strength of his hatred woke him. He lay flat upon his back and stared up
at the sky. It was all dark with clouds; only occasionally they opened
and let the stars shine briefly through.
"It must not rain. It must not rain." He repeated it like a prayer,
staring up at the dark sky, concentrating upon it as though by the force
of his mind he could control the elements.
There were lions hunting in the forest. He heard the male roaring,
moving up from the south, and once his two lionesses answered him. They
killed a little before dawn and Bruce lay on the hard earth and listened
to their jubilation over the kill. Then there was silence as they began
to feed.
That I might have success as well, he thought. I do not often ask for
favours, Lord, but grant me this one. I ask it not only for myself but
for Shermaine and the others.
In his mind he saw again the two children lying where Hendry had shot
them. The smear of mingled blood and chocolate across the boy's cheek.
He deserves to die, prayed Bruce, so please don't let it rain.
As long as the night had been, that quickly came the dawn. A grey dawn,
gloomy with low cloud.
"Will it go?" Bruce asked for the twentieth time, and this time
Jacque looked up from where he knelt beside the spoor.
"We can try now." They moved off slowly with Jacque leading, doubled
over to peer shortsightedly at the earth and Bruce close behind him,
bedevilled by his impatience and anxiety, lifting his head every dozen
paces to the dirty grey roof of cloud.
The light strengthened and the circle of their vision opened from
six feet to as many yards, to a hundred, so they could make out the tops
of the ivory palms, shaggy against the grey cloud.
Jacque broke into a trot and ahead of them was the end of the clearing
and the beginning of the forest. Two hundred yards beyond rose the
massive pile of the kopie, in the early light looking more than ever
like a castle, turreted and sheer. There was something formidable in its
outline. It seemed to brood above them and Bruce looked away from it
uneasily.
Cold and with enough weight behind it to sting, the first raindrop
splashed against Bruce's cheek.
"Oh, no!" he protested, and stopped. Jacque straightened up from the
spoor and he too looked at the sky.
"It is finished. In five minutes there will be nothing to follow."
Another drop hit Bruce's upturned face and he blinked back the tears of
anger and frustration that pricked the rims of his eyelids.
Faster now, tapping on his helmet, plopping on to his shoulders and
face, the rain fell.
Quickly," cried Bruce. "Follow as long as you can." Jacque opened his
mouth to speak, but before a word came out he was flung-backwards,
punched over as though by an invisible fist, his helmet flying from his
head as he fell and his rifle clattering on the earth.
Simultaneously Bruce felt the bullet pass him, disrupting the air, so
the wind of it flattened his shirt against his chest, cracking viciously
in his ears, leaving him dazedly looking down at Sergeant
Jacque's body.
It lay with arms thrown wide, the jaw and the side of the head below the
ear torn away; white bone and blood bubbling over it. The trunk twitched
convulsively and the hands fluttered like trapped birds.
Then flat-sounding through the rain he heard the report of the rifle.
The kopje, screamed Bruce's brain, he's lying in the kopie!
And Bruce moved, twisting sideways, starting to run.
Wally Hendry lay on his stomach on the flat top of the turret. His body
was stiff and chilled from the cold of the night and the rock was harsh
under him, but the discomfort hardly penetrated the fringe of his mind.
He had built a low parapet with loose flakes of granite, and he had
screened the front of it with the thick bushy stems of broom bush.
His rifle was propped on the parapet in front of him and at his elbow
were the spare ammunition clips.
He had lain in this ambush for a long time now - since early the
preceding afternoon. Now it was dawn and the darkness was drawing back;
in a few minutes he would be able to see the whole of the clearing below
him.
I coulda been across the river already, he thought, coulda been fifty
miles away. He did not attempt to analyse the impulse that had made him
lie here unmoving for almost twenty hours.
Man, I knew old Curry would have to come. I knew he would only bring one
nigger tracker with him. These educated Johnnies got their own rules -
man to man stuff, and he chuckled as he remembered the two minute
figures that he had seen come out of the forest in the fading light of
the previous evening.
The bastard spent the night down there in the clearing. Saw him light a
match and have hisself a smoke in the night - well, I hope he enjoyed
it, his last.
Wally peered anxiously out into the gradually gathering dawn.
They'll be moving now, coming up the clearing. Must get them before they
reach the trees again. Below him the clearing showed as a paleness, a
leprous blotch, on the dark forest.
The bastard! Without preliminaries Hendry's hatred returned to him. This
time he don't get to make no fancy speeches - This time he don't get no
chance to be hoity-toity.
The light was stronger now. He could see the clumps of ivory palms
against the pale brown grass of the clearing.
"Ha!" Hendry exclaimed.
There they were, like two little ants, dark specks moving up the middle
of the clearing. The tip of Hendry's tongue slipped out between his lips
and he flattened down behind his rifle.
Man, I've waited for this. Six months now I've thought about this, and
when it's finished I'll go down and take his ears. He slipped the safety
catch; it made a satisfying mechanical click.
Nigger's leading, that's Curry behind him. Have to wait they turn, don't
want the nigger to get it first. Curry first, then the nigger.
He picked them up in his sights, breathing quicker now, the thrill of it
so intense that he had to swallow and it caught in his throat like dry
bread.
A raindrop hit the back of his neck. It startled him. He looked up
quickly at the sky and saw it coming.
"Goddam it," he groaned, and looked back at the clearing.
Curry and nigger were standing together, a single dark blob in the
half-light. There was no chance of separating them.
The rain fell faster, and suddenly Hendry was overwhelmed by the old
familiar feeling of inferiority; of knowing that everything, even the
elements, conspired against him; the knowledge that he could never win,
not even this once.
They, God and the rest of the world.
The ones who had given him a drunk for a father.
A squalid cottage for a home and a mother with cancer of the throat.
The ones who had sent him to reform school, had fired him from two dozen
jobs, had pushed him, laughed at him, gaoled him twice - They, all of
them (and Bruce Curry who was their figurehead), they were going
to win again. Not even this once, not even ever.
"Goddarn it," he cursed in hopeless, wordless anger against them all.