'Looks like it,' Sean agreed. 'And if we push along we should be able to reach the beginning of the swamps either this evening or early tomorrow.'
'What about Tukutela?' Riccardo asked.
'Well, we know from his track approximately where he would have reached the swamps. We'll just cast along the edge until we find where he went in, but we've lost a lot of ground on him. We'll have to go hard if we don't want him to get away from us. Do you feel up to it, Capo?'
'Never better,' Riccardo said. 'Lead on, man.'
Before they set off again Sean went quickly over their packs.
They had consumed a great deal of the provisions, and he redistributed the remainder. By giving both Job and himself an extra ten pounds or so, he was able to reduce Riccardo's pack to twenty pounds and Claudia's to a mere ten, just her sleeping bag and personal items.
They both responded well to their reduced burdens, but again Sean marched beside Riccardo to encourage him and watch over him. Claudia was still going surprisingly well; he needn't have worried about her at all. Under her light pack she was stepping out lithely. He took pleasure in watching her long legs driving and her hard little buttocks oscillating in those tight blue jeans. They reminded him of the cheeks of a chipmunk chewing a nut.
They were on the valley floor now. There were open vleis and baobabs, those trees with bloated trunks, bark like a reptile's skin, and crooked bare branches from which a few late cream-of-tartar pods still hung. It was easy to see why the Zulus said the gods had accidentally planted the baobab upside down with its roots in the air.
Far ahead of them a slow standing cloud of evaporation marked the position of the swamps, and the alluvial soil was sandy and yielding underfoot.
'Just think of this, Capo.' Sean was trying to divert him. 'You are probably one of the last men who will ever hunt a great elephant in the classical tradition of the long chase. This is the way it should be done, man. Not grinding around in a Land-Rover and then leaning out of the window to kill him. This is how Selous and 'Karamojo' Bell and Samaki' Salmon hunted their elephant.'
He saw Riccardo's expression light up at the idea of being compared to those grand masters of the chase, men from another age when all elephants had been fair game. 'Samaki' Sahnon had hunted and killed four thousand elephants in his lifetime. There had been a different morality in those days. Today a man with a bag of those dimensions would be accounted a villain and a criminal, but in his day 'Samaki' Salmon had been respected and honored. He had even hunted with Edward, Prince of Wales, as his client.
Sean knew that Riccardo had an avid interest in the old-time elephant hunters, so he enlarged on their careers.
'If you want to do it the way 'Karamojo' Bell did it, Capo, you have to walk like this. Bell wore out twenty- four pairs of boots a year and had to replace his porters and gun bearers every few weeks. They just couldn't keep up with him.'
'That was the golden age.' Riccardo extended his stride a little as he thought about it. 'You and I should have lived then, Sean.
We were born after our time.'
'A true hunter should kill a great elephant with his legs. He should walk him down. That's the respectful and proper way, and that is what you are doing now, Capo. Enjoy every step you take, for you are treading in old Bell's footprints.'
Unfortunately the effects of Sean's encouragement were not enduring; within an hour Riccardo was flagging again and Sean noticed a new, disconcerting unsteadiness in his gait. He stumbled and would have fallen had not Sean caught his arm.
'We all need a five-minute break and a cup of tea.' Sean led him to the shade.
When Job brought the tea mugs, Riccardo mumbled, 'Have you got a couple more aspirins for me?'
'You all right, Capo?' he asked as he handed him the tablets.
'Damned headache again, that's all.' But he would not meet Sean's eyes.
Sean looked across at Claudia, who was sitting close beside her father, but she also avoided his gaze. 'Do you two know something I don't?' Sean demanded. 'You both look guilty as hell.' He didn't wait for an answer but stood up and went to join Job at the small fire where he was baking a fresh batch of maize cakes for their evening meal.
'The aspirin will make you feel better,' Claudia told her father softly.
'Of course. Aspirin's a surefire cure for cancer once it reaches the brain,' he agreed. Then, as he saw her agonized expression, he blurted out, 'I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that. Self-pity isn't my usual style.'
'Is it bad, Papa?'
'I can tolerate the headache, but I'm getting a little double vision that worries me,' he admitted. 'Damn it, I was feeling so well a few days ago. It's all happened so quickly.'
'The exertion,' she said, pitying him. 'Perhaps that's what has aggravated it. We should turn back.'
'No,' he said with utter finality. 'Don't even talk about that again.'
She inclined her head in aquiescence.
'The swamps aren't far ahead. Perhaps we'll have a chance to rest,' she said.
'I don't want to rest,' he said. 'I realize just how little time I have left. I don't want to waste a moment of it.'
Sean came back to them. 'Are you ready to go on?'
Claudia glanced at her wristwatch. They had rested for less than half an hour. It was too short and she would have protested, but her father pushed himself to his feet.
'All set,' he said, and she could see that even the short break had refreshed him.
They had been going only a few minutes when Riccardo said, quite cheerfully, 'Those hamburgers Job has cooked smell just great. Makes me feel hungry.'
'Those hamburgers are maize cakes,' Sean chuckled. 'Sorry to disappoint you. 'You can't bullshit me.' Riccardo chuckled with him. 'I can smell the fried onions and beef.'
'Papa.' Claudia looked back over her shoulder and frowned sharply, and Riccardo stopped chuckling and looked distraught.
'There might be hallucinations,' Doc Andrews had warned Claudia. 'He may begin to see things or imagine various odors. I can't give you an exact progress of the disease, of course, and there may be periods of swift deterioration followed by longer periods of remission. Just remember, Claudia, that his fantasies will be very real to him, and episodes of hallucination can be followed by periods of complete lucidity.'
That evening Sean would not stop to brew tea. 'We have to try and make up the ground we've lost,' he told them, so they ate the cold maize cakes and biltong-slivers of salted, air-dried venison-on the march.
'One large hamburger with fried onions and all the trimmings coming up, Capo,' Sean teased him. Claudia glared at him, but Riccardo laughed uneasily and munched on the unappetizing fare as he walked.
They no longer had a spoor to follow, so Sean kept going lOng after night had fallen. The long, tortuous miles fell slowly behind them and the brilliant southern stars burned over their heads. It was almost midnight before they stopped and unrolled their sleeping bags.
Sean let them sleep until the dawn light was strong enough to make out the way ahead. The landscape had changed. During the night they had entered the region that was held in thrall by the great Zambezi. These were ancient flood plains that were inundated when the river broke its banks during the torrential rainy season.
They were dry now, although almost devoid of trees; a few long dead mo pane and acacia thorn trees drowned by the floods still held up twisted bare branches to the hazy blue sky, standing out on the empty plains like lonely sentinels.
As they moved out into the open, the dried mud had cracked in to brick lets beneath their feet, the edges curling up, and the clumps of swamp grass were brown and matted and dead from drought. When the breeze switched fitfully they could smell the swamps still out of view ahead, the odor of mud and rotting vegetation, The mirage shimmered across the plains, so there was no clear horizon; land and sky merged into each other like water. When they looked back the tree line crawled like a long black serpent below the milky sky, undulating and vibrating softly in the mirage, and the dust devils spun upon themselves twisting and swaying like belly dancers.
Out on the plain Sean felt exposed and vulnerable. There was just the scant chance of a Frelimo patrol plane passing this way to search for Renamo bands, and they were as obvious as fleas on a white sheet. He wanted to hurry but glanced back at Riccardo and knew that they would have to rest again soon.
Ahead of Sean, Matatu gave a cry that made his nerves jump. Sean knew what it meant and he ran forward, passing Claudia, and stopped beside Matatu.
'Well, all right!' He clapped Matatu's shoulder and went down on one knee to examine the earth.
'What is it?' Riccardo sounded alarmed, but Sean lifted his head and grinned at him.
'It's him. Tukutela. We've cut his spoor again just where Matatu predicted we would.' And he touched the marks of the huge pads whose weight had crushed the brick lets of dried mud to talcum powder. The spoor was so clear that the difference between the bull's rounded front feet and the more oval hind feet was immediately apparent, and the
