by Wilbur Smith
“I tell you now, Hedgehog, you’ll not come within ten feet of it.” It was a calculated challenge. Louisa’s eyes narrowed into blue diamond chips of determination. This time her hand was steady. When the gunsmoke cleared after the shot, Jim’s hat was spinning high in the air. It was his favourite hat, and he raced after it. When he stuck his forefinger through the hole in the brim his expression was of such disbelief and dismay that Bakkat dissolved into hoots of mirth. He staggered in circles demonstrating with hand signals how the hat had sailed into the air. Then his legs gave way under him, and he collapsed in the dust and beat his belly with both hands, shrieking with laughter.
His mirth was infectious and Louisa broke into peals of laughter. Up to that time Jim had not heard her laugh so naturally and so wholeheartedly. He placed the riddled hat on his head, and joined in the merriment. Later he stuck an eagle feather in the hole and wore it proudly.
They sat in the shade of a sweet thorn tree and ate the lunch of cold venison and pickles that Louisa had packed into his canteen. Every few minutes one of them would start laughing again and set off the other two.
“Let Welanga shoot your hat again,” Bakkat pleaded. “It was the greatest joke of my life.”
Jim declined, and instead he blazed the trunk of the sweet thorn tree with his hunting knife. The bright white patch formed an idle target. He was learning that when Louisa set her mind on something she was determined and tenacious. She swiftly mastered the art of loading the rifle: measuring the powder charge from the flask, ramming the wad down upon it, selecting a symmetrical ball from the bag on her belt, wrapping it in the greased patch, and rodding it down the bore, tapping it home with the little wooden mallet until it seated on the wad, then priming the pan and closing the frizzen over it to prevent it spilling.
By the second day of instruction she could load and fire the weapon unaided, and soon she was able to hit the sapoozing blaze on a tree with four balls out of five.
“This is becoming too easy for you now, Hedgehog. Time for your first real hunt.”
Early the next morning she loaded the rifle in the way he had trained her, and they rode out together. As they approached the first herds of grazing game Jim showed her how to use Trueheart as a stalking horse. They both dismounted and Jim led Drumfire, while she followed in his tracks leading the mare and staying close to her flank. Screened by the bodies of the horses they angled across the front of a small bachelor herd of springbuck rams. These animals had never seen human beings or horses before and they stood and stared with innocent amazement at the strange creatures passing by. Jim approached them on the diagonal, not heading directly towards the herd, which might have alarmed them and set them to flight.
At the point of closest approach, less than a hundred paces from the nearest animals in the herd, Jim halted Drumfire and whistled softly. Louisa dropped Trueheart’s reins. The mare stopped and stood obediently, trembling in anticipation of the shot she knew was coming. Louisa sank down and, from a seated position, took careful aim at a ram who was standing broadside to her and slightly separated from the rest of the herd. Jim had drummed into her the point of aiming behind the shoulder, showing it to her on a drawing of the animal, and on carcasses that he had shot and brought into camp.
Nevertheless, she found this different from aiming at a blaze on a tree. Her heart was racing, her hands shook almost uncontrollably and her aim danced up and down and across.
Softly Jim called to her, “Remember what I told you.”
In the excitement of the hunt she had forgotten his advice. “Take a deep breath. Swing it up smoothly. Let half of your breath out. Don’t hang on the trigger. Squeeze it off as your sights bear.”
She lowered the rifle, gathered herself and did it just the way he had taught her. The little rifle felt light as thistle-down as it floated up, and fired of its own accord, so unexpectedly that she was startled by the crash of the shot and long spurt of gunsmoke.
There was a thud of the ball striking, the ram leaped high in the air, and came down in a graceful pirouette. Then its legs collapsed under it, it rolled like a ball across the sun-baked earth, and at last stretched out and lay still. Jim let out a whoop of triumph and raced out to where it lay. With the smoking rifle in her hand Louisa ran after him.
“Shot cleanly through the heart,” Jim cried. “I could not have done it better myself.” He turned to meet her as she came running up. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair had escaped in glorious disarray from under her hat and her eyes sparkled. Despite her efforts to avoid the sun, her skin had taken on the colour of a ripe peach. Her excitement matched his own, and he thought he had never seen anything as beautiful as she was at that moment.
He reached out with both arms to take her into his embrace. She came up short, just out of his reach and backed away from him. With a mighty effort, he checked his impulse. They stared at each other, and he saw the horror replace the sparkle in her eyes, her revulsion at a masculine touch. It was only a fleeting moment, but he knew how close he had come to disaster. All these months spent in building her trust, in showing her how he respected her, and cared for her well-being, how he wanted to protect and cherish her, all of that so nearly lost in a boisterously impulsive gesture.
He turned away quickly, giving her time to recover from her fright. “It’s a magnificent buck, fat as butter.”
As the animal relaxed in death, the long fold of skin that ran down the centre of its back opened, and it displayed the dorsal plume of snowy white hair. Jim stooped and ran one finger down the fold of skin, then raised the finger to his nose. “It’s the only animal that smells like a flower.” A pale yellow wax from the animal’s sebaceous glands coated his finger. He did not look at her. “Try it,” he suggested.
She averted her eyes from his as she combed her fingers through the animal’s dorsal plume, then held them to her own nose. “Perfumed!” she exclaimed, with surprise. He called Bakkat and between them they gralloched the springbuck and hoisted the carcass on to the pack-saddle. The wagons were tiny specks across the plain. They rode towards them, but the joyous mood of the morning was spoilt, and they were silent. Jim was consumed with despair. It seemed that he and Louisa had lost all the ground they had travelled together, and were back at the starting point of their relationship.
Fortunately, when they reached the wagons there was something to distract him. Smallboy had driven the lead wagon over the underground burrow of an antbear, and the earth had collapsed. The heavily laden vehicle had crashed into the excavation as far as its floorboards. A number of spokes in the offside front wheel were shattered, and the vehicle was firmly stuck. They had to unload it before it was light enough for a double span of oxen to heave it out. Darkness had fallen before they had freed the wagon. It was too late to start repairs to the broken front wheel. The shattered spokes would have to be replaced, and the work of shaving the new parts to fit was finicky and might take days.
Tired and sweat-drenched, Jim went to his own wagon. “Bath! Hot water!” he shouted at Zama.
“Welanga has already ordered it,” Zama told him disapprovingly.
Well, at least, we know whose side you’re on, Jim thought bitterly, but his mood lifted when he found the galvanized-iron bath filled with hot water waiting for him, a bar of soap and a clean towel laid out beside it. After he had bathed he went to the kitchen tent.
Louisa was working at the cooking fire. He was still feeling too affronted by her rejection to thank her or acknowledge her gesture of contrition in preparing his bath. When he entered the tent she glanced up then looked away again quickly.
“I thought you might like a dram of the Hollands that your father gave you.” The gin bottle stood on the camp table ready for him. This was the first time he had seen it since he had parted from his family. He did not know how to decline her offer gracefully, and tell her that he did not like to fuddle his senses with alcohol. He had been drunk only once in his life and regretted the experience. However, he did not wish
to spoil this delicate mood, so he poured half a dram and drank it reluctantly.
Louisa had grilled fresh springbuck cutlets for dinner, and she served them with caramelized onions and herbs, a recipe Sarah had given her. This he fell on with great appetite, and his mood improved sufficiently to compliment her. “Not only well shot, but perfectly cooked.” Yet after that their conversation was stilted and interspersed with awkward silences. They had come so close to being friends, he lamented silently, as he drank a mug of coffee.
“I am off to bed.” He stood up sooner than he usually did. “How about you?”
“I want to write up my journal,” she answered. “For me it has been a special day. My first hunt. And, what is more, I promised your father not to miss a day. I will come later.” He left her and made his way to his own wagon.
Each night the wagons were drawn up in a square, and the spaces between them filled with branches of thorn trees, to pen the domestic animals and keep out the predators. Louisa’s wagon was always parked alongside Jim’s, so that there was only the thickness of the two wagon tents between them. This ensured that Jim was always on hand if she needed him, and during the night, without leaving their separate beds, they were able to speak to each other.
That evening Jim lay awake, until he heard her footsteps coming from the kitchen tent, and saw the glow of her lantern pass along the wall of his tent. Later he heard her changing into her nightdress. The rustle of her clothing conjured up disturbing images of her, and he tried unsuccessfully to banish them. Then he heard her brushing her hair, every stroke of the brush a soft whisper like the wind in a field of ripe wheat. He could imagine the way it rippled and glowed in the lamplight. At last he heard the creak of the cardell bed as it took her weight. Then there was a long silence.
“Jim.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper. It shocked and thrilled him. “Jim, are you awake?”
“Yes.” His voice sounded loud in his own ears.
“Thank you,” she said. “I cannot remember when last I enjoyed a day so much.”
“I have enjoyed it also.” He almost added, “Except—” but he bit back the word.
They were silent for so long that he thought she had fallen asleep, but she whispered again: “Thank you also for your gentleness.”
He said nothing, for there was nothing to say. He lay long awake, and his hurt slowly gave way to anger. I do not deserve to be treated like this. I have given up everything for her, my home and my family. I have become an outlaw to save her, yet she treats me like some repulsive and poisonous reptile. Then she goes off to sleep as though nothing has happened. I hate her. I wish I had never laid eyes upon her.
Louisa lay rigid and wakeful on her bed. She knew he could hear any movement she made and she did not want him to know that she was unable to sleep. She was racked by guilt and remorse. She felt a deep sense of obligation to Jim. She knew only too well what he had sacrificed for her.
Added to this she liked him. It was impossible not to. He was so outgoing and cheerful, so strong, dependable and resourceful. She felt safe when he was near at hand. She liked the way he looked, big and strong, with an open, honest face. He could make her laugh. She smiled as she thought of the way he had reacted when she shot a hole through his hat. He had a quirky sense of humour that she was at last coming to understand. He could retell the day’s events in a way that made her laugh with surprise, even though she had witnessed them. She felt that he was her friend when he called her Hedgehog, and teased her in that rude, almost incomprehensible English way.
Even now that he was sulking it was good to know that he was within call. Often in the night when she heard strange wild sounds, the gibbering of hyena or the roaring of a pride of lions, she was mortally afraid. Then he would speak to her quietly through the wall of the tent. His voice reassured her, calmed her fears, and she could sleep again.
Then there were the nightmares. Often she dreamed that she was at Huis Brabant again; she saw the tripod and the silk ropes and, in the candlelight, the dark figure dressed in the costume of the executioner, the black gloves and the leather mask with the eye slits. When the nightmares came upon her she was trapped in those dark fantasies, unable to escape, until his voice woke her, rescued her from the terror.
“Hedgehog! Wake up! It’s all right. It’s only a dream. I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you.” She always woke to a deep sense of gratitude.
She liked him a little more each day, and she trusted him. But she could not let him touch her. At even the most casual contact—if he adjusted her stirrup leather and touched her ankle, if he handed her some ordinary object like a spoon or a coffee mug and their fingers brushed—she felt afraid and repelled.
Strangely, from a distance she found him attractive. When he rode beside her and she smelt his warm man smell and listened to his voice and his laughter, it made her happy.
Once she had come upon Jim unexpectedly while he was washing in the river. He had still been wearing his breeches, but he had thrown his shirt and leather jacket on the bank; he was scooping handfuls of water and dashing them over his head. His back had been towards her so he had not seen her. For a long moment, before she turned away, she had stared at the smooth, unblemished skin of his bare back. It was in sharp contrast to his sun-browned arms. The muscles were strongly defined below the pale skin and changed shape as he lifted his arms.
She had felt again that wicked stirring of her senses, that shortness of breath, the melting heaviness of her loins, and the unfocused but lascivious longing that Koen van Ritters had awakened in her, before he plunged her into the horrors of his evil fantasy.
I don’t want that ever again, she thought as she lay in darkness. I cannot let another man touch me. Not even Jim. I want him to be my friend, but I don’t want that. I should go into the Church, a nunnery. That is the only escape for me.
But there was no nunnery in the wilderness, and at last she slept.
Xhia led Koots and his band of bounty-hunters back to the camp where Jim Courtney had stampeded their horses, the camp from which they had begun the long march back to the colony. Many weeks had passed since that night, and in the meantime there had been high winds and heavy rainfall in the mountains. To any other eye than Xhia’s the elements had washed away every last vestige of the sign.
Xhia worked outwards from the old campsite, following the direction of the stampede, then instinctively divining the direction in which Jim would have driven the stolen herd once he had it under control again. A quarter of a league from the old camp he picked out the faintest trace of the spoor, the scrape of a steel horseshoe on shale that could not have been made by the hoof of an eland bull or any other wild game. He aged the sign, it was not too fresh, nor too old. This was the first peg upon which he began to build the picture of the chase.
He worked away from it searching in the sheltered places, between two rocks, in the lee of fallen trees, in the malleable clay of a donga bottom, in the stratas of shale soft enough to bear an imprint and hard enough to retain it.
Koots and his men followed at a distance, careful not to over-tread and spoil the ancient sign. Often when the spoor was so ethereal as to be obscured from even Xhia’s sorcery, they unsaddled their horses and waited, smoking and bickering, playing dice, gambling for the reward money they would win with the capture of the fugitives. At last Xhia, with infinite patience, would unravel that part of the puzzle. He would call them, and they would mount up and follow him on through the mountains.
Gradually the sign became fresher as he narrowed the gap between them and their quarry, and Xhia moved along it with more confidence. None the less, it was three weeks after picking up that first faint hoofprint that Xhia caught up with the wandering herd of mules and horses that Jim and Bakkat had used to lure them on, then abandoned.
At first Koots could not understand how they had been gulled. Here were their horses but no human beings with them. Since the first day he had encountered great difficulty communicating wit
h Xhia, for the Bushman’s Dutch was rudimentary and hand signs were not adequate for explaining the complicated nature of the deceit that Bakkat had played upon them. Then it dawned upon Koots that the best horses were missing from this herd of strays: Frost, Crow, Lemon, Stag and, of course, Drumfire and Trueheart.
“They split off, and left this bunch of animals to lead us away.” Koots had understood at last and he blanched with fury. “For all this time we have been wandering in circles, while those criminals got clear away in another direction.”
His anger needed a focus, and that was Xhia. “Catch that yellow rat!” he shouted at Richter and Le Riche. “I want some skin from this stinking little swartze.” They grabbed the Bushman before he realized their intention.
“Tie him to that tree.” Koots pointed out a large cripplewood. They were enjoying this. Their anger with the Bushman was every bit as intense as Koots’s: he was directly responsible for their hardship and discomfort over the past months, and retribution would be sweet. They bound him with leather thongs at ankles and wrists. Koots tore off Xhia’s leather breech cloth and left him naked.
“Goffel!” Koots shouted at the Hottentot trooper. “Cut me a bundle of thorn branches this thick.” He made a circle of thumb and forefinger. “Leave the thorns on them.”
Koots shrugged off his leather coat, and windmilled his right arm, loosening the muscles. Goffel came up from the bank of the stream with an armful of thorn branches, and Koots took his time selecting one that had a pleasing whip and rigidity. Xhia watched him with huge eyes as he strained at his bonds. Koots chopped the thorns off the butt end of the stick of his choice so they would not prick his own fingers, but the rest of the limber wand bristled with the red-tipped spikes. He flourished the scourge as he advanced on Xhia. “Now, you little reptile, you have led me a fine fandango, but it’s your turn to dance now.”