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 kopie, 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.” Another drop hit Bruce’s upturned face and he blinked back the tears of anger and frustration that pricked the rims of his eyelids.
Faster now, tapping on his helmet, plopping on to his shoulders and face, the rain fell.
Quickly,” cried Bruce. “Follow as long as you can.” Jacque opened his mouth to speak, but before a word came out he was flung-backwards, punched over as though by an invisible fist, his helmet flying from his head as he fell and his rifle clattering on the earth.
Simultaneously Bruce felt the bullet pass him, disrupting the air, so the wind of it flattened his shirt against his chest, cracking viciously in his ears, leaving him dazedly looking down at Sergeant
Jacque’s body.
It lay with arms thrown wide, the jaw and the side of the head below the ear torn away; white bone and blood bubbling over it. The trunk twitched convulsively and the hands fluttered like trapped birds.
Then flat-sounding through the rain he heard the report of the rifle.
The kopje, screamed Bruce’s brain, he’s lying in the kopie!
And Bruce moved, twisting sideways, starting to run.
Wally Hendry lay on his stomach on the flat top of the turret. His body was stiff and chilled from the cold of the night and the rock was harsh under him, but the discomfort hardly penetrated the fringe of his mind. He had built a low parapet with loose flakes of granite, and he had screened the front of it with the thick bushy stems of broom bush.
His rifle was propped on the parapet in front of him and at his elbow were the spare ammunition clips.
He had lain in this ambush for a long time now - since early the preceding afternoon. Now it was dawn and the darkness was drawing back; in a few minutes he would be able to see the whole of the clearing below him.
I coulda been across the river already, he thought, coulda been fifty miles away. He did not attempt to analyse the impulse that had made him lie here unmoving for almost twenty hours.
Man, I knew old Curry would have to come. I knew he would only bring one nigger tracker with him. These educated Johnnies got their own rules - man to man stuff, and he chuckled as he remembered the two minute figures that he had seen come out of the forest in the fading light of the previous evening.
The bastard spent the night down there in the clearing. Saw him light a match and have hisself a smoke in the night - well, I hope he enjoyed it, his last.
Wally peered anxiously out into the gradually gathering dawn.
They’ll be moving now, coming up the clearing. Must get them before they reach the trees again. Below him the clearing showed as a paleness, a leprous blotch, on the dark forest.
The bastard! Without preliminaries Hendry’s hatred returned to him. This time he don’t get to make no fancy speeches - This time he don’t get no chance to be hoity-toity.
The light was stronger now. He could see the clumps of ivory palms against the pale brown grass of the clearing.
“Ha!” Hendry exclaimed.
There they were, like two little ants, dark specks moving up the middle of the clearing. The tip of Hendry’s tongue slipped out between his lips and he flattened down behind his rifle.
Man, I’ve waited for this. Six months now I’ve thought about this, and when it’s finished I’ll go down and take his ears. He slipped the safety catch; it made a satisfying mechanical click.
Nigger’s leading, that’s Curry behind him. Have to wait they turn, don’t want the nigger to get it first. Curry first, then the nigger.
He picked them up in his sights, breathing quicker now, the thrill of it so intense that he had to swallow and it caught in his throat like dry bread.
A raindrop hit the back of his neck. It startled him. He looked up quickly at the sky and saw it coming.
“Goddam it,” he groaned, and looked back at the clearing.
Curry and nigger were standing together, a single dark blob in the half-light. There was no chance of separating them.
The rain fell faster, and suddenly Hendry was overwhelmed by the old familiar feeling of inferiority; of knowing that everything, even the elements, conspired against him; the knowledge that he could never win, not even this once.
They, God and the rest of the world.
The ones who had given him a drunk for a father.
A squalid cottage for a home and a mother with cancer of the throat.
The ones who had sent him to reform school, had fired him from two dozen jobs, had pushed him, laughed at him, gaoled him twice - They, all of them (and Bruce Curry who was their figurehead), they were going
to win again. Not even this once, not even ever.
“Goddarn it,” he cursed in hopeless, wordless anger against them all.
“Goddam it, goddam it to hell,” and he fired at the dark blob in his sights.
As he ran Bruce looked across a hundred yards of open ground to the edge of the forest.
He felt the wind of the next bullet as it cracked past him.
If he uses rapid fire he’ll get me even at three hundred yards
And Bruce jinked his run like a jack-rabbit. The blood roaring in his ears, fear driving his feet.
Then all around him the air burst asunder, buffeting him so he staggered; the vicious whip-whip whip of bullets filled his head.
I can’t make it Seventy yards to the shelter of the trees.
Seventy yards of open meadowlands and above him the commanding mass of the kopje.
The next burst is for me - it must come, now!
And he flung himself to one side so violently that he nearly fell.
Again the air was ripping to tatters close beside him.
I can’t last! He must get me!
In his path was an ant-heap, a low pile of clay, a pimple on the open expanse of earth. Bruce dived for it, hitting the ground so hard that the wind was forced from his lungs out through his open mouth.
The next burst of gunfire kicked lumps of clay from the top of the ant-heap, showering Bruce’s back.
He lay with his face pressed into the earth, wheezing with the agony of empty lungs, flattening his body behind the tiny heap of clay.
Will it cover me? Is there enough of it?
And the next hail of bullets thumped into the ant-heap, throwing fountains of earth, but leaving Bruce untouched.
I’m safe. The realization came with a surge that washed away his
fear.
But I’m helpless, answered his hatred. Pinned to the earth for as long as Hendry wants to keep me here.
The rain fell on his back. Soaking through his jacket, coldly caressing the nape of his neck and dribbling down over his jaws.
He rolled his head sideways, not daring to lift it an inch, and
the rain beat on to the side of his face.
The rain! Falling faster. Thickening. Hanging from the clouds like the skirts of a woman’s dress.
Curtains of rain. Greying out the edge of the forest, leaving no solid shapes in the mist of falling liquid motherof-pearl.