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Mungo St. John replaced the long black cheroot between his teeth and he made a little tripod with the fingers of his left hand, then he laid the polished maplewood cue into the notch of his thumb and forefinger. There was a final flurry of bets, and then a silence fell over the crowded room. The air was blue with tobacco smoke, and the faces that strained forward were flushed and sweating. Mungo St. John lined up his white cue ball with his single bright eye, and across the table Harry Mellow took a slow breath and held it. If Mungo succeeded with the ca
Mungo St. John's face was grave as a professor of philosophy considering the riddle of the universe as he made a gentle practice stroke that he arrested with the leather button at the tip of the long cue almost touching the white ivory ball. Then he drew back the cue deliberately to its full travel. At the instant that he launched the stroke the voice of a young woman cut through the hated silence of watching men.
"General St. John, you must come quickly." There were only one hundred white women in the entire vast land north of the Shashi and south of the Zambezi rivers, of which probably ninety were already married and most of the others spoken for. A voice with such lovely ringing tones could have turned every male head down both sides of the Champs-Elyskes, but in the billiard saloon of the Grand Hotel of woman-starved Bulawayo, it had the effect of a close-range broadside of grapeshot. A waiter dropped a tray laden with schooners of beer, a heavy wooden bench toppled over backwards with a shattering crash as the six men seated upon it sprang to attention like guardsmen, an inebriated transport rider toppled backwards off the counter on top of the barman who instinctively swung a round-arm punch at him, missed and swept a row of whisky bottles off the shelf.
The sudden uproar in the deep silence would have u
It was a perfect ca
"Pot red," he a
"General St. John, my mother is dying." This time Mungo St. John's head flew up, his single eye wide with shock, and the white ball screwed off down the table -in a violent miscue as he stared at Vicky.
Mungo let the wooden cue drop with a clatter onto the floor and he ran from the bar room.
Vicky went on standing in the doorway of the bar room for a few seconds. Her hair was tangled into thick ropes on her shoulders by the wind, and her breathing was still so rough that her breasts heaved tantalizingly under her thin cotton blouse. Her eyes swept the sea of gri
Harry Mellow tossed his cue to the barman, and shoved his way through the disappointed crowd. By the time he reached the street, Mungo St. John, still bareheaded and in shirtsleeves, was mounted on a big bay mare, but leaning from the saddle to talk urgently to Vicky, who stood at his stirrup.
Mungo looked up and saw Harry. "Mr. Mellow," he called, "I would be obliged if you could see my stepdaughter -safely out of town. I am needed at Khami." Then he put his heels into the mare's flanks, and she jumped away at a dead run down the dusty street.
Vicky was climbing up onto the driving seat of a rickety little cart drawn by two diminutive donkeys with drooping melancholy ears, and on the seat beside her sat the mountainous black figure of a Matabele woman.
"Miss Codrington," Harry called urgently. "Please wait." He reached the wheel of the cart with a few long strides and looked up -at Vicky.
"I have wanted to see you again so very much." "Mr. Mellow," Vicky lifted her chin haughtily, "the road to Khami Mission is clearly signposted, you could not possibly have lost your way." "Your mother ordered me off the Mission Station you know that damned well."
"Please do not use strong language in my presence, sir," said Vicky primly.
"I apologize, but your mother does have a reputation. They say she fired both barrels at one unwanted visitor." "Well," Vicky admitted, "that is true, but he was one of Mr. Rhodes" hirelings, and it was birdshot, and she did miss with one barrel." "Well, I am one of Mr. Rhodes" hirelings, and she might have upped to buckshot, and the practice might have improved her shooting." "I like a man of determination. A man who takes what he wants and damn the consequences." "That is strong language, Miss Codrington." "Good day to you, Mr. Mellow." Vicky shook up the donkeys, and they stumbled into a dejected trot.
The little cart reached the outskirts of the new town, where the dozen or so brick buildings gave way to grass huts and tattered dusty canvas shelters and where the wagons of the transport riders were parked wheel to wheel on both sides of the track, still laden with the bags, bolts and bales that they had carried up from the railhead.