Some instinct pushed him along a way that he had traveled long ago and almost forgotten. The baboon’s den, the cave where the troop had originally lived, the place where he had ambushed them the first time. He staggered along in the darkness toward the high peak and then turned and made his way down the great outside escarpment, where the wind pressed him against the side of the black stone, where the drop was straight down, hundreds of feet.
He came to the crevice where he had waited in the night for dawn to come, for the baboons to emerge. He went on and found the den and crawled into it, smelled the musky scent of the animals and then collapsed on the dry floor.
He awoke several hours later, his body stiff and painful. He crawled deeper into the den and massaged his limbs until the circulation improved, until his body tingled with the pain. He closed his eyes and waited for dawn. The rain would have killed many creatures as it had almost killed him; there would be dead things to feed on before the sun came and destroyed them: fat lizards drowned in their holes, luckless birds smashed against the cliff walls, rock pythons driven from their familiar lairs, easy prey in surroundings they did not know.
He fell asleep with the nightmare of the pit in his mind.
He relived it all again. The water reached his hips, his chest. He could see nothing now from the torrents of water cascading down on him. It grew dark. The water was cold and his legs were almost numb. He began moving them and lost his balance, fell sideways, found himself swimming, fighting the water to stay up.
Swimming!
He found the slippery sides of his prison, held onto a slight bulge in the rock. There was only the pitch-blackness of the night now and the water under him and the roar of water as it cascaded into the pit. He was going to live now, escape. He would endure the long hours until the water level permitted him to reach up and pull himself out of the hole. He was going to live, live, live… .
An hour later his raw fingers found a thin lip of granite and he lifted himself until his left hand grasped the edge of the pit. His whole body shook from the terrible strain but he swung sideways and his toes found purchase and he was up and out in a tremendous heave of his body, lying on the slippery rock like an exhausted fish, the water swirling past him.
Grace Monckton sat with the rifle in her hands, her eyes searching. She sat in the mouth of the cave and a few yards behind her, out of the sun, was Mike Bain. He was sound asleep.
A week had passed since the great rain. The valley was green; grass grew in the stony soil and trees came to life and bushes turned thick and leafy; the dry winter was over and summer was coming and everywhere there was life. Flocks of strange birds came and made nests in the inaccessible crannies of the black cliffs. Bees filled the air with their droning and swarms of them came from nowhere and colonized secret clefts that their scouts had discovered.
Two days after the rain Mike Bain shot a gemsbok within sight of the cave mouth. It had come like the first one, across the sands, unaware that a new force had come to the gorge to create a new balance of life and death. They skinned the big animal with care and butchered it as Grimmelmann had. The bulk of the meat was flayed thin and made into biltong. What they did not cure they boiled to make extract. Mike smashed the bones with his big wrench and made a soup from the marrow and bits of stray flesh. Nothing went to waste.
They cleaned the hide and stretched it in the shade to dry; they had no immediate use for it but they were vaguely aware that it would be of value, that they should keep it.
They watched the miracle of life with an interest they had never known; they saw a dead land come to life, saw strange things push up from hard earth, from bulbous seeds once dormant and sterile; they almost sensed a change in the soil with their bare feet, saw insects multiply and listened to new sounds in the dusk. And they were part of it, tied to the great cycle of life and growth and death.
They had plenty of food and the nights were milder. They caught many migrating birds near the pool in nets and bizarre traps that Bain devised. In one week they had progressed from the brink of starvation and despair to a time of plenty.
But they did not enjoy it.
They felt that O’Brien was alive and waiting for them. They felt that his eyes were upon them, that he was high up among the crags and gloomy ridges following their movements, studying them while he bided his time and grew strong again. They knew that if he were alive he would strike soon, suddenly, without pity.
They went back to the pit and searched the whole area. The hole was filled with water but each day the level dropped. They knew that his body might be on the bottom but it would be a long time before they were positive, for there was ten or twelve feet of water in the big pool.
There was another possibility: he had been drowned and his body had floated out of the hole and lodged in some cranny or cleft on the downward slope of the cliff top. They spent hours searching and became convinced that this hadn’t happened.
The third possibility was that he had been strong enough to stay afloat in the rising water until he could reach the top and crawl out, that he was hiding now in one of the gorges or high on the cliffs waiting for an opportunity to surprise them, kill them.
They saw no sign of him. They looked upward toward the black peak and scanned the fissured cliffs a hundred times each day, expecting to see him again, naked and black-maned, standing as he did, relaxed and graceful. They looked and saw nothing but as the days went by they sensed his presence, felt his eyes upon them.
They waited for him to come.
The cave, Bain knew, was a death trap for them if they wandered too far from it and allowed O’Brien to enter it. He could wait in the dark or hide in the tunnel they had found and creep upon them at night. They had been lucky and shot the gemsbok and had a great supply of food, but eventually they would have to move away from the cave to forage. It could trap O’Brien, of course. If they went off for the day and let him sneak into it they could wall it up and have him again—but it was too tricky; too many things could go wrong.
They stayed in the cave and took turns sleeping; they banked the outside fire and found that it lasted until dawn. They strung wire and cord across the cave’s mouth and hung tins and utensils and other noisemaking things to give alarm if anything broke the string or pushed the wire. And then Bain dug an arc-shaped ditch six feet behind the wire, a ditch filled with pointed stakes to impale any intruder who might charge through the web of wire and string in hopes of taking them by sudden assault. They felt safe at night now, one of them always awake, waiting for O’Brien to come through the cave mouth.
And they were cautious outside as well. They stayed in the open, away from certain parts of the cliff where he might be waiting to crush them with rocks. They stayed in the valley, close to the cave, and hoped that another gemsbok would wander past.
“Maybe it’s all in our mind,” Mike said one day as they sat in the cave entrance.
“He’s alive,” Grace said. “I can feel him watching us from the high places. And sometimes in the night I feel that he’s out here in the dark, creeping close to the cave. I’m afraid.”
“I’m afraid too,” Mike said. “But sometimes I wonder why. It seems that he’d have shown himself by now.”
“We’ve got to act as if he were alive,” Grace said.
“You’re right. If he is alive then his only weapon is surprise.”
They sat silently. Flies buzzed around them and from the cliffs came the bark of a baboon. Grace Monckton was deeply tanned, her blond hair blending with her bronze skin.
Bain scratched himself and yawned. He fingered his heavy beard and wondered if they would both die here. Living was easy now but the bad time was coming; the rains were over and it would be at least seven or eight months before they came again. They couldn’t wait that long. He turned to Grace.
“Why the hell doesn’t somebody come!”
“They will,” Grace said. “We’ve got to believe that. Every day makes the chances better.”
“I don’t know,” Bain said. “I get depressed once in a while. I know it’s wrong but it happens. Smith and Sturdevant never made it. They couldn’t have. It’s so long.”
“I’m afraid I agree with you,” Grace said.
“I had an idea the other night,” Bain said. “I was sitting on guard and I thought about the birds, the ones I managed to catch in those traps by the water. If there was only some way to use them. Band them. Tie notes on their legs and set them free. Use them as they use homing pigeons or bottles cast into the sea.”
“It’s an idea,” Grace said.
“You really think so?”
“No.”
They both laughed.
“Okay,” Mike said, “we’ll continue to eat them and save our dried gemsbok.”
“A bird in the hand,” Grace said.
The canyon was green and filled with millions of tiny yellow flowers. The trees were fat with leaves.
“What would you do if O’Brien came down from the pool right this minute?” Grace asked.
“I hope I’d have sense enough to shoot him.”
“Would you?”
“I think so. He murdered Grimmelmann. He murdered Smith. And he swore to kill me.”
Another night settled over the black mountain.
An airplane flew over the valley.
It came so fast, so suddenly, that it was gone before they had recovered from the surprise. It was midday and at the outside fire they were roasting a bird that had strangled itself in one of the nets around the pool.
Bain bounded into the cave and came out with two torches.
“Run,” he shouted to Grace. “Hurry.”
The torches caught fire and he ran after her, two burning torches in his left hand, the rifle in his right. They ran down the valley, away from the cliffs into the flatlands. The plane was far away but the noise was still in their ears, the sound of power, civilization, salvation.
They ran easily. They would be seen now if the plane turned and made another sweep over the gorges. The ground leveled off, the stones and sand replaced by the hard-baked red soil; tender grass grew in some spots and delicate white flowers. They came to the first big pile of trash: thornbush and dead camel’s-thorn and wads of dead grass. Bain set it on fire and handed the torch to Grace. They ran across the valley toward the other pile.
The plane came back, slower this time it seemed. They stood waving the torches and the roar of the engines was deafening as it passed overhead. They found themselves shouting. The plane went on, then turned sharply to the right. They had been seen; the plane was heading out of the valley so that it could turn and come in for a landing.
It was a small plane with lettering on one side, a fragile object floating in the sky above the jagged black cliffs, the type of small plane that is usually privately owned. It reminded Bain of the crop dusters he’d seen in many parts of the world; he wondered if it would hold two more people.
They threw down the torches and stopped running.
“What about O’Brien? ” Grace asked.
“He’ll be here,” Bain said. “Any minute now.” They looked to the cliffs, shielding their eyes from the sun; they searched the black walls around them and saw nothing.
“I’m afraid,” Grace said. “Even with you and the rifle and the plane. I’m still afraid.”
“If he’s here, he’ll come,” Bain said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“He might not be here, Grace. It could all be imagination. Something that grew out of the fear you had of him. And my fear. If he survived the pit he’ll come down and get in the plane. What’s he got to lose? His word is as good as ours. We can’t prove he did anything.”
“You think he’s dead then?” Grace asked.
“I think he’s alive,” Bain said. “But if he doesn’t show, then
I’ll close the book on him. I’ll consider him dead, drowned in the pit.”
The plane was a speck growing larger. But they did not watch it; they looked toward the cave and the ridges on both sides of them. They looked for O’Brien.
And then the plane was almost upon them, roaring and blowing red dust over them—a plane on the ground now, moving past them on rubber wheels, a fantastic sight, almost beyond their belief. They ran toward it, found that they were crying, holding each other, laughing, waving.
The plane stopped and a small door opened. The noise of the engine died as it idled. A long leg came out of the doorway and a big man stood before them, a middle-aged man with rimless glasses and a clean white shirt. The lettering on the side of the small craft was plain: Tsumsebi Mining, Ltd.
The man looked at them for a long minute.
“Well, we found you,” he said.
Bain smiled. It was difficult to talk. The man had eaten a real breakfast in the outside world, he wore shoes, he had a haircut.
And Grace was suddenly aware that she was almost naked; she drew closer to Bain, saw that the pilot was leaning away from the controls, looking out the tiny door at her.
The man was talking to them. “We volunteered to join the search when the word came out about you. They picked up some guy along the coast in the diamond fields. Said he was a pilot, that his plane was down here. They locked him up, didn’t believe it, but somebody checked the story and discovered that he was telling the truth after all. Funny.”
“Sturdevant,” Bain said. “We thought he was dead.”
“Did he really walk to the sea from here?”
“Yes,” Bain said. “He was our pilot. He must have.” So Sturdevant was alive. He wanted to cry.
“We can’t cut the motor,” the man was saying. “We’re low on gas now. Are there any others?”
“Others?”
“They’re dead,” Grace shouted above the motor noise.
Bain looked back along the cliffs. No one. No movement. O’Brien was dead. In their fear they’d convinced themselves that he was still alive.
“The others are dead,” he said. “We’re the only survivors.”
And they got into the plane and flew away.
O’Brien watched the plane go.
He stood on a great slab of black stone and the sun glinted on his bronzed body. He scratched himself and rubbed the short pointed stick against his hard calf. He was alone now. Bain and the girl were gone; Grimmelmann was gone; they were all gone. The mountain was his.
He walked along the slab until it ended and began making his way down the face of the cliff; he had a sudden urge to see the pool again and the cave, the old surroundings.
There were birds by the pool. He moved toward them and they grew nervous. Then he sprinted forward. The birds flew away and the stick he threw at them clattered against the stone and rolled into the water.
He drank deeply and walked down the path to the cave. He saw the smoke first and caught the smell of the bird that Bain had been cooking. He smiled and hurried on, squatted over the fire and ate the bird.
He could survive; he was not worried. The mountain had only one human belly to fill, not six. A new crop of tsamma melons was already growing. Game would wander into the gorges now that man’s noise and smell were gone. There would be honey and yellow lizards and more snakes and more of the roots and tubers that Grimmelmann had found for them. He would hunt and forage and he would survive.
He got up and walked into the cave. He saw the alarm net and the pit with the sharpened stakes. He had been right about Bain; the man had guessed he was alive and had taken the utmost precautions. They would have killed him if he’d shown himself.
He found one of the torches, went outside and stuck it in the fire. He walked back and saw the dried meat and the smoked meat which hung high in the darkness; saw the remaining melons, the piles of ragged clothes. He would live here for a time, eat the dried meat and let the living things in the valley grow and multiply.
Something cool under his bare foot. He stepped back, knelt and dug in the soft sand. It was the big wrench, the one Bain had a
lways carried. He hefted it in his hand. It had a good feel to it, a weapon-feel. He swung it in front of him in a wide arc.
He took a strip of biltong and went outside, sat in the warm sunlight. Somewhere far away a baboon barked.
He did not sleep in the cave every night but in any place he found in the gorges and high on the cliffs, in the old baboon den, in narrow clefts, in low caves where sometimes in the sand he found flints and arrowheads and Bushman beads made from shell and bone.
He made fire easily: a hardwood, pencil-sized shaft held and spun between his callused hands, spun into a flat piece of soft wood in a tinder-filled cavity. Then a small fire warming him in the neolithic night over which he roasted partridge and fat geckos and other things he found in the sand and crevices of the black mountain.
There were new rains. He stood naked and let the water cool him, felt the ground grow slippery and soft under his feet. The great sand sea surrounding the black mountain took the water and gave nothing back, but in the canyons more grass came and pink flowers bloomed and the trees came to life and budded. A billion seeds awoke and sent forth fibers seeking moisture and the sun; living creatures came to feed upon the tender grasses and ripe tubers and sweet saps: noble gemsbok like fabled unicorns from the mysterious sand wastes, sleek zebra in harlequin camouflage, nimble gazelles and a few slope-backed hyenas. They found their way to the rock island from some ancient instinct and fed upon its sudden ripeness.
And he fed upon them. He dug a shallow pit and fixed a vicious stake in the bottom, covered it with a matting of sticks and grass and a thin layer of sand. On the third day a zebra fell into it and the stake ripped mortally into its belly. He followed it into the desert and butchered it while flies fought him and planted their eggs in the fresh meat. He carried a hundred pounds of it to the cave and buried it in the cool sand to keep until the night when he would slice it thin and make biltong. He raced back to the rest of the meat but it was gone. Hyenas fought over the crushed bone and evil vultures flapped away at his approach. He cursed them and crippled one of the hyenas with a heavy stone. He hated them. They were like baboons and others who stole his kill.
The Sands of Kalahari Page 22