The Witch Doctor and other Rhodesian Studies Part 33

"So we want you to sell us up; sell our outfit as it stands--waggon, donkeys, and everything else we've got. Don't we, Black?"

"Yes."

"But," I said, "who do you expect to buy in a place like this? There isn't a white man within a couple of hundred miles. I'm not buying donkeys, and the natives can't."

"That's all right," said Fernie. "I will do all the bidding, and you can divide the proceeds between us."

"Yes," said Black, "that's what we want you to do."

Of course, I agreed to help and asked them to set out the things for sale.

When everything was ready, Black handed to me a list, neatly written and ruled with two money columns, one headed "Cost Price" and the other "Sale Price."

I had never acted as auctioneer before, but that didn't matter; entering into the spirit of the thing, I began.

"Gentlemen, I have here as fine a span of donkeys and as sound a waggon as ever came north of the Zambesi----"

But Fernie cut me short with: "A hundred and sixty pounds."

I looked at the list. In the cost-price column, against the item "span of donkeys and a waggon" was set 160.

I got no fun out of the sale at all. Fernie bought everything, bidding cost price for everything. The total, I think, came to just three hundred pounds.

"Black, I owe you a hundred and fifty, and here you are."

Black took the bundle of notes, counted them with practised finger and thumb, nodded, and handed a receipt to Fernie. The queer pair then shook hands, grinned at each other sheepishly, and thanked me for settling their little difference.

The three of us had lunch together, and during the meal Fernie told me as much of their story as he thought fit.

It appears that on their way up to the Zambesi friction arose between them; nothing serious, but just enough to make them feel a little tired of one another's company. Fernie considered that he should boss the outfit; Black wanted a say in matters, too. In Black's opinion Fernie was too dictatorial. Fernie thought that Black b.u.t.ted in too much and always unnecessarily--fatuously. So they sat down one day and discussed the situation calmly and decided that Fernie should buy Black's share and that Black should become a pa.s.senger, paying Fernie so much weekly.

This arrangement was so simple and complete that I wondered why it was necessary to bring me into the matter at all. I suspect it was the ex-clerk's pa.s.sion for regularity and record, for immediately after the sale he had drawn up a formal statement of dissolution of partnership.

When he and Fernie had signed this doc.u.ment, they asked me to countersign it.

After luncheon we sat for a while discussing guns and rifles. By we, I mean Fernie and I, for Black possessed no firearms of any sort and appeared to take little interest in them.

Fernie set so much store by the Martini-Henry rifle and the old hammer shot-gun that I correctly guessed these made up his battery. Presently he produced the weapons for my opinion.

The shot-gun had been a good one in its far-off day, but the spring of the right-hand lock had gone, so only the left barrel was serviceable.

The Martini was so old and the rifling so worn that I wondered how Fernie ever hit anything at which he aimed. But he did. He said he had got to know the old gas-pipe.

That evening the pair left me and went North.

From time to time I came across these men; now and again one or the other wrote to me; later, their waggon boys told me much; I gathered more from the natives of the district in which they aimlessly wandered; finally, Black's sister entrusted her brother's diary to me. The entries in this book were made in shorthand. I had the whole transcribed. I told her I had lost the book; I lied. I have the book still. She died peacefully without an inkling of its contents.

From these various sources of information I have put together a few yarns, which I now tell for the first time. For instance, there was a curious adventure with a lion.

Fernie had been out shooting most of the day: shooting for the pot, as the party had been without meat for some time. Black, as usual, remained in camp writing up his diary. He also mended a boot.

He concluded that Fernie was having very good sport because of the number of shots he fired during the afternoon. With an inexperienced man like Fernie, armed with a rifle such as his, it was not wise to jump at conclusions.

Late in the evening Fernie came back to camp very hot and tired. He was evidently in a bad temper, for when Black asked him if he would like some tea, he rudely said: "Tea, you bloomin' grandmother," and opened a bottle of whisky.

Then he called the driver and said he wanted a couple of donkeys to bring in the meat of a hartebeest which he had killed. The driver brought two and followed Fernie into the bush. They didn't return until eleven o'clock at night. Black had become anxious as time went on. He heard Fernie shooting again at about ten o'clock and wondered how he could see to take aim in the dark. He had, of course, never heard of the common practice of firing a shot in the air if you are not quite sure of your whereabouts and then listening for a guiding shot from the camp.

It wouldn't have helped much if he had known, for he had never fired a gun in his life. It did not occur to the second waggon boy, who had also remained in camp, to ask Black why he didn't reply to the signals of distress; he very naturally concluded that Black did not do so for reasons of his own, not through ignorance or inability.

It is only fair to Black to say that Fernie had not previously heard of this manner of signalling either. The waggon boy put him up to it when they thought they were lost.

At eleven o'clock the wanderers found their way back to camp. Fernie was in a worse temper than ever.

"Why the h.e.l.l didn't you answer my shots?"

"Your shots?"

"Is the fellow deaf as well as a brainless idiot?"

"I did hear you shooting, but I thought you had come across some more hartebeest."

"How the devil do you suppose I could see to shoot in this pitch darkness?"

"I don't know; I wondered."

"Oh, so you wondered, did you?"

"Well, what did you want me to do?"

"Sing, or any d.a.m.n thing. But how could an ex-ink-slinger be expected to have any horse-sense to do anything requiring a glimmer of intelligence?

Oh, don't talk; of course, it's not your fault, it's your Maker's."

Black felt keenly the coa.r.s.e injustice of this attack and sat silently looking into the fire. The truth of the matter was that Fernie had lost his way. He couldn't find the dead hartebeest. He cursed the waggon boy for a fool, which he wasn't; and beat him, which he didn't deserve.

"Off-load those chunks of meat near the fire and get to h.e.l.l out of this," said Fernie roughly to the waggon boy. The fellow relieved the donkeys of their load and slouched away.

Black looked up. "You're tired, Fernie. Won't you have some supper?"

Fernie, who was making a pile of the hartebeest meat, turned with an angry jerk towards the speaker. Something in Black's att.i.tude brought him sharply to his senses and saved him from adding fresh insult to those already thrown at his friend.

Instead, he said: "I'm sorry, Black old man. I'm a beast and we both know it. I take back all I said; please forget it. And I must give that driver fellow a tot of whisky; I hit him, which was a rotten thing to do, because he can't hit me back, and I, not he, was wrong."

It certainly was a rotten thing to do. Fernie was a big-boned, powerful man, with a fist like a leg of mutton in size. He hardly knew his strength, but many a troublesome seaman could have testified to it in the old liner days.

However, the tot of neat whisky put matters more or less right with the boy.

Black pressed Fernie to have a good square meal, but he wouldn't. He drank half a gla.s.s of raw whisky, followed by about a gallon of water.

Then he put down his blankets and turned in, his head towards the pile of meat and his feet to the fire. Completely exhausted, he fell asleep immediately.

It had become a habit with Fernie to place his loaded shot-gun by his side when he went to sleep, and he invariably had a large spanner handy.

He did not forget to make these preparations now, tired though he was.