The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 97

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The forest hemmed him in, and even when he climbed into the top branches of a solitary boabab, he looked down on the unbroken roof of the forest that spread away, grey and forbidding, to the horizon.

He climbed down and wearily retraced his steps to the edge of the glade. His Ovarnbos were waiting for him there.

We have lost them on the hard ground, Hendrick greeted him. Cast ahead, we must find them, Lothar ordered. I have tried already, the spoor is closed We cannot give up. We will work at it, I will not let them go. You saw them, Hendrick said softly, watching his master's face. Yes. It was a white girl, Hendrick insisted. You saw the girl, did you not? We cannot leave her here in the desert. Lothar looked away. He did not want Hendrick to see into the empty place in his soul. We must find her. We will try again, Hendrick agreed, and then with a sly telling grin, She was beautiful, this girl? Yes, Lothar whispered softly, still not looking at him. She was beautiful. He shook himself, as though waking from a dream, and the line of his jaw hardened.

Get your men on to the ridge, he ordered.

They worked over it like a pack of hunting dogs, quartering every inch of the adamant yellow rock, stooping over it and moving in a slow painstaking line, but they found only one further mark of the passage of the San and the girl.

In one of the overhanging branches of a paper-bark tree, near the crest of the ridge, just at the level of Lothar's shoulder, a lock of human hair was caught, torn from the girl's scalp as she ducked beneath the branch. It was curly and springy, as long as his forearm, and it glistened in the sunlight like black silk. Lothar wound it carefully around his finger, and then when none of his men was watchin& he opened the locket that hung around his neck on a golden chain. In the recess was a miniature of his mother.

He placed the curl of hair over it and snapped the lid of the locket closed.

Lothar kept them hunting for signs until it was dark, and in the morning he started them again as soon as they could see the ground at their feet. He split them into two teams. Hendrick took one team along the eastern side of the ridge, and Lothar worked the western extremity where the calcrete merged into the Kalahari sands, trying to discover the spot at which their quarry had left the ridge again.

E Four days later they had still not intersected the spoor, and two of the Ovarnbo had deserted. They slipped away during the night, taking their rifles with them.

We will lose the rest of them, Hendrick warned him ; : quietly. They are saying that this is a madness. They cannot understand it. Already we have lost the elephant herd, and there is no profit in this business any longer.

The spoor is dead. The San and the woman have slipped away. You will not find them now. Hendrick was right, it had become an obsession. A

single glimpse of a woman's face had driven him mad.

Lothar sighed, and slowly turned away from the ridge on which the pursuit had foundered.

Very well. He raised his voice so that the rest of his men, who had been trailing disconsolately, could hear him. Drop the spoor. It is dead. We are going back. The effect upon them was miraculous. Their step quickened and their expressions sparkled to life again.

Lothar remained on the ridge as the gang started back down the slope. He stared out over the forest towards the east, towards the mysterious interior where few white men had ventured, and he fingered the locket at his throat.

Where did you go? Was it that way, deeper into the Kalahari? Why didn't you wait for me, why did you run? There were no answers, and he dropped the locket back into the front of his shirt. If I ever cut your spoor again, you won't lose me so easily, my pretty. Next time I'll follow you to the ends of the earth, he whispered, and turned back down the slope.

O`wa jinked back and followed the ridge towards the south, keeping just below the crest, driving the women as hard as they could run heavily laden over the rough footing. He would not allow them to rest, although Centaine was beginning to tire badly, and pleaded with him over her shoulder.

In the middle of the afternoon he allowed them to drop their satchels and sprawl on the rocky slope while he scurried on down to reconnoitre the contact line of the sands and the calcrete intrusion for a point at which to make the crossover. Halfway down he paused and sniffed; picking up the faint stench of carrion, he turned aside and found the carcass of an old zebra stallion. Reading the sign, O'wa saw that hunting lions had caught him as he crossed the ridge and dragged him down. The kill was weeks old, the tatters of skin and flesh had dried hard and the bones were scattered amongst the rocks.

O'wa searched quickly and found all four of the zebra's feet intact. The hyena had not yet crunched them to splinters. With the clasp knife he prised the horny sheath of the actual hooves from the bony mass of the metatarsals, and hurried back to fetch the women. He led them the soft ground, and knelt in front of down to the edge of Centaine.

I will take Nam Child off, and then come back for you, he told H'ani as he bound the hoof sheaths to Centaine's feet with sansevieria twine.

We must hurry, old grandfather, they could be close behind us. H'ani sniffed the light breeze anxiously, and cocked her head towards each small forest sound.

Who are they? Centaine had recovered not only her breath, but her curiosity and reason. Who is chasing us?

I haven't seen or heard a thing. Are they people like me, O'wa, are they my people? Swiftly H'ani cut in before O'wa could reply. They are black men. Big black men from the north, not your people. Although she and O'wa had both seen the white man at the edge of the glade when they looked back from the ridge, they had reached agreement in a few words that they would keep Nam Child with them.

f Are you sure, H'ani? Centaine teetered on the zebra hooves, like a little girl in her first high-heeled shoes. They were not pale-skinned like me? The dreadful possi- Ilk bility that she was fleeing from her rescuers had suddenly occurred to her.

No! No! H'ani fluttered her hands in extreme agitation. The child was so close to birth, to witness that moment was the last thing in her life that she still cared about. Not pale-skinned like you. She thought of the most horrific being in San mythology. They are big black giants who eat human flesh. Cannibals! Centaine was shocked.

Yes! Yes! That is why they pursue us. They will cut the child from your womb and-, Let's go, O'wa! Centaine gasped. Hurry! Hurry!"

O'wa, with the other pair of hooves strapped to his own feet, guided Centaine away from the ridge, walking behind her and creating the illusion of a zebra having left the rocky ground and wandered away into the forest.

A mile from the ridge he hid Centaine in a clump of thorny scrub, removed the hooves from her feet, reversed the pair upon his own feet and set off back to fetch H'ani.

The two San, each of them wearing hoof sandals, tracked back along the same trail and when they reached Centaine's hiding-place, discarded the hooves and all three of them fled into the east.

O'wa kept them going all that night, and in the dawn while the women slept exhausted, he circled back on their trail and guarded it against the possibility that the pursuers had not been deceived by his ruse with the zebra hooves. Although he could discover no evidence of pursuit, for three more days and nights he force-marched, allowing no cooking fires, and used every natural feature to anti-track and hide their trail.

On the third night, he was confident enough to tell the women, We can make fire. And by its ruddy wavering light he danced with dedicated frenzy and sang the praise of the spirits in turn, including Mantis and Eland, for, as he explained seriously to Centaine, it was uncertain who had aided their escape, who had directed the wind to carry the warning scent to them in the first place, and who had subsequently placed the zebra carcass so conveniently to hand. It is necessary, therefore, to thank them all. He danced until moonset, and the next morning slept until sunrise. Then they resumed the familiar leisurely pattern of march, and even halted early that first day when O'wa discovered a colony of spring-hare.

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