The old free-booting days were probably numbered. This could be his last hunt.
Send back the horses! he ordered. Take the spoor! Lothar wore tight hunting velskoen. His men were all tempered and hardened by long years of war, and they ran on the spoor, taking it in turns to come to the front and take the point, then dropping back to rest as another man hit the front.
They entered the fly-bett in the late afternoon, and the vicious little tsetse swarmed out of the shade of the forest to plague them, settling light-footed on their backs to drive their blood-sucking probosces deep into the flesh.
The men cut switches of green leaves and brushed the tsetse off each other's backs as they ran. By nightfall they had gained two days on the herd, and the spoor was so fresh that the ant-lions had not yet built their tiny funnelshaped traps in the crisply trodden pad marks.
Darkness stopped them. They lay on the hard earth and slept like a pack of hounds, but when the moon climbed over the tops of the mopani trees, Lothar kicked them to their feet. The slant of moonlight was in their favour, outlining the spoor with a rim of shadow, and the raw trunks of the mopani trees, from which the feeding elephant had stripped the bark, shone like mirrors to guide them through the night, and when the sun rose they lengthened their stride.
An hour after sunrise they suddenly ran out of the tsetse fly-belt. The territory of these little winged killers was sharply demarcated, the border could be crossed in a hundred paces, from swarming multitudes to complete relief. The swollen itching lumps on the back of their necks were the only souvenirs of their onslaught.
Two hours before noon, they reached a good water-hole in one of the valleys of the mopani forest. They were only hours behind the herd.
Drink quickly, Lothar ordered, and waded knee-deep into the filthy water which the bathing elephant had churned to the colour of cafe all lait. He filled his hat and poured the water over his own head. His thick, redgold locks streamed down over his face, and he snorted with pleasure. The water was acrid and bitter with the salt of the elephant urine, the beasts always emptied their bladders at the shock of cold water, but the hunters drank and refilled the water-bottles.
Quickly, Lothar chivvied them, keeping his voice low, for sound carries in the bush and the herd was very close.
Baas! Hendrick signalled him urgently, and Lothar waded to the edge of the pool, and skirted it quickly. What is it?
Wordlessly the big Ovambo pointed at the ground. The spoor was perfectly imprinted in the stiff yellow clay, and it was so fresh that it overlaid that of the elephant herd water was still seeping into the indentations.
Men! Lothar exclaimed. Men have been here since the herd left. Hendrick corrected him harshly. San, not men. The little yellow cattle-killers. The Ovambo, were herdsmen, their cattle were their treasure and their deep love. The desert dogs who cut the teats off the udders of our finest cows, the traditional revenge of the San for the atrocities committed upon them, they are only minutes ahead of us. We could catch them within the hour. The sound of gunfire would carry to the herd. Lothar shared his headman's hatred of the Bushmen. They were dangerous vermin, cattle-thieves and killers. His own great-uncle had been killed during one of the great Bushmen hunts of fifty years before, a tiny bone-tipped arrow had found the chink in his rawhide armour, and family history had recorded his death in every excruciating I detail.
Even the English with their sickly sentimentality towards the black races had realized that there was no place in this twentieth-century world for the San. The standing orders of Cecil Rhodes famous British South Africa Police contained instructions that all San and wild I dogs encountered on patrol were to be shot out of hand. I The two species were considered as one.
Lothar was tempted, torn between the pleasure of performing the public service of following and destroying the pack of San, and of mending his own fortune by following the elephant.
The ivory, he decided. No, the ivory is more important than culling a few yellow baboons Baas, here! Hendrick had moved around the edge of the pool and stopped abruptly. His tone and the alert set of his head made Lothar hurry to him, and then sit quickly on his heels, the better to examine this new set of prints.
Not San! Hendrick whispered. Too big But a woman, Lothar replied. The narrow foot and small shapely toe marks were unmistakable. A young woman. The toe marks were deeper than the heel, a springy step, a young step.
It is not possible! Hendrick sank down beside him and without touching the print traced the arched portion between ball and heel. Lothar sat back and shook his wet dangling locks again.
The black people of Africa who go barefooted from their very first step leave a distinctive flat imprint.
A wearer of shoes, Hendrick said softly.
A white woman? No, it's impossible! Lothar repeated. Not here, not travelling in the company of wild San! For the love of God, we are hundreds of miles from civilization! It is so, a young white girl, a captive of the San, Hendrick confirmed, and Lothar frowned.
The tradition of chivalry towards women of his own race was an integral part of Lothar's upbringing, one of the -pillars of his Protestant religion. Because he was a soldier and hunter, because it was part of the art of his trade, Lothar could read the sign left upon the earth as though he were actually seeing the beast or the man, or woman, who had made it. Now as he squatted over these dainty prints, an image formed in his mind. He saw a girl, fine- boned, long-legged, gracefully proportioned, but strong and proud, with a raking stride that drove her forward on the balls of her feet. She would be brave also, and determined. There was no place in this wilderness for weaklings, and clearly this girl was flourishing. As the image formed, Lothar became aware of an emptiness deep in his soul.
We must go after this woman, he said softly, to rescue her from the San. Hendrick rolled his eyes towards the sky and reached for his snuff gourd, and poured a little of the red powder into his pink palm.
The wind is against us, he waved one hand along the run of the spoor, they are travelling downwind. We will never come up with them. There are always one hundred good reasons why we should not do what you don't want to do. Lothar raked his wet hair back with his fingers and retied it with the leather thong at the nape of his neck. We will be following San, not animals. The wind is of no consequence. The San are animals.
Hendrick blocked one of his wide flat nostrils with his thumb and sucked red snuff up the other before going on. With this wind they will smell you from two miles and hear you long before you sight them.'He dusted his hands and flicked the residual grains from his upper lip.
