'Yes, pull into the side.' Slowly, held to the speed of the lumbering
vehicles behind them, they drove on through the afternoon. Twice they
passed deserted Baluba villages beside the road, the grass huts
disintegrating and the small cultivated lands about them thickly
overgrown.
'My God, I'm hungry. I've got a headache from it and my belly feels as
though it's full of warm water,' complained Bruce.
'Don't think you're the only one. This is the strictest diet I've ever
been on, must have lost two kilos! But I always lose in the wrong
place, never on my bottom.'
'Good,' Bruce said. 'I like it just the way it is, never shed an ounce
there.' He looked over his shoulder at the two gendarmes. 'Are you
hungry?' he asked in French.
'Mon Dieu!' exclaimed the fat one. 'I will not be able to sleep tonight,
if I must lie on an empty stomach.'
'Perhaps it will not be necessary.' Bruce let his eyes wander off the
road into the surrounding bush. The character of the country had changed
in the last hundred miles.
'This looks like game country. I've noticed plenty of spoor on the road.
Keep your eyes open.' The trees were tall and widely spaced
with grass growing beneath them. Their branches did not interlock so
that the sky showed through. At intervals there were open glades filled
with green swamp grass and thickets of bamboo and ivory palms.
(We've got another half hour of daylight. We might run into something
before then.' In the rear-view mirror he watched the lumbering column of
transports for a moment. They must be almost out of gasoline by now,
hardly enough for another half hour's driving.
There were compensations however; at least they were in open country now
and only eighty miles from Msapa junction.
He glanced at the petrol gauge - half the tank. The Ranchero still had
sufficient to get through even if the trucks were almost dry.
Of course! That was the answer. Find a good camp, leave the convoy, and
go on in the Ford to find help.
Without the trucks to slow him down he could get through to Msapa
junction in two hours. There was a telegraph in the station office, even
if the junction was still deserted.
'We'll stop on the other side of this stream,' said Bruce and slowed the
Ford, changed into second gear and let it idle down the steep bank.
The stream was shallow. The water hardly reached the hubcaps as they
bumped across the rocky bottom. Bruce gunned the Ford up the far bank
into the forest again.
'There!' shouted one of the gendarmes from the back seat and Bruce
followed the direction of his arm.
Standing with humped shoulders, close beside the road, bunched together
with mournfully drooping horns, heads held low beneath the massive
bosses, bodies very big and black, were two old buffalo bulls.
Bruce hit the brakes, skidding the Ranchero to a stop, reaching for his
rifle at the same instant. He twisted the door handle, hit the door with
his shoulder and tumbled out on to his feet.
