'Well, Garry, how are things out at Theuniskraal?'
'Not bad.
'Iread your book, I think it's excellent. It certainly deserved the
reception it got in London. Lord Caisterbrook wrote to me to say that
your concluding chapter is giving the War Office just food for thought.
Well done, Garry. ' . 'Thank you.' But there was an evasive lack of
warmth in Garry's reply. He made no attempt to continue the
conversation.
'Michael didn't come out with you today?'
'No. ' 'Why not, Garry?' And Garry smiled for the first time, a cool,
spiteful smile.
'He didn't want to.'
'Oh!' The hurt showed in Sean's face for an instant, then he turned to
the men around him. 'Right, gentlemen, let's get down there.
' In position now, a line of men standing quietly in the gloom and
stagnant heat. Each man's neighbour visible only as an indefinite
shape among the leaves and vines and fallen trees. Few things sharp,
the outline of a hat, brim, the glint of a random beam of sun on gun,
metal, a human hand framed in a hole of dark green leaves. The silence
heavy as the heat, spoiled by the nervous rustle of a branch, a hastily
smothered cough, the click of a shotgun breech.
Sean hooked his thumb across both hammers of his gun and pulled them
back to full cock, lifted the twin muzzles to the roof Of leaves above
his head and fired in rapid succession. He heard the deep booming note
of the gun bouncing against the sides of the valley, echoing and
fragmenting as it was thrown back upon itself. Then swiftly the
silence closed in again.
He stood motionless, tuning his hearing as finely as was possible, but
his reward was the thin drone of an insect and the harsh startled cry
of a bush laurie. He shrugged, two miles of distance and the mass of
vegetation would blanket completely the cries of the beaters and the
clatter of their sticks as they thrashed the bush. But they were
coming now, of this he was certain, they would have heard his signal
shots. He could imagine them moving down the line, two hundred black
men interspersed with the small white boys, chanting the rhetorical
question which was as old as the drive hunt itself.
'Eyapi, Repeated over and over again, the accent on the first half of
the word, shrilling it.
, Eyapi? Where are you going?'
And between him and the beaters, in that wedge of tangled bush there
would be the first uneasy stirring. Dainty bodies dappled with grey,
rising from the secret beds of fallen leaves.
Hooves, pointed and sharp, splayed and driven deep into sot't leaf,
mould by the weight of tensed muscle. Ears pricked forward, eyes like
wet black satin, shiny moist muzzles quivering and snuffling, corkscrew
horns laid back. The whole poised on the edge of flight.
With the taint of gunsmoke in his nostrils, Sean opened the action of
his shotgun and the empty shells ejected crisply, spilling out to leave
the eyes of the breech empty. He selected fresh cartridges from his
belt and slid them home, snapped the gun closed and thumbed the hammers
