And after the first two hours Bruce knew they had not gained upon him.
Hendry was still eight hours ahead, and at the pace he was setting eight
hours' start was something like thirty miles in distance.
Bruce looked over his shoulder at the sun where it lay wedged between
two vast piles of cumulonimbus. There in the sky were the two elements
which could defeat him.
Time. There were perhaps two more hours of daylight.
With the onset of night they would be forced to halt.
Rain. The clouds were swollen and dark blue round the edges. As
Bruce watched, the lightning lit them internally, and at a count of ten
the thunder grumbled suddenly. If it rained again before morning there
would be no spoor to follow.
'We must move faster,' said Bruce.
Sergeant Jacque straightened up and looked at Bruce as though he were a
stranger. He had forgotten his existence.
'The earth hardens.' Jacque pointed at the spoor and Bruce saw that in
the last half hour the soil had become gritty and compacted.
Hendry's heels no longer broke the crust. 'It is unwise to run on such a
lean trail.' Again Bruce looked back at the menace of gathering clouds.
'We must take the chance,' he decided.
'As you wish,' grunted Jacque, and transferred his rifle to his other
shoulder, hitched up his belt and settled the steel helmet more firmly
on his head.
'Allez!' They trotted on through the forest towards the southeast.
Within a mile Bruce's body had settled into the automatic rhythm of his
run, leaving his mind free.
He thought about Wally Hendry, saw again the little eyes and round them
the puffy folded skin, and the mouth below, thin and merciless, the
obscene ginger stubble of beard. He could almost smell him. His nostrils
flared at the memory of the rank red-head's body odour.
Unclean, he thought, unclean mind and unclean body.
His hatred of Wally Hendry was a tangible thing. He could feel it
sitting heavily at the base of his throat, tingling in his fingertips
and giving strength to his legs.
And yet there was something else. Suddenly Bruce grinned: a wolfish
baring of his teeth. That tingling in his fingertips was not all hatred,
a little of it was excitement.
What a complex thing is a man, he thought. He can never hold one emotion
- always there are others to confuse it. Here I am hunting the
thing that I most loathe and hate, and I am enjoying it. Completely
unrelated to the hatred is the thrill of hunting the most dangerous and
cunning game of all, man.
I have always enjoyed the chase, he thought. It has been bred into me,
for my blood is that of the men who hunted and fought with
Africa as the prize.
The hunting of this man will give me pleasure. If ever a man deserved to
die, it is Wally Hendry. I am the plaintiff, the judge and the
executioner.
Sergeant Jacque stopped so suddenly that Bruce ran into him and they
