How long will you need? Garry asked again, and Lothar frowned with irritation.
In the name of all that's merciful, how many times must I tell you I don't know? The three of them were seated around the fire at the entrance to the overhanging cave. They had been talking for hours, already the stars showed along the narrow strip of sky that the canyon walls framed.
I have explained where I saw the girl, and the circumstances. Didn't you understand, must I go over it all again?
Anna lifted a hand to placate him. We are very anxious.
We ask stupid questions. Forgive us. Very well. Lothar relit the butt of the cigar with a burning twig from the fire. The girl was the captive of the wild San. They are cunning and cruel as animals.
They knew I was following them and they threw me off the spoor with ease. They could do it again, if I ever find their spoor. The area I will have to search is enormous, almost the size of Belgium. It's over a year since I last saw the girl, she could be dead of disease or wild animals or those murderous little yellow apes Do not even say it, Mijnheer, l Anna pleaded, and Lothar threw up both hands.
I do not know, he said. Months, a year? How can I tell how long I will need? We should come with you, Garry muttered.
We should be allowed to take part in the search, at least be told in what area of the territory you first saw her. Colonel, you did not trust me. Very good. Now I don't trust you. As soon as the girl is in your hands, my usefulness to you is at an end. Lothar took the cigar butt from his mouth and inspected it ruefully. There was not another puff left in it; sadly he dropped it into the fire.
No, Colonel, when I find the girl we will make a formal exchange, amnesty for me, and your daughter for you. We accept, Mijnheer. Anna touched Garry's elbow. We will deliver the sum of 1,000 pounds to you as soon as possible. When you have Centaine safely with you, you will send us the name of her white stallion. Only she can tell you that, so that way we will know you are not cheating us. We will have your pardon signed and ready. Lothar held out his hand across the fire. Colonel, is it agreed? Garry hesitated a moment, but Anna prodded him so heavily in the ribs that he grunted and reached to take the preferred hand. It's agreed. One last favour, Mijnheer De La Rey.
I will prepare a package for Centaine. She will need good clothes, women's things. I will deliver it to you with the money.
Will you give it to her when you find her? Anna asked. If I find her, Lothar nodded. When you find her, Anna told him firmly.
It took almost five weeks for Lothar to make his preparations and then trek back to that remote water-hole below the Cunene river where he had cut the spoor of his quarry.
There was still water in the pan, it was amazing how long those shallow unshaded basins retained water even in the sweltering desert conditions, and Lothar wondered, as he had before, if there wasn't some subterranean seepage from the rivers in the north that found its way into them. In any event, the fact that there was still surface water boded well for their chances of being able to penetrate deeper eastwards, the direction which the long-dead spoor had taken.
While his men were refilling the water barrels from the water-hole, Lothar strolled around the periphery of the circular pan and there, incredibly, was the girl's footprint still preserved in the clay, just as he had last seen it.
He knelt beside it, and with his finger traced out the shape of the small, graceful foot. The cast was baked by the sun as hard as a brick. Though all around it the mud had been trampled by buffalo and rhinoceros and elephant, this single print remained.
It's an omen, he told himself, and then chuckled cynically . I've never believed in omens, why should I begin now? Yet his mood was buoyant and optimistic when he assembled his men around the camp fire that evening.
Apart from the camp servants and the wagoners, he had four mounted riflemen to help him conduct the actual search. All four of them had been with him since the days of the rebellion. They had fought and bled together, shared a looted bottle of Cape smoke, or a woollen blanket on a frosty desert night, or the last shreds of tobacco in the pouch, and he loved them a little, though he trusted them not at all.
There was Swart Hendrick or Black Henry, the tall, purplish-black Ovambo and Klein Boy, or Little Boy, his bastard son by a Hereto woman. There was Vark Janor Pig John, the wrinkled yellow Khoisan. Mixed blood of Nama and Bergdama and even of the true San ran in his veins, for his grandmother had been a Bushman slave, captured as a child on one of the great commando raids of the last century that the Boers had ridden against the San people. Lastly there was Vuil Lipped, the Bondelswart Hottentot with lips like fresh-cut liver and a vocabulary that gave him his name Dirty Lips.
My hunting pack, Lothar smiled, half-affectionately and half in revulsion as he looked them over. Truly the term outlaw had meaning when applied to them, they were beyond the rules of tribe or tradition. He studied their faces in the firelight. Like half-tamed wolves, they would turn and savage me at the first sign of weakness, he thought.
All right, you sons of the great hyena, listen to me. We are looking for San, the little yellow killers. Their eyes sparkled. We are looking for the white girl they had as their captive, and there are a hundred gold sovereigns for the man who cuts her spoor. This is how we will conduct the hunt, Lothar smoothed the sand between his feet and then traced out the plan for them with a twig.
The wagons will follow the line of the water-holes, here and here, and we will fan out, like this and like this.
Between us we can sweep fifty miles of country. So they rode into the east, as he had planned it, and within the first ten days they cut the spoor of a small party of wild San. Lothar called in his outriders and they followed up the trail of tiny childlike footprints.
They moved with extreme caution, carefully spying out the terrain ahead through Lothar's telescope, and skirting each stand where an ambush could be laid. The idea of a poisoned bone arrowhead burying itself in his flesh made Lothar shudder every time he let himself think about it.
Bullets and bayonets were the tools of his trade, but the filthy poisons that these little pygmies brewed unmanned him, and he hated them more each hot tortuous nervewracking mile that they followed the spoor.
Reading the sign, Lothar learned that there were eight San in the party they were following: two adult males
