I waited awhile, gathering my courage, then I went to her tent, and my heart threatened to hammer its way out of its malformed rib-cage.
‘Sal?’
‘Ben?’ she answered my whisper softly.
‘May I come in?’ She hesitated before she replied.
‘All right-just for a minute.’
I went into the tent, and in the gloom her nightdress was a pale blur. I groped for her face, and touched her cheek.
‘I came to tell you that I love you,’ I said softly, and I heard her little catch of breath in the dark. When she answered her voice was gentle.
‘Ben,’ she whispered. ‘Dear, sweet Ben.’
‘I would like to be with you tonight.’
And it seemed to me there was regret in her voice as she replied, ‘No, Ben. Everyone would know about it. I don’t want that.’
The morning started off as the previous day had ended. Everybody was in high spirits, laughing at the breakfast table. The servants sky-larked as they broke camp and repacked the truck sand by seven o’clock we had left the road and were following the edge of the pan.
The Land-Rover leading and the trucks following our tracks through scrub and rank grass, and across the dry ravines which meandered down to the pan.
We had been going for an hour when I saw a flash of pale movement among the trees ahead of us, and three stately gemsbok broke out onto the open pan and trotted in single file away from us. They moved heavily, like fat ponies, the pale mulberry of their coats and the elaborate black and white face masks standing out clearly against the grey of the pan surface.
Louren slammed the brake on the Land-Rover, and with the smoothly executed timing of the professional the old Matabele gunbearer put the big .375 Magnum Holland Holland into Louren’s hand and he was gone, running doubled-up behind the fringe of grass that lined the edge of the pan.
‘Is he going to kill them?’ asked Sally in her little-girl voice. I nodded and she went on, ‘Why-but why?’
‘It’s one of the things he likes doing.’
‘But they are so beautiful,’ she protested.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. Out on the pan, about six hundred yards from the Land-Rover, the gemsbok had stopped. They were standing broadside to us. Staring at us intently with heads held high, and long slender horns erect.
‘What’s he doing?’ Sal pointed at Louren who was still running along the edge of the pan.
‘He’s playing the rules,’ I explained. ‘It’s an offence to fire within 500 yards of a vehicle.’
‘Jolly sporting,’ she muttered, biting her lip and glancing from Louren to the distant gemsbok. Then suddenly she had jumped from the Land-Rover and clambered up onto the engine bonnet. She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled.
‘Run, you fools. Run, damn you!’
She snatched her hat and waved it over her head, jumping up and down on the bonnet and howling like a banshee. Out on the pan the gemsbok erupted into startled flight, galloping diagonally away from us in a bunch. I glanced at Louren’s small figure, and saw him drop into a sitting position with elbows braced on his knees, head cocked over the telescopic sight. The rifle jerked, and smoke spurted from the muzzle -but it was a second or two before the flat report of the shot reached us. Out on the pan the leading gemsbok slid over his nose and rolled in a drift of white dust. Louren fired again, and the second animal tumbled with legs kicking to the sky. The last gemsbok ran on alone.
Behind me the old gunbearer spoke to the other in Sindebele. ‘Hou! This is much man.’
Sally climbed down off the bonnet, and sat silently while I drove to where Louren waited. He handed the rifle to the gunbearer, and as I relinquished the wheel to him the bitter tang of burnt cordite filled the cab of the Land- Rover. He glanced at Sally. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I prefer a running shot.’
‘Why didn’t you kill all three of them?’ Her tone was neutral, without rancour.
‘You are only allowed two on a licence.’
‘Christ,’ said Sally in a voice that now reeked of anger and outrage, ‘how bloody touching. It’s not often you meet a true gentleman.’
And Louren drove us out to where the dead animals lay. While the servants skinned and butchered the carcasses. Sally remained in the back seat with her face averted, her hat pulled down low over her forehead, and her eyes glued to a book.
I stood beside Louren in the bright sunlight, that was intensified by the glare of the white salt surface, and watched the gunboys cut the incisions in the skin and flay the gemsbok with the skill of a pair of Harley Street surgeons.
‘You might have warned me we had one of
I didn’t reply and he went on. ‘I’ve a bloody good mind to send her back to Maun on one of the trucks.’ The suggestion was so unworkable that it didn’t give me even a twinge, and Louren went on immediately. ‘She’s your assistant - try and keep her under control, will you!’
I moved away, giving him time to recover his temper, and took the map-case from the seat beside Sally. She didn’t look up from her book. I walked around the vehicle and spread the aeronautical large-scale map on the bonnet of the Land-Rover, and within two minutes Louren was with me. Navigation is one of his big things, and he fancies himself no end.
‘We’ll leave the pan here,’ he pointed to where a dry riverbed joined the eastern extremity of the pan, ‘and
