A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur. Страница 29

"Goodnight," she said, and she released his hand and turned away.

He watched her walk back toward her own tent. The moon was two days from full, and her white dress was ethereal and misty.

Beneath it her body was slim and her limbs long and elegant.

In that moment he admired her spirit and liked her more than he had done in all the time he had known her.

Sean slept as lightly as a hunter or a soldier. The natural sounds of the bush did not disturb him, not even the shrieks of the hyena pack around the fortified trophy shed, where the lion skins were curing. But at the light scratch on the canvas of his tent, he was instantly awake and reaching for his flashlight and the.577 propped at the head of his bed. "Who is it?" he asked quietly.

"It's me, Job."" Sean glanced at his Rolex wristwatch, the luminous hands pointed to three o'clock. "Come in. What is it?"

"One of the trackers we left on the river has come into camp. He has run twenty miles."

Sean felt the back of his neck prickle, and he swung both legs out of bed. "Yes?" he said eagerly.

"At sunset this evening Tukutela crossed the river out of the national park."

"Is it certain?"

"It is certain. They saw him close by. It is Tukutela, the Angry One, and he has no collar around his neck."

"Where is Matatu?" As Sean stood up and reached for his pants, the little Ndorobo piped at the entrance, "I am ready, Bwana. "

"Good.

We leave in twenty minutes. Marching packs and water bottles. We'll take Pumula in Shadrach's place. I want to be on Tukutela's spoor before it's light enough to see it."

Bare-chested, Sean strode across to Riccardo's tent, hearing his even snores as he paused at the flap.

"Capo!" The snores cut off abruptly. "Are you awake? I've got an elephant for you. Get your arse out of the sack. Tukutela has crossed. We leave in twenty minutes."

"Hot damni" He could hear Riccardo was still half asleep. He stumbled about in the dark tent. "Where the hell are my pants?

Hey, Sean, wake Claudia, will you?"

There was a lantern burning in Claudia's tent. She must have heard the excitement.

"Are you awake?" Sean asked at the flap. She opened it and stood with the lantern light behind her. Her nightdress reached almost to her ankles, there was lace at her throat and cuffs, but the cloth was so fine that the light struck through it, and her naked body was in silhouette.

"I heard you telling Papa," she said. "I'll be ready. Will we be walking? Should I wear my hiking boots or moccasins?"

He was certain that she was putting on this show deliberately, and he felt a prudish outrage that was totally alien to his nature.

"Today you'll walk further and faster than you ever have in your life before," he told her harshly. Then he thought, "She's showing herself off like a tramp," ignoring the fact that his taste usually ran strongly toward tramps. "Just when I was starting to respect her."

A reprimand rose to his lips, but he bit it off and tried not to look at the flowing shape of her hips, graceful as the lines of a celadon porcelain vase thrown by a master craftsman of the Tang dynasty.

He wanted to turn away to show his indifference and his contradictory disapproval, but he was still standing there when she let the tent flap drop.

"Truce be damned," he muttered furiously as he strode back to his tent. "She's still in the ring throwing punches." But his anger puzzled him. With any other woman, even one half as lovely, he would have been delighted by the exhibition.

She's got more class than that," he explained to himself. Then he remembered how much he despised and disliked her. "This bimbo is getting you all up a gum tree," he warned himself. Suddenly he burst out laughing. The dreadful gloom of Shadrach's amputation and the imminent loss of his license were dispelled. He was going to hunt one of Africa's legendary beasts, and in some unaccountable manner the presence of this woman added spice to his mood of high anticipation.

There was frost on the grass in the low vleis they crossed. It sparkled in the headlights, and the game they saw was lethargic with the cold, barely moving out of the road to let the Toyota pass in the night. They reached the ford on the Chiwewe River an hour before dawn.

The waters were as black and shining as anthracite in the last beams of the moon, and the tall trees along either bank were a silvered host, like two opposing armies of mythical giants.

Sean parked the Toyota well off the track and left one of the skinners to guard it. They fell naturally into established hunting formation, clients in the center. Purnula took up Shadrach's old position at the end. A muscular taciturn man with a thick woolly bush of a black beard, he carried Riccardo's Rigby on its sling.

All the men, including Riccardo, were carrying field packs and even Claudia carried her own water bottles. Job had Riccardo's second rifle, the Weatherby, over his shoulder, and as always Sean lugged the577 Nitro Express. Once the hunt had begun he never let it out of his hands. They moved out, heading upstream, and within a mile they had warmed up and were pushing harder. Sean noticed that Claudia moved well on those long legs of hers and was keeping up without difficulty. She gave him a saucy grin as she noticed his appraisal.

The dawn light was hardening when the tracker who had come in with the news of Tukutela's crossing exclaimed and pointed ahead. It was light enough to make out a fresh blaze on the trunk of a pod mahogany tree guarding a low place on the riverbank.