musket at the ready. Suddenly he reined in and stared with amazement into the narrow gateway in the rock that opened in front of him.
Xhia had disappeared into the dim depths of the passage. Koots hesitated to follow him in there. He could see that once he was inside it the passage was too narrow for him to turn his horse. The other troopers hung back behind him.
'Goffel!' Koots shouted. 'Go in there and pull the little bastard out.'
Goffel looked behind him, back down the slope, but Koots turned the cocked musket on him.
'If I can't have Xhia, then by God you will have to do.'
At that moment they heard Xhia's voice issue from the mouth of the passage, and he was singing.
'What is he saying?' Koots demanded, and Goffel looked mightily relieved.
'It is his song of victory. He is thanking his gods for their kindness in revealing the spoor to him.'
Koots's misgivings evaporated. He swung down from the saddle and strode into the passage. He found Xhia around the first bend, singing, clapping and giggling with triumph. 'What have you found?'
'Look under your feet, you white baboon,' Xhia told him, making sure he would not understand the insult, but pointing at the trampled white sand. Koots understood the gesture, but still he was uncertain. Any definition of the spoor was long ago obliterated: it was merely a dimpling of the surface.
'How can he be sure that this is our quarry?' Koots demanded of Goffel as he came up. 'It could be anything a herd of quagga or eland.'
Xhia answered this objection with a rapid fire of denials, and Goffel spoke for him: 'Xhia says that this is a sacred place. No wild animal ever passes through here.'
'I don't believe that!' Koots scoffed. 'How would an animal know?'
'If you cannot feel the magic here, your eyes are blind and your ears are deaf indeed,' Xhia told him, but he went to the nearest wall of the passage and peered minutely at it. Then he began to pick things off the rock, the way a baboon picks nits from a companion's scalp. He gathered whatever it was in the palm of his hand, then came back to Koots. Between forefinger and thumb he offered him something. Koots had to look closely to see that it was a hair.
'Behold, with your pale and disgusting eyes, O eater of dung!' he said, so Koots could not understand. 'This white hair came from the shoulder of the gelding, Frost. This brown and silky one from Trueheart when she touched the rock, and this yellow one from Lemon. This dark one is from Somoya's horse, Drumfire.' He hooted scornfully. 'And now do you believe that Xhia is the mightiest hunter of all the San, and that he has worked a great and solemn magic and revealed the spoor to you?'
'Tell the little yellow ape to stop chattering, and take us after them.' Koots tried, unsuccessfully, to disguise his elation.
What river is that?' Koots asked. They stood on the peak and looked down from the mountains, over endless plains and vistas of rolling grassland, to another range of hills, pale against the milky blue of the tall African sky at noon day.
'It is called the river Gariep,' Goffel translated. 'Or, in the language of the San, Gariep Che Tabong, the River Where the Elephant Died.'
'Why is it called that?' Koots wanted to know.
'It was on the banks of this river when he was a young man that Xhia slew the great elephant he had followed for many days.'
Koots grunted. Since the Bushman had found the spoor again Koots was more kindly disposed towards him. He had treated his burns and other injuries from the field chest of medicines he carried on the packhorse. Xhia healed quickly, the way a wild animal does.
Tell him that if he can find where Somoya crossed this river, I will give him a fine cow as his own animal when we return to the colony. Then, if he can lead me to the capture or the killing of Somoya, I will give him five more fat cows.' Koots was now regretting his previous harsh treatment of the Bushman. He knew that if he wanted to catch up with the fugitives, he must make amends and buy back Xhia's loyalty.
it
Xhia received this promise of wealth joyfully. Few men of the San owned a sheep, let alone a single head of kine. Childlike, his memory of abuse faded with the offer of reward. He started down the mountain slopes towards the plains and the river with such alacrity that even on horseback Koots was hard-pressed to keep him in sight. When they reached the river they found wild game concentrated on these waters in numbers that Koots had not imagined possible. The herds within the colony had been hunted extensively since the first Dutch colonists, under Governor van Riebeeck, had set foot ashore almost eighty years before. The burghers were all enthusiastic hunters, indulging in the pastime not only for the thrill of the chase but also for the meat, hides and ivory it yielded. Within the borders of the colony at any time of day one could hear the boom of their long roers, and in the season of the great animal migrations across the plains they had organized themselves into large mounted parties to hunt the wild horses, the quagga, for their hides, the spring buck and eland for their meat. After one of these great jags the vultures darkened the sky with their wings and the stench of death hung in the air for months thereafter. The bleached bones lay like banks of snowy arum lilies, gleaming in the sunlight.
As a consequence of these predations the game had been severely reduced in numbers, and even the quagga had become something of a rarity within the immediate environs of the town and castle. The last elephant herds had been driven far from the frontiers of the colony almost forty years before, and only a few hardy souls occasionally made the journey of months and even years into the remote wilderness to pursue them. In fact, not many white men had ventured even thus far from the safety and security of the colony, which was why this mighty gathering of wild beasts was a revelation to Koots.
Game had been scarce in the mountains, and they were hungry for fresh meat so Koots and Oudeman spurred ahead of the rest of the troop. Riding hard they caught up with a herd of giraffe who had been grazing on the top branches of an isolated clump of acacia trees. These gigantic creatures ran with a ponderous, swaying motion, twisting their bushy tails up on to their haunches. They thrust their long, sinuous necks forward as though to counterbalance their massive bodies. Koots and Oudeman cut a young cow out of the herd of a dozen and, riding hard at her heels, with the stones and pebbles flung up by her hoofs whizzing past their ears they fired into her rump, trying to send a ball through the ridge of her spine, which showed clearly under her dappled brown and yellow skin. At last Koots pressed in so close to her that he almost touched her with the muzzle of his musket, and this time the ball flew true. It severed her spinal column and she collapsed in a cloud of
dust and debris. Koots dismounted to reload and as soon as his weapon was recharged he ran close to her. She was thrashing about weakly, but he avoided the convulsive kicks of her long front legs, which could snap the spine of an attacking lion. Then he fired another ball into the back of her skull.
That night while the hyena squalled and squabbled with a pride of lions for possession of what remained of the colossal carcass, Koots and his men feasted around their campfire on marrow from the giraffe's thigh-bones. They cracked the roasted bones between two rocks, and out slid long cylindrical lumps of the rich yellow marrow, as thick as a man's arm and twice as long.
In the dawn when Koots awoke, he found Goffel, who was on sentry duty, fast asleep. Xhia was gone. Raging, Koots booted Goffel in the stomach and crotch, then laid into him with a bridle, swinging the bit end and the metal cheek buckles across his shoulders and close- cropped scalp. At last he stepped back and snarled, 'Now, take the spoor and catch that little yellow ape, or there'll be another helping of ginger for you.'
Xhia had made no attempt to cover his tracks so even Goffel could read them easily. Without breakfast they mounted up and rode after Xhia before he could make good his escape. On the open plain Koots hoped to spot him at a distance, and even a Bushman could not hope to outdistance a good horse.
Xhia's tracks led straight towards the dark green ribbon of riverine bush on the horizon that marked the course of the Gariep river. They were only half- way there when Koots saw the spring buck herds ahead pranking, leaping high in the air with all four feet together and noses almost touching their front hoofs, the snowy dorsal plumes flashing in full display.
'Something's alarming them,' Goffel said. 'Maybe it is the Bushman.' Koots spurred forward. Then, through the dust kicked up by the antics of the spring buck herds, he saw a tiny familiar figure trotting towards them.
'By the breath of Satan!' Koots swore. 'It's him. It's Xhia and he's coming back!'
As he came towards them Xhia broke into a dance and a litany of triumph and self-congratulation. 'I am Xhia, the greatest hunter of all my tribe. I am Xhia, the beloved of the ancestors. My eyes are like the moon for they see all, even in the night. My arrows are swift as swallows in flight, and no animal may run from them. My magic is so powerful that no man may avoid it.'
That same day Xhia led them to the Gariep river, and he showed
Koots the wheel ruts of many wagons scored deeply into the soft alluvial earth along its banks.
'Four great wagons and one small one passed this way.' Through Goffel he explained the sign to Koots. 'With the wagons were many animals, horses and cattle
