The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 33
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Time means nothing to these people. We cannot start down into the gorge
until they arrive."
"Well, at least while we are waiting for them I will have a chance to
sight in my rifle,'Nicholas remarked with resignation. "In Africa it
never pays to be in a hurry. Too wearing on the nerves."
After a leisurely breakfast the next morning, when there was still no
sign of the mules, Nicholas fetched his rifle case.
When Nicholas lifted the weapon out of its nest of green baize, Boris
took it from him and examined it minutely.
"An old rifle?"
"Made in 1926,'Nicholas nodded. "My grandfather had it made for
himself."
"They knew how to make them in those days. Not like the mass-produced
crap they turn out today." Boris pursed his lips critically. "Short
Mauser Oberndorf double square, bridge action, beautiful! But it has
been rebarrelled, no?
The original barrel was shot out. I had it replaced with a Shilen match
barrel. It will shoot the wings off a mosquito at a hundred paces."
"Calibre 7 57, is it?" Boris asked.
'275 Rigby, as a matter of fact," Nicholas corrected him, but Boris
snorted.
"It is exactly the same cartridge - just your English bloodiness must
call it something else." He grinned. "It wilt push a 150 grain bullet
out there at 2800 feet per second.
It is a good rifle, one of the best."
"You will never know, my dear fellow, how much your approval means to
me,'Nicholas murmured in English, and Boris chuckled as he handed the
rifle back to him.
"English jokes! I love your English jokes."
When Nicholas left camp carrying the little rifle in its slip case,
Royan followed him down to the river and helped him fill two small
canvas bags with white river sand. He laid them on top of a convenient
rock and they formed a firm but malleable rest for the rifle as he
settled it over them.
Using the open hillside as a safe back'stop, he "stepped out two hundred
yards and at that range set up a cardboard carton on which he had taped
a Bisley'type target. He came back to where Royan waited and then
settled down behind the rock on which the weapon lay.
Royan was unprepared for the report of the first shot from the dainty,
almost feminine-looking rifle. She jumped involuntarily, and her ears
sang.
"What a horrible, vicious thing!" she exclaimed. "How can you bring
yourself to kill lovely animals with a highpowered gun like that?" she
demanded.
"Rifle," he corrected her, as he noted the strike of the shot through
his binoculars. "Would it make you feel better if I used a low-powered
rifle, or beat them to death with a stick?"
The shot had struck three inches right and two inches low. As he
adjusted the telescopic sight he attempted to explain. "An ethical
hunter does everything in his power to kill as swiftly and as cleanly as
is possible, and that means stalking in as close as he is able to do,
using a weapon of adequate power and sighting it the best way he knows
how."
His next shot struck exactly on line but only an inch above the
bull's-eye. He wanted it to shoot three inches high at that range. He
worked on the sight again.
"Gun or rifle, but I don't understand why you would want to deliberately
kill any of God's creatures," she protested.
"That I can never explain to you." He aimed deliberately and fired once.
Even through the lower magnification of the sight lens he could see that
the bullet had struck exactly three inches high.
"It is something to do with an atavistic urge that few men, no matter
how Cultured and civilized they deem themselves, can deny completely."
He fired a second time.
"Some of them work it out in the board room, others on the golf course
or the tennis court, and some of us on a salmon river, in the ocean
deeps or in the hunting field."
He fired a third shot, merely to confirm the previous two, and then went
on, "As for God's creatures, he gave them to us. You are the believer.
Quote me Acts 10, verses 12 and 13."
"Sorry." She shook her head. "You tell me.
... all manner Of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and
creeping things, and fowL of the air,"'
Nicholas obliged her. "'And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter;
kill, and eat., "You should have been a lawyer," she moaned in mock
despair.
"Or a priest," he suggested, and went forward to retrieve the target. He
found that his last three shots had punched a tiny symmetrical rosette
three inches above the bull, all three bullet holes just touching each
other.
He patted the butt stock of the little rifle, "That's my lovely darling,
Lucrezia Borgia." He had named the rifle for her beauty and for her
murderous potential.
He slid the rifle back into its leather slip case and they walked back
together. As they came in sight of the camp, Nicholas pulled up short.
"Visitors," he said, and raised his binoculars. "Aha! We have flushed
something out of the undergrowth. That is a Pegasus truck parked there
and, unless I am much mistaken, one of our visitors is the charming
laddie from Abilene.
Let's go down and find out what is going on."
As they drew closer to camp, they realized that there were a dozen or
more heavily armed, uniformed soldiers clustered around the red and
green Pegasus truck, and that Jake Helm and an Ethiopian army officer
were seated under the awning of the dining tent in serious and intent
conversation with Boris, A
s soon as Nicholas entered the tent, Boris introduced him to the
bespectacled Ethiopian officer. "This is Colonel Tuma Nogo, the military
commander of the southern Goiam region."
"How do you do?" Nicholas greeted him, but the colonel ignored the
pleasantry.
"I want to see your passport, and your firearms licence, he ordered
arrogantly, while Jake Helm chewed complacently on the evil-smelling
butt of an extinguished cigar.
"Yes, of course," Nicholas agreed, and went to his own tent to fetch his
briefcase. He opened it on the dining table, and smiled at the officer.
"I am sure you will also want to see my letter of introduction from the
British Foreign Secretary in London, and this one from the British
Ambassador in Addis Ababa. Here is another from the Ethiopian Ambassador
to the Court of St. James, and this is from your own Minister of
Defence, General Abraha."
The colonel stared in consternation at this fruit salad of ornate
official letterheads and scarlet beribboned seals.
Behind the gold-rimmed glasses his eyes were bemused and confused.
"Sir!" He jumped to his feet and saluted. "You are a friend of General
Abraha? I did not know. Nobody informed me. I beg your pardon for this
intrusion."
He saluted again, and his embarrassment made him awkward and ungainly.
"I came to warn you only that the Pegasus Company is conducting drilling
and blasting operations. There may be some danger. Please be alert. Also
there are many bandits and outlaws, shufta, operating in this area."
Colonel Nogo was flustered and barely coherent.
He stopped and drew a deep breath to steady himself. "You see, I have
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