The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 6

"Bawu, how would you like it if I could move the goats off your pasture?" he asked, and walked back down the hill to where he had left the Volkswagen.

t was a little b4ore five o'clock when he drove back into town. The estate agency and auctioneering floor opposite the Standard Bank was still open for business.

The sign had even been repainted in scarlet, and as soon as Craig entered, he recognized the burly red-faced auctioneer in khaki shorts and short-sleeved, open-necked shirt.

"So you didn't take the gap, like the rest of us did, Jock," Craig greeted jock Daniels.

"Taking the gap, was the derogatory expression for All emigrating. Out of 250,000 white Rhodesians, almost 150,000 had taken the gap since the beginning of hostilities, and most of those had left since the war had been lost and the black government of Robert Mugabe had taken control.

Jock stared at him. "Craig!" he exploded. "Craig Mellow!" He took Craig's hand in a h.o.r.n.y brown paw. "No, I stayed, but sometimes it gets h.e.l.lish lonely. But you've done well, by G.o.d you have. They say in the papers that you have made a million out of that book. People here could hardly believe it. Old Craig Mellow, they said, fancy Craig Mellow of all people."

"Is that what they said?" Craig's smile stiffened, and he took his hand back.

"Can't say I liked the book myself." Jock shook his head.

"You made all the blacks look like b.l.o.o.d.y heroes but that's what they like overseas, isn't it? Black is beautiful that's what sells books, hey?"

"Some of my reviewers called me a racist," Craig murmured.

"You can't keep all the people happy all of the time." Jock wasn't listening. "Another thing, Craig, why did you have to make out that Mr. Rhodes was a queer?" Cecil Rhodes, the father of the white settlers, had been dead for eighty years, but the old-timers still called him Mr. Rhodes.

"I gave the reasons in the book," Craig tried to placate him.

"He was a great man, Craig, but nowadays it's the fashion for you young people to tear down greatness like mongrels snapping at the heels of a lion." Craig could see that Jock was warming to his subject, and he had to divert him.

"How about a drink, Jock?" he asked, and Jock paused.

His rosy cheeks and swollen purple nose were not solely the products of the African sun.

"Now, you're making sense." Jock licked his lips. "It's been a long thirsty day. just let me lock up the shop."

"If I fetched a bottle, we could drink it here and talk privately." The last of Jock's antagonism evaporated. "d.a.m.n good idea. The bottle store has a few bottles of Dimple Haig left and get a bucket of ice while you are about it." They sat in Jock's tiny cubicle of an office and drank the good whisky out of cheap thick tumblers. Jock Daniels" mood mellowed perceptibly.

"I didn't leave, Craig, because there was nowhere to go.

England? I haven't been back there since the war. Trade unions and b.l.o.o.d.y weather no thanks. South Africa?

They are going to go the same way that we did at least we've got it over and done with." He poured again from the pinch bottle. "If you do go, they let you take two hundred dollars with you. Two hundred dollars to start again when you are sixty-five years old no b.l.o.o.d.y thanks."

"So what's life like, Jock?"

"You know what they call an optimist here? "Jock asked.

"It's somebody who believes that things can't get any worse." He bellowed with laughter and slapped his bare hairy thigh. "No. I'm kidding. It's not too bad. As long as you don't expect the old standards, if you keep your mouth shut and stay away from politics, you can still live a good life probably as good as. anywhere in the world."

"The big farmers andlanchers how are they doing?"

"They are the elite. The government has come to its senses. They've dropped all that c.r.a.p about nationalizing the land. They've come to face the fact that if they are going to feed the black ma.s.ses, then they need the white farmers. They are becoming quite proud of them: when they get a state visitor a communist Chinese or a Libyan minister they give him a tour of white farms; to show him how good things are looking." "What about the price of land?"

"At the end of the war, when the blacks first took over and were shouting about taking the farms and handing them over to the ma.s.ses, you couldn't give the land away." jock gargled with his whisky. "Take your family company for instance, Rholands Ranching Company that includes all three spreads: King's Lynn, Queen's Lynn and that big piece of country up in the north bordering the Chizarira Game Reserve your uncle Douglas sold the whole d.a.m.ned shooting match for quarter of a million dollars.

Before the war he could have asked ten million."

"Quarter of a million." Craig was shocked. "He gave it I , away.

"That included all the stock prize Afrikander bulls and breeding cows, the lot," Jock related with relish. "You see, he had to get out.

He had been a member of Smith's cabinet from the beginning and he knew that he would have been a marked man once the black government took over. He sold out to a Swiss-German consortium, and they paid him in Zurich. Old Dougie took his family, and went to Aussie. Of course, he already had a few million outside the country, so he could buy himself a nice little cattle station up in Queensland. It's us poor b.u.g.g.e.rs with every.

thing we have tied up here that had to stay."

"Have another drink," Craig offered, and then steered Jock back to Rholands Ranching.

"What did the consortium do with Rholands?"

"Cunning b.l.o.o.d.y Krauts!" Jock was slurring a little by now. "They took all the stock, bribed somebody in government to give them an export permit and shipped them over the border to South Africa. I hear they sold for almost a million and a half down there. Remember, they were the very top breeding-stock, champions of champions. So they cleared over a million, and then they repatriated their profit in gold shares and made another couple of million."

"They stripped the ranches and now they have abandoned them?" Craig asked, and Jock nodded weightily.

"They're trying to sell the company, of course. I've got it on my books but it would take a pile of capital to restock the ranches and get them going again. n.o.body is interested. Who wants to bring money into a country which is tottering on the brink? Answer me thad"

"What is the asking price for the company?" Craig enquired airily, and Jock Daniels sobered miraculously, and fastened Craig with a beady auctioneer's eye.

"You wouldn't be interested?" And his eye became beadier. "Did you really make a million dollars out of that book?"

"What are they asking?" Craig repeated.

"Two million. That's why I haven't found a buyer. Lots of the local boys would love to get their paws on that grazing but two million. Who the h.e.l.l has that kind of money in this country-" "Supposing they could be paid in Zurich, would that make a difference to the price?" Craig asked.

"Do a Shana's armpits stink! "How much difference?"

"They might take a million in Zdrich."

"A quarter of a million?"

"No ways, never not in ten thousand years," jock shook his head emphatically.

"Telephone them. Tell them the ranches are over-run with squatters, and it would cause a political boo, ha to try and move them now. Tell them they are running goats on the grazing, and in a* ear's time it will be a desert. Point "y out they will be "getting their original investment out intact. Tell them the government has threatened to seize all land owned by absentee landlords. They could lose the lot."

"All that is true," jock grumped. "But a quarter of a million! You are wasting my time."

"Phone them."

"Who pays for the call?"

"I do. You can't lose, Jock." Jock sighed with resignation. "All right, I'll call them."

"When?"