Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 11
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Our destinies are linked with chains of steel --' Manfred broke off, and lifted his binoculars to his eyes. 'They are moving in closer now,' he murmured. 'We had better get ready." He lowered the binoculars and smiled carefully at Shasa. 'I have heard that you shoot well. I look forward to a demonstration." Shasa was disappointed. He had wanted to know where the carefully rehearsed recital had been heading, but now he hid his impatience behind that easy smile of his and opened the breech of the rifle across his lap.
'You are right in one thing Minister,' he said. 'We are linked together with chains of steel. Let us hope the weight of them doesn't draw us all under." He saw a strange flash in those topaz yellow eyes, of anger or triumph, he was not certain, and it lasted only an instant.
'I will fire only on a line from dead ahead towards the right,' Manfred said. 'You only in an arc to the left. Agreed?" 'Agreed,' Shasa nodded, although he felt a prickle of irritation at being out-manoeuvred so soon and so easily. Manfred had carefully placed himself to cover the right flank, the natural side for a righthanded marksman to swing.
'You will need the advantage,' Shasa thought grimly and asked aloud. 'I hear you also are a fine shot. What about a small wager on the bag?" 'I do not gamble,' Maned replied easily. 'That is a device of the devil, but I will count the bag with interest,' and Shasa was reminded of just how puritanical was the extreme Calvinism that Manfred De La Rey practised.
Carefully Shasa loaded his rifle. He had hand-loaded his own cartridges for he never trusted mass-produced factory ammunition. The shiny brass cases were filled with a charge of Norma powder that would drive the Nosier Partition bullet at well over three thousand feet a second. The special construction of the bullet would ensure that it mushroomed perfectly on impact.
He worked the bolt and then raised the weapon to his shoulder and used the telescopic sight to scan the plain. The pick-up trucks were less than a mile away, gently weaving back and forth, to prevent the herds breaking back, keeping them moving slowly down towards the line of hills and the hunters hidden below them. Shasa blinked his eye rapidly to clear his vision, and he could make out each individual animal in the herds of antelope trotting ahead of the vehicles.
They were light as smoke, and they rippled like cloud shadow across the plain. Trotting daintily with heads held high and with their horns shaped like perfect miniature lyres, they were graceful and indescribably lovely.
Without stereoscopic vision, Shasa had difficulty in judging distance, but he had developed the knack of defining relative size and added to this a kind of sixth sense that enabled him to pilot an aircraft, strike a polo ball, or shoot as well as any fully sighted person.
The nearest of the approaching antelope were almost at extreme range, when there was a crackle of rifle fire from farther down the line and immediately the herds exploded into silent airy flight. Each tiny creature danoed and bounced on long legs no thicker than a man's thumb. Seeming no longer bounded by the dictates of gravity, every fluid leap blurring against the matching background of parched earth, they tumbled and shot into the mirage-quivering air in the spectacular display of aerobatics that gave them their name, and down each of their backs a frosty mane came erect and shone with their alarm.
It was more difficult than trying to bring down a rocketing grouse with a spreading pattern of shot, impossible to hold the darting ethereal shapes in the cross-hairs of the lens, fruitless to aim directly at the swift creatures - necessary rather to aim at the empty space where they would be a micro second later when the supersonic bullet reached them.
With some men shooting well is skill learned with much practice and concentration. With Shasa it was a talent that he had been born with. As he turned his upper body, the long barrel pointed exactly where he was looking and the cross hairs of the telescopic sight moved smoothly in the centre of his vision and settled on the nimble body of a racing antelope as it went bounding high in the air. Shasa was not conscious of squeezing the trigger, the rifle seemed to fire of its own accord and the recoil drove into his shoulder at precisely the correct instant.
The ram died in the air, turned over by the bullet so his snowy belly flashed in the sunlight, somersaulting to the impetus of the tiny metal capsule as it lanced his heart, and he fell and rolled horned head over dainty hooves as he hit the earth and lay still.
Shasa worked the bolt and picked up another running creature and the rifle fired again and the sharp stink of burned powder prickled his nostrils. He kept shooting until the barrel was hot enough to raise blisters and his eardrums ached to the crackle of shot.
Then the last of the herds were gone past them and over the hills behind them, and the gunfire died away. Shasa unloaded the cartridges that remained in his rifle and looked at Manfred De La Rey.
'Eight,' Manfred said, 'and two wounded." It was amazing how those tiny creatures could carry away a misplaced bullet. They would have to follow them up. It was unthinkable to allow a wounded animal to suffer unnecessarily.
'Eight is a good score,' Shasa told him. 'You can be pleased with your shooting." 'And you?" Manfred asked. 'How many?" 'Twelve,' Shasa answered expressionlessly.
'How many wounded?" Manfred hid his chagrin well enough.
'Oh." Shasa smiled at last. 'I don't wound animals - I shoot where I aim." That was enough. He did not have to rub in salt.
Shasa left him and walked out to the nearest carcass. The springbok lay on its side and in death the deep fold of skin along its back had opened and from it the snowy plume started erect. Shasa went down on one knee and stroked the lovely plume. From the glands in the fold of skin had exuded reddish-brown musk, and Shasa parted the long plume and rubbed the secretion with his forefinger, then raised it to his face and inhaled the honey-scented aroma. It smelled more like a flower than an animal. Then the hunter's melancholy came upon him, and he mourned the beautiful little creature he had killed.
'Thank you for dying for me,' he whispered the ancient Bushman prayer that Centaine had taught him so long ago, and yet the sadness was pleasure, and deep inside him the atavistic urge of the hunter was for the moment replete.
In the cool of the evening the men gathered around the pits of glowing embers in front of the homestead. The braaivleis, or meat bake, was a ritual that followed the hunt; the men did the cooking while the women were relegated to the preparation of salads and pudding at the long trestle tables on the stoep. The game had been marinated or larded or made into spiced sausage, and the livers, kidneys and tripes were treated to jealously guarded recipes before they were laid upon the coals in the grilling pit, while the self-appointed chefs kept the heat of the fires from becoming oppressive with liberal draughts of mampoer, the pungent peach brandy.
A scratch band of coloured farm labourers belted out traditional country airs on banjo and concertina and some of the guests danced on the wide front stoep. A few of the younger women were very interesting, and Shasa eyed them thoughtfully. They were tanned and glowing with health and an Unsophisticated sensuality that was made all the more appealing by the fact of their Calvinist upbringing. Their untouchability and probable virginity made them even more attractive to Shasa who enjoyed the chase as much as the kill.
However, there was too much at stake here to risk giving the slightest offence. He avoided the shy but calculating glances that some of them cast in his direction, and avoided just as scrupulously the savage peach brandy and filled his glass with ginger ale. He knew he would need all his wits before the night was ended.
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