The covenant - James A. Michener [604]
'Who are the Troxel boys?'
'Their families own the old De Groot farm. Their parents, that is.'
'Those people who live on the far side of the lake?'
'Yes. Marius' father brought them here from Johannesburg over fifty years ago. Wonderfully sturdy people.'
'And they have two young men, Sannie's age?'
'Yes. They're cousins. On military service just now, but they'll be back, and things will be different.'
'Sannie's said nothing.'
'I think she has, Philip. Didn't you ask to marry her?'
'Twice.'
'Why do you think she hesitated?'
'Had she some arrangement with one of the boys?'
'With both, I think. Point is, when they left she hadn't made up her mind between them. But she will, Philip. She's Afrikaner to the core and will marry an Afrikaner. Of that I'm convinced.'
'I'm not,' he said with laughter that softened the disagreement.
'Nor should you be. But remember my warning. Don't take this too seriously, because, I assure you, Sannie doesn't.'
He was prevented from brooding about his courtship when his obligations at Swartstroom suddenly intensified. His men had come upon a reach where the stream took a pronounced turn to the left, producing a bend where diamonds ought to have been deposited had any ever existed in this territory.
The crew found what it was looking for, two tiny bits of diamond, glistening so pure in sunlight they seemed to create a radiance all the way to Pretoria, Antwerp and New York, where word circulated that 'Amalgamated Mines may have something at Swartstroom.' The two tiny fragments were worth about four rand, enough to pay one black worker for one day's effort, but they had the power to inflame men's imaginations, for when taken in conjunction with Pik Prinsloo's earlier find, they confirmed that at some time far distant this little stream had been diamantiferous. Salt-wood's problem was to isolate the ancient source, but so far he could find no signs of it.
A helicopter was flown in to take him aloft so that he might inspect contiguous areas, but this disclosed nothing, and he had to revert to time-tested procedures of following the little stream. He discovered no more diamond chips, but in reality he needed no more. Those he had found proved that somewhere in this vicinity there had been a source of diamonds, and in time he, or someone like him, would uncover it.
So he was kept at the dig and for some weeks found no opportunity to visit with Sannie, but his spare time was not wasted, for an unusual young man came to visit him, and through this accidental meeting he was about to behold rather more of South Africa than the average foreign geologist would ordinarily have seen.
His visitor was Daniel Nxumalo, a black of about Saltwood's age; he spoke the precise English of one who had been educated in a colonial college by itinerant scholars from Dublin or London, and he was on a curious mission: 'Mr. Philip Saltwood? I'm Daniel Nxumalo, associate professor as you would call me in Americaat Fort Hare. I was advised to come see you.'
'By whom?' Saltwood had the prejudices of a typical Texas engineer: he would hire anyone, but he had an instinctive distrust of any black who spoke in complete sentences.
'The people in Venloo. They told me you were interested in all things South African.'
'How would they know?'
'They've seen you in church. They listen.'
'What was it you wanted?'
'Because you've seen so much of Africa, Mr. Saltwood, I thought it would be courteous if I showed you the real partour portion, that is.'
With this rather condescending introduction, Daniel Nxumalo, home on vacation from his duties at the university, began to take his American guest to little enclaves in eastern Transvaal occupied by blacks who, like his own predecessors, had fled the Mfecane of King Shaka and Mzilikazi. They had survived for the past century and a half in various settings, some attached to white farms like Vrymeer, some living by themselves