Read Online Sunset at Sheba by John Harris - Free Book Online Page A

sticks to keep away the night-prowling animals and before she was awake he had cleared the obstruction and, cutting a stick, had braced the hind legs apart, piercing the shanks with its pointed tips. Then he had hung the carcass from the tailgate of the cart with a length of hide he had stripped from the body, and he was now engaged in cutting slices of flesh down the centre of the back, in deft swinging strokes, and rolling them in salt spread on a board in the cart. The prepared strips of meat lay in a row on a rock beside him, ready for drying in the fierce heat of the sun when it rose in the heavens.
    She watched him as she moved about the fire, rinsing out the gritty greasy cooking pot with a cupful of boiled water. She stared dolefully at the scum the operation left on her fingers, then she tossed the pot into the back of the cart and, wiping her hands on the limp print frock she’d changed into, lashed out at the flies with a cheerful violence.
    ‘This is a fine old way to wash things,’ she said. ‘Sammy, can’t we get any water? That stream’s more mud than anything else.’
    ‘You ought to know by now,’ Sammy replied calmly, ‘that when you fall into a South African stream you get suffocated by the dust. We can pick up water tonight,’ he added. ‘I know a sure place. Plenty of time. Got to learn to make do.’
    ‘Sammy Schuter, we’ve been making do ever since we left Plummerton! I’ve got dust in my eyes, in my nose, in my mouth. My hair’s full of it. I haven’t looked in a mirror since we left. How’s a girl to take a proper pride in herself?’ It was less of a complaint than the mourning cry of a town dweller whose personal appearance was part of her life.
    ‘It won’t take long,’ he consoled her. ‘Then you’ll be able to comb it all out.’
    She looked at him candidly, demanding the truth. ‘Sammy, when are we going to find a decent-sized town again? These flies fair take the flesh off you.’
    ‘I told you,’ he said patiently. ‘Four-five days. A bit longer perhaps.’
    ‘A bit longer’s right,’ she said ruefully. ‘I didn’t think it’d be like this.’
    ‘I warned you.’
    ‘No, you didn’t. You just said there’d be no hotels. You didn’t say there’d be no water either, and all this dust.’
    She picked up the concertina and stretched out on the ground, idly squeezing a tune out of the instrument. Her face felt like leather and she was uncomfortably aware of the grease that still lay between her fingers from the rudimentary cooking and cleaning.
    For a while she studied the veld, gently undulating, wide and empty and featureless to the distant horizon, and the immeasurable saffron dome of the sky. The land lay very still in the first streaks of light, and the faded green patched with reddish-brown stony earth looked like a desert. The Wilderness. It was well named. With its scant vegetation and wide patches of coarse grass alternating with slopes of thorny scrub, it looked like the bleak landscape of another planet, for trees were rare enough to be a landmark beyond the patch of mimosa along the deep dry bed of the stream.
    Polly stared at it, comparing it with the single bedroom which had been her home in Plummerton. Used as she was to the sound of a piano somewhere in the background, the chatter of voices, the rumble of traffic outside, she was still unable to accept the tremendous silences that made her feel as though she were suspended in space.
    ‘Sammy,’ she said uncertainly.
    ‘Yep?’
    ‘How much longer will it really take?’
    He glanced down at her, busy with his task. ‘We’ve hardly started yet!’ he said, avoiding an answer.
    She looked up at him, slashing at the flies again. ‘I didn’t get any sleep last night,’ she pointed out. ‘I was cold. I had a stone in my back. And, Sammy, I could imagine creepy-crawly things all the time. I heard ‘em once. I heard something howling.’
    ‘Wild dog mebbe,’ he said, unmoved. ‘Nothing to