shoulders, wet and shiny with rain, a man past the prime of -his life, with the dull, unintelligent eyes and the coarse almost brutal features of a Russian peasant. The face of one who would kill a man with as little compunction as he would slit a hog's throat.
He had seen Mark against the dead tree trunk, but the swirling rain and the bad light showed him just the dark uncertain shape, and the call of the owl had lulled him. Rene? he called again, and then stopped, for the first time uncertain, and he squinted into the teeming rain with those flat expressionless eyes. Then he swore angrily, and tried to bring up the Lee-Metford, swinging it across his belly and wipping the safety-catch across with one calloused thumb. It's him! He recognized Mark, and the dismay was clear to see on his face. No, Mark warned him urgently, but the rifle barrel was coming up swiftly, and Mark had heard the metallic snick of the safety-catch and knew that in an instant the man would shoot him down.
He fired with the P. 14 still held low across his hip, the man was that close, and the shot crashed out with shocking loudness.
The man was lifted off his feet, thrown backwards With the Lee-Metford spinning from his hands, hitting the rocky ground with his shoulder blades, his heels kicking and drumming wildly on the earth and his eyelids fluttering like the wings of trapped butterflies.
The blood that streamed from his chest soaked into the sodden material of his shirt and was diluted immediately to a paler rose pink by the hammering raindrops.
With a final spasm, which arched his back, the man subsided and lay completely still. He seemed to have shrunk in size, looking old and frail, and his lower jaw hung open, revealing the pink rubber gums of a set of tobacco-stained false teeth. The rain beat into the open staring eyes, and Mark felt a familiar sense of dismay. The cold familiar guilt of having inflicted death on another human being. He had an irrational desire to go to the man, to give him succour, though he was far past any human help, to try to explain to him, to justify himself. The impulse was fever-born and carried on wings of rising delirium; he was at the point now where there was no clear dividing line between fantasy and reality. You shouldn't have, he blurted, you shouldn't have tried, I warned you, I warned, He stepped out from the shelter of the dead tree trunk, forgetting the other man, the man that his senses should have warned him was the most dangerous of the two hunters.
He stood over the man he had killed, swaying on his feet, holding the rifle at high port across his chest.
Hobday had missed with his first three shots, but the range had been two hundred or more and it was up-hill shooting, with intervening bush and tree and shrub, snap shooting at a running, jinking target, worse than jumpshooting for kudu in thick cat bush, a slim swift human shape. He had fired the second and third shots in despair, hoping for a lucky hit before his quarry reached the crest of the ridge and disappeared.
Now he could follow only cautiously, for he had seen the rifle strapped on the boy's back, and he might be lying up on the ridge, waiting his chance for a clear shot. He used all the cover there was, and at last the sheets of falling rain, to reach the rocky crest, at any moment expecting retaliatory fire, for he had shown his own hand clearly. He knew the boy was a trained soldier. He was dangerous and Hobday moved with care.
His relief when he reached the crest was immense, and he lay there on his belly in the wet grass with the reloaded Mauser in front peering down the reverse slope for a sign of his quarry.
He heard the owl hoot out on his left, and frowned irritably. Stupid old bastard! he grunted. Pissing himself with fright still. His partner needed constant reassurance, his old nerves too frayed for this work, and he used no judgement in timing his contact calls. The damned fool!
He must have heard the shots and known the critical stage of the hunt was on, yet here he was, calling again, like a child whistling in the dark for courage.
He brushed the man from his thoughts and concentrated on searching the rain-swept slope, until he froze with disbelief. The owl call had been answered, from his left, just below the crest.
Hobday came up on his feet. Crouching low, he worked swiftly along the crest.
He saw solid movement in the grey, wind-whipped scrub and dropped into a marksman's squat, drawing swift aim on the indistinct target, blinking the rain out of his eyes, waiting for a clean shot and then grunting with disappointment as he recognized his own partner, bowed under the glistening wet gas-cape, moving heavily as a pregnant woman in the gloom beneath the rain cloud and dense overhead branches.
The man paused to cup his hand over his mouth and call the mournful owl hoot again, and the bearded hunter grinned. Decoy duck, he whispered aloud, the stupid old dog! and he felt no compunction that he was going to let his ally draw fire for him. He watched him carefully, keeping well down on the skyline, the silhouette of his head and shoulders broken by the low bush under which he crouched.
The old man in the gas-cape called again, and then waited listening with his head cocked. The reply called him on, and he hurried forward into the wind and the rain, drawn on to his fate. Hobday grinned as he watched. One share was better than two, he thought, and wiped the clinging raindrops off the rear sight of the Mauser with his thumb.
Suddenly the old man checked and began to swing up the rifle he carried, but the shot crashed out and he went down abruptly in the grass. Hobday swore softly, bitterly, he had missed the moment, had not been able to place the spot from which the shot had been fired. Now he waited with a finger on the trigger, screwing up his eyes against the rain, less certain of himself, feeling a new awe and respect for his quarry, and the first tingle of fear. It had been a good kill, that one, leading the old man right in close, calling him up as though he were a hungry leopard coming to the bleat of a duiker horn.
Then suddenly the bearded hunter's doubts were dispelled, and for an instant he could hardly believe his fortune. just when he had been steeling himself for a dangerous and long-dravTn-out duel, his quarry stepped out into the open from the cover of a twisted dead tree trunk on the bank of the river, a childlike, ridiculously artless act an almost suicidal act, so ingenuous that for a moment he feared some trap.
The young man stood for a moment over the corpse of the man he had killed. Even at this range, it seemed as though he swayed on his feet, his face very pale in the weak grey light but the khaki of his shirt standing out clearly against the back lighting from the surface of the river.
it needed no fancy shooting, the range was less than a hundred and fifty yards and for an instant Hobday held his aim in the centre of the boy's chest, then he squeezed off the shot with exaggerated care, knowing that it was a heart shot. As the rifle pounded back into his shoulder and the brittle crack of the Mauser stung his eardrums, he watched the boy hurled backwards by the shock of the strike and heard the bullet impact with a jarring solid thud.
Mark never even heard the Mauser shot for the bullet came ahead of the sound. There was only the massive shock in the upper part of his body, and then he was hurled backwards with a violence that drove the air from his lungs.
