Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 51
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However, it was ten days before they were allowed to fire a shot and then it was only bird-hunting. Under strict supervision, they were allowed to hunt the fat brown francolin and speckled guinea fowl with their strange waxen yellow helmets in the scrub along the river. Then they had to clean and dress their kill and help the Herero chef to prepare and cook it.
'It's the best meal I've ever eaten,' Sean declared, and his brothers agreed with him enthusiastically through full mouths.
The next morning Shasa told them, 'We need fresh meat for the men." In camp there were thirty mouths to feed, all with an enormous appetite for fresh meat. 'All right, Sean, what is the scientific name for impala?" 'Aepyceros Melampus,' Sean gabbled eagerly. 'The Afrikaners call it rooibok and it weighs between 130 and 160 pounds." 'That will do,' Shasa laughed. 'Go and get your rifle." In a patch of whistling thorn near the river, they found a solitary old ram, an outcast from the breeding herd. He had been mauled by a leopard and was limping badly on one foreleg, but he had a fine pair of lyre-shaped horns. Sean stalked the lovely red brown antelope just as Shasa had taught him, using the river bank and the wind to get within easy shot, even with the light rifle. However, when the boy knelt and raised the Winchester to his shoulder, Shasa slipped the safety-catch of his heavy weapon, ready to render the coup de gr5ce, if it was needed.
The impala dropped instantly, shot through the neck, dead before it heard the shot, and Shasa went to join his son at the kill.
As they shook hands, Shasa recognized in Sean the deep atavistic passion of the hunter. In some contemporary men that urge had cooled or been suppressed - in others it still burned brightly. Shasa and his eldest son were of that ilk, and now Shasa stooped and dipped his forefinger in the bright warm blood that trickled from the tiny wound in the ram's neck and then he traced his finger across $eon's forehead and down each cheek.
'Now you are blooded,' he said, and he wondered when that ceremony had first been performed, when the first man had painted his son's face with the blood of his first kill, and he knew instinctively that it had been back before recorded time, back when they still dressed in skins and lived in caves.
'Now you are a hunter,' he said, and his heart warmed to his son's proud and solemn expression. This was not a moment for laughter and chatter, it was something deep and significant, something beyond mere words. Sean had sensed that and Shasa was proud of him.
The following day they drew lots and it was Michael's turn to kill.
Again Shasa wanted a solitary impala ram, so as not to alarm the breeding herd, but an animal with a good pair of horns as a trophy for the boy. It took them almost all that day of hunting before they found the right one.
Shasa and his two brothers watched from a distance as Michael made his stalk. It was a more difficult situation than Sean had been presented with, open grassland and a few scattered flat-top acacia thorns, but Michael made a stealthy approach on hands and knees, until he reached a low ant heap from which to make his shot.
Michael rose slowly and lifted the light rifle. The ram was still unaware, grazing head down thirty paces off, broadside on and offering the perfect shot for either spine or heart. Shasa was ready with the Holland and Holland to back him, should he wound the impala. Michael held his aim, and the seconds drew out. The ram raised its head and looked around warily, but Michael was absolutely still, the rifle to his shoulder, and the ram looked past him, not seeing him. Then it moved away unhurriedly, stopping once to crop a few mouthfuls. It disappeared into a clump of taller grass and without having fired, Michael slowly lowered his rifle.
Sean jumped to his feet, ready to rush out and challenge his brother, but Shasa restrained him with a hand on his shoulder. 'You and Garry go and wait for us back at the jeep,' he said.
Shasa walked out to where Michael was sitting on the ant heap with the unfired Winchester held across his lap. He sat down beside Michael and lit a cigarette. Neither of them said anything for almost ten minutes and then Michael whispered, 'He looked straight at me. - and he had the most beautifut eyes." Shasa dropped the butt of his cigarette and ground it out under his heel. They were silent again, and then Michael blurted, 'Do I really have to kill something, Dad? Please don't make me." 'No, Mickey,' Shasa put his arm around his shoulders. 'You don't have to kill anything. And in a different sort of way, I'm just as proud of you as I am of Sean." Then it was Garrick's turn. Again it was a solitary ram with'a beautiful head of wide-curved horns and the stalk was through scattered bush and waist-high grass.
His spectacles glinting determinedly, Garry began his stalk under Shasa's patient supervision. However, he was still a long way out of range of the ram, when there was a squawk and Garry disappeared into the earth. Only a small cloud of dust marked the spot where he had been. The impala raced away into the forest, and Shasa and the two boys ran out to where Garry had last been seen. They were guided by muffled cries of distress, and a disturbance in the grass.
Only Garry's legs were still above ground, kicking helplessly in the air. Shasa seized them and heaved Garry out of the deep round hole in which he was wedged from the waist.
It was the entrance to an antbear burrow. Intent on his stalk, Garry had tripped over his own bootlace and tumbled headlong into the hole. The lenses of his spectacles were thick with dust and he had skinned his cheek and torn his bushjacket. These injuries were insignificant when compared to the damage to his pride. In the next three days Garry made as many attempts to stalk. All of these were detected by his intended victim, long before he was within gunshot.
Each time as he watched the antelope dash away, Garry's dejection was more abject and Sean's derision more raucous.
'Next time we will do it together,' Shasa consoled him, and the following day he coached Garry quietly through the stalk, carrying the rifle for him, pointing out the obstacles over which Garry would have tripped, and leading him the last ten yards by the hand until they were in a good position for the shot. Then he handed him the loaded rifle.
'In the neck,' he whispered. 'You can't miss." The ram had the best trophy horns they had seen yet, and he was twenty-five yards away.
Garry lifted the rifle and peered through spectacles that were misted with the heat of excitement and his hands began to shake uncontrollably.
Watching Garry's face screwed up with tension, and seeing the erratic circles that the rifle barrel was describing, Shasa recognized the classic symptoms of 'buck fever' and reached out to prevent Garry firing. He was too late, and the ram jumped at the sharp crack of the shot, and then looked around with a puzzled expression.
Neither Shasa nor the animal, and least of all Garry, knew where the bullet had gone.
'Garry? Shasa tried to prevent him, but he fired again as wildly, and a puff of dust flicked from the earth half-way between them and the ram.
The impala went up into the air in a fluid and graceful leap, a.
flash of silken cinnamon-coloured skin and a glint of sweeping horns and then it was bounding away on those long delicate legs, so lightly it seemed not to touch the earth.
They walked back to the jeep in silence, Garry trailing a few paces behind his father, and his elder brother greeted him with a peal of merry laughter.
'Next time throw your specs at him, Garry." 'I think you need a little more practice before you have another go at it,' Shasa told him tactfully. 'But don't worry. Buck fever is something that can attack anyone - even the oldest and most experienced." They moved camp, going deeper into the little Eden they had discovered. Now every day they came across elephant droppings, knee-high piles of fibrous yellow lumps the size of tennis balls, full of chewed bark and twigs and the stones of wild fruit in which the baboons and red-cheeked francolin delved delightedly for titbits.
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