A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 60

Sean turned away in disgust. It took him a few seconds to get full control of himself, then he asked Matatu, you think we are close enough for Tukutela to have heard the shooting?"

"The swamps are close, and the sound carries over this flat earth as it does over water." Matatu shrugged. "Perhaps the elephant heard, who knows?"

Sean looked back the way they had come. From the ridge they could see out across the floodplain into the dusty distances.

" Job, what chance that the terrs heard? We'll find out the hard way, Sean. It depends how close behind us they are."

Sean shook himself, trying to rid himself of his anger the way a spaniel shakes off water, "We'll have to rest here. The mambo is sick.

Brew a billy of tea, and we'll decide what to do," he ordered.

He walked back to where Claudia was still holding her father.

She faced Sean defiantly, turning her body to shield Riccardo from him.

"Sorry I Pushed YOU around, Capo," Sean said mildly. "You gave me a hell of a fright."

"I don't understand," Riccardo mumbled. "I could have sworn it was him. I saw him so clearly." We will break for a cup of tea," Sean told him. "I think you've got a touch of the sun. It can turn a man's brain to jelly."

"He'll be fine in a few minutes," Claudia said confidently. Sean nodded coldly at her.

"Let's get him into the shade."

Riccardo leaned back against the hole of the baobab and closed his eyes. He looked pale and bewildered, and sweat droplets sparkled on his chin and upper lip. Claudia knelt beside him and dabbed them away with the corner of her scarf, but when she looked up at Sean he jerked his head in a Peremptory gesture and she stood up and followed him.

"This doesn't come as any surprise to you, does it?" he accused as soon as they were beyond earshot. She did not reply, and he went on, "Just what kind of daughter are you anyway? You knew he was sick and you let him come out on this jaunt."

Her lips were trembling and as he stared into them he saw that her honey-colored eyes were swimming. He had not expected tears from her. They took him by surprise. He felt his fury slipping away and he had to make an effort to bolster it.

"It's too late to start blubbering now, ducky. We've got to find a way to get him home. He's a sick man."

"He's not going home," she murmured, so low he barely caught All the words. Her tears were hanging on thick dark lashes and he stared at her in silence. She swallowed hard and then said, "He's not a sick man, Sean. He's dying. Cancer. It was diagnosed by a specialist before we left home. He predicted that it could attack the brain like this."

Sean's fury crumpled. "No," he said. "Not Capo."

"Why do you think I agreed to let him come and insisted on coming with him? I knew that this was his last hunt-and I wanted to be with him."

They were silent, staring at each other, then she said, "You care.

I can see you truly care for him. I didn't expect that."

"He's my friend," Sean said, puzzled himself by the depth of his own sadness.

"I didn't think you were capable of gentleness," she went on softly. "I may have misjudged you."

"Perhaps we misjudged each other," he said.

She nodded. "Perhaps we did," she said. "But thank you anyway. Thank you for caring about my father."

She began to turn away to go back to Riccardo, but Sean stopped her. "We still haven't settled anything," he said. "We haven't decided what we are going to do."

"We go on, of course," she answered. "Right to the bitter end.

That's what I promised him."

"You've got guts," he told her softly.

"If I have, then I got them from him," she replied, and went to her father.

The mug of tea and a half-dozen aspirin tablets revived Riccardo. He was acting and talking completely rationally again, and none of them made any further reference to his wild behavior, although quite naturally it had thrown a pall over all of them.

"We must move on, Capo," Sean told him. "Tukutela is walking away from us every minute we sit here."

They followed the ridge of high ground, and now the odor of the swamps was stronger, brought to them by the fitful, inconstant wind.

"That's one of the many reasons elephants like the swamps," Sean explained to Riccardo. "The wind is always shifting, turning and switching. It makes it much more difficult to get close to them."

There was a gap in the trees ahead. Sean stopped and they gazed out through it. "There they are," he said. "The Zambezi swamplands.

The ridge on which they stood was like the back of a sea serpent, swimming across the open flood plains Now, just ahead of them, it ducked below the surface and disappeared at the point where the open plains gave way to endless expanses of papyrus and reeds.

Sean raised his binoculars and surveyed the swamps ahead. The reed beds seemed limitless, but he had flown over them and he knew they were interspersed with shallow lagoons of open water and narrow winding channels. Farther out, almost on the horizon, he could see the loom of small islets, dark patches of almost impenetrable bush-crowned islands, and he could just make out the curved palm stems with their high fluffy heads.