The Dark of the Sun - Smith Wilbur - Страница 60

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when I thought I had lost you, when I saw the tanker go over into the

riven" She swallowed and now her eyes were full of tears. "it was as

though the light had gone - it was so dark, so dark and cold without

you." Absorbed with him so that she had forgotten about the road,

Shermaine let the Ford veer and the offside wheels pumped into the rough

verge.

"Hey, watch it!" Bruce cautioned her. "Dearly as I love you also, I have

to admit that you're a lousy driver. Let me take her."

"Do you feel up to it?"

"Yes, pull into the side." Slowly, held to the speed of the lumbering

vehicles behind them, they drove on through the afternoon. Twice they

passed deserted Baluba villages beside the road, the grass huts

disintegrating and the small cultivated lands about them thickly

overgrown.

"My God, I'm hungry. I've got a headache from it and my belly feels as

though it's full of warm water," complained Bruce.

"Don't think you're the only one. This is the strictest diet I've ever

been on, must have lost two kilos! But I always lose in the wrong

place, never on my bottom."

"Good," Bruce said. "I like it just the way it is, never shed an ounce

there." He looked over his shoulder at the two gendarmes. "Are you

hungry?" he asked in French.

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the fat one. "I will not be able to sleep tonight,

if I must lie on an empty stomach."

"Perhaps it will not be necessary." Bruce let his eyes wander off the

road into the surrounding bush. The character of the country had changed

in the last hundred miles.

"This looks like game country. I've noticed plenty of spoor on the road.

Keep your eyes open." The trees were tall and widely spaced

with grass growing beneath them. Their branches did not interlock so

that the sky showed through. At intervals there were open glades filled

with green swamp grass and thickets of bamboo and ivory palms.

(We've got another half hour of daylight. We might run into something

before then." In the rear-view mirror he watched the lumbering column of

transports for a moment. They must be almost out of gasoline by now,

hardly enough for another half hour's driving.

There were compensations however; at least they were in open country now

and only eighty miles from Msapa junction.

He glanced at the petrol gauge - half the tank. The Ranchero still had

sufficient to get through even if the trucks were almost dry.

Of course! That was the answer. Find a good camp, leave the convoy, and

go on in the Ford to find help.

Without the trucks to slow him down he could get through to Msapa

junction in two hours. There was a telegraph in the station office, even

if the junction was still deserted.

"We'll stop on the other side of this stream," said Bruce and slowed the

Ford, changed into second gear and let it idle down the steep bank.

The stream was shallow. The water hardly reached the hubcaps as they

bumped across the rocky bottom. Bruce gunned the Ford up the far bank

into the forest again.

"There!" shouted one of the gendarmes from the back seat and Bruce

followed the direction of his arm.

Standing with humped shoulders, close beside the road, bunched together

with mournfully drooping horns, heads held low beneath the massive

bosses, bodies very big and black, were two old buffalo bulls.

Bruce hit the brakes, skidding the Ranchero to a stop, reaching for his

rifle at the same instant. He twisted the door handle, hit the door with

his shoulder and tumbled out on to his feet.

With a snort and a toss of their ungainly heads the buffalo started to

run.

Bruce picked the leader and aimed for the neck in front of the plunging

black shoulder. Leaning forward against the recoil of the rifle he fired

and heard the bullet strike with a meaty thump. The bull slowed,

breaking his run. The stubby forelegs settled and he slid

forward on his nose, rolling as he fell, dust and legs kicking.

Turning smoothly without taking the butt from his shoulder, swinging

with the run of the second bull, Bruce fired again, and again the thump

of bullet striking.

The buffalo stumbled, giving in the legs, then he steadied and galloped

on like a grotesque rocking horse, patches of baldness grey on his

flanks, big-bellied, running heavily.

Bruce shifted the bead of the foresight on to his shoulder and fired

twice in quick succession, aiming low for the heart, hitting each time,

the bull so close he could see the bullet wounds appear on the dark

skin.

The gallop broke into a trot, with head swinging low, mouth open, legs

beginning to fold. Aiming carefully for the head Bruce fired again. The

bull bellowed - a sad lonely sound - and collapsed into the grass.

The lorries had stopped in a line behind the Ford, and now from each of

them swarmed black men. jabbering happily, racing each other, they

streamed past Bruce to where the buffalo had fallen in the grass beside

the road.

"Nice shooting, boss," said Ruffy. "I'm going to have me a piece of

tripe the size of a blanket."

"Let's make camp first."

Bruce's ears were still singing with gunfire. "Get the lorries into a

ring." IT see to it." Bruce walked up to the nearest buffalo and watched

for a while as a dozen men strained to roll it on to its back and begin

butchering it. There were clusters of grape-blue ticks in the folds of

skin between the legs and body.

A good head, he noted mechanically, forty inches at least.

"Plenty of meat, Captain. Tonight we eat thick!" grinned one of his

gendarmes as he bent over the huge body to begin flensing.

"Plenty," agreed Bruce and turned back to the Ranchero.

In the heat of the kill it was a good feeling: the rifle's kick and your

stomach screwed up with excitement. But afterwards you felt a little bit

dirtied; sad and guilty as you do after lying with a woman you do not

love.

He climbed into the car and Shermaine sat away from him, withdrawn.

"They were so big and ugly - beautiful," she said softly.

"We needed the meat. I didn't kill them for fun." But he thought with a

little shame, I have killed many others for fun.

"Yes," she agreed. "We needed the meat." He turned the car off the road

and signalled to the truck drivers to pull in behind him.

Later it was all right again. The meat-rich smoke from a dozen cooking

fires drifted across the camp. The dark tree tops silhouetted against a

sky full of stars, the friendly glow of the fires, and laughter, men's

voices raised, someone singing, the night noises of the bush insects and

frogs in the nearby stream - a plate piled high with grilled fillets and

slabs of liver, a bottle of beer from Rutty's hoard, the air at last

cooler, a small breeze to keep the mosquitoes

away, and Shermaine sitting beside him on the blankets.

Ruffy drifted across to them in one hand a stick loaded with meat from

which the juice dripped and in the other hand a bottle held by the

throat.

"How's it for another beer, boss?"

"Enough." Bruce held up his hand. "I'm full to the back teeth."

"You're getting old, that's for sure. Me and the boys going to finish

them buffalo or die trying."

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