Роберт Фиш - Rough Diamond

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.