Sunbird by Wilbur Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

pace I took. I walked for a long time, stopping once to listen to the distant roaring of a lion, from the edge of the bush. When I returned to the camp a lantern still burned in Sally's tent, and her silhouette was magnified against the pale canvas, a huge, dark portrait of my love. She was reading, sitting cross-legged upon her camp-bed, but as I watched she reached across and extinguished the lantern.
    I waited awhile, gathering my courage, then I went to her tent, and my heart threatened to hammer its way out of its malformed rib-cage.
    'Sal?'
    'Ben?' she answered my whisper softly.
    'May I come in?' She hesitated before she replied.
    'All right-just for a minute.'
    I went into the tent, and in the gloom her nightdress was a pale blur. I groped for her face, and touched her cheek.
    'I came to tell you that I love you,' I said softly, and I heard her little catch of breath in the dark. When she answered her voice was gentle.
    'Ben,' she whispered. 'Dear, sweet Ben.'
    'I would like to be with you tonight.'
    And it seemed to me there was regret in her voice as she replied, 'No, Ben. Everyone would know about it. I don't want that.'
    The morning started off as the previous day had ended. Everybody was in high spirits, laughing at the breakfast table. The servants sky-larked as they broke camp and repacked the truck sand by seven o'clock we had left the road and were following the edge of the pan.
    The Land-Rover leading and the trucks following our tracks through scrub and rank grass, and across the dry ravines which meandered down to the pan.
    We had been going for an hour when I saw a flash of pale movement among the trees ahead of us, and three stately gemsbok broke out onto the open pan and trotted in single file away from us. They moved heavily, like fat ponies, the pale mulberry of their coats and the elaborate black and white face masks standing out clearly against the grey of the pan surface.
    Louren slammed the brake on the Land-Rover, and with the smoothly executed timing of the professional the old Matabele gunbearer put the big .375 Magnum Holland Holland into Louren's hand and he was gone, running doubled-up behind the fringe of grass that lined the edge of the pan.
    'Is he going to kill them?' asked Sally in her little-girl voice. I nodded and she went on, 'Why-but why?'
    'It's one of the things he likes doing.'
    'But they are so beautiful,' she protested.
    'Yes,' I agreed. Out on the pan, about six hundred yards from the Land-Rover, the gemsbok had stopped. They were standing broadside to us. Staring at us intently with heads held high, and long slender horns erect.
    'What's he doing?' Sal pointed at Louren who was still running along the edge of the pan.
    'He's playing the rules,' I explained. 'It's an offence to fire within 500 yards of a vehicle.'
    'Jolly sporting,' she muttered, biting her lip and glancing from Louren to the distant gemsbok. Then suddenly she had jumped from the Land-Rover and clambered up onto the engine bonnet. She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled.
    'Run, you fools. Run, damn you!'
    She snatched her hat and waved it over her head, jumping up and down on the bonnet and howling like a banshee. Out on the pan the gemsbok erupted into startled flight, galloping diagonally away from us in a bunch. I glanced at Louren's small figure, and saw him drop into a sitting position with elbows braced on his knees, head cocked over the telescopic sight. The rifle jerked, and smoke spurted from the muzzle -but it was a second or two before the flat report of the shot reached us. Out on the pan the leading gemsbok slid over his nose and rolled in a drift of white dust. Louren fired again, and the second animal tumbled with legs kicking to the sky. The last gemsbok ran on alone.
    Behind me the old gunbearer spoke to the other in Sindebele. 'Hou! This is much man.'
    Sally climbed down off the bonnet, and sat silently while I drove to where Louren waited. He handed the rifle to the gunbearer, and