Sunbird (24 page)

^{'The arrow-bird flew from my hand}

^{Swift as a bee, or a stooping hawk.'}

^{The branches of the trees around us were heavy with festoons of raw meat, hung out to dry, and beyond the firelight the jackal and hyena howled their frustrations to the star-bright heavens, as they snuffed the tantalizing odours.}

^{The blood when it flowed was bright as a flower}

^{And sweet as wild honey was the flesh of his body,'}

^{The dance ended at last, and the women giggled and trilled as they flocked to the fire to cram more meat into their little round bellies. Bushmen and women are awed by physical size, and to them Louren was a huge golden giant. They discussed him in a frank and intimate manner, starting at his golden head and working downwards until I laughed out aloud.}

^{'What's so funny?' Louren demanded, and I told him.}

^{'My God, they didn't say that!' Louren was shocked, staring at the women in horror, and they covered their mouths with their hands as they giggled.}

^{I sat between Xhai and Louren, one of them smoking and the other eating a Romeo and Juliette cigar, and I translated for them. They spoke of the animals and the birds for they had a common love of the chase.}

^{'My grandfather told me that when he was a young man the buffalo in this land below the great river were as locusts, black upon the earth - but then the red sickness came.'}

^{'Rinderpest,' I explained to Louren.}

^{'And they died so that they fell one upon the other, so thick that the vultures could not fly with the load of their bellies, and their bones lay in the sun like the fields of white Namaqua daisies in the spring time'}

^{They talked on after the women and children had curled up and fallen asleep like little yellow puppies in the dust. They spoke of noble animals and great hunts, and they became friends beside the fire so that at last Xhai told me shyly, 'I should like to share the hunt with such a one. I could show him an elephant, like those that my grandfather knew, with teeth as thick as my waist and as long as the shaft of a throwing spear.'}

^{And there goes any further pretence of looking for ruins and caravan routes, I thought, as I watched Louren's face light up at the suggestion.}

^{'But,' I added, 'he says you must leave the Land-Rover here. They heard us coming for half an hour before we arrived today and he says this elephant is old and cunning. Which means we will have to get some sleep now. We've got a hell of a day ahead of us tomorrow.'}

^{By the time the sun came up we had been on the march for three hours, dew had soaked our trousers to the knees but we had walked the night's chill out of our joints and were extending ourselves, stepping out with full stride to keep the two tiny brown figures in view. Xhai and Ghal were into that loose-limbed trot that would eat away the miles all day without flagging, their little brown forms danced ahead of us through the thickening thorns and Jessie bush.}

^{'How you doing, Ben?'}

^{I grunted and changed the shotgun to my other shoulder.}

^{'The little bastards can certainly foot it.'}

^{'Brother, you have only just started,' I warned him. They led us into bad, broken country where harsh black ridges of ironstone thrust from the earth and the thorn was grey and spiny and matted, where deep ravines rent the walls of steep tableland outcrops and the heat was a fierce dazzling thing that sucked the moisture from our bodies and dried it in rings of white salt on our shirts. It was the type of country that a canny old elephant bull, pursued by men all his life, might choose as a retreat.}

^{We rested for half an hour at noon, seeking shade in the lee of a boulder whose black surface was scalding to the touch and drinking a few mouthfuls of lukewarm water, then we went on and almost immediately cut the spoor.}

^{'There and there.' With the point of a poison arrow, Xhai traced the outline of a padmark on the iron-hard earth. 'Do you not see it?' he asked with exasperation, and though we circled the area, tilting our heads learnedly, neither of us could make it out.}

^{'If that's an elephant spoor,' muttered Louren, 'I'm a Chinese tinker.' But Xhai set off confidently on a new bearing through the thorns, and we climbed one of the rocky tablelands, following a trail that Louren and I could not even see. Near the crest of the hill, lay a pile of elephant dung, still moist despite the furnace-dry heat, and a cloud of yellow and orange butterflies hovered over it attracted by the wetness. The dung looked like the contents of a coir mattress.}

^{'Velly solly,' I whispered to Louren, 'please fixee pottee -chop chop.'}

^{'The man's a bloody magician.' Louren shook his head in amazement, as he unslung the heavy rifle from his shoulder and tucked it under his arm.}

^{We went on again, but slowly now, pausing frequently while Xhai and Ghal searched the impenetrable thickets of thorn ahead of us. It was a gut-aching business in this close bush, each step planned and made only at a signal from Xhai's dainty pink-palmed hand, moving forward when the hand beckoned and freezing when it froze.}

^{'Come,' said the hand and we went on again, then abruptly--}

^{'Stop!' A quick cut-out sign, with the hand like a blade, then balling into a fist and pointing ahead, bad luck to point with a finger at the quarry.}

^{We stood still as death, sweat-shiny faces staring ahead into the wall of thorn - and then suddenly the elephant loomed ghostly grey amongst the grey thorn, moving from us in a leisurely sway-backed shamble, grey skin wrinkled and old, hanging in bags and pouches at the belly and in the crotch of his back legs, the tail bare of tuft hair, the knuckles of the spine showing clearly through the ridged skin on his back. Old elephant. Big elephant.}

^{'Stay here!' Xhai's hand pointed at Ghal and me, and I nodded in acknowledgement.}

^{'Come with me!' Xhai's forefinger crooked at Louren, and they went on together, circling out on the elephant's flank through the thorn. The bushman doll-like beside Louren's bulk, leading him around for a clean shot at the head or shoulder.}

^{The elephant paused, and began feeding from one of the thickets, delicately plucking the pale green shoots with the tip of his trunk, stuffing them into his mouth, completely unaware of danger - while out on his flank Louren reached a firing stance and braced himself, legs spread, leaning forward to meet the recoil of the heavy rifle.}

^{The shot was stunningly loud, shocking in the heat-drugged silence. I heard the bullet slap into flesh, and the elephant spun away from the impact, turning to face Louren, with its long yellow ivories lifted high, the huge grey ears cocked back, and it squealed as it saw the man. It squealed in anger, and a long smouldering hatred now burst into flame.}

^{It crabbed sideways as it began the charge, blanketing Louren's line of fire with a thicket of thorns. I saw Louren turn and run out to the side, trying to open his front for a clear shot. His foot hit an ant-bear hole and he fell in full run, going down heavily, the rifle flying from his hand, lying stunned full in the path of the charge.}

^{'Louren!' I screamed, and then I was running also, armed with only a shotgun, racing to head the charge of a wounded bull elephant.}

^{'Here!' I screamed at it as I ran. 'Here!' Trying to lead it off him, in the corner of my vision I saw Louren on hands and knees crawling painfully towards his rifle.}

^{'Yah! Yay!' I screamed with all the strength of my lungs, and the bull checked his charge, his head swinging towards me, piggy eyes seeking me, trunk questing for my scent.}

^{I threw up the shotgun, and at thirty yards' range I aimed for his little eyes, hoping to blind him.}

^{Blam! Blam! I fired left and right into his face, and he came at me. I felt a vast sense of relief as his charge exploded towards me. I had taken him off Louren - that was all that counted. With clumsy fingers I groped for fresh cartridges, knowing that before I could reload he would be upon me.}

^{'Run, Ben, run!' Louren's voice, high above the ground-thudding charge of the bull. But I found my legs would not function, and I stood in the path of the charge, groping stupidly for cartridges which were useless as thrown peppercorns against this grey mountain of flesh.}

^{The blast of Louren's rifle beat against my numbed brain, once - twice, it crashed out and like an avalanche the grey mountain fell towards me, dead already, the brain shattered like an overripe fruit at the passage of the heavy bullet.}

^{My feet were rooted to the earth, I could not move, could not dodge, and the outflung trunk hit me with savage force. I felt myself thrown through air, and then the cruel impact of earth and my brain burst into bright colours and stabbing lights as I went out.}

^{'You silly bastard! Oh, you silly brave little bastard.' I heard Louren's voice speaking to me down a long dark tunnel, and the sound of it echoed strangely in my head. Cool wetness splashed over my face, blessed wetness on my lips and I opened my eyes. Louren was sitting on the ground, my head was cradled in his lap and he was splashing water from the bottle into my face.}

^{'Who are you calling a bastard?' I croaked up at him, and the expression of relief that flooded over his worried features was one of the most satisfying things I have ever seen.}

^{I was stiff and sore, bruised of shoulder and across the small of my back, and there was a lump above my temple that was too painful to touch.}

^{'Can you walk?' Louren fussed over me.}

^{'I can try.' It wasn't too painful, and I even found the inclination to photograph the huge dead beast as it knelt in a prayerful attitude with the head supported on the curved yellow tusks. Louren and the bushman sat on its head.}

^{'We will camp tonight at the Water-In-The-Rocks,' Xhai told me, 'and tomorrow we will return and take the teeth.'}

^{'How far is it?' I asked dubiously.}

^{'Close!' Xhai assured me. 'Very close.' And I scowled at him uncertainly. I had heard him use the same words to describe a march of fifty miles.}

^{'It had bloody well better be,' I said in English, and to my surprise it was much closer than I had expected - and a lot of other things I had not expected either.}

^{We crossed one ridge with me hobbling along on Louren's arm and then came out on a wide granite sheet, a great curved dome of rock almost four acres in extent. I took one look at it, at the lines of shallow rounded holes that dimpled the entire surface, and I let out a whoop of joy. Suddenly I no longer needed Louren's support, and both of us ran down onto the stone floor, chortling with glee, as we examined the regular lines of worn depressions.}

^{'It must have been a big one, Ben,' Louren exulted, he made a guess at the number of holes. 'A thousand?'}

^{'More!' I said. 'More like two thousand.'}

^{I paused then, imagining the long regular lines of naked slaves kneeling on the rock floor, each beside one of the smooth depressions, each of them linked to his neighbours by the iron slave chains, each of them with a heavy iron pestle in his hands, pounding away at the gold-bearing ore in the stone mortar between his knees.}

^{I saw in my imagination the slave masters walking along the lines, the leather whips in their hands as they checked that the rock was crushed to a fine powder. I saw the endless columns of slaves with ore baskets balanced on their heads coming up from the workings. All this had happened here nearly 2,000 years before.}

^{'I wonder where the mine is.' Louren was paralleling my thoughts.}

^{'And the water?' I added. 'They'd need water to wash the gold out.'}