nearly fell.
'What is it?' panted Bruce, coming back to reality.
'Look!' The earth ahead of them was churned and broken.
'Zebra,' groaned Bruce, recognizing the round uncloven hoof prints. 'God
damn it to hell - of all the filthy luck!'
'A big herd,' Jacque agreed. 'Spread out. Feeding.' As far ahead as they
could see through the forest the herd had wiped out Hendry's tracks.
'We'll have to cast forward.' Bruce's voice was agonized by his
impatience. He turned to the nearest tree and hacked at it with his
bayonet, blazing it to mark the end of the trail, swearing softly,
venting his disappointment on the trunk.
'Only another hour to sunset,' he whispered. 'Please let us pick him up
again before dark.' Sergeant Jacque was already moving forward,
following the approximate line of Hendry's travel, trying vainly to
recognize a single footprint through the havoc created there by the
passage of thousands of hooves. Bruce hurried to join him and then moved
out on his flank. They zigzagged slowly ahead, almost meeting on the
inward leg of each tack and then separating again to a distance of a
hundred yards.
There it was! Bruce dropped to his knees to make sure.
Just the outline of the toecap, showing from under the spoor of an old
zebra stallion. Bruce whistled, a windy sound through his dry lips, and
Jacque came quickly. One quick look then: 'Yes, he is holding more to
the right now.' He raised his eyes and squinted ahead, marking a tree
which was directly in line with the run of the spoor.
They went forward.
'There's the herd.' Bruce pointed at the flicker Of a grey body through
the trees.
'They've got our wind.' A zebra snorted and then there was a rumbling, a
low bluffed drumming of hooves as the herd ran. Through the trees Bruce
caught glimpses of the animals on the near side of the herd. Too far off
to show the stripes, looking like fat grey ponies as they galloped, ears
up, black-maned heads nodding. Then they were gone and the sound of
their flight dwindled.
'At least they haven't run along the spoor,' muttered Bruce, and then
bitterly: 'Damn them, the stupid little donkeys! They've cost us an
hour. A whole priceless hour.' Desperately searching, wild with haste,
they worked back and forth. The sun was below the trees; already the air
was cooling in the short African dusk. Another fifteen
minutes and it would be dark.
Then abruptly the forest ended. they came out on the edge of a vlei.
Open as Wheatland, pastured with green waist-high grass, hemmed in by
the forest, it stretched ahead of them for nearly two miles.
Dotted along it were clumps of ivory palms with each graceful stem
ending in an untidy cluster of leaves. Troops of guinea-fowls were
scratching and chirruping along the edge of the clearing, and near the
far end a herd of buffalo formed a dark mass as they grazed beneath a
canopy of white egrets.
In the forest beyond the clearing, rising perhaps three hundred feet out
of it, stood a kopje of tumbled granite.
