The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 67

"Five days," Craig corrected her. "You come in again on Tuesday morning."

"Yes," she nodded. "I will take off in the dark, and be over Tuti airfield at sunrise that's at 05.22 hours."

"But you are not to land until I signal that we have secured the strip. Now, for the love of G.o.d, don't run yourself short of fuel to get back to the pan. If we don't show up, don't stay on hoping."

"I will have three hours" safe endurance over Tuti. That means you will have until 08-30 hours to get there."

"If we don't make it by then, we aren't going to make it.

It's time for you to go now, my love." I know, Sally-Anne said, and made no move.

"I have to go," he said.

"I don't know how I'm going to live through the next few days, sitting out there in the desert, not knowing a thing, just living with my fears and imagination." He took her in his arms and found she was trembling.

"I'm so very afraid for you," she whispered against his throat.

4see you Tuesday morning, "he told her. "Without fail."

"Without faffl" she agreed, and then her voice quavered.

"Come back to me, Craig. I don't want to live without you.

Promise me you'll come back."

"I promise." He kissed her.

"There now, I feel much better." She gave him that cheeky grin of hers, but it was all soft around the edges.

She climbed up into the c.o.c.kpit and started the engine.

"I love you." Her lipiformed the words that the engine drowned, and she svAng the Cessna round with a burst of throttle and did not look back.

m the front t was only sixty miles on the map and fro seat of an aircraft it had not looked like hard going.

On the ground it was different.

They were crossing the grain of the land; the watershed dropped away from their right to their left, towards the escarpment of the Zambezi valley. They were forced to ack of hills and the intervening valleys follow the switchb so they were never on level ground.

The guerrillas had hidden their own women in a sate place, and only reluctantly consented to Sarah accompanying the raiding pare, but she carried a full load and kept up with the hard pace that Comrade Lookout set for them.

The ironstone hills soaked up the heat of the sun and at them, as they toiled up the steep bounced it back hillsides and dropped again into the next valley. The descents were as taxing as the climbs, the heavy load-, the backs of their legs jarring their spines and straining and their Achilles tendons. The old elephant trails that pebbles they were following were littered with round rolled under foot like hall washed out by the rains that bearings and made each pace fraught with danger.

One of the guerrillas fell, and his ankle swelled up so that they could not get his boot back on his foot. The m and left him to find his distributed his load amongst the own way back to where they had left the women.

i bees plagued them dit ring the day, The tiny mo pan clouding around their mouths and nostrils and eyes in their persistent search for moisture and in the nights the mosquitoes from the stagnant pools in the valleys took over from them. At one stage of the trek they pa.s.sed fly-belt, and the silent, light through the edge of the -ie torment, settling so softh footed tsetse-flies joined ri that the, victim was unaware until a red-hot needle stabbeJ

7 into the soft flesh at the back of the, ear, or under the armpit.

Always there was danger of attack. Every few miles either the scouts out ahead or the rear-guard dragging the trail behind them would signal an alert, and they would be forced to dive into cover and wait with finger on trigger until the all-clear signal was pa.s.sed down the line.

it was slow and gruelling and nerve-racking two full days" marching from freezing dawn through burning noon into darkness again, to reach Sarah's father's village.

Vusamanzi was his name and he was a senior magician, soothsayer and rainmaker of the Matabele tribe. Likeall his kind, he lived in isolation, with only his wives and immediate family around him. However great their respect for them, ordinary mortals avoided the pract.i.tioners of the dark arts; they came to them only for divination or treatment, paid the goat or beast that was the fee, and hurried thankfully away again.

Vusamanzi's village was some miles north of Tuti Mission Station. It was a prosperous little community on a hilltop, with many wives and goats and chickens and fields of maize in the valley.

The guerrillas lay up" in the forest below the kopje, and they sent Sarah in to make certain all was safe and to warn the villagers of their presence. Sarah returned within an hour, and Craig and Comrade Lookout went back to the village with her.

Vusamanzi had earnqa his name, "Raise the Waters', from his reputed ah9ity to control the Zambezi and its tributaries. As a much younger man he had sent a great flood to wash away the village of a lesser chief who had cheated him of his fees, and since then a number of others who had displeased him had drowned mysteriously at fords or bathing holes. It was said that at Vusamanzi's behest the surface of a quiet pool would leap up suddenly in a hissing wave as the marked victim approached to drink or bathe or cross, and he would be sucked in. No living man had actually witnessed this terrible phenomenon but never an did not have much ffieless, Vusamanzi, the magici trouble with bad debts from his patients and clients.

Vusamanzi's hair was a cap of pure white and he wore a small beard, also white dressed out to a spade shape in the fashion of the Zulus. Sarah must have been a child of his old age, but she had inherited her fine looks from him, for he was handsome and dignified. He had put aside his only a simple loin-cloth and his body was regalia.

He vote straight and lean, and his voice, when he greeted Craig IR courteously, was deep and steady.

Clearly Sarah revered him, for she took the beer-pot from one of his junior wives and knelt to offer it to him herself. In her turn, Sarah obviously had a special place in the old man's affections, for he smiled at her fondly, and when she sat at his feet, he fondled her head casually as he listened attentively to what Craig had to tell him. Then he sent her to help his wives to prepare food and beer and take it down to the guerrillas hidden in the valley before he turned back to Craig.

4the man you call Tungat a Zebiwe, the Seeker after justice, was born Samson k.u.malo. He is in direct line of succession from Mzilikazi, the first king and father of our people. He is the one upon whom the prophecies o t. e ancients descend. On the night he was taken by the Shons Idlers, I had sent for him to appraise him of his responsiso bility and to make him privy to the secrets of the kings. It he is still alive, as my daughter tells us he is, then it is the duty of every Matabele to do all in his power to seek his m. The future of our people tests with him. How can free do I a.s.sist you? You have only to ask."

"You have already helped us with food," Craig thanked him. "Now we need information."

"Ask, Kuphela. Anything that I can tell you, I will." and the camp of the "The road between Tuti Mission soldiers pa.s.ses close to this place. Is that correct?"

isi

"Beyond those hills," the old man pointed.

"Sarah tells me that every week the trucks come along this road on the same day, taking food to the soldiers and the prisoners at the camp."

"That is so. Every week, on the Monday late in the afternoon, the trucks pa.s.s here loaded with bags of maize and other stores. They return empty the following morning.

"How many trucks?"

"Two or, rarely, three."

"How many soldiers to guard them?"

"Two in front beside the driver, three or four more in the back. One stands on the roof with a big gun that shoots fast." A heavy machine-gun, Craig translated for himself. "The soldiers are very watchful and alert and the trucks drive fast."

"They came last Monday, as usual?" Craig asked.

As usual," Vusarnanzi nodded his cap of shiny white wool. He must believe then that the routine was still in operation, Craig decided, and bet everything on it.

"How far is it to the mission station from here?" he as cec.

"From there to there." The witch-doctor swept his arm through a segment of the sky, about four hours of the sun's pa.s.sage. Reckoned as the pace of a man on foot, that was approximately fifteen mil4;s.

"And from here to the camp of the soldiers?" Craig went on.