by Wilbur Smith
‘That mad bastard’s forgotten about us,’ grumbled Ruffy and went to the Ford to fetch the beer crate. Bruce fidgeted restlessly on the unpadded chair beside the telegraph table. He reconsidered anxiously all his previous arguments for leaving Wally Hendry in charge of the camp, but once again decided that it was safe. He couldn’t do much harm. Unless, unless, Shermaine! No, it was impossible. Not with forty loyal gendarmes to protect her.
He started to think about Shermaine and the future. There was a year’s mercenary captain’s pay accumulated in the Crédit Banque Suisse at Zurich. He made the conversion from francs to pounds – about two and a half thousand. Two years’ operating capital, so they could have a holiday before he started working again. They could take a chalet up in the mountains, there should be good snow this time of the year.
Bruce grinned. Snow that crunched like sugar, and a twelve-inch-thick eiderdown on the bed at night.
Life had purpose and direction again.
‘What you’re laughing at, boss?’ asked Ruffy.
‘I was thinking about a bed.’
‘Yeah? That’s a good thing to think about. You start there, you’re born there, you spend most of your life in it, you have plenty of fun in it, and if you’re lucky you die there. How’s it for a beer?’
The telegraph came to life at Bruce’s elbow. He turned to it quickly.
‘Curry – Franklyn,’ it clattered. Bruce could imagine the wiry, red-faced little man at the other end. Ex-major in the third brigade of the Legion. A prime mover in the O.A.S., with a sizeable price still on his head from the De Gaulle assassination attempt.
‘Franklyn – Curry,’ Bruce tapped back. ‘Train unserviceable. Motorized transport stranded without fuel. Port Reprieve road. Map reference approx—’ He read the numbers off the sheet on which he had noted them.
There was a long pause, then:
‘Is U.M.C. property in your hands?’ The question was delicately phrased.
‘Affirmative,’ Bruce assured him.
‘Await air-drop at your position soonest. Out.’
‘Message understood. Out.’ Bruce straightened from the telegraph and sighed with relief.
‘That’s that, Ruffy. They’ll drop gas to us from one of the Dakotas. Probably tomorrow morning.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘Twenty to one, let’s get back.’
Bruce hummed softly, watching the double tracks ahead of him, guiding the Ford with a light touch on the wheel.
He was contented. It was all over. Tomorrow the fuel would drop from the Dakota under those yellow parachutes. (He must lay out the smudge signals this evening.) And ten hours later they would be back in Elisabethville.
A few words with Carl Engelbrecht would fix seats for Shermaine and himself on one of the outward-bound Daks. Then Switzerland, and the chalet with icicles hanging from the eaves. A long rest while he decided where to start again. Louisiana was under Roman-Dutch Law, or was it Code Napoléon? He might even have to rewrite his bar examinations, but the prospect pleased rather than dismayed him. It was fun again.
‘Never seen you so happy,’ grunted Ruffy.
‘Never had so much cause,’ Bruce agreed.
‘She’s a swell lady. Young still – you can teach her.’
Bruce felt his hackles rise, and then he thought better of it and laughed.
‘You going to sign her up, boss?’
‘I might.’
Ruffy nodded wisely. ‘Man should have plenty wives – I got three. Need a couple more.’
‘One I could only just handle.’
‘One’s difficult. Two’s easier. Three, you can relax. Four, they’re so busy with each other they don’t give you no trouble at all.’
‘I might try it.’
‘Yeah, you do that.’
And ahead of them through the trees they saw the ring of trucks.
‘We’re home,’ grunted Ruffy, then he stirred uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Something going on.’
Men stood in small groups. There was something in their attitude: strain, apprehension. Two men ran up the road to meet them. Bruce could see their mouths working, but could not hear the words.
Dread, heavy and cold, pushed down on the pit of Bruce’s gut.
Gabbled, incoherent, Sergeant Jacque was trying to tell him something as he ran beside the Ford.
‘Tenente Hendry – the river – the madame – gone.’ French words like driftwood in the torrent of dialect.
‘Your girl,’ translated Ruffy. ‘Hendry’s done her.’
‘Dead?’ The question dropped from Bruce’s mouth.
‘No. He’s hurt her. He’s – you know!’
‘Where’s she?’
‘They’ve got her in the back of the truck.’
Bruce climbed heavily out of the car. Now they were silent, grouped together, not looking at him, faces impassive, waiting.
Bruce walked slowly to the truck. He felt cold and numb. His legs moved automatically beneath him. He drew back the canvas and pulled himself up into the interior. It was an effort to move forward, to focus his eyes in the gloom.
Wrapped in a blanket she lay small and still.
‘Shermaine.’ It stuck in his throat.
‘Shermaine,’ he said again and knelt beside her. A great livid swelling distorted the side of her face. She did not turn her head to him, but lay staring up at the canvas roof.
He touched her face and the skin was cold, cold as the dread that gripped his stomach. The coldness of it shocked him so he jerked his hand away.
‘Shermaine.’ This time it was a sob. The eyes, her big haunted eyes, turned unseeing towards him and he felt the lift of escape from the certainty of her death.
‘Oh, God,’ he cried and took her to him, holding the unresisting frailty of her to his chest. He could feel the slow even thump of her heart beneath his hand. He drew back the blanket and there was no blood.
‘Darling, are you hurt? Tell me, are you hurt?’ She did not answer. She lay quietly in his arms, not seeing him.
‘Shock,’ he whispered. ‘It’s only shock,’ and he opened her clothing. With tenderness he examined the smoothly pale body; the skin was clammy and damp, but there was no damage.
He wrapped her again and laid her gently back on to the floor.
He stood and the thing within him changed shape. Cold still, but now burning cold as dry ice.
Ruffy and Jacque were waiting for him beside the tailboard.
‘Where is he?’ asked Bruce softly.
‘He is gone.’
‘Where?’
‘That way.’ Jacque pointed towards the south-east. ‘I followed the spoor a short distance.’
Bruce walked to the Ford and picked up his rifle from the floor. He opened the cubby hole and took two spare clips of ammunition from it.
Ruffy followed him. ‘He’s got the diamonds, boss.’
‘Yes,’ said Bruce and checked the load of his rifle. The diamonds were of no importance.
‘Are you going after him, boss?’
Bruce did not answer. Instead he looked up at the sky. The sun was half way towards the horizon and there were clouds thickly massed around it.
‘Ruffy, stay with her,’ he said softly. ‘Keep her warm.’
Ruffy nodded.
‘Who is the best tracker we’ve got?’
‘Jacque. Worked for a safari outfit before the war as a tracker boy.’
Bruce turned to Jacque. The thing was still icy cold inside him, with tentacles that spread out to every extremity of his body and his mind.
‘When did this happen?’
‘About an hour after you left,’ answered Jacque.
Eight hours start. It was a long lead.
‘Take the spoor,’ said Bruce softly.
– 31 –
The earth was soft from the night’s rain and the spoor deep trodden, the heels had bitten in under Hendry’s weight, so they followed fast.
Watching Sergeant Jacque work, Bruce felt his anxiety abating,
for although the footprints were so easy to follow in these early stages that it was no test of his ability, yet from the way he moved swiftly along – half-crouched and wholly absorbed, occasionally glancing ahead to pick up the run of the spoor, stooping now and then to touch the earth and determine its texture – Bruce could tell that this man knew his business.
Through the open forest with tufted grass below, holding steadily south by east, Hendry led them straight towards the Rhodesian border. And after the first two hours Bruce knew they had not gained upon him. Hendry was still eight hours ahead, and at the pace he was setting eight hours’ start was something like thirty miles in distance.
Bruce looked over his shoulder at the sun where it lay wedged between two vast piles of cumulonimbus. There in the sky were the two elements which could defeat him.
Time. There were perhaps two more hours of daylight. With the onset of night they would be forced to halt.
Rain. The clouds were swollen and dark blue round the edges. As Bruce watched, the lightning lit them internally, and at a count of ten the thunder grumbled suddenly. If it rained again before morning there would be no spoor to follow.
‘We must move faster,’ said Bruce.
Sergeant Jacque straightened up and looked at Bruce as though he were a stranger. He had forgotten his existence.
‘The earth hardens.’ Jacque pointed at the spoor and Bruce saw that in the last half hour the soil had become gritty and compacted. Hendry’s heels no longer broke the crust. ‘It is unwise to run on such a lean trail.’
Again Bruce looked back at the menace of gathering clouds.
‘We must take the chance,’ he decided.
‘As you wish,’ grunted Jacque, and transferred his rifle to his other shoulder, hitched up his belt and settled the steel helmet more firmly on his head.
‘Allez!’
They trotted on through the forest towards the southeast. Within a mile Bruce’s body had settled into the automatic rhythm of his run, leaving his mind free.
He thought about Wally Hendry, saw again the little eyes and round them the puffy folded skin, and the mouth below, thin and merciless, the obscene ginger stubble of beard. He could almost smell him. His nostrils flared at the memory of the rank red-head’s body odour. Unclean, he thought, unclean mind and unclean body.
His hatred of Wally Hendry was a tangible thing. He could feel it sitting heavily at the base of his throat, tingling in his fingertips and giving strength to his legs.
And yet there was something else. Suddenly Bruce grinned: a wolfish baring of his teeth. That tingling in his fingertips was not all hatred, a little of it was excitement.
What a complex thing is a man, he thought. He can never hold one emotion – always there are others to confuse it. Here I am hunting the thing that I most loathe and hate, and I am enjoying it. Completely unrelated to the hatred is the thrill of hunting the most dangerous and cunning game of all, man.
I have always enjoyed the chase, he thought. It has been bred into me, for my blood is that of the men who hunted and fought with Africa as the prize.
The hunting of this man will give me pleasure. If ever a man deserved to die, it is Wally Hendry. I am the plaintiff, the judge and the executioner.
Sergeant Jacque stopped so suddenly that Bruce ran into him and they nearly fell.
‘What is it?’ panted Bruce, coming back to reality.
‘Look!’
The earth ahead of them was churned and broken.
‘Zebra,’ groaned Bruce, recognizing the round uncloven hoof prints. ‘God damn it to hell – of all the filthy luck!’
‘A big herd,’ Jacque agreed. ‘Spread out. Feeding.’
As far ahead as they could see through the forest the herd had wiped out Hendry’s tracks.
‘We’ll have to cast forward.’ Bruce’s voice was agonized by his impatience. He turned to the nearest tree and hacked at it with his bayonet, blazing it to mark the end of the trail, swearing softly, venting his disappointment on the trunk.
‘Only another hour to sunset,’ he whispered. ‘Please let us pick him up again before dark.’
Sergeant Jacque was already moving forward, following the approximate line of Hendry’s travel, trying vainly to recognize a single footprint through the havoc created there by the passage of thousands of hooves. Bruce hurried to join him and then moved out on his flank. They zigzagged slowly ahead, almost meeting on the inward leg of each tack and then separating again to a distance of a hundred yards.
There it was! Bruce dropped to his knees to make sure. Just the outline of the toecap showing from under the spoor of an old zebra stallion. Bruce whistled, a windy sound through his dry lips, and Jacque came quickly. One quick look, then:
‘Yes, he is holding more to the right now.’ He raised his eyes and squinted ahead, marking a tree which was directly in line with the run of the spoor. They went forward.
‘There’s the herd.’ Bruce pointed at the flicker of a grey body through the trees.
‘They’ve got our wind.’
A zebra snorted and then there was a rumbling, a low blurred drumming of hooves as the herd ran. Through the trees Bruce caught glimpses of the animals on the near side of the herd. Too far off to show the stripes, looking like fat grey ponies as they galloped, ears up, black-maned heads nodding. Then they were gone and the sound of their flight dwindled.
‘At least they haven’t run along the spoor,’ muttered Bruce, and then bitterly: ‘Damn them, the stupid little donkeys! They’ve cost us an hour. A whole priceless hour.’
Desperately searching, wild with haste, they worked back and forth. The sun was below the trees; already the air was cooling in the short African dusk. Another fifteen minutes and it would be dark.
Then abruptly the forest ended and they came out on the edge of a vlei. Open as wheatland, pastured with green waist-high grass, hemmed in by the forest, it stretched ahead of them for nearly two miles. Dotted along it were clumps of ivory palms with each graceful stem ending in an untidy cluster of leaves. Troops of guinea-fowls were scratching and chirruping along the edge of the clearing, and near the far end a herd of buffalo formed a dark mass as they grazed beneath a canopy of white egrets.
In the forest beyond the clearing, rising perhaps three hundred feet out of it, stood a kopje of tumbled granite. The great slabs of rock with their sheer sides and square tops looked like a ruined castle. The low sun struck it and gave the rock an orange warmth.
But Bruce had no time to admire the scene; his eyes were on the earth, searching for the prints of Hendry’s jungle boots.
Out on his left Sergeant Jacque whistled sharply and Bruce felt the leap of excitement in his chest. He ran across to the crouching gendarme.
‘It has come away.’ Jacque pointed at the spoor that was strung ahead of them like beads on a string, skirting the edge of the vlei, each depression filled with shadow and standing out clearly on the sandy grey earth.
‘Too late,’ groaned Bruce. ‘Damn those bloody zebra.’ The light was fading so swiftly it seemed as though it were a stage effect.
‘Follow it.’ Bruce’s voice was sharp with helpless frustration. ‘Follow it as long as you can.’
It was not a quarter of a mile farther on that Jacque rose out of his crouch and only the white of his teeth showed in the darkness as he spoke.
‘We will lose it again if we go on.’
‘All right.’ Bruce unslung his rifle with weary resignation. He knew that Wally Hendry was at least forty miles ahead of them; more if he kept travelling after dark. The spoor was cold. If this had been an ordinary hunt he would long ago have broken off the chase.
He looked up at the sky. In the north the stars were fat and yellow, but above them and to the south it was black with cloud.
‘Don’t let it rain,’ he whispered. ‘Please God, don’t let it rain.’
The night was long. Bruce slept once for perhaps two hours and then the strength of his hatred woke him. He lay flat upon his
back and stared up at the sky. It was all dark with clouds; only occasionally they opened and let the stars shine briefly through.
‘It must not rain. It must not rain.’ He repeated it like a prayer, staring up at the dark sky, concentrating upon it as though by the force of his mind he could control the elements.
There were lions hunting in the forest. He heard the male roaring, moving up from the south, and once his two lionesses answered him. They killed a little before dawn and Bruce lay on the hard earth and listened to their jubilation over the kill. Then there was silence as they began to feed.
That I might have success as well, he thought. I do not often ask for favours, Lord, but grant me this one. I ask it not only for myself but for Shermaine and the others.
In his mind he saw again the two children lying where Hendry had shot them. The smear of mingled blood and chocolate across the boy’s cheek.
He deserves to die, prayed Bruce, so please don’t let it rain.
As long as the night had been, that quickly came the dawn. A grey dawn, gloomy with low cloud.
‘Will it go?’ Bruce asked for the twentieth time, and this time Jacque looked up from where he knelt beside the spoor.
‘We can try now.’
They moved off slowly with Jacque leading, doubled over to peer short-sightedly at the earth and Bruce close behind him, bedevilled by his impatience and anxiety, lifting his head every dozen paces to the dirty grey roof of cloud.
The light strengthened and the circle of their vision opened from six feet to as many yards, to a hundred, so they could make out the tops of the ivory palms, shaggy against the grey cloud.
Jacque broke into a trot and ahead of them was the end of the clearing and the beginning of the forest. Two hundred yards beyond rose the massive pile of the kopje, in the early light looking more than ever like a castle, turreted and sheer. There was something formidable in its outline. It seemed to brood above them and Bruce looked away from it uneasily.
Cold and with enough weight behind it to sting, the first raindrop splashed against Bruce’s cheek.
‘Oh, no!’ he protested, and stopped. Jacque straightened up from the spoor and he too looked at the sky.
‘It is finished. In five minutes there will be nothing to follow.’