I'll leave at first light tomorrow, Duff decided. Ten days, riding to

the railhead at Colesberg and another four days by train will get me

there. With luck I'll be back under two months. He wriggled round in

his chair and looked directly at Sean. After paying Candy her two

hundred pounds and with what I spent in Pretoria I've only got about a

hundred and fifty left. Once I get to Paarl I'll have to pay out three

or four hundred for the Mill, then I'll need to hire twenty or thirty

wagons to bring it up here, say eight hundred pounds altogether to be on

the safe side. Sean looked at him. He had known this men a few short

weeks. Eight hundred was the average man's earnings for three years.

Africa was a big land, a man could disappear easily. Sean loosened his

belt and dropped it onto the table; he unbuttoned the money pouch.

Give me a hand to count it out, he told Duff. Thanks, said Duff and he

was not talking about the money. With trust asked for so simply and

given so spontaneously the last reservations in their friendship

shrivelled and died.

When Duff had gone Sean drove himself and his men without mercy. They

stripped the overburden off the Reef and exposed it across the whole

length of the Candy claims, then they broke it up and started stacking

It next to the mill site. The dump grew bigger with every twelve-hour

day worked. There was still no trace of the Leader Reef but Sean found

little time to worry about that. At night he climbed into bed and slept

away his fatigue until another morning called him back to the workings.

On Sundays he rode across to Francois's tent and they talked mining and

medicines. Francois had an enormous chest of patent medicines and a

book titled The Home Physician. His health was his hobby and he was

treating himself for three major ailments simultaneously. Although he

was occasionally unfaithful, his true love was sugar diabetes.

The page in The Home Physician which covered this subject was limp and

grubby from the touch of his fingers.

He could recite the symptoms from memory and he had all of them. His

other favourite was tuberculosis of the bone; this moved around his body

with alarming rapidity taking only a week to leave his hip and reach his

wrist.

Despite his failing health, however, he was an expert on mining and Sean

picked his brain shamelessly. Francois's sugar diabetes did not prevent

him from sharing a bottle of brandy with Sean on Sunday evenings. Sean

kept away from Candy's Hotel, that shiny blonde hair and peach skin

would have been too much temptation. He couldn't trust himself not to

wreck his new friendship with Duff by another importunate affair, so

instead he sweated away his energy in the trenches of the Candy Deep.

Every morning he set his Zulus a task for the day, always just a little

more than the day before. They sang as they worked and it was very

seldom that the task was not complete by nightfall. The days blurred

into each other and turned to weeks which quadrupled like breeding

amoebae and became months. Sean began to imagine Duff giving the

Capetown girls a whirl with his eight hundred pounds. One evening he

rode south for miles along the Cape road, stopping to question every

traveller he met and when he finally gave up and returned to the

goldfields he went straight to one of the canteens to look for a fight.

He found a big, yellow-haired German miner to oblige him. They went

outside and for an hour they battered each other beneath a crisp

Transvaal night sky surrounded by a ring of delighted spectators. Then

he and the German went back into the canteen, shook each others bleeding

hands, drank a vow of friendship together and Sean returned to the Candy

Deep with his devil exorcized for the time being The next afternoon Sean

was working near the north boundary of the claims, at this point they

had burrowed down about fifteen feet to keep contact with the reef.

Sean had just finished marking the shot holes for the next blast and the

Zulus were standing around him taking snuff and spitting on their hands

before attacking the rock once more. Mush, you shag-eared villains.

What's going on here, a trade union meeting? The familiar voice came

from above their heads, Duff was looking down at them. Sean scrambled

straight up the side of the trench and seized him in a bear hug. Duff

was thinner, his jowls covered with a pale stubble and his curly hair

white with dust.

When the fury of greeting had subsided a little Sean demanded, Well,

where's the present you went to fetch me? Duff laughed, Not far behind,

all twenty-five wagons full of it. You got it then? Sean roared.

You're damn right I did! Come with me and I'll show you. # Duff's

convoy was strung out four miles across the veld, Most Of the wagons

double-teamed against the enormous weight of the machinery. Duff

pointed to a rust-streaked cylinder that completely filled one of the

leading wagons. That is my particular cross, seven tons of the most

spiteful, stubborn and evil boiler in the world. if it's broken the

wagon axle once it's broken it a dozen times since we left Colesberg,

not to mention the two occasions on which it capsized itself, once right

in the middle of a river.

They rode along the line of wagons. Good God! I didn't realize there'd

be so much. Sean shook his head dubiously. Are you sure you know how

it all fits together? Leave it to your Uncle Duff. Of course, it's

going to need a bit of work done on it, after all it's been lying out in

the open for a couple of years. Some of it was rusted up solid, but the

judicious use of grease, new paint and the Charleywood brain will see

the Candy Deep plant breaking rock and spitting out gold within a month.

Duff broke off and waved to a horseman coming towards them. This is the

transport contractor. Frikkie Malan, Mr Courtney, my partner. The

contractor pulled up next to, them and acknowledged the introduction. He

wiped the dust off his face with the sleeve of his shirt. Gott, man, Mr

Charleywood, I don't mind telling you that this is the hardest money