A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 57

"So we're clear, then?" Riccardo asked.

"Looks like it," Sean agreed. "And if we push along we should be able to reach the beginning of the swamps either this evening or early tomorrow."

"What about Tukutela?" Riccardo asked.

"Well, we know from his track approximately where he would have reached the swamps. We'll just cast along the edge until we find where he went in, but we've lost a lot of ground on him. We'll have to go hard if we don't want him to get away from us. Do you feel up to it, Capo?"

"Never better," Riccardo said. "Lead on, man."

Before they set off again Sean went quickly over their packs.

They had consumed a great deal of the provisions, and he redistributed the remainder. By giving both Job and himself an extra ten pounds or so, he was able to reduce Riccardo's pack to twenty pounds and Claudia's to a mere ten, just her sleeping bag and personal items.

They both responded well to their reduced burdens, but again Sean marched beside Riccardo to encourage him and watch over him. Claudia was still going surprisingly well; he needn't have worried about her at all. Under her light pack she was stepping out lithely. He took pleasure in watching her long legs driving and her hard little buttocks oscillating in those tight blue jeans. They reminded him of the cheeks of a chipmunk chewing a nut.

They were on the valley floor now. There were open vleis and baobabs, those trees with bloated trunks, bark like a reptile's skin, and crooked bare branches from which a few late cream-of-tartar pods still hung. It was easy to see why the Zulus said the gods had accidentally planted the baobab upside down with its roots in the air.

Far ahead of them a slow standing cloud of evaporation marked the position of the swamps, and the alluvial soil was sandy and yielding underfoot.

"Just think of this, Capo." Sean was trying to divert him. "You are probably one of the last men who will ever hunt a great elephant in the classical tradition of the long chase. This is the way it should be done, man. Not grinding around in a Land-Rover and then leaning out of the window to kill him. This is how Selous and "Karamojo" Bell and Samaki" Salmon hunted their elephant."

He saw Riccardo's expression light up at the idea of being compared to those grand masters of the chase, men from another age when all elephants had been fair game. "Samaki" Sahnon had hunted and killed four thousand elephants in his lifetime. There had been a different morality in those days. Today a man with a bag of those dimensions would be accounted a villain and a criminal, but in his day "Samaki" Salmon had been respected and honored. He had even hunted with Edward, Prince of Wales, as his client.

Sean knew that Riccardo had an avid interest in the old-time elephant hunters, so he enlarged on their careers.

"If you want to do it the way "Karamojo" Bell did it, Capo, you have to walk like this. Bell wore out twenty-four pairs of boots a year and had to replace his porters and gun bearers every few weeks. They just couldn't keep up with him."

"That was the golden age." Riccardo extended his stride a little as he thought about it. "You and I should have lived then, Sean.

We were born after our time."

"A true hunter should kill a great elephant with his legs. He should walk him down. That's the respectful and proper way, and that is what you are doing now, Capo. Enjoy every step you take, for you are treading in old Bell's footprints."

Unfortunately the effects of Sean's encouragement were not enduring; within an hour Riccardo was flagging again and Sean noticed a new, disconcerting unsteadiness in his gait. He stumbled and would have fallen had not Sean caught his arm.

"We all need a five-minute break and a cup of tea." Sean led him to the shade.

When Job brought the tea mugs, Riccardo mumbled, "Have you got a couple more aspirins for me?"

"You all right, Capo?" he asked as he handed him the tablets.

"Damned headache again, that's all." But he would not meet Sean's eyes.

Sean looked across at Claudia, who was sitting close beside her father, but she also avoided his gaze. "Do you two know something I don't?" Sean demanded. "You both look guilty as hell." He didn't wait for an answer but stood up and went to join Job at the small fire where he was baking a fresh batch of maize cakes for their evening meal.

"The aspirin will make you feel better," Claudia told her father softly.

"Of course. Aspirin's a surefire cure for cancer once it reaches the brain," he agreed. Then, as he saw her agonized expression, he blurted out, "I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that. Self-pity isn't my usual style."

"Is it bad, Papa?"

"I can tolerate the headache, but I'm getting a little double vision that worries me," he admitted. "Damn it, I was feeling so well a few days ago. It's all happened so quickly."

"The exertion," she said, pitying him. "Perhaps that's what has aggravated it. We should turn back."

"No," he said with utter finality. "Don't even talk about that again."

She inclined her head in aquiescence.

"The swamps aren't far ahead. Perhaps we'll have a chance to rest," she said.

"I don't want to rest," he said. "I realize just how little time I have left. I don't want to waste a moment of it."