the Purdey shotgun from the rack and loaded it as he ran.
Zulu was staggering along the path beyond the gates, and David hurried
after him.
Johann Akkers was no longer a human being, he had become an animal. The
spectacle of the running quarry had roused the predator's single-minded
passion to chase and drag down and kill, yet it was seasoned with a
feline delight in torment. He was playing with his wounded dragging
prey, running it when he could have ended it, drawing it out, postponing
the climax, the final consuming thrill of the kill.
The moment came at last, some deep atavistic sense of the ritual of the
hunt, for all sport killing has its correct ceremony, and Akkers knew it
must end now.
He came up behind the running figure and reached out to take a twist of
the thick dark hair in the crippled claw of his hand, wrapping it with a
quick movement about his wrist and jerking back her head, laying open
the long pale throat for the knife.
She turned upon him with a strength and ferocity he had not anticipated.
Her body was hard and strong and supple, and now that she could place
him she drove at him with the wild terror of a hunted thing.
He was unprepared, her attack took him off-balance, and he went over
backwards with her on top of him, and he dropped the knife and the
lantern into the grass to protect his eyes, for she was tearing at them
with long sharp nails. He felt them rip into his nose and cheek, and
she screeched like a cat, for she was also an animal in this moment.
He freed the stiff claw from the tangle of her hair, and he drew it
back, holding her off with his right hand and he struck her.
It was like a wooden club, stiff and hard and without feeling. A single
blow with it had stunned the labrador and broken his jaw. It hit her
across the temple, a sound like an axe swung at a tree trunk.
It knocked all the fight out of her, and he came up on his knees,
holding her with his good hand and with the other he clubbed her
mercilessly, beat her head back and across with a steady rhythm. In the
light of the fallen lantern, the black blood spurted from her nose, and
the blows cracked against her skull, steady and unrelenting. Long after
she was still and senseless he continued to beat her. Then at last he
let her drop, and he stood up. He went to the lantern and played the
beam in the grass. The knife glinted up at him.
There is an ancient ceremony with which a hunt should end. The
culminating ceremony of the gralloch, when the triumphant huntsman slits
open the paunch of his game, and thrusts his hand into the opening to
draw out the still-warm viscera.
Johan Akkers picked the knife out of the grass and set down the lantern
so the beam fell upon Debra's supine figure.
He went to her and, with his foot, rolled her onto her back. The dark
black mine of sodden hair smothered her face.
He knelt beside her and hooked one iron-hard finger into the front of
her blouse. With a single jerk he ripped it cleanly open, and her big
round belly bulged into the lantern light. it was white and full and
ripe with the dark pit of the navel in its centre.
Akkers giggled and wiped the rain and sweat from his face with his arm.
Then he changed his grip on the knife, reversing it so the blade would
go shallow, opening the paunch neatly from crotch to rib cage without
cutting into the intestines, a stroke as skilful as a surgeon's that he
had performed ten thousand times before.
Movement in the shadows at the edge of the light caused him to glance
up. He saw the black dog rush silently at him, saw its eyes glow in the
lantern light.
He threw up his arm to guard his throat and the furry body crashed into
him. They rolled together, with Zulu mouthing him, unable to take a
grip with his injured jaws.
Akkers changed his grip on the hilt of the carving knife and stabbed up
into the dog's rib cage, finding the faithful heart with his first
thrust. Zulu yelped once, and collapsed. Akkers pushed his glossy
black body aside, pulling out the knife and he crawled back to where
Debra lay.
The distraction that Zulu had provided gave David a chance to come up.
David ran to Akkers, and the man looked up with the muddy green eyes
glaring in the lantern light. He growled at David with the long blade
in his hand dulled by the dog's blood. He started to come to his feet,
ducking his head in exactly the same aggressive gesture as the bull
baboon.
David thrust the barrels of the shotgun into his face and he pulled both
triggers. The shot hit solidly, without spreadin& tearing into him in
the bright yellow flash and thunder of the muzzle blast, and it took
away the whole of Akkers head above the mouth, blowing it to
nothingness. He dropped into the grass with his legs kicking
convulsively, and David hurled the shotgun aside and ran to Debra.
He knelt over her and he whispered, My darling, oh my darling. Forgive
me, please forgive me. I should never have left you. Gently he picked
her up and holding her to his chest, he carried her up to the homestead.
Debra's child was born in the dawn. It was a girl, tiny and wizened and
too early for her term. If there had been skilled medical attention
available she might have lived, for she fought valiantly. But David was
clumsy and ignorant of the succour she needed. He was cut off by the
raging river and the telephone was still dead, and Debra was still
unconscious.
When it was over he wrapped the tiny little blue body in a clean sheet
and laid it tenderly in the cradle that had been prepared for her. He
felt overwhelmed by a sense of guilt at having failed the two persons
who needed him.
At three o'clock that afternoon, Conrad Berg forced a passage of the
Luzane stream with the water boiling above the level of the big wheels
of his truck, and three hours later they had Debra in a private ward of
the Nelspruit hospital. Two days later she became conscious once more,
but her face was grotesquely swollen and purple with bruises.
Near the crest of the kopje that stood above the homestead of Jabulani
there was a natural terrace, a platform which overlooked the whole
estate. It was a remote and peaceful place and they buried the child
there. Out of the rock of the kopje David built a tomb for her with his
own hands.
It was best that Debra had never felt the child in her arms, or at her
breast. That she had never heard her cry or smelled the puppy smell of
her.
Her mourning was therefore not crippling and corrosive, and she and
David visited the grave regularly. One Sunday morning as they sat upon
the stone bench beside it, Debra talked for the first time about another
baby.
You took so long with the first one, Morgan, she complained. I hope
you've mastered the technique. They walked down the hill again, put the
rods and a picnic basket into the Land-Rover and drove down to the
pools.
The Mozambique bream came on the bite for an hour just before noon and
they fought over the fat yellow wood grubs that David was baiting. Debra
hung five, all around three pounds in weight, and David had a dozen of
the big blue fish before it went quiet and they propped the rods and
opened the cold box.
They lay together on the rug beneath the outspread branches of the fever
trees, and drank white wine cold from the icebox.
The African spring was giving way to full summer, filling the bush with
bustle and secret activity. The weaver birds were busy upon their