Sweet Thorn

By David Pickup

Erik Magnussen is a wealthy refugee with an untenable martial arts skills living in the Western United States. He is travelling to the wilds of South Africa to start a new life but becomes embroiled in a political plot to murder two very important men who own vast diamond fields in Kimberley. He refuses to become involved and as a consequence is attacked a number of times but survives the attacks through his knowledge of martial arts and unarmed combat. His prowess with firearms is also vital to his survival. He befriends a street girl urchin who escaped from an English penal ship transporting convicts and orphans to Australia. He also meets and fall in love with a widow woman who is waiting for her late husband’s estate to be finalised. Then, the widow is kidnapped by the plotters in an attempt to force Erik to comply with their demands for him to be the sniper that kills the two wealthy men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665591645

David Pickup

David Pickup was born and raised in South Africa in the early 1940’s. He was an avid reader from childhood, grew up in a rural setting with lots of dogs, cats and horses. He has a photograph of himself on horseback at age 2 or 3. He became a falconer in his teens and worked at an Oceanarium, Museum and Snakepark complex. He used to catch and sell poisonous snakes for pocket money. He has a deeply enquiring mind and is an artist and woodworker when not writing. He is also a keen gardener. He is also a Reiki practiononer, treating people in South Africa and Norway. He is an extremely observant and passionate man and has a deep interest in natural history, wild life, hunting and geology. He was a qualified South African tour guide and knows the Southern part of South Africa extremely well. He has an in depth knowledge of firearms of the 1800’s, having restored the antique weapons at the museum. He has an abiding interest and deep regard for the Khoisan people of Southern Africa.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

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Erik Magnussen gazed into the distance over the foaming wake of the SS Great Britain. His bright blue eyes, vacant with deep thought, stared back over the thousands of miles of sea, that had sped beneath the stern of this ship and that of the Cunard Line’s Caledonia, to the distant shores of America. The sounds of the great eight hundred horse power steam engine, deep in the bowels of the ship and the dull roar from the smoke stack did not intrude on his reverie.

Cape Town, the City at the bottom of Africa, was drawing closer with every passing minute and each passing minute added another nail in the lid of the box in which he had shut away his old life. This was July 1875 and this was to be a new beginning for him. He knew that his life was to change forever when he set foot on the shores of Africa. He was seeking to forget, to wipe the memories of Eleanor from his mind and if possible to start again. The breeze stroked his short beard and moustache and the long hair tied at the nape of his neck blew in short snatches of movement.

His thoughts went back to where this journey had begun so many months ago in the small desert town of Thatcher, Arizona overlooked by the Gila Mountains. He remembered his incredible sadness at leaving the small town and looking back down at the town from the pass on the slopes of Mount Graham. Eleanor had stood outside the back door and had watched him saddle up and ride away out of her life. Her lovely face had been streaked with tears.

As he rode out of the yard he heard her call out.

‘I’m so sorry Erik’

He had known that she was sorry but it was not enough to make her give up the other man. He had not turned around. He knew that if he did his resolve would break. He had ridden slumped in the saddle, weighed down by the cruel pain in his chest.

He had told her of his resolve to leave her, hoping that the thought of his going would be enough to make her decide. She had however decided that the years of shared memories and the love they had shared, the joys and the heartaches, the triumphs and defeats they had gone through did not match up to the love she had for the other man.

He had ridden, crushed in spirit, his life and love in ruins, down the scorching dusty road. To what sort of existence? Desolation rode with him as he sat, empty and soul dead, in the creaking saddle all the way to the rails at Bowie, over fifty miles from Thatcher.

In a saloon in Bowie he had tried to numb his mind with whisky. It had made him even more morose and mean.

Erik Magnussen in a mean morose mood was not a man to confront. He had lurched up from his stool and had tripped over the extended feet of a huge mule skinner. The huge man, chatting to his friends was interrupted by Erik tripping over his feet.

He sprang to his feet and shouted, ‘Watch where you’re going you drunken bastard!’

Erik turned and glared at him, his voice rasping and harsh.

‘What did you call me?’

‘A drunken bastard, you mangy son of a bitch!’ bellowed the mule skinner.

The mule skinner saw Erik adopt a most peculiar stance but he did not hesitate and simply attacked Erik head on. He sent an over hand right that was blocked by Erik’s forearm. Erik’s block was followed instantly by a devastating right hand blow to the chin. Erik’s hands returned instantly to the ‘on guard ‘position as he watched the mule skinner crash backwards and fall limply to the floor. His friends leapt up and converged on Erik. An unholy light of battle shone in his eyes as the Viking blood of his forebears sang in his veins.

The three men rushed at him, all eager to get the first blow in. The leading man grabbed for Erik and found himself grabbed instead and thrown across the room, to land on the edge of a poker table where play had been suspended to watch the fight. The table broke and spilt everything on it onto the floor. Money rolled all over the place. The thrown man rolled over in the debris and added to the tangle. The players tried to leap up but fell over each other, the thrown man and the furniture. The players scrambled to collect the fallen money and angrily kicked the thrown man out of the way. He crawled out of the melee with a hand covering his head.

A tough wiry man stabbed a right at Erik and caught him on the cheek as he turned from throwing the other man across the room. Erik spun and lashed out a booted foot which took the man on the chest and sent him flying backward. The third man pulled a gun and pointed it at Erik’s head. Erik stabbed a side kick at the man’s hand and deflected his aim upward. The gun went off with lancing flame, a smashing report and a cloud of smoke. The bullet smashed an overhead lamp and ricocheted into the back bar mirror, punching a hole in it. Erik began a follow through kick but stopped suddenly. The barman was pointing a double barreled shotgun at him.

‘Stop it you lousy son of a bitch!’ he shouted ‘you’ll destroy the bar’

Erik knew he had no answer for the shotgun and put up his hands.

‘What in all hell got under your saddle?’ asked the barman, still holding the gun on Erik.

Erik shook his head ‘You wouldn’t understand’ he took a few gold dollars out of his pocket and put them on the bar. ‘I hope this covers the damage, and please buy a round for everyone, I’m sorry’ he turned and walked out of the saloon.

The barman put down the shotgun as Erik walked away and then shook his head as he collected the coins off the counter. The coins would more than cover the damages and drinks.

‘Come on men,’ he called out to the general crowd, who stood looking about at the broken furniture and the mule skinner who was still unconscious on the floor. The thrown man was easing his back where it had hit the table edge and the gun man was nursing a badly bruised wrist. ‘The drinks are on the mad man’

With a murmur of appreciation, the men surged to the bar.

The barman began serving as fast as he could, and said to no one in particular, ‘That was one really mean man, something must be really wrong there’

A dried out looking prospector came to the bar to get his free drink and said. ‘That there were Erik Magnussen, he sure is a mean man in a fight. His ranch got attacked by ‘Paches and his baby son got kilt. The boy was only two and jes ‘walkin’ strong when a ‘pache stuck him with a spear. Magnussen did for four or more of them ‘Paches afore they got outen his yard, two with his bare hands an’ then follered the others. He was shot full o’ holes an stuck with a knife an’then he came up on them others an’kilt another four or so along with Santos the chief. Now the ‘Paches walk light near his place an’ they sing songs about him, saying to stay away from the long haired mad man’

Some of the men at the bar had heard the stories of the fight with the Apaches and had all thought they were just ‘Windies’Tall stories to while away long nights. Having actually seen him in action, they had all become believers.

A cowboy took his drink and added his story too. ‘I rode for him for a while an’ he’s a really good boss, fair an’ hard workin’his own self. He’s the strongest man I’ve ever did see. Why, one time I seen him lift the chuck wagon on one side so we could put a block under the axle an’ the wagon was full at the time. He just did it, made no show about it, it needed to be done an’ he did it. I heard tell that his wife has another man but doesn’t want Magnussen to go. She wants him to co.?. co.?. what the hell, live together with the other feller in the house too, the whole damn town of Thatcher knowed it’

Another man nodded and said, Yup I hear’d that too, he must’ha sold his blacksmith shop in Thatcher then, I hear’d he were lookin’to sell it. Not many men will be able to work like him. He’s a real curly wolf from the high timber when he gets mad.’

The men listening all agreed that, that could make a man totally ‘loco.’

On the deck of the ship, looking out at the sea, Erik closed his eyes in sadness and pain, shutting out the beauty of the deep blue sea, the frothing whitecaps of foam and the pure white gulls with their startling black wings that soared and swooped around the ship as they followed it toward land, hoping for scraps from the galley. Their cries echoed through his mind as cries of loneliness and sadness.

He remembered the cursed day when he took the washing basket downstairs to where Son Hing the Chinese laundry man waited in the kitchen to collect it. His wife Eleanor normally took the basket down, but on this occasion she was busy drying her hair when they heard the knock at the door. Erik had wondered why she had seemed a bit nervous about him taking the basket down on this particular morning, but he had dismissed it as normal woman’s monthly stress. For on the two previous nights, when he had tried to begin making love to her, she had said she was unwell and he had not questioned it.

Son Hing was not only the laundry man, he was also a friend, and would chat cheerfully for a while before taking the Magnussen washing. He had trained Erik in the deadly martial arts of Kung Fu and Jujitsu.

How he wished he had not called out to Son Hing, bringing him back so that he could check for his pocket knife in his denim jeans. He often forgot it in the pocket when he came in from work, and a few times it had been found by the laundry workers.

On top of his blue work pants was a maroon silk night dress. It was his favourite. He had bought it for her on her birthday a year or so ago. When she wore it he knew that it was a special occasion and that their lovemaking would be special too.

He lifted it, to find his jeans, and saw the unmistakable signs of passionate lovemaking on the silken garment. They were like water marks and spread in rings of dull white from below the waist at the back. He had grinned at the Chinese and winked knowingly as Son Hing looked at the marks. He had probably seen such signs many times before, but he too grinned, with large buck teeth, and nodded and chuckled knowingly, man to man.

He had stood with the garment held up to the light and a look of puzzlement had passed over his face. He had not seen this garment for a long time. She had not worn it for him in months, so how?.......?. Like a bolt of lightning, he knew with absolute certainty that his wife must have betrayed him with another man. She had actually worn this, ‘His’ nightdress for this betrayal.

He had been away on a blacksmithing contract in a town a few days ride away and he had also bought some cattle and driven them to Bowie to sell at the rail yards. He had been gone for at least 12 days. They had not made love for at least four days before that, and they had not made love since. It was in fact just short of four weeks since the last time.

It staggered him. He actually reeled back, dropping the garment on the floor, staring at it as if it had become a rattle snake. His legs trembled and he fell on to a chair and it slid into the kitchen table with a crash.

‘What wrong Erik?! cried Son Hing in a panic as he saw the ghastly pallor on his friend’s face.

The night dress lay crumpled on the floor and seemed to glow with a malevolent light as the early morning sun shone on the gleaming silk. He was unable to speak and just shook his head waving the Chinese away.

His wife, Eleanor, came hurrying down the stairs to see what the noise was about. She saw the night dress and took it all in a split second.

The look of utter desolation on her husband’s face. The way he clutched his chest in agony and the terrible pallor of his face.

At his feet lay her night dress, the mute maroon silk, marred by the dull white stains screamed her infidelity. The evidence of her betrayal was shockingly plain to see.

Son Hing looked at her, at the night dress and then at her husband. He saw it all, understood what had happened and decided that he had better go, there was nothing he could do in this situation. He grabbed the basket and leaving the night dress, scuttled out through the door.

Erik had looked at her in blank shock, his eyes unseeing. His head swung heavily back so that he could see the soft silk at his feet again. His head shook slowly from side to side.

‘Why?’ he said in an anguished whisper. ‘Why?’

She had stood at the door leaning on it for support. Her face ashen with shock. Her hands covered the lower half of her face, masking her mouth, covering her trembling lips.

On the ship he remembered how she had looked at him with naked terror in her eyes.

She knew him well and had seen him in a berserk killing rage on the ghastly day when a band of marauding Mescalero Apaches had attacked their ranch and one of them, a young man had killed their two-year-old son. The Apache had seen Daniel tottering on unsteady legs, crying in fright at the smashing sounds of gunfire. The young man, screaming his war cry, had run at Daniel and had impaled him on a spear, killing the child instantly. Erik had seen it happen and had gone berserk. He had been shot at almost point blank range but in his berserk rage had killed five of the attackers, two of them with his bare hands. The young man who had killed Daniel had been grabbed by the throat and inner thigh. Erik lifted him up above his head and then dropped to one knee. He had then slammed the man down over his knee like a piece of dry wood. The Apache’s back had broken with a horrible sound. It killed the man instantly and he flopped on the ground like a broken doll. Erik then drew his Bowie knife and, screaming a Viking battle cry, attacked the others who had stopped in shock at seeing the incredible strength and rage of the long haired white savage. Seven Apaches made it out of the yard escaping from the berserk savagery of the screaming man.

Then, with his wounds barely patched, Erik had followed the others for three days until he had killed another four including the chief. It had almost killed him, but his rage had kept him alert and his love for her had kept him alive.

The Apaches sang about him around their fires and told the young men to leave the ‘White long haired savage alone, he was ‘bad medicine’ and could not be killed’ His reputation was known not only to the Apaches but to many people who had once seen him savagely beat three men, who had dared to insult Eleanor as she crossed the street one day.

The men were strangers in town and had been looking for the ‘cat house’ They had foolishly called out to Eleanor making her an offer. Erik had heard them from where he was standing in the door of his blacksmith shop watching Eleanor walking to the shops.

The doctor had said, after examining and tending to the broken, battered and bleeding men, that they would have been better off had they been thrown off a cliff than falling foul of Erik Magnussen. All three men had been armed, Erik was unarmed but that did not deter him.

She had watched him in the kitchen, with the maroon silk gleaming malevolently in the sunshine, as he shook his head viciously to clear it.

Then he had looked at her with his face as bleak as a hard winter in Dakota and had said ‘Who was it?’

She had shaken her head and said ‘No, you’ll kill him’

‘Do you love him?’ He asked quietly.

She studied his face trying to read it, then with a tiny movement of her head nodded mutely.

Agony etched his face as his heart spasmed with a pain so intense that it should by rights have killed him.

‘But I still love you too’ she gasped out.

‘How can you?’ he had grated savagely. ‘How can you love me and cause me this much agony, how can you say you love me and be this cruel.?’

‘I don’t know, but I do,’ she had sobbed.

‘How can you love two men?’ he said brutally.

He had got up and stumbled through the door and out into the street. People who knew him were shocked to see him walk blindly across the road. He narrowly missed being run down by the early morning stage coach that was rattling down the main street.

The desert had opened before him and he had sought refuge there, away from the few townsfolk who stared after him.

They wondered what had happened to him. He was known to always be a pleasant quiet man. A man to call on when need arose. A man to leave alone if you were looking for trouble. Men had tried him because, at first glance, he looked so gentle and meek, but when they had looked into those blue eyes they saw something which chilled them as if death had touched them. Vicious men walked quietly around him. He was known to many as the ‘Viking’ because of his long white blonde hair, his blonde beard with faint reddish tinges in it, his sharp blue eyes and his lack of fear and berserk savagery when cornered.

He had no idea of how far he walked or where he had gone. He had eventually walked blindly into an arroyo and had tripped on a rock, crashing heavily to the ground. He had lain there and had cried out his anguish and pain until dry sobs had racked his body. It was a catharsis and it left him exhausted. His face was streaked with tears and he wiped his nose on a kerchief he had in his pocket. He sat on the dry sandy ground and looked around, his eyes again unseeing and distant. Something glinted under the rock he had tripped on. Absently he put out a hand to it, his mind occupied by his anguish. He lifted the object and found himself looking at a gold nugget as big as a walnut.

‘Gold! out here?’ His mind was numb, thick and turgid with his distress. With no excitement he began to search for more to keep his mind off Eleanor. He kicked rocks over and pulled out tufts of grass. He uprooted a manzanita bush looking at the roots and the clods of earth which clung to them. There was no urgency or thrill in his looking. He was distracting his mind from the fear of losing the only woman he had ever loved. The person who filled his every waking moment, who was his very reason to be alive. Without her his life would be barren. devoid of purpose.

His purpose in his looking was to give him time to be able to think rationally. He found five more nuggets, though none as big as the first. Dully he had put them in his pocket and had begun to walk slowly out of the desert. When he was close to the house she saw him and came out of the house and walked slowly to meet him.

She stood before him meekly, ready to accept whatever he would do to her. She knew she had hurt him beyond anything she could have ever imagined.

She had had no idea of the depth of his love. She had known that he loved her more than most husbands loved their wives but she never in her wildest dreams had she ever expected to see the depth of pain and desolation that she had seen on his face.

She looked up into his incredibly blue eyes and again saw the love there, but now it had pain with it and fear. He did not normally know fear. Courage was not given or learnt, it was something you had. He had it. But now he also had fear in his eyes. Fear of losing her.

He stood there and looked at her and his eyes filled with tears again. He had cried when he had lain their son to rest in the ground under a large mesquite tree that overlooked the ashes and charred timber of their home. He had sobbed his grief and loss then and had sworn never to cry again. Now the tears rolled unheeded down his cheeks again and he had grabbed her and hugged her so tight that she could scarcely breathe.

‘For God’s sake why?’ he had sobbed. ‘Is my love not enough for you? What more can I do than I do now?’ What am I lacking that you have to go to another man for? Am I not enough man for you that you have to seek satisfaction elsewhere?’

She pulled away and looked up at him. The tears had left trails down his face and his lower lip trembled like a small child as the choking sobs burst from his throat. She put a hand tenderly to his cheek.

‘I could not wish for a better husband than you,’ she had said.

He shook his head uncomprehendingly. ‘Then why?’ he gasped, choking back a sob.

‘I don’t know why; I can’t help it but I also love him,’ she had said.

‘How can that be? How can you love two men?’

Her head shook slowly and she raised her eyes and looked at him again ‘I do,’ she had said simply.

He had trusted her implicitly. Her life and happiness were all that mattered to him and he had adored her. He remembered the way her hair would blow into her face and the gesture she would use as she held it back. He ached as he remembered her lovely face smiling at him in the mirror as she sat naked before it brushing her hair and the lift of her firm breasts as she moved her arms.

She had been a wonderful wife to him, always there when he came home exhausted at night. Her ready hands had made wonderful meals for him and had also cleaned and polished their home to perfection. Those hands had made him tremble with an aching passion as she had caressed him and driven him wild. Those hands now did that for another man.

CHAPTER TWO

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A coldness seized him and he turned from the rail to look forward at the horizon to the South. To look ahead not back. Ahead lay newness, things he had never seen before, places new to him, a new land and a new life. Behind lay pain and memories. He had set out from the town where he had lived in the May of 1875. Eleanor had watched him go with desolate eyes.

He could not continue pretending that all was fine, that he understood and accepted the way she expected him to live, sharing her with the other man. He had felt emasculated, without honour, half a man. He had always felt that he was second best and his position as her husband was only a token.

There was no alternative for him but to leave. He was fortunate that he had found the gold and over a number of months had exploited his gold claim until it was completely worked out and as a result he was an exceptionally wealthy man and could still provide for her too.

He had sold his thriving blacksmith’s business for a good sum and had travelled across the breadth of America by train. It had seemed to take forever and each clacking joint in the track marked another measure of distance further from the woman he loved, but could not share.

The Cunard ship Caledonia had sailed from New York on the 12th of May and had docked in Liverpool just in time for him to board the SS Great Britain on her 42nd voyage to Melbourne, Australia on the 1st of June 1875.

The passage had been largely uneventful other than for the ‘Crossing of the line’ celebration that heralded the crossing of the Equator. It was hot as the ship was in the tropics. The passengers had perspired freely in their best clothing as they sat down to a sumptuous celebration meal at midday under an awning rigged to ward off the blazing sun.

Captain Peter Robinson had proposed a toast to Queen Victoria and to the British Empire. The whole happy event was briefly marred by the drunken behaviour of an assistant steward. The steward, James Parry, had been a thorn in the flesh of the ill-fated Captain Gray and was known to Captain Robinson as a trouble maker but was a good steward when sober.

On this occasion he had become abusive toward the purser who had ordered him below. He took a swing at the purser and knocked him down and in the process had mistakenly also hit a woman in the follow through of the blow.

Erik had seen this and has risen from his seat with fluid speed and had caught the woman as she staggered to one side. Ensuring that the woman was alright, he had stepped over the purser and with one crashing blow had knocked Parry unconscious. He had returned to his seat and had taken up his knife and fork almost before the other passengers had realised what had happened.

This event had spread through the ship like wild fire and later when all the passengers had collected on the main deck for some games and entertainment a burly Welsh miner, bound for Australia, had challenged Erik to a bare knuckle fight as entertainment for the crowd. Erik declined, saying that he had no wish to fight anyone.

Bryn Evans had laughed and said. ‘Oh! so Blaen wen, the white head, will only hit those too drunk to hit back’ Erik had looked at the man’s six foot three frame and his massive arms that were like tree trunks.

He had shaken his head and said. ‘Evans, you are too nice a man to be beaten till you can stand no more, I will not do that to you. I have too much liking for you to see you hurt.’

‘Me hurt?’ laughed Evans, ‘by you?’ ‘No bach! it will be you who is seeing the blue sky and clouds passing above I am thinking.’

Erik had smiled and shook his head again and had declined the fight.

A lady had looked at Erik and said ‘Maybe the Welshman is right, maybe you do only hit those unable to retaliate’

Erik looked at her and said ‘Madam will you minister to him when he lies bleeding before you?’

The woman had smiled and looked him over. ‘Yes I will, and I will wager that he beats you to a standstill’

‘How much?’ asked Erik.

Down her nose the woman had said ‘Ten pounds’

Erik had smiled and said ‘Put up your money then, I will fight him’

A general roar had gone up. A fight with a wager was on and there was a hubbub as bets were placed and taken. No one seemed to notice the amount that Erik placed on himself to win. He did it quietly and with purpose and made a number of bets with large odds against him.

The passengers had formed a ring and the contestants had removed their shirts. A murmur of surprise had gone up as Erik lay his shirt to one side. He was massively built and looked as if carved from granite. Huge slabs of muscle rippled on his torso. His shoulders had huge muscles bulked by his years of hard work with axe and pick, rope and shovel and his biceps were huge and thick ropes of muscle corded