The Burning Shore (62 page)

We should be allowed to take part in the search, at least be told in what area of the territory you first saw her. Colonel, you did not trust me. Very good. Now I don’t trust you. As soon as the girl is in your hands, my usefulness to you is at an end. Lothar took the cigar butt from his mouth and inspected it ruefully. There was not another puff left in it; sadly he dropped it into the fire.

No, Colonel, when I find the girl we will make a formal exchange, amnesty for me, and your daughter for you. We accept, Mijnheer. Anna touched Garry’s elbow. We will deliver the sum of 1,000 pounds to you as soon as possible. When you have Centaine safely with you, you will send us the name of her white stallion. Only she can tell you that, so that way we will know you are not cheating us. We will have your pardon signed and ready. Lothar held out his hand across the fire. Colonel, is it agreed? Garry hesitated a moment, but Anna prodded him so heavily in the ribs that he grunted and reached to take the preferred hand. It’s agreed. One last favour, Mijnheer De La Rey.

I will prepare a package for Centaine. She will need good clothes, women’s things. I will deliver it to you with the money.

Will you give it to her when you find her? Anna asked. If I find her, Lothar nodded. When you find her, Anna told him firmly.

It took almost five weeks for Lothar to make his preparations and then trek back to that remote water-hole below the Cunene river where he had cut the spoor of his quarry.

There was still water in the pan, it was amazing how long those shallow unshaded basins retained water even in the sweltering desert conditions, and Lothar wondered, as he had before, if there wasn’t some subterranean seepage from the rivers in the north that found its way into them. In any event, the fact that there was still surface water boded well for their chances of being able to penetrate deeper eastwards, the direction which the long-dead spoor had taken.

While his men were refilling the water barrels from the water-hole, Lothar strolled around the periphery of the circular pan and there, incredibly, was the girl’s footprint still preserved in the clay, just as he had last seen it.

He knelt beside it, and with his finger traced out the shape of the small, graceful foot. The cast was baked by the sun as hard as a brick. Though all around it the mud had been trampled by buffalo and rhinoceros and elephant, this single print remained.

It’s an omen, he told himself, and then chuckled cynically . I’ve never believed in omens, why should I begin now? Yet his mood was buoyant and optimistic when he assembled his men around the camp fire that evening.

Apart from the camp servants and the wagoners, he had four mounted riflemen to help him conduct the actual search. All four of them had been with him since the days of the rebellion. They had fought and bled together, shared a looted bottle of Cape smoke, or a woollen blanket on a frosty desert night, or the last shreds of tobacco in the pouch, and he loved them a little, though he trusted them not at all.

There was Swart Hendrick or Black Henry, the tall, purplish-black Ovambo and Klein Boy, or Little Boy, his bastard son by a Hereto woman. There was Vark Janor Pig John, the wrinkled yellow Khoisan. Mixed blood of Nama and Bergdama and even of the true San ran in his veins, for his grandmother had been a Bushman slave, captured as a child on one of the great commando raids of the last century that the Boers had ridden against the San people. Lastly there was Vuil Lipped, the Bondelswart Hottentot with lips like fresh-cut liver and a vocabulary that gave him his name Dirty Lips.

My hunting pack, Lothar smiled, half-affectionately and half in revulsion as he looked them over. Truly the term outlaw had meaning when applied to them, they were beyond the rules of tribe or tradition. He studied their faces in the firelight. Like half-tamed wolves, they would turn and savage me at the first sign of weakness, he thought.

All right, you sons of the great hyena, listen to me. We are looking for San, the little yellow killers. Their eyes sparkled. We are looking for the white girl they had as their captive, and there are a hundred gold sovereigns for the man who cuts her spoor. This is how we will conduct the hunt, Lothar smoothed the sand between his feet and then traced out the plan for them with a twig.

The wagons will follow the line of the water-holes, here and here, and we will fan out, like this and like this.

Between us we can sweep fifty miles of country. So they rode into the east, as he had planned it, and within the first ten days they cut the spoor of a small party of wild San. Lothar called in his outriders and they followed up the trail of tiny childlike footprints.

They moved with extreme caution, carefully spying out the terrain ahead through Lothar’s telescope, and skirting each stand where an ambush could be laid. The idea of a poisoned bone arrowhead burying itself in his flesh made Lothar shudder every time he let himself think about it.

Bullets and bayonets were the tools of his trade, but the filthy poisons that these little pygmies brewed unmanned him, and he hated them more each hot tortuous nervewracking mile that they followed the spoor.

Reading the sign, Lothar learned that there were eight San in the party they were following: two adult males and two women, probably their wives. There were also four small children, two still at the breast and two just old enough to walk on their own.

The children will slow them down, Vark Jan gloated, they will not be able to stand the pace. I want one of them alive, Lothar warned them.

I want to know about the girl. Vark Jan’s slave grandmother had taught him enough of the San language to interrogate a captive and he grinned. Catch one of them and I will make him talk, be sure of that. The San were hunting and foraging and Lothar’s band gained on them rapidly. They were only an hour behind when the San, with their animal perceptions, sensed their presence.

Lothar found the spot where they had become aware, the spot where the trail seemed to vanish.

They are anti-tracking, he growled. Get down and search, he ordered.

They are carrying the children, Vark Jan squatted to examine the earth, the babies are too young to cover their own spoor. The women are carrying them, but they will tire quickly under the load. Though the trail seemed to end and the ground beyond seemed unmarked even to Lothar’s experienced eye, yet even the San had left sign that Vark Jan and Swart Hendrick could follow. The pace was slower, for they had to dismount to be closer to the earth, but still they followed, and within four hours Swart Hendrick nodded and grinned.

The women are tiring quickly. They are leaving better sign and moving slower. We are gaining on them now. Far ahead the San women, toiling under the weight of the children, looked back and wailed softly. The following horses showed across the plain, magnified by the mirage until they loomed like monsters, but even the sight of their pursuers could not drive the women on at a better speed.

So I must play the plover, said the oldest of the San hunters. He was re erring to t e way the plover feigns injury to lead a predator away from its nest. If I can make them follow me, I may be able to burn up their horses with thirst, he told his clan. Then when you reach the next water-hole and after you have drunk and filled the water-eggs- He proffered a sealed buckhom container to his wife and he did not have to say the fateful words.

Poisoning a water-hole was such a desperate deed that none of them wanted to talk of it. If you can kill the horses, you will be safe, the hunter told them. I will try to give you time to do it.

The old San hunter went quickly to each of the children and touched their eyelids and lips in blessing and farewell, and they stared at him solemnly. When he went to his woman who had borne him two sons, she gave a short keening wall. He admonished her with a glance which told her clearly, Show no fear in front of the little ones. Then as he shed his clothing and his leather satchel, the old San whispered to the younger man, his companion in a thousand hunts, Be a father to my sons. He handed his satchel to him, and stepped back. Now, go!

While he watched his clan trot away, the old man restrung his little bow and then carefully unwound the strips of leather that protected the heads of his arrows.

His family disappeared across the plain, and he turned his back upon them and went to meet his pursuers.

Lothar was fretting at the pace. Though he knew that the quarry was only an hour ahead, they had lost the spoor again and were held up while his flanks cast forward to pick it up. They were in open country, a flat plain that stretched away to an indeterminate meeting with the sky.

The plain was dotted with dark clumps of low scrub, and the mirage made them dance and squirm in the field of the telescope. It would be impossible to pick out a human figure amongst them at more than a mile distance.

The horses were almost knocked up, they had to have water soon. Within the next hour he would have to call off the pursuit and turn back to the water wagon. He lifted the telescope again, but a wild shout made him start and glance around. Swart Hendrick was pointing out to the left. The man on the extreme left flank, Vuil Lippe, the Bondelswart, was trying to control his mount.

It was rearing and walking on its hindlegs, dragging him with it in a sheet of flying dust.

Lothar had heard that a horse would react to the hot scent of a wild Bushman as though to that of a lion, but he had doubted it. Vuil Lippe was helpless, both hands on the reins, his rifle in the boot on the saddle, and as Lothar watched he was dragged over one of the salt bushes and sprawled in the dirt.

Then quite miraculously another human shape seemed to appear out of the very earth. The tiny naked pixie-like shape stood up only twenty paces beyond the dragging rider. Unlikely as it seemed, he must have been completely concealed behind a clump of scrub that should not have hidden a hare.

As Lothar watched with helpless horror, the little mannikin drew his bow and let fly. Lothar saw the flight of the arrow, like a dust mote in the sunlight, and then the naked Bushman whirled and trotted directly away from the line of horsemen.

Lothar’s men were all shouting and struggling to remount, but terror seemed to have infected the horses, and they pranced and circled. Lothar was the first up. He did not touch the stirrups, but with a hand on his horse’s withers, sprang into the saddle, turned its head and galloped down the line.

Already the running Bushman was disappearing amongst the low mirage-shrouded scrub, in a swinging trot that carried him away at an incredible rate. The man he had fired at had let his horse run free and had pulled himself to his feet. He stood with his legs braced apart, swaying slightly from side to side.

Are you all right? Lothar shouted as he rode up, and then he saw the arrow.

It dangled down Vuil Lippe’s chest, but the arrow-head was buried in his cheek, and he stared up at Lothar with a bewildered expression. Lothar jumped down and caught him by the shoulders.

I’m a dead man, Lippe said softly, his hands hanging by his sides, and Lothar seized the dangling arrow and tried to pull it free. The flesh of Lippe’s cheek was drawn out in a peak and he screamed and staggered. Gritting his teeth, Lothar heaved again, but this time the frail reed shaft snapped, leaving the bone arrowhead embedded in the man’s flesh, and he began to struggle.

Lothar seized a handful of his greasy black hair and twisted his head over to examine the wound. Keep still, damn you. A short length of bone protruded from the wound. It was caked with a black rubbery coating.

Euphorbia latex. Lothar had examined San weapons before, his father had once possessed an important collection of tribal artefacts. Now Lothar recognized the poison, the distilled latex from the roots of one of the rare desert euphorbia plants. Even as he studied it, he could see the poison spreading beneath the skin, discolouring it a deep lavender-purple, blooming like crystals of permanganate of potash dropped into water, following the course of the shallow blood vessels as it was absorbed.

How long? Lippe’s tortured eyes held Lothar’s, beseeching comfort.

The latex looked freshly distilled, none of its virulence dissipated, but Vuil Lippe was big and strong and healthy, his body would fight the toxin. It would take time, a few dreadful hours that would seem like eternity.

Can’t you cut it out? Lippe pleaded.

It’s gone deep, you’d bleed to death. Bum it out!

The pain would kill you. Lothar helped him down into a sitting position, just as Hendrick rode up with the bunch.

Two men stay to look after him, Lothar ordered. Hendrick, you and I will go after the little yellow swine. They pushed the tired horses, and within twenty minute s they saw the Bushman ahead of them. He seemed to dissolve and dance in the heat mirage, and Lothar felt a dark rage seize him, the kind of hatred a man can only feel towards something he fears in the deep places of his soul.

Go right Lothar waved Hendrick over. Head him off if he turns. And they spurred forward, riding down swiftly on the fleeing figure.

I’ll give you a death to wipe out the other, Lothar promised grimly, and he loosened his blanket roll from the pommel in front of him.

The sheepskin that he used as a mattress would shield him from the frail bone-tipped arrows. He wrapped it around his torso, and tucked the end over his mouth and nose. He pulled his wide-brimmed hat low, leaving only a slit for his eyes.

The running Bushman was two hundred yards ahead.

He was naked, except for the bow in one hand and the halo of tiny arrows in the leather thong around his head.

His body shone with a coating of sweat, and it was the colour of bright amber, almost translucent in the sunlight. He ran lightly as a gazelle, his small neat feet seemed to skim the earth.

There was the crack of a Mauser and a bullet kicked a fountain of pale dust just beyond the running Bushman like the spout of a sperm whale, and the Bushman jerked and then, unbelievably, increased the speed of his flight, drawing away from the two galloping horsemen. Lothar glanced across at Hendrick; he was riding with a loose rein, using both hands to reload the Mauser.