threw it over a chair with his leather breeches and slouch hat, ready to wear in the morning. He went down to the study and made his selection from the gun rack, ignoring the fancy doubles and obscure calibres. He took down a pair of shotguns and four Mannlichers.
Then he went to tell Candy goodbye. She was in her suite but she opened quickly to his knock.
Hav you heard? he asked her. Yes, the whole town knows. Oh! Sean, I'm so sorry please come in.
She held the door open for him. How is Duff? He'll be all right, right now he's both drunk and asleep. I'll go to him, she said quickly. He'll need me now.
For answer Sean raised an eyebrow and looked at her until she dropped her eyes.
No, you're right, I suppose. Perhaps later, when he's got over the first shock. She looked up at Sean and smiled. I suppose you need a drink. It must have been hell for you as well. She went across to the cabinet. She had on a blue gown and it clung to the womanish thrust of her hips and did not go high enough to cover the cleft of her breasts.
Sean watched her pour his drink and bring it to him. She was lovely, he thought.
Till we meet again, Candy, Sean lifted his glass.
Her eyes went wide and very blue. I don't understand.
Why do you say that!
We're going, Candy, first thing tomorrow No, Sean, you're joking. But she knew he wasn't.
There wasn't much to say after that. He finished his drink and they talked for a while, then he kissed her.
Be happy, please, he ordered her. I'll try. Come back one day soon. Only if you promise to marry me, he smiled at her and she caught hold of his beard and tugged his head from side to side. Get away with you, before I hold you to that. He left her then because he knew she was going to weep and he didn't want to watch it.
The next Duff packed his gear under Sean's direction. He followed each instruction with a dazed obedience, answering when Sean spoke but otherwise withdrawn in a protective shell of silence. When he had finished Sean made him pick up his bags and marched him down to where the horses waited in the chill gloom of not-yet day. With the horses were men, four shapes in the darkness. Sean hesitated before going out into the yard. Mbejane, he called. Who are these with you?
They came forward into the light that poured through the doorway and Sean chuckled.
Hlubi, of the noble belly! Nonga! And is it you, Kandhla? Men who had worked beside him in the trenches of the Candy Deep, had plied the spades that had uncovered his fortune, had plied the spears that protected it from the first predators. Happy at his recognition of them, for it had been many years, they crowded forward smiling as widely and whitely as only a Zulu can. What brings you three rogues together so early in the day? Sean asked, and Hlubi answered for them. Nkosi, we heard talk of a trek and our feet burned, we heard talk of hunting and we could not sleep There is no money for wages, Sean spoke gruffly to cover the sudden rush of affection he felt for them. We made no talk of wages, Hlubi answered with dignity. Sean nodded, it was the reply he had expected. He cleared his throat and went on. You would come with me when you know that I have the Tagathi on me? He used the Zulu word f or witchcraft. You would follow me knowing that behind me I leave a spoor of dead men and sorrow? Nkosi, Hlubi was grave as he answered. Something always dies when the lion feeds, and yet there is meat for those that follow him. I hear the chatter of old women at a beer drink, Mbejane observed drily. There is no more to say and the horses grow restless. They rode down the driveway of Xanadu between the jacaranda trees and the smooth wide lawns. Behind them the mansion was grey and unlighted in the half darkness.
They took the Pretoria road, climbed to the ridge and checked their horses at the crest. Sean and Duff looked back across the valley. The valley was filled with early morning mist, and the mine headgears probed up out of it. They watched the mists turn to gold as the low sun touched them and a mine hooter howled dismally. Couldn't we stay for just a week longer, perhaps we could work something out? Duff asked softly.
Sean sat silently staring at the golden mist. It was beautiful. It hid the scarred earth and it hid the mills, it was a most appropriate cloak for that evil, greedy city.
Sean turned his horse away towards Pretoria and slapped the loose end of his reins across its neck.
The Wilderness They stayed five days in Pretoria, just long enough to buy the wagons and commission them, and when they left on the morning of the sixth day they went north on the Hunters Road. The wagons moved in column urged on by the Zulus and a dozen new servants that Sean had hired. They were followed by a mixed bag of black and white urchins and stray dogs; men called good luck after them and women waved from the verandas of the houses which lined the road. Then the town was behind them and they were out into the veld with only a dozen of the more adventurous mongrels still following them.
They made fifteen miles the first day and when they camped that night beside the ford of a small stream, Sean's back and legs ached from his first full day in the saddle in over five years. They drank a little brandy and ate steaks grilled over wood embers, then they let the fire die and sat and looked at the night. The sky was a curtain at which a barrel of grape- shot had been fired, riddling it with the holes through which the stars shone. The voices of the servants made a hive murmur as a background to the wailing of a jackal in the darkness beyond the firelight. They went to their living wagon early and for Sean the feel of rough blankets instead of silk sheets and the hardness of a straw mattress were not sufficient to keep him long from sleep.
From an early start the following morning they put another twenty miles behind them before outspan that night and twenty more the next day. The push and urgent drive were habits Sean had acquired on the Rand when every minute was vital and the loss of a day was a disaster.
leisurely turning of wagon-wheels. Sean's eyes which had been pointing straight ahead along the line of travel now turned aside to look about him. Each morning he and Duff would leave the wagons and wander out into the bush.
Sometimes they would spend the day panning for gold in the sands of a stream, another day they would search for the first signs of elephant, but mostly they just rode and talked or lay hidden and watched the herds of game that daily became more numerous. They killed just enough to feed themselves, their servants and the pack of dogs that had followed them when they left Pretoria. They passed the little Boer settlement at Pietersburg and then the Zoutpansberg climbed up over the horizon, its sheer sides dark with rain forest and high rock cliffs. Here under the mountains they spent a week at Louis Trichardt, the most northerly permanent habitation of white men.
In the town they spoke with men who had hunted to the north of the mountains, across the Limpopo. These were taciturn brown-faced Boers with tobacco-stained beards, big men with the peace of the bush in their eyes.
In their courteous, unhurried speech Sean sensed a fierce possessive love of the animals that they hunted and the land through which they moved so freely. They were a different breed from the Natal Afrikanders and those he had met on the Witwatersrand, and he conceived the respect for them that would grow stronger in the years ahead when he would have to fight them.
There was no way through the mountains, they told him, but wagons could pass around them. The western passage skirted the edge of the Kalahari desert and this was bad country where the wagon wheels sank into the sandy soil and the marches between water became successively longer.
To the east there was good rich forest land, well watered and stocked with game: low country, hotter the nearer one went to the coast, but the true bushveld where a man could find elephant.
So Sean and Duff turned east and, holding the mountains always in sight at their left hand, they went down into the wilderness.
Within a week's trek they saw elephant sign: trees broken and stripped of their bark. Although it was months old the trees already dried out, nevertheless Sean felt the thrill of it and that night spent an hour cleaning and oiling his rifles. The forest thickened until the wagons had to weave continually between the trunks of the trees. But there were clearings in the forest, open vleis filled with grass where buffalo grazed like herds of domestic cattle and white tick birds squawked about them. This country was well watered with streams as clear and merry as a Scottish trout stream, but the water was blood-warm and the banks thick with bush. Along the rivers, in the forest and in the open were the herds of game: impala twisting and leaping away at the first approach with their crumpled horns laid back, kudu with big ears and soft eyes, black sable antelope with white bellies and horns curved like a naval cutlass, zebra trotting with the dignity of fat ponies, while about them frolicked their companions, the gnu, waterbuck, nyala, roan antelope and, at last, elephant.
Sean and Mbejane were ranging a mile ahead of the wagons when they found the spoor. It was fresh, so fresh that sap still oozed from the mahoba-hobo tree where the bark had been prised loose with the tip of a tusk and then stripped off. The wood beneath was naked and white. Three bulls, said Mbejane. One very big. Wait here, Sean spun his horse and galloped back to the column. Duff lay on the driver's seat of the first wagon rocking gently to its motion, his hat covering his face and his hands behind his head.
Elephant! Duff, Sean yelled. Not an hour ahead of us.
Get saddled up, man! Duff was ready in five
