Valley was filled with early morning mist, and the mine headgears probed

up out of it. They watched the mists turn to gold as the low sun

touched them and a mine hooter howled dismally. Couldn't we stay for

just a week longer, perhaps we could work something out? Duff asked

softly.

Sean sat silently staring at the golden mist. It was beautiful. It hid

the scarred earth and it hid the mills, it was a most appropriate cloak

for that evil, greedy city.

Sean turned his horse away towards Pretoria and slapped the loose end of

his reins across its neck.

The Wilderness They stayed five days in Pretoria, just long enough to

buy the wagons and commission them, and when they left on the morning of

the sixth day they went north on the Hunters Road. The wagons moved in

column urged on by the Zulus and a dozen new servants that Sean had

hired. They were followed by a mixed bag of black and white urchins and

stray dogs; men called good luck after them and women waved from the

Verandas of the houses which lined the road. Then the town was behind

them and they were out into the veld with only a dozen of the more

adventurous mongrels still following them.

They made fifteen miles the first day and when they camped that night

beside the ford of a small stream, Sean's back and legs ached from his

first full day in the saddle in over five years. They drank a little

brandy and ate steaks grilled over wood embers, then they let the fire

die and sat and looked at the night. The sky was a curtain at which a

barrel of grape-shot had been fired, riddling it with the holes through

which the stars shone. The voices of the servants made a hive murmur as

a background to the wailing of a jackal in the darkness beyond the

firelight. They went to their living wagon early and for Sean the feel

of rough blankets instead of silk sheets and the hardness of a straw

mattress were not sufficient to keep him long from sleep.

From an early start the following morning they put another twenty miles

behind them before outspan that night and twenty more the next day. The

push and urgent drive were habits Sean had acquired on the Rand when

every minute was vital and the loss of a day was a disaster.

leisurely turning of wagon-wheels. Sean's eyes which had been pointing

straight ahead along the line of travel now turned aside to look about

him. Each morning he and Duff would leave the wagons and wander out

Into the bush.

Sometimes they would spend the day panning for gold in the sands of a

stream, another day they would search for the first signs of elephant,

but mostly they just rode and talked or lay hidden and watched the herds

of game that daily became more numerous. They killed just enough to

feed themselves, their servants and the pack of dogs that had followed

them when they left Pretoria. They passed the little Boer settlement at

Pietersburg and then the Zoutpansberg climbed up over the horizon, its

sheer sides dark with rain forest and high rock cliffs. Here under the

mountains they spent a week at Louis Trichardt, the most northerly

permanent habitation of white men.

In the town they spoke with men who had hunted to the north of the

mountains, across the Limpopo. These were taciturn brown-faced Boers

with tobacco-stained beards, big men with the peace of the bush in their

eyes.

In their courteous, unhurried speech Sean sensed a fierce possessive

love of the animals that they hunted and the land through which they

moved so freely. They were a different breed from the Natal Afrikanders

and those he had met on the Witwatersrand, and he conceived the respect

for them that would grow stronger in the years ahead when he would have

to fight them.

There was no way through the mountains, they told him, but wagons could

pass around them. The western passage skirted the edge of the Kalahari

desert and this was bad country where the wagon wheels sank into the

sandy soil and the marches between water became successively longer.

To the east there was good rich forest land, well watered and stocked

with game: low country, hotter the nearer one went to the coast, but the

true bushveld where a man could find elephant.

So Sean and Duff turned east and, holding the mountains always in sight

at their left hand, they went down into the wilderness.

Within a week's trek they saw elephant sign: trees broken and stripped

of their bark. Although it was months old the trees already dried out,

nevertheless Sean felt the thrill of it and that night spent an hour

cleaning and oiling his rifles. The forest thickened until the wagons

had to weave continually between the trunks of the trees. But there

were clearings in the forest, open vleis filled with grass where buffalo

grazed like herds of domestic cattle and white tick birds squawked about

them. This country was well watered with streams as clear and merry as

a Scottish trout stream, but the water was blood-warm and the banks

thick with bush. Along the rivers, in the forest and in the open were

the herds of game: impala twisting and leaping away at the first

approach with their crumpled horns laid back, kudu with big ears and

soft eyes, black sable antelope with white bellies and horns curved like

a naval cutlass, zebra trotting with the dignity of fat ponies, while

about them frolicked their companions, the gnu, waterbuck, nyala, roan

antelope and, at last, elephant.

Sean and Mbejane were ranging a mile ahead of the wagons when they found

the spoor. It was fresh, so fresh that sap still oozed from the

mahoba-hobo tree where the bark had been prised loose with the tip of a

tusk and then stripped off. The wood beneath was naked and white.

Three bulls, said Mbejane. One very big. Wait here, Sean spun his

horse and galloped back to the column. Duff lay on the driver's seat of

the first wagon rocking gently to its motion, his hat covering his face

and his hands behind his head.

Elephant! Duff, Sean yelled. Not an hour ahead of us.

Get saddled up, man! Duff was ready in five minutes. Mbejane was

waiting for them; he had already worked the spoor a short distance and

picked up the run of it and now he went away on it, They followed him,

riding slowly side by side.

You've hunted elephant before, laddie? asked Duff.

Never, said Sean. Good grief! Duff looked alarmed. I thought you were

an expert. I think I'll go back and finish my sleep, you can call me

when you've had a little more experience. Don't worry, Sean laughed

with excitement. I know all about it; I was raised on elephant stories

That sets my heart at ease, Duff murmured sarcastically and Mbejane

glanced over his shoulder at them, not trying to conceal his irritation.

Nkosi, it is not wise to talk now for we will soon come up with them. So

they went on in silence: passing a knee-high pile of yellow dung that

looked like the contents of a coir mattress, following the oval pad

marks in the dust and the trail of torn branches.