vehicles and a tall mobile drilling rig in the line. The rest of the
yard was filled with prospecting equipment and stores. There were stacks
of drilling rods and steel core boxes, wooden crates of spares, and
several hundred forty-four-gallon drums of diesel and oil and drilling
mud. The drums and the stores were stacked with a neatness and sense of
good order that was startling in this wild and rocky landscape. just
inside the gate stood a small village of a dozen buildings made of
corrugated sheet sections, of the Quonset type. They too were set out in
a street of military precision.
"A big, well-organized outfit," Nicholas commented.
"Let's go down and see who is in charge."
There were two armed guards on the gate, dressed in the camouflage
uniform of the Ethiopian army. They were clearly surprised by the
arrival at the gate of the strange Land Cruiser, and when Nicholas
sounded his horn one of them came forward suspiciously with his AK,47
rifle at the ready.
"I want to speak to the manager here," Nicholas told him in Arabic, with
enough haughty authority to make the entry uncertain and uneasy.
The soldier grunted, went back and consulted his colleague, then lifted
the handset of the two-way radio and spoke earnestly into the
mouthpiece. There was a five minute delay after he finished speaking,
and then the door of the nearest Quonset building opened and a white man
came out.
He was dressed in khaki coveralls and a soft bush cap.
His eyes, covered by mirrored sunglasses, were set in a deeply tanned,
leathery face. His physique was short and chunky, and his sleeves were
rolled up over hairy, work thickened arms. After speaking a few words to
the guards at the gate he came out to the Toyota
"Yeah? What's going down here?" he demanded in Texan drawl, speaking
around the stub of an unlit cigar.
"The name is Quenton-Harper." Nicholas dismounted from the truck to
greet him, and held out his hand.
"Nicholas Quenton-Harper. How do you do?"
The American hesitated, and then took the hand as though he had been
offered an electric eel to squeeze.
"Helm," he said. "Jake Helm, from Abilene, Texas. I am the foreman
here." His hand was that of an artisan, with calloused palms and lumpy
scar tissue over the knuckles, and half moons of black grease under the
fingernails.
"Terribly sorry to worry you. I am having some trouble with my truck. I
wondered if you had a mechanic who could have a look at it for
me."Nicholas smiled winningly, but received no encouragement from the
man.
"Not company policy." He shook his head.
"I am prepared to pay for any-'
"Listen, buddy, I said no." Jake removed the cigar from his mouth and
examined it minutely.
"Your company - Pegasus. Can you tell me where your head office is
situated? Who is your managing director?"
"I am a busy man. You are wasting my time." Helm ,,returned the cigar to
his mouth and began to turn away.
"I will be hunting in this area over the next few weeks.
I would not like to endanger any of your employees with a stray shot.
Can you give me some idea of where you will be working?"
outfit here, mister. I don't
"I am running a prospecting give out news flashes on my movements. Beat
id'
He turned and walked to the gate and gave brusque orders to the guards
before marching back to his office building.
"Satellite disc on the roof," Nicholas remarked. "I wonder who our lad
Jake is speaking to at this very moment."
"Somebody in Texas?" Royan hazarded.
"Doesn't follow, necessarily, Nicholas demurred. Tega, is probably a
multinational. Just because Jake is one, doesn't mean his boss is Texan
also. Not a very instructive conversation, I am afraid." He started the
engine and Uturned the Toyota. "But if someone at Pegasus is the ugly
mixed up in this, he will recognize my name. We have given them notice
of our arrival. Let's see what we have flushed out of the bushes."
When they got back to the Dandera river falls, they found that Boris's
truck had arrived, the tents had been erected, and the chef had brewed
tea for them. Boris was less welcoming than his chef, and maintained a
sullen silence while Nicholas tried to placate him for commandeering his
truck.
It was only after his first vodka of the evening that he mellowed
sufficiently to speak again.
"The mules were supposed to be waiting for us here.
Time means nothing to these people. We cannot start down into the gorge
until they arrive."
"Well, at least while we are waiting for them I will have a chance to
sight in my rifle,'Nicholas remarked with resignation. "In Africa it
never pays to be in a hurry. Too wearing on the nerves."
After a leisurely breakfast the next morning, when there was still no
sign of the mules, Nicholas fetched his rifle case.
When Nicholas lifted the weapon out of its nest of green baize, Boris
took it from him and examined it minutely.
"An old rifle?"
"Made in 1926,'Nicholas nodded. "My grandfather had it made for
himself."
"They knew how to make them in those days. Not like the mass-produced
crap they turn out today." Boris pursed his lips critically. "Short
Mauser Oberndorf double square, bridge action, beautiful! But it has
been rebarrelled, no?
The original barrel was shot out. I had it replaced with a Shilen match
barrel. It will shoot the wings off a mosquito at a hundred paces."
"Calibre 7 57, is it?" Boris asked.
'275 Rigby, as a matter of fact," Nicholas corrected him, but Boris
snorted.
"It is exactly the same cartridge - just your English bloodiness must
call it something else." He grinned. "It wilt push a 150 grain bullet
out there at 2800 feet per second.
It is a good rifle, one of the best."
"You will never know, my dear fellow, how much your approval means to
me,'Nicholas murmured in English, and Boris chuckled as he handed the
rifle back to him.
"English jokes! I love your English jokes."
When Nicholas left camp carrying the little rifle in its slip case,
Royan followed him down to the river and helped him fill two small
canvas bags with white river sand. He laid them on top of a convenient
rock and they formed a firm but malleable rest for the rifle as he
settled it over them.
Using the open hillside as a safe back'stop, he "stepped out two hundred
yards and at that range set up a cardboard carton on which he had taped
a Bisley'type target. He came back to where Royan waited and then
settled down behind the rock on which the weapon lay.
Royan was unprepared for the report of the first shot from the dainty,
almost feminine-looking rifle. She jumped involuntarily, and her ears
sang.
"What a horrible, vicious thing!" she exclaimed. "How can you bring
yourself to kill lovely animals with a highpowered gun like that?" she
demanded.
"Rifle," he corrected her, as he noted the strike of the shot through
his binoculars. "Would it make you feel better if I used a low-powered
rifle, or beat them to death with a stick?"
The shot had struck three inches right and two inches low. As he
adjusted the telescopic sight he attempted to explain. "An ethical
hunter does everything in his power to kill as swiftly and as cleanly as
is possible, and that means stalking in as close as he is able to do,
using a weapon of adequate power and sighting it the best way he knows
how."
His next shot struck exactly on line but only an inch above the
bull's-eye. He wanted it to shoot three inches high at that range. He
worked on the sight again.