Master of the Game (2 page)

“Excuse me,” Jamie said. “Do you carry mail to Klipdrift?”

“That’s right. Loadin’ up now.”

Jamie felt a sudden surge of hope. “Do you take passengers?”

“Sometimes.” He looked up and studied Jamie. “How old are you?”

An odd question
. “Eighteen. Why?”

“We don’t take anyone over twenty-one or twenty-two. You in good health?”

An even odder question
. “Yes, sir.”

The thin man straightened up. “I guess you’re fit. I’m leavin’ in an hour. The fare’s twenty pounds.”

Jamie could not believe his good fortune. “That’s wonderful! I’ll get my suitcase and—”

“No suitcase. All you got room for is one shirt and a toothbrush.”

Jamie took a closer look at the dogcart. It was small and roughly built. The body formed a well in which the mail was stored, and over the well was a narrow, cramped space where a person could sit back to back behind the driver. It was going to be an uncomfortable journey.

“It’s a deal,” Jamie said. “I’ll fetch my shirt and toothbrush.”

When Jamie returned, the driver was hitching up a horse to the open cart. There were two large young men standing near the cart: One was short and dark, the other was a tall, blond Swede. The men were handing the driver some money.

“Wait a minute,” Jamie called to the driver. “You said
I
was going.”

“You’re all goin’,” the driver said. “Hop in.”

“The
three
of us?”

“That’s right.”

Jamie had no idea how the driver expected them all to fit in the small cart, but he knew he was going to be on it when it pulled out.

Jamie introduced himself to his two fellow passengers. “I’m Jamie McGregor.”

“Wallach,” the short, dark man said.

“Pederson,” the tall blond replied.

Jamie said, “We’re lucky we discovered this, aren’t we? It’s a good thing everybody doesn’t know about it.”

Pederson said, “Oh, they know about the post carts, McGregor. There just aren’t that many fit enough or desperate enough to travel in them.”

Before Jamie could ask what he meant, the driver said, “Let’s go.”

The three men—Jamie in the middle—squeezed into the seat, crowded against each other, their knees cramped, their backs pressing hard against the wooden back of the driver’s seat. There was no room to move or breathe.
It’s not bad
, Jamie reassured himself.

“Hold on!” the driver sang out, and a moment later they were racing through the streets of Cape Town on their way to the diamond fields at Klipdrift.

By bullock wagon, the journey was relatively comfortable. The wagons transporting passengers from Cape Town to the diamond fields were large and roomy, with tent covers to ward off the blazing winter sun. Each wagon accommodated a dozen passengers and was drawn by teams of horses or mules. Refreshments were provided at regular stations, and the journey took ten days.

The mail cart was different. It never stopped, except to change horses and drivers. The pace was a full gallop, over rough roads and fields and rutted trails. There were no springs on the cart, and each bounce was like the blow of a horse’s hoof. Jamie gritted his teeth and thought,
I can stand it until we stop for the night. I’ll eat and get some sleep, and in the morning I’ll be fine
. But when nighttime came, there was a ten-minute halt for a change of horse and driver, and they were off again at a full gallop.

“When do we stop to eat?” Jamie asked.

“We don’t,” the new driver grunted. “We go straight through. We’re carryin’ the mails, mister.”

They raced through the long night, traveling over dusty, bumpy roads by moonlight, the little cart bouncing up the rises, plunging down the valleys, springing over the flats. Every inch of Jamie’s body was battered and bruised from the constant jolting. He was exhausted, but it was impossible to sleep. Every time he started to doze off, he was jarred awake. His body was cramped and miserable and there was no room to stretch. He was starving and motion-sick. He had no idea how many days it would be before his next meal. It was a six-hundred-mile journey, and Jamie McGregor was not sure he was going to live through it. Neither was he sure that he wanted to.

By the end of the second day and night, the misery had turned to agony. Jamie’s traveling companions were in the same sorry state, no longer even able to complain. Jamie understood now why the company insisted that its passengers be young and strong.

When the next dawn came, they entered the Great Karroo, where the real wilderness began. Stretching to infinity, the monstrous
veld lay flat and forbidding under a pitiless sun. The passengers were smothered in heat, dust and flies.

Occasionally, through a miasmic haze, Jamie saw groups of men slogging along on foot. There were solitary riders on horseback, and dozens of bullock wagons drawn by eighteen or twenty oxen, handled by drivers and
voorlopers
, with their sjamboks, the whips with long leather thongs, crying, “Trek! Trek!” The huge wagons were laden with a thousand pounds of produce and goods, tents and digging equipment and wood-burning stoves, flour and coal and oil lamps. They carried coffee and rice, Russian hemp, sugar and wines, whiskey and boots and Belfast candles, and blankets. They were the lifeline to the fortune seekers at Klipdrift.

It was not until the mail cart crossed the Orange River that there was a change from the deadly monotony of the veld. The scrub gradually became taller and tinged with green. The earth was redder, patches of grass rippled in the breeze, and low thorn trees began to appear.

I’m going to make it
, Jamie thought dully.
I’m going to make it
.

And he could feel hope begin to creep into his tired body.

They had been on the road for four continuous days and nights when they finally arrived at the outskirts of Klipdrift.

Young Jamie McGregor had not known what to expect, but the scene that met his weary, bloodshot eyes was like nothing he ever could have imagined. Klipdrift was a vast panorama of tents and wagons lined up on the main streets and on the shores of the Vaal River. The dirt roadway swarmed with kaffirs, naked except for brightly colored jackets, and bearded prospectors, butchers, bakers, thieves, teachers. In the center of Klipdrift, rows of wooden and iron shacks served as shops, canteens, billiard rooms, eating houses, diamond-buying offices and lawyers’ rooms. On a corner stood the ramshackle Royal Arch Hotel, a long chain of rooms without windows.

Jamie stepped out of the cart, and promptly fell to the ground,
his cramped legs refusing to hold him up. He lay there, his head spinning, until he had strength enough to rise. He stumbled toward the hotel, pushing through the boisterous crowds that thronged the sidewalks and streets. The room they gave him was small, stifling hot and swarming with flies. But it had a cot. Jamie fell onto it, fully dressed, and was asleep instantly. He slept for eighteen hours.

Jamie awoke, his body unbelievably stiff and sore, but his soul filled with exultation.
I am here! I have made it!
Ravenously hungry, he went in search of food. The hotel served none, but there was a small, crowded restaurant across the street, where he devoured fried snook, a large fish resembling pike; carbonaatje, thinly sliced mutton grilled on a spit over a wood fire; a haunch of bok and, for dessert,
koeksister
, a dough deep-fried and soaked in syrup.

Jamie’s stomach, so long without food, began to give off alarming symptoms. He decided to let it rest before he continued eating, and turned his attention to his surroundings. At tables all around him, prospectors were feverishly discussing the subject uppermost in everyone’s mind: diamonds.

“…There’s still a few diamonds left around Hopetown, but the mother lode’s at New Rush.…”

“…Kimberley’s got a bigger population than Joburg…”

“…About the find up at Dutoitspan last week? They say there’s more diamonds there than a man can carry…”

“…There’s a new strike at Christiana. I’m goin’ up there tomorrow.”

So it was true. There were diamonds everywhere! Young Jamie was so excited he could hardly finish his huge mug of coffee. He was staggered by the amount of the bill. Two pounds, three shillings for one meal!
I’ll have to be very careful
, he thought, as he walked out onto the crowded, noisy street.

A voice behind him said, “Still planning to get rich, McGregor?”

Jamie turned. It was Pederson, the Swedish boy who had traveled on the dogcart with him.

“I certainly am,” Jamie said.

“Then let’s go where the diamonds are.” He pointed. “The Vaal River’s that way.”

They began to walk.

Klipdrift was in a basin, surrounded by hills, and as far as Jamie could see, everything was barren, without a blade of grass or shrub in sight. Red dust rose thick in the air, making it difficult to breathe. The Vaal River was a quarter of a mile away, and as they got closer to it, the air became cooler. Hundreds of prospectors lined both sides of the riverbank, some of them digging for diamonds, others meshing stones in rocking cradles, still others sorting stones at rickety, makeshift tables. The equipment ranged from scientific earth-washing apparatus to old tub boxes and pails. The men were sunburned, unshaven and roughly dressed in a weird assortment of collarless, colored and striped flannel shirts, corduroy trousers and rubber boots, riding breeches and laced leggings and wide-brimmed felt hats or pith helmets. They all wore broad leather belts with pockets for diamonds or money.

Jamie and Pederson walked to the edge of the riverbank and watched a young boy and an older man struggling to remove a huge ironstone boulder so they could get at the gravel around it. Their shirts were soaked with sweat. Nearby, another team loaded gravel onto a cart to be sieved in a cradle. One of the diggers rocked the cradle while another poured buckets of water into it to wash away the silt. The large pebbles were then emptied onto an improvised sorting table, where they were excitedly inspected.

“It looks easy,” Jamie grinned.

“Don’t count on it, McGregor. I’ve been talking to some of the diggers who have been here a while. I think we’ve bought a sack of pups.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know how many diggers there are in these parts, all hoping to get rich? Twenty bloody thousand! And there aren’t enough diamonds to go around, chum. Even if there were, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth it. You broil in winter, freeze
in summer, get drenched in their damned
donderstormen
, and try to cope with the dust and the flies and the stink. You can’t get a bath or a decent bed, and there are no sanitary arrangements in this damned town. There are drownings in the Vaal River every week. Some are accidental, but I was told that for most of them it’s a way out, the only escape from this hellhole. I don’t know why these people keep hanging on.”

“I do.” Jamie looked at the hopeful young boy with the stained shirt. “The next shovelful of dirt.”

But as they headed back to town, Jamie had to admit that Pederson had a point. They passed carcasses of slaughtered oxen, sheep and goats left to rot outside the tents, next to wide-open trenches that served as lavatories. The place stank to the heavens. Pederson was watching him. “What are you going to do now?”

“Get some prospecting equipment.”

In the center of town was a store with a rusted hanging sign that read:
SALOMON VAN DER MERWE, GENERAL STORE
. A tall black man about Jamie’s age was unloading a wagon in front of the store. He was broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, one of the most handsome men Jamie had ever seen. He had soot-black eyes, an aquiline nose and a proud chin. There was a dignity about him, a quiet aloofness. He lifted a heavy wooden box of rifles to his shoulder and, as he turned, he slipped on a leaf fallen from a crate of cabbage. Jamie instinctively reached out an arm to steady him. The black man did not acknowledge Jamie’s presence. He turned and walked into the store. A Boer prospector hitching up a mule spat and said distastefully, “That’s Banda, from the Barolong tribe. Works for Mr. van der Merwe. I don’t know why he keeps that uppity black. Those fuckin’ Bantus think they own the earth.”

The store was cool and dark inside, a welcome relief from the hot, bright street, and it was filled with exotic odors. It seemed to Jamie that every inch of space was crammed with merchandise. He walked through the store, marveling. There were agricultural implements, beer, cans of milk and crocks of butter, cement,
fuses and dynamite and gunpowder, crockery, furniture, guns and haberdashery, oil and paint and varnish, bacon and dried fruit, saddlery and harness, sheep-dip and soap, spirits and stationery and paper, sugar and tea and tobacco and snuff and cigars…A dozen shelves were filled from top to bottom with flannel shirts and blankets, shoes, poke bonnets and saddles.
Whoever owns all this
, Jamie thought, is
a rich man
.

A soft voice behind him said, “Can I help you?”

Jamie turned and found himself facing a young girl. He judged she was about fifteen. She had an interesting face, fine-boned and heart-shaped, like a valentine, a pert nose and intense green eyes. Her hair was dark and curling. Jamie, looking at her figure, decided she might be closer to sixteen.

“I’m a prospector,” Jamie announced. “I’m here to buy some equipment.”

“What is it you need?”

For some reason, Jamie felt he had to impress this girl. “I—er—you know—the usual.”

She smiled, and there was mischief in her eyes. “What is the usual, sir?”

“Well…” He hesitated. “A shovel.”

“Will that be all?”

Jamie saw that she was teasing him. He grinned and confessed, “To tell you the truth, I’m new at this. I don’t know what I need.”

She smiled at him, and it was the smile of a woman. “It depends on where you’re planning to prospect, Mr.—?”

“McGregor. Jamie McGregor.”

“I’m Margaret van der Merwe.” She glanced nervously toward the rear of the store.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Miss van der Merwe.”

“Did you just arrive?”

“Aye. Yesterday. On the post cart.”