“Bruce, I want to - I can’t explain-” Unable to find the words she leaned forward instead and kissed him, full on the mouth.
When they drew apart, Sergeant Jacque and the two gendarmes with him were grinning delightedly.
“There is nothing wrong with you now, Captain.”
“No, there isn’t,” Bruce agreed. “Make your preparations for departure.” From the passenger seat of the Ford Bruce took one last look at the bridge.
The repaired section hung like a broken drawbridge into the water.
Beyond it on the far bank were scattered a few dead Baluba, like celluloid dolls in the sunlight. Far downstream the gasoline tanker had been washed by the current against the beach. It lay on its side, half-submerged in the shallows and the white Shell insignia showed clearly.
And the river flowed on, green and inscrutable, with the jungle pressing close along its banks.
“Let’s get away from here,” said Bruce.
Shermaine started the engine and the convoy of trucks followed them along the track through the belt of thick river bush and into the open forest again.
Bruce looked at his watch. The inside of the glass was dewed with moisture and he lifted it to his ear.
“Damn thing has stopped. What’s your time?”
“Twenty minutes to one.”
“Half the day wasted,” Bruce grumbled.
“Will we reach Msapa Junction before dark?”
“No, we won’t. For two good reasons. Firstly, it’s too far, and secondly, we haven’t enough gas.”
“What are you going to do?” Her voice was unruffled, already she had complete faith in him. I wonder how long it will last, he mused cynically. At first you’re a god. You have not a single human weakness. They set a standard for You, and the standard is perfection. Then the first time you fall short of it, their whole
world blows up.
“We’ll think of something,” he assured her.
“I’m sure you will,” she agreed complacently and Bruce grinned.
The big joke, of course, was that when she said it he also believed it.
Damned if being in love doesn’t make you feel one hell of a man.
He changed to English so as to exclude the two gendarmes in the back seat from the conversation.
“You are the best thing that has happened to me in thirty years.”
“Oh, Bruce.” She turned her face towards him and the expression of trusting love in it and the intensity of his own emotion struck Bruce like a physical blow.
I will keep this thing alive, he vowed. I must nourish it with care and protect it from the dangers of selfishness and familiarity.
“Oh, Bruce, I do love you so terribly much. This morning when -
when I thought I had lost you, when I saw the tanker go over into the
riven” She swallowed and now her eyes were full of tears. “it was as though the light had gone - it was so dark, so dark and cold without you.” Absorbed with him so that she had forgotten about the road, Shermaine let the Ford veer and the offside wheels pumped into the rough verge.
“Hey, watch it!” Bruce cautioned her. “Dearly as I love you also, I have to admit that you’re a lousy driver. Let me take her.”
“Do you feel up to it?”
“Yes, pull into the side.” Slowly, held to the speed of the lumbering vehicles behind them, they drove on through the afternoon. Twice they passed deserted Baluba villages beside the road, the grass huts disintegrating and the small cultivated lands about them thickly overgrown.
“My God, I’m hungry. I’ve got a headache from it and my belly feels as though it’s full of warm water,” complained Bruce.
“Don’t think you’re the only one. This is the strictest diet I’ve ever been on, must have lost two kilos! But I always lose in the wrong
place, never on my bottom.”
“Good,” Bruce said. “I like it just the way it is, never shed an ounce there.” He looked over his shoulder at the two gendarmes. “Are you hungry?” he asked in French.
“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the fat one. “I will not be able to sleep tonight, if I must lie on an empty stomach.”
“Perhaps it will not be necessary.” Bruce let his eyes wander off the road into the surrounding bush. The character of the country had changed in the last hundred miles.
“This looks like game country. I’ve noticed plenty of spoor on the road. Keep your eyes open.” The trees were tall and widely spaced
with grass growing beneath them. Their branches did not interlock so that the sky showed through. At intervals there were open glades filled with green swamp grass and thickets of bamboo and ivory palms.
(We’ve got another half hour of daylight. We might run into something before then.” In the rear-view mirror he watched the lumbering column of transports for a moment. They must be almost out of gasoline by now, hardly enough for another half hour’s driving.
There were compensations however; at least they were in open country now and only eighty miles from Msapa junction.
He glanced at the petrol gauge - half the tank. The Ranchero still had sufficient to get through even if the trucks were almost dry.
Of course! That was the answer. Find a good camp, leave the convoy, and go on in the Ford to find help.
Without the trucks to slow him down he could get through to Msapa junction in two hours. There was a telegraph in the station office, even if the junction was still deserted.
“We’ll stop on the other side of this stream,” said Bruce and slowed the Ford, changed into second gear and let it idle down the steep bank.
The stream was shallow. The water hardly reached the hubcaps as they bumped across the rocky bottom. Bruce gunned the Ford up the far bank into the forest again.
“There!” shouted one of the gendarmes from the back seat and Bruce followed the direction of his arm.
Standing with humped shoulders, close beside the road, bunched together with mournfully drooping horns, heads held low beneath the massive bosses, bodies very big and black, were two old buffalo bulls.
Bruce hit the brakes, skidding the Ranchero to a stop, reaching for his rifle at the same instant. He twisted the door handle, hit the door with his shoulder and tumbled out on to his feet.
With a snort and a toss of their ungainly heads the buffalo started to run.
Bruce picked the leader and aimed for the neck in front of the plunging black shoulder. Leaning forward against the recoil of the rifle he fired and heard the bullet strike with a meaty thump. The bull slowed, breaking his run. The stubby forelegs settled and he slid
forward on his nose, rolling as he fell, dust and legs kicking.
Turning smoothly without taking the butt from his shoulder, swinging with the run of the second bull, Bruce fired again, and again the thump of bullet striking.
The buffalo stumbled, giving in the legs, then he steadied and galloped on like a grotesque rocking horse, patches of baldness grey on his flanks, big-bellied, running heavily.
Bruce shifted the bead of the foresight on to his shoulder and fired twice in quick succession, aiming low for the heart, hitting each time, the bull so close he could see the bullet wounds appear on the dark skin.
The gallop broke into a trot, with head swinging low, mouth open, legs beginning to fold. Aiming carefully for the head Bruce fired again. The bull bellowed - a sad lonely sound - and collapsed into the grass.
The lorries had stopped in a line behind the Ford, and now from each of them swarmed black men. jabbering happily, racing each other, they streamed past Bruce to where the buffalo had fallen in the grass beside the road.
“Nice shooting, boss,” said Ruffy. “I’m going to have me a piece of tripe the size of a blanket.”
“Let’s make camp first.”
Bruce’s ears were still singing with gunfire. “Get the lorries into a ring.” IT see to it.” Bruce walked up to the nearest buffalo and watched for a while as a dozen men strained to roll it on to its back and begin butchering it. There were clusters of grape-blue ticks in the folds of skin between the legs and body.