He drank once more, and then stood up and stung the 30/06 on his
shoulder. Ready now for anything that the goddess of the chase could
send his way, he moved off along the crest to intercept the war party.
From every vantage point along the rim he glassed the valley below, each
time without spying his quarry, and the afternoon passed 'swiftly. He
was just beginning to worry that Mek Nimmur had somehow managed to slip
past him unseen, that he had crossed the river at some secret ford or
taken another path through a hidden valley, when there came a plaintive
and querulous cry on the heat-hushed air.
He looked up. A pair of kites were circling over one particular clump of
Thorn scrub on the river bank.
The yellow'billed kite is one of the most ubiquitous scavengers in
Africa. It exists in close symbiotic association with man, feeding off
his rubbish, picking up his leavings, soaring and circling over his
villages or his temporary campsites, watching for his scraps or waiting
patiently for him to squat in the bushes and then dropping down
immediately he has finished his private business, acting as a universal
sewage disposal agent.
Boris studied this pair of birds through his binoculars as they sailed
idly in the heated air, always circling directly over that same patch of
river in bush. They had a distinctive manner of steering with their long
bifurcated tails, twisting them from side to side as they flirted with
the breeze. Their bright yellow beaks showed clearly as they turned
their heads to look down at something in the scrub.
He smiled coldly to himself. 'Da! Nimmur has gone into camp early.
Perhaps the heat and the pace are too fierce for his new woman, or
perhaps he has stopped to play with her a little.'
He moved on along the rim until he could look down directly into the
patch of bush. He studied it through the binoculars, but without picking
out any signs of human presence. After almost two hours he was becoming
uncertain of his original assumption. The only thing that retained his
attention was the pair of kites, which had settled in a treetop
overlooking the patch of scrub. He had to trust that they were watching
the men hidden in the scrub.
He glanced at the sun anxiously. It was sliding down towards the horizon
at last and losing its furious heat. Then he looked down into the valley
again.
Directly below the patch of bush was an indentation in the river bank
that formed a backwater, almost a small lagoon, When the river was in
flood it would be inundated, but now there was a small strip of gravel
bank exposed. On this bank stood a number of boulders that had tumbled
down from the cliff above. Some of them were lying on the beach, while
others had rolled into the river and were half, submerged. The largest
was the size of a cottage, a great round mass of dark rock.
As he watched, a man emerged unexpectedly from the scrub. Boris's pulse
quickened as he watched him scramble down on to one of the smaller
boulders and jump from there on to the gravel bank. He knelt at the
water's edge and filled a canvas bucket -with water, then climbed back
and disappeared into the bush again.
'Ah! The heat is too much even for them. They must drink, and that gives
