Three of the others were hunting butterflies. There had been a new hatching of colotis lone. On white and purple wings they fluttered close to the earth and the cubs reared on their hind legs and boxed at them with more gusto than skill, over-balancing at the end of each attack and collapsing in a fluffy tangle of outsized paws.
The sixth cub was hunting the tails of the butterflyhunters. Every time they slashed their little tufted tails in the feverish excitement of the chase, he pounced upon them with savage growls and they were forced to turn and defend themselves against the sting of his needle-sharp baby teeth.
The progress of the family from river to jessie thicket was a long drawn out series of unseemly brawls, which the lioness finally broke up. She turned back and gave that drumming cough which promised imminent retribution if not obeyed instantly. The cubs abandoned their play, formed an Indian file and trotted after the lioness into the shelter of the jessie. I would like to know how many females there are in the litter, Mark whispered, grinning fondly like a new father as he watched them go. If you wish, Jamela, I will go down and look under their tails, Pungushe offered solemnly. And you will treat my widows generously. Mark chuckled and led the way back down the side of the hill.
They had almost reached the tree where Mark had left Trojan, when something caught his eyes. He turned aside and kicked hopefully at the little heap of stones, before he realized that they had not been erected by human hands, but had been pushed up by the surface roots of a siringa tree.
He gave a grunt of disappointment and turned away.
Pungushe watched him speculatively, but made no comment.
He had seen Mark perform that strange little ritual a hundred times before, whenever an unusual rock or pile caught his attention.
It had become a custom that every few evenings Mark would wander across from the thatched cottage at main camp, half a mile to where Pungushe's wives had erected the cluster of huts that was the family home.
Each hut was shaped in the perfect cone of a beehive, long whippy saplings bent in to form the framework and the thatch bound in place by the plaited string of bark stripped from the saplings.
The earth between the huts was smoothed and brushed, and Pungushe's carved wooden stool set before the low doorway of his personal sleeping hut. After Mark's fourth visit another, newly carved stool appeared beside it.
Though it was never spoken of, it was immediately apparent that this had been reserved exclusively for Mark's visits.
Once Mark was seated, one of the wives would bring him a bowl to wash his hands. The water had been carried laboriously all the way from the river, and Mark merely damped his fingertips so that it would not be wasted.
Then the youngest wife knelt in front of him, smiling shyly, and offered with both hands a pot of the delicious sour utshwala, the Zulu millet beer, thick as gruel and mildly alcoholic.
Only when Mark had swallowed the first mouthful would Pungushe look up and greet him. I see you, Jamela. Then they could talk in the relaxed desultory fashion of men totally at ease in each other's company. Today, when we came down off the hill after watching the lions, you turned off the path and kicked at some stones. It was for this strange custom I named you, this endless seeking, this looking and never finding Pungushe would never ask the direct question, it would have been the grossest bad manners to ask outright what r Mark was looking for; only a child or an umlungu, a white man, would be so callow. It had taken him many months to ask the question, and now he framed it in the form of a statement.
Mark took anotherpull athis beerpot and offered Pungushe his cigarette case. The Zulu declined with an open hand, and instead began to roll his own smoke, coarse tarry black tobacco in a thick roll of brown paper, the size of a Havana cigar. Watching his hands Mark replied:My father and my mother died of the white sore throat, diphtheria, when I was a child, and an old man became both father and mother to me. He started to answer the question in as devious a manner as it had been asked, and Pungushe listened, nodding and smoking quietly. So this man, my grandfather whom I loved, is buried somewhere in this valley. It is his grave I seek, he ended i simply, and realized suddenly that Pungushe was staring at him with a peculiar sombre expression.
What is it? Mark asked. When did this happen? Six seasons ago. Would this old man have camped beneath the wild figs? Pungushe pointed down the valley. Where first you camped? Yes, Mark agreed. He always camped there. He felt the surge of something in his chest, foreknowledge of something momentous about to happen. There was a man, said Pungushe, who wore a hat, a hat under which an impi could have camped, and he made a circle of his arms, exaggerating only a little the size of a double terai brim, and who had a beard, shaped thus like the wings of a white egret, An image of the old man's forked beard, snowy and stained only around the mouth with tobacco juice, leapt in Mark's mind. An old man who walked like the secretary bird when it hunts for locusts in the grass. The long thin legs, the stooped arthritic shoulders, the measured stride, the description was perfect. Pungushe! Mark exploded with excitement. You know him' Nothing moves in this valley, no bird flies, no baboon barks, but the jackal hears and sees. Mark stared at him, appalled at his own oversight. Of course Pungushe knew everything. Pungashe the silent watcher, why in God's name had he not thought to ask him before? He followed this path' Pungushe walked ahead of Mark, and with the natural skill of the born actor he mimicked John Anders, the halting gait, and stooped shoulders of an old man. If Mark half closed his eyes, he could see his grandfather as he had seen him so many times before. Here he turned off the path, Pungushe left the game trail and started up one of the narrow dried-out watercourses. Their feet crunched in the sugary sand. Half a mile further, Pungushe stopped and pointed at one of the shiny water-polished black boulders. Here he sat and set his rifle aside. He lit his pipe and smoked. Pungushe turned and scrambled up the steep bank of the water-course. While the old man smoked, the fourth man came up the valley. He came as a hunter, silently, following the easy spoor of the old man. He used the Zulu word of respect for an elder, ixhegu. Wait, Pungushe, Mark frowned. You say the fourth man? I am confused. Count the men for me.
They squatted down on the bank and Pungushe took a little snuff, offered the horn to Mark who refused, then sniffed the red powder out of his palm, closing one nostril at a time with his thumb. He screwed his eyes closed and sneezed deliciously before going on.
There was the old man, your grandfather, ixl2egu. That is one. Then there was another old man. Without hair on his head nor on his chin. That is two, Mark agreed. Then there was a young man with very black hair, a man who laughed all the time and walked with the noise of a buffalo herd. Yes. That is three. These three came together to the valley. They hunted together and camped together below the wild figs. Pungushe must be describing the Greylings, the father and son who had made the sworn deposition to the Ladyburg magistrate.
That was as he had expected, but now he asked, What of the fourth man, Pungushe? The fourth man followed them secretly and ixhegu, your grandfather, did not know of him. He had always the manner of the hunter of men, watching from cover and moving silently. But once when your grandfather, ixhegu, had left camp to hunt alone for birds along the river, this secret man came to the camp below the wild figs and all three of them spoke together, quietly but with closed faces and wary eyes of men who discuss affairs of deadly moment. Then the silent man left
