“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 bluffed 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, blackmaned 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. 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 shortsightedly 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.