.

  side, notably in curbing some of the grosser

  “Another of them damn policemen on

  evils of frontier life in whose existence Hart

  the trail,” said the hotel-keeper. “One arter

  was pecuniarily interested, he could not another, like flies going into a jam-trap.”

  imagine that Hart had been so mad as to set

  Hart cursed volubly. “That’ll be the

  himself in open opposition to the Force.

  last,” he said. “We’ve got to make that clean-

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  4

  up and get down country in the next two

  Boskop, on the very fringe of the desert, a

  weeks now, or hell won’t have nothing on

  goodish way, but only a day’s journey for one

  Bechuanaland for hotness.”

  of the hardy native horses such as he rode.

  Baldy grinned at his employer. “Don’t

  Here years before Jan Duplessis had built up a

  worry, Hart,” he answered. “Well pick him up

  flourishing ranch, with a string of dams fed by

  where we landed the other two.”

  a spruit in the wet season, and substantial

  “How about wiring one of our agents

  enough to defy the eight months of drouth that

  to send another telegram?” suggested Hart,

  succeeded it.

  turning to Jacobs.

  Of course there would be a welcome

  “Give ’um time. We’ll wire the post

  for him, a meal, coffee, a bed if he cared to

  from Kimberley arter we git there.”

  stay. No South African would deny that even

  “I’ll leave that part to you, Jacobs.”

  to his bitterest enemy without feeling himself

  Hart leaned back in his chair, drained the glass

  disgraced forever, provided he came with the

  of whiskey, and cursed the boy with the fan in

  necessary emblem of respectability—to wit, a

  Zulu, the lingua franca of the country.

  horse. The horseless white man would be

  “Get on the job, Baldy,” he told his

  invited to eat alone and sleep among the

  henchman.

  natives.

  He uttered a grunt of satisfaction as he

  Sergeant Luke had met pretty Emmy

  saw Baldy riding back into town a few Duplessis several times. She always had a minutes later.

  smile and a blush for him, which had

  “Well,” he said to Jacobs, “we’ve got

  sometimes made him dream of the date of his

  that feller Evans, and we’ll worry along for

  discharge, when, with his savings and a small

  two weeks more without any more damn legacy that had come to him, he meant to take policemen mixing in.”

  up land and start out for himself with a small

  The hotel-keeper’s face took on a flock of sheep.

  saturnine expression.

  On the other hand, Jan Duplessis’s

  “If Van Reenen don’t spill the beans

  reception of him had been, to say the least,

  by fooling with that Duplessis girl,” he devoid of warmth. The old man, who came of observed.

  an old Boer family with a strain of French

  “Hell!” exploded Hart. “I’ve warned

  Huguenot blood, had always been an

  him that this is business.”

  irreconcilable enemy of the British. He had

  “Well, Van Reenen ain’t the kind of

  migrated to the edge of the desert after the

  man who keeps his pleasure and his business

  War, a generation before, and vowed that no

  separate enough,” responded Jacobs.

  Englishman should cross his threshold again.

  If time and circumstance had forced him to

  modify that vow he none the less retained his

  CHAPTER II

  ancient prejudices. As he had told Sergeant

  INTO THE DESERT

  Luke the last time he had visited the ranch-

  house:

  “I’ve got nothing against you as a man,

  AS he rode on toward the desert through the

  Sergeant. But I won’t have any verdommte

  scorching sunlight Sergeant Luke was Engelsmans buzzing around my girl. When, anticipating his reception at the Duplessis she marries it will be one of our own people.”

  farm with mixed feelings.

  Luke had wondered if the old man was

  The farm was some sixty mile
s from

  thinking of Van Reenen. Adventurer as the

  Sand and Diamonds

  5

  fellow was, he had a superficial air of last outpost of civilization.

  breeding, and was insinuating enough to have

  Luke saw the homestead in the far

  acquired a certain ascendancy over the simple-

  distance set beside the series of great dams,

  minded old farmer, in spite of his being Hart’s

  around which the thirsty cattle crowded under

  right-hand man. Besides, two almost rainless

  the grateful shade of the immense eucalyptus

  seasons succeeding each other had brought the

  trees. Reaching the cluster of native huts two

  Duplessis ranch to the verge of ruin, and miles from the house Sergeant Luke was Duplessis might have hoped to win favor with

  surprised to discover that they were empty. In

  Van Reenen with the idea of placating Hart,

  place of the smiling, native women, eternally

  who held the mortgage.

  washing rags or sweeping the mud floors, was

  At any rate, Van Reenen, as solitude.

  Duplessis’s son-in-law, would probably avert

  The sergeant pulled in sharply. He

  ruin. Luke thought that Emmy had hinted as

  shouted, but there came no answer.

  much the last time they had met, when there

  This wholesale abandonment of the

  were tears in her eyes, but he had not felt

  native quarters meant that something

  justified in speaking to the girl then—not untoward had happened. He spurred his horse without his discharge in his pocket.

  up past the dams, in which a little water still

  The sergeant decided not to make the