Suddenly and unexpectedly they came to a hole in the jess, a tiny clearing twenty paces across, and the earth was trodden like a cattle kraal and littered with pancakes of old black dung.
They lay on the edge of the clearing and peered across into the tangled vegetation on the far side. The sunlight into the clearing dazzled them, and the shadow beyond it was confused and obscure.
Then the bull shook his head again, and Sean saw them. They were lying in a bunch, a mountainous mass of blackness in the shadows, and their heads overlapped so that the heavy bosses and curls of horn formed an inextricable puzzle. Though they were less than thirty paces away, it was impossible to separate one animal from the others, or one set of horns from the bunch.
Slowly Sean turned his head and laid his lips against Lana's ear. 'I am going to get them up,' he whispered. 'Be ready to take the shot as I call it.' She was sweating and trembling. He could smell her fear and excitement, and it excited him also. He felt his loins thicken and stiffen, and for a moment he savoured the sensation, pressing his hips against the earth as though he had her body under him. Then deliberately he knocked the brass cartridges in his left hand against the steel barreb of the Gibbs. The sharp metallic sound was shocking in the silence.
Across the clearing the three bulls lumbered to their feet, and faced the sound. Their heads were lifted, drooling wet muzzles held high and the bosses of rough horn, black as ironstone, joined above theiI vicious piggy little eyes, the tips curving down and up again to the wide points, and their ears flared like trumpets.
'The middle one,' Sean said softly. 'Rake him through the chest.' He stiflened in anticipation of her shot, and then glanced sideways.
The barrel of the Weatherby was describing small erratic circles as Lana tried to hold her aim, and it flashed upon Sean that she had forgotten to change the power of her variable telescopic sight. She was looking at a bull buffalo from thirty paces through a lens of ten multiplications. It was like looking at a battleship through a microscope: all she was seeing was a black shapeless mass.
'Don't shoot!' he whispered urgently but the Weatherby erupted in a long blazing muzzle-flash across the clearing, and the big bull lurched and tossed his head, grunting to the strike of shot. Sean saw the dried mud puff from his scabby black skin, low down in the joint of. his right shoulder, and as the bull spun away into the jess, Sean swung the Gibbs on him to take the back-up shot. But one of the other buffalo turned across the wounded animal, screening him for the instant that it took for him to crash away into the jess, and Sean lifted the Gibbs without firing.
They lay side by side and listened to the thunderous rush of bodies dwindle into the jess.
'I couldn't see clearly,' Lana said in her childish piping treble.
'You had the scope on full power, you dilly bitch.' 'But I hit him!' 'Yes, Treacle Breeches, you hit him - more's the pity. You broke his right front leg.' Sean stood up and whistled for Matatu. In a few quick words of Swahili he explained the predicament, and the little Ndorobo looked at Lana reproachfully.
'Stay here with your gunbearer,' Sean ordered Lana. 'We'll go and finish the business.' Tm going with you.' Lana shook her head.
'This is what I'm paid for,' Sean told her. 'Cleaning up the mess.
Stay here and let me do my job.' 'No,' she said. 'It's my buff. I'll finish it.' 'I haven't got time to argue,' Sean said bitterly. 'Come on then, but do as you are told,' And he waved Matatu forward to pick up the blood spoor.
There were bone splinters and hair where the bull had stood.
'You smashed the big bone,' Sean told her. 'It's a racing certainty that the bullet broke up. At that range it was probably still going 3500 foot per second when it hit - even a Nosier bullet can't stand that.' The bull was bleeding profusely. Bright blood had sprayed the jess as he blundered through, and blood had formed a dark gelatinous puddle where he stood for the first time to listen for his pursuers.
The other two bulls had deserted him and Sean grunted with satisfaction. That would prevent confusion, shooting at the wrong animal in the mix-up.
Lana kept close beside him. She had removed the scope from the Weatherby and left it with the gunbearer, and now she carried the rifle at high port across her chest.
Abruptly they stepped into another narrow clearing, and Matatu squeaked and bolted back between Sean and the girl as the bull broke from the far side of the clearing and came down on them in a bizarre crabbing sideways gait. His nose was up, and the long mournful droop of his horns gave him a funereal menace. His broken leg flapped loosely, hampering his gait, so he rocked and plunged, and bright blood was forced in a spurting stream from the wound by the movement.
'Shoot!' said Sean. 'Aim at his nose!' But without looking at her he sensed her terror, and her first movement as she turned to run.
'Come on, you yellow bitch. Stand and shoot it out,' he snarled at her. 'This is what you wanted - now do it.' The Weatherby whiplashed, and flame and thunder tore across the clearing. The buffalo flinched to the shot, and black flinty chips flew from the boss of his horns.
'High!' Sean called. 'Shoot him on the nose. 'And she shot again, and hit the horn a second time and the bull kept coming.
'Shoot!' Sean called, watching the great armoured head over the express sights of the Gibbs. 'Come on, bitch, kill him!' 'I can't,' she screamed. 'He's too close!' The bull filled all their existence, a mountain of black hide and muscle and lethal horn, so close that at last he dropped his head to toss and gore them, to rip and trample and crush them under the anvil of his crenellated boss.
As the massive horns went down, Sean shot him through the brain and the bull rolled forward over his own head. Sean pulled Lana out from under the flying hooves as the bull somersaulted. She had dropped the rifle and now she clung to him helplessly, shaking, her red mouth slack and smeared with terror.
'Matatu!' Sean called quietly, holding her to his chest, and the little Ndorobo reappeared at his side like a genie. 'Take the gunbearer with you,' Sean ordered. 'Go back to the Land-Rover and bring it back here, but do not hurry.' Matatu grinned lewdly and ducked his head. He had an enormou respect for his Bwana's virility and he knew what Sean was going t do. He only wondered that it had taken so long for the Bwana t, straighten this pale albino creature's back for her. He disappearel into the jess like a black shadow and Sean turned the girl's face up to his own and thrust his tongue deeply into the wet red wound o her mouth.
She moaned and clung to him, and with his free hand he unbucklec her belt and jerked down the culottes. They fell in a tangle arount her ankles and she kicked them away. He hooked his thumbs mt( the waistband of her
