Manfred rolled to his feet and started to run. He had plotted every yard of his escape route to the Morris, and a savage elation gave strength to his legs and speed to his feet.
Behind him somebody shouted, a plaintive bewildered sound, but Manfred did not check or look back.
Shasa came over the crest at a full run. The two men were
kneeling beside the body that lay in the grass at the side of the track. They looked up at Shasa, both their faces stricken.
Shasa took one look at the body as it lay face down. The bullet must have been a dum-durn to inflict such a massive exit wound. It had carved a hole through the chest cavity into which he could have thrust both his fists.
There was no hope. He was dead. He hardened himself.
There would be time for grief later. Now was the time for vengeance.
Did you see who did it? he gasped.
Yes. Blaine jumped to his feet. I got a glimpse of him.
He cut back around Oudekraal Kop, he said, dressed in blue. Shasa knew this side of the mountain intimately, every path and cliff, every gorge and gully between Constantia Nek and the Saddle.
The killer had turned around the foot of the kop, he had a start of less than two minutes.
The bridle path, Shasa gasped He is heading for the bridle path.
I'll try and cut him off at the top of Nursery Ravine. He started to run again, back towards Breakfast Rock.
Shasa, be careful Blaine yelled after him. He has the rifle with him, I saw it. The bridle path was the only way a vehicle could reach the tableland, Shasa reasoned as he ran, and this had been so carefully planned that the killer must have an escape vehicle. it had to be parked somewhere on the bridle path.
The footpath made a wide loop around Oudekraal Kop, then came back to the edge and ran along the cliff top past the head of Nursery Ravine until it intersected the bridle path half a mile farther on. There was another rough, littleused path that cut this side of the Kop, along the cliff top.
The beginning was difficult to find and a mistake would lead into a dead end against the precipice, but if he found it he could cut a quarter of a mile off the route.
He found the path and turned off onto it. At two places the track was overgrown and he had to struggle through interlaced branches, at anot. at a spot at the edge the track had washed away. He had to back up and take a run at it, jumping over the gap with five hundred feet of open drop below him. He landed on his knees, clawed himself to his feet and kept running.
He burst out unexpectedly into the main footpath and collided at full tilt with the blue-overalled killer coming in the opposite direction.
He had a fleeting impression of the man's size and the breadth of his shoulders, and then they were down together, locked chest to chest, grappling savagely, rolling down the slope of the path. The impact had knocked the rifle out of the killer's hand, but Shasa felt the springy hardness and the bulk of his muscle, and the first evidence of the man's strength shocked him. He knew instantly that he was out-matched. Against his fiercest resistance the man rolled him onto his back and came up on top of him, straddling him.
Their faces were inches apart. The man had a thick dark curling beard that was sodden with sweat, his nose was twisted and his brows were dense and black, but it was the eyes that struck terror into Shasa. They were yellow and somehow dreadfully familiar. However, they galvanized Shasa, transforming his terror into superhuman strength.
He wrenched one arm free and rolled the killer over far enough to yank the Beretta pistol from his own belt. He had not loaded a cartridge into the chamber, but he struck upwards with the short barrel, smashing it into the man's temple, and he heard the steel crack on the bone of the skull.
The man's grip slackened and he fell back. Shasa wriggled to his knees, fumbling to load the Beretta. With a metallic snicker the slide pushed a cartridge into the chamber, and he lifted the barrel. He had not realized how close they had rolled to the clifftop. He was kneeling on the very brink, and as he tried to steady his aim on that bearded head, the killer jack-knifed his body and drove both feet into Shasa's chest.
Shasa was hurled backwards. The pistol fired but the shot
went straight into the air, and he found himself falling free as he went over the edge of the cliff. He had a glimpse down the precipice; there was open drop for hundreds of feet, but he fell less than ten of those before he wedged behind a pine sapling that had found a foothold in a cleft of the rock.
He hung against the cliff face, his legs dangling free, winded and dazed, and he looked up. The killer's head appeared over the edge of the cliff, those strange yellow eyes glared at him for an instant and then disappeared. Shasa heard his boots scrabble on the pathway, and then the unmistakable sound of a rifle bolt being loaded and cocked.
He is going to finish me off, he thought, and only then realized that he still had the Beretta in his right hand.
Desperately he hooked his left elbow over the pine sapling and pointed the Beretta up at the rim of the cliff above his head.
Once more the killer's head and shoulders appeared against the sky, and he was swinging the long barrel of the Mauser downwards; but the weapon was awkward to point at this angle and Shasa fired an instant before it could bear.
He heard the light bullet of the pistol strike against flesh, and the killer grunted and disappeared from view. A moment afterwards he heard someone else shout from a distance, and recognized Blaine's voim Then the killer's running footsteps moved swiftly away as he set off along the path once more, and a minute later Blaine looked down at Shasa from the clifftop.
Hold on! Blaine's face was flushed with exertion and his voice unsteady. He pulled the thick leather belt from his trouser top and buckled it into a loop.
