the dark powder on to his fingernail.
'Nkosi, this porridge has an unusual taste.' He sniffed and sneezed.
'Yes?'
'It seems to me that the spoor has changed. ' Mbejane wiped the
residual snuff from his nostrils with the pink palm of his hand.
'You speak in riddles.'
'These men we follow ride in a different manner from the way they did
before , ' Sean thought about that for a few seconds before he saw it
Yes! He was right. Where previously Leroux's commando had spread and
trampled the grass in a road fifty feet wide, since this morning they
had ridden in two files as though they were regular cavalry.
'They ride as we do, Nkosi, so the hooves of the horses fall in the
tracks of those that lead. In this way it is difficult to tell how
many men we follow.'
'We know there are about six hundred. . . . Hold on! I think I see
what you .
'Nkosi, it comes to me that there are no longer six hundred men ahead
of us.'
'My God! You could be right.' Sean jumped up and began to pace
restlessly. 'He is splitting his commando again. We've crossed a
dozen rocky places where he could have detached small groups of his
men. By evening we'll be following less than fifty men, , when that
happens they'll break up into individuals, lose us in the dark and head
separately for a prearranged rendezvous.' He punched his fist into the
palm of his hand.
'That's it, by God!' He swung round to face Saul
'You remember that stream we crossed a mile back, it would have been an
ideal place.'
'You're taking a big risk,' Saul cautioned him. 'if we go back now and
it turns out you're wrong, , then you've lost him for good.
'I'm right,' Sean snapped. 'I know I am. Get them mounted up, we're
going back.'
Sean sat his horse on the bank of the stream and looked down into the
clear water that sparkled over gravel and small round boulders.
'They will have gone downstream, otherwise the mud they stirred up
would have washed down across the ford. ' He turned to Saul. 'I'm
going to take fifty men with me so as not to raise too much dust. Give
me an hour's start and then follow with the rest of the column.
'Mazelto! ' Saul grinned at him.
With a Zulu tracker on each bank Sean and Eccles and fifty men followed
the stream towards the north, west. Behind them the mountains of the
Drakensberg were an irregular pale blue suggestion against the sky and
around them the brown winter sere veld spread away in the folded
complexity of ridges and the shallow valleys. In the rocky ground
along the ridges grew the squat little aloe plants, holding up their
multiple flowers like crimson candelabra while in the valleys the
stunted Thorn bushes huddled along the course of the stream. High,
cold cloud obscured the sky. There was no warmth in the pale sunlight,
and the wind had a knife, edge to it.
