of the wild desert melons, but at this range it was difficult to be certain.
Then abruptly he realized that he had never before encountered baboon this far to the west, and at the same moment he was convinced that there was no troop. It was a solitary animal, unheard of with such a gregarious species, and immediately after that he saw that this animal was too big to be a baboon, and that its movements were uncharacteristic of an ape.
With a singing, soaring joy he launched into a full gallop, and the hooves beat an urgent staccato rhythm on the iron-hard earth, but as he dragged his horse down to a plunging halt and swung down out of the saddle, his JOY shrivelled.
She was on her knees, and they were scratched bloody by the stony ground. Her clothing was mostly gone, and her tender flesh was exposed in the rents. The sun had burned her arms and legs into red raw blisters. Her feet were bound up in the remains of her skirt, but blood had soaked through the rags.
Her hair was a dry tangled bush about her head, powdered with dust and with the ends split and bleached.
Her lips were black scabs, burned and cracked down into the living meat. Her eyelids were swollen as though stung by bees and she peered up at him like a blind old crone through slits that were caked with dried yellow mucus. The flesh had fallen off her body and her face.
Her arms were skeletal and her cheekbones seemed to push through the skin. Her hands were blackened claws the nails torn down into the quick.
She crouched like an animal over the flat leaves of the vine, and she had broken open one of the wild green melons with her fingers and stuffed pulp into her ruined mouth. The juice ran down her chin, cutting a ninnel through the dirt that plastered her skin.
'Louise.' He went down on one knee, facing her.
'Louise! -' His voice choked.
She made a little mewling sound in her throat and then touched her hair in a heartbreakingly feminine gesture, trying to smooth the stiff dust-caked tresses.
'Is it?' she croaked ' peering at him with bloodshot eyes from slits of sun-swollen red lids. 'It isn't Fumbling, she tried to cover one soft white breast with the rags of her blouse. She started to shake, wildly and uncontrollably, and then she closed her eyes tightly.
He reached out gently and at his touch she collapsed against his chest, still shaking, and he held her. She felt light and frail as a child.
'I knew -' she mumbled. 'It didn't make sense, but I knew somehow that you would come.'
'Will you not dowse the lantern, Ralph' Cathy whispered, and her eyes were huge and dark and piteous as she crept in under the canvas of his wagon.
'Why?' he asked, smiling, propping himself on one elbow on the wagon cot.
'Somebody may come.'
'Your father and mother are still at Lobengula's kraal.
There is nobody 'My sister, Salina 'Salina is long ago asleep, dreaming of brother Jordan, no doubt. We are alone, Cathy, all alone. So why should we put out the lantern?'
'Because I am shy, then,' she said, and blushed a new shade of scarlet. 'All you ever do is tease me. I wish I had never come.'
'Oh Cathy.' His chuckle was fond and indulgent, and he sat up on his cot, and the blanket slid to his waist.
Quickly she averted her eyes from his naked chest and muscled upper arms. The skin was so white and marble-smooth in comparison to his brown forearms and face.
it set strange unfamiliar emotions loose within her.
'come!' He caught her wrist and drew her towards the cot, but she hung back until he jerked her for-ward and, taken off balance, she fell across his legs.
Before she could break free, he had taken a handful of the thick dark hair at the back of her head and turned her pale face up to his mouth. For a while she continued to struggle unconvincingly, and then her whole body softened, like wax in the candle flame, and seemed to melt over him.
'Do you still wish you had not come, Cathy?' he asked, but she could not reply; instead she tightened her arms around his neck convulsively. Once more she searched for his mouth with hers, and made a little moaning sound.
He goaded her with his mouth and tongue, the way Lil had first taught him so long ago, and she was defenceless as a beautiful soft-bodied insect in the spider's gossamer toils. It excited him as none of the practised and calculating women on whom he had spent his gold sovereigns ever had.
His own breathing started to bunt roughly, and his fingers shook at the lacings of her bodice. The skin of her shoulder was without blemish, silky and warm. He touched it with the tip of his tongue, and she shuddered and gasped, but when he pulled down the light cotton, she shrugged her shoulders to let the cloth come free. It caught for a moment and then slid to the level of her lowest rib.
He was unprepared for those tender and terribly vulnerable young breasts, so pale and rosy-tipped and yet at the same time hard and jubilant in their marvellous symmetry.
He stared at her body, and she watched him through half-closed lids, but made no effort to cover herself, though her cheeks were wildly flushed and her lips trembled as she whispered.
'No, Ralph, I don't want to go, not now, or ever.'
'The lantern -' He reached for it, but now she caught his hand.
'No, Ralph, I'm not ashamed of you and me. I don't want darkness, I want to see your dear face.'
