The covenant - James A. Michener [24]
'What is it, young friend?'
'It is my brother, mfundisi,' he said, using a term of respect. 'Last year he left for the south, and I must go too, when it is time.' It was a custom that he must honor: the oldest brother always succeeded to the chieftainship, while the younger brothers moved to the frontier and started their own villages. And this had been done since these blacks came down from the north, centuries ago.
'No, no!' the Old Seeker protested. 'Find me the rhinoceros horn. Bring it to me in Zimbabwe.'
'Why should I do so?'
The old man took the boy's hands and said, 'If one like you, a boy of deep promise, does not test himself in the city, he spends his life where? In some wretched village like this.'
On the fourth day such discussions halted temporarily, for the Old Seeker's troop was attacked by a band of little brown men who swarmed like pestilential flies determined to repel an invader. When their slim arrows began buzzing, Nxumalo shouted, 'Beware! Poison!' and he led the Old Seeker to safety inside a ring of porters whose shields repelled the arrows.
The fight continued for about an hour, with the little men shouting battle orders in a preposterous series of clicking sounds, but gradually the taller, more powerful blacks herded them away, and they retreated into the savanna, still uttering their clicks.
'Aiee!' Nxumalo shouted with exasperation as the little fellows disappeared. 'Why do they attack us like jackals?'
Old Seeker, who had worked with the small people in the north, said calmly, 'Because we're crossing hunting grounds they claim as their own.'
'Jackals!' the boy snorted, but he knew the old man was right.
On the morning of the fifth day, as planned, the file of men reached the Ridge-of-White-Waters, which later settlers would call Witwatersrand, where the Old Seeker hoped to find evidence that gold existed, but the more carefully he explored the regiona handsome one, with prominent hillocks from which Nxumalo could see for milesthe more disappointed he became. Here the telltale signs, which in the lands about Zimbabwe indicated gold, were missing; there was no gold, and it became obvious that the exploration had been fruitless, but on the evening of their last day of tramping the hills the Old Seeker discovered what he was looking for. It was an ant hill, eleven feet high, and he rushed to it, breaking it apart with a long stick and fumbling through the fine-grained soil.
'What are you looking for?' Nxumalo asked, and the old man said, 'Gold. These ants dig down two hundred feet to build their tunnels. If there's gold here, they bring flecks to the surface.'
At this site there were none, and reluctantly the Old Seeker had to admit that he had taken this long journey to no avail: T didn't come to see your father. I didn't come for rhino horn. Son, when you have a multitude of targets, always aim for the one of merit. I came seeking gold, and I'm convinced there's gold here.'
'But you didn't find it.'
'I had the joy of hunting. Son, have you listened to what I've been telling you these days?' He led Nxumalo some distance from the spot where his bearers waited, and as he looked out over the vast bleakness visible from the fruitless ridge he said, 'It isn't even gold I seek. It's what gold can achieve. To Zimbabwe come men from all across the world. They bring us gifts you cannot imagine. Four times I went down the trails to Sofala. Twice I sailed upon the dhows to mighty Kilwa. I saw things no man could ever forget. When you seek, you find things you did not anticipate.'
'What are you seeking?' Nxumalo asked.
The old man had no