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They drove slowly over the winding, bumpy track and as the night retreated before the advance of dawn Sean switched off the headlights.
Claudia peered into the comb return forest and down the grassy glades that intersected it that Sean called vleis, trying to be the first to spot some elusive and lovely creature. But it was always Sean or her father who murmured first, "Kudu on the left" or "That's a reedbuck." Or Matatu would lean over from the back to tap her shoulder and point out a rarer sight with his tiny pink-palmed hand.
The dusty track was pocked with the spoor of the animals that had crossed in the night. Once they came across the fresh droppings of an elephant, still steaming in the chill of dawn, a knee-high pile everybody climbed out of the Toyota to examine closely. At first Claudia had been disconcerted by this avid interest in dung, but now she was accustomed to it.
"Old beggar," Sean said. "On his last set of teeth."
"How do you know that?" she demanded.
"Can't chew his food," he replied. "Look at the twigs and leaves in the dung, almost whole."
Matatu was crouched by the spoor, examining the great round footprints, the size of trash can lids.
"See how smooth the pads of his feet are?" Sean said. "Worn down like an old set of car tires. Old and big."
"Is it him?" Riccardo asked eagerly, glancing at the.416 Rigby rifle in the gun rack behind his seat.
"Matatu will tell us." Sean shrugged, and the little Ndorobo spat in the dust, and shook his head mournfully as he stood up.
Then he spoke to Sean in piping falsetto Swahili.
"It's not the one we want. Matatu knows this bull," Sean translated. "We saw this one last year down near the river. He has one tusk broken off at the lip, and the other is worn down to a stump.
He might once have had a magnificent pair, but he's far over the other side of the hill now."
"You mean Matatu can recognize a particular elephant by his footprints?" Claudia looked incredulous.
"Matatu can recognize a particular buffalo out of a herd of five hundred, and he'll know that animal again two years later just by a glance at the spoor," Sean exaggerated a little for her. "Matatu isn't a tracker, he's a magician."
They drove on with small wonders occurring all around them: a kudu bull, gray as a ghost, striped with chalky lines, maned and humpbacked, his long corkscrew horns glinting in the gloom, slipped away into the forest; a genet cat caught out from his nocturnal prowling, spotted and golden as a miniature leopard, peered at them with astonishment from the brown grass of the verge; a kangaroo rat hopped ahead of the Toyota. Troops of chattering guinea fowl with waxen yellow helmets on their heads ran through the grass beside the track. Claudia no longer had to ask, "What is that bird?" or "What animal is that?" She was begi
Just before sunrise, Sean parked the Toyota at the foot of a rocky hill that rose abruptly out of the forest and they climbed out stiffly and took off their heavy outer clothing. They climbed the side of the kopJe, three hundred feet of steep, uneven pathway, without a pause, and Claudia tried to disguise her ragged breathing as they came out on the summit. Sean had timed the ascent perfectly, and as they reached the top the sun burst out of the distant forest and lit it all with dramatic color and brilliance.
They looked out over a panorama of forest and glade that glowed with golden grass to other high sheer kopJes standing like fairy castles, all turreted and towered in the dawn. Other hills were great dumps of black rock, like the rubble left over from the Creation.
They shed their sweaters, for the climb had warmed them and even the first rays of the sun held the promise of the noonday heat.
They sat on the front edge of the hill and played their binoculars over the forest below. Behind them Job laid out the food box he had carried up, and in minutes he had a fire going. It had been too early to eat breakfast before they left camp, but now, at the odor of frying bacon and eggs, Claudia felt saliva flooding her mouth.
While they waited for their breakfast, Sean pointed out the terrain. "That is the Mozambican border over there, just beyond the second kopje, only seven or eight miles from here."
"Mozambique," Claudia murmured, peering through her binoculars. "The name has such a romantic ring to it."
"Not so romantic. It's just another triumph of African socialism and the carefully thought out economic policy of chaos and ruination," Sean grunted.
"I can't take racism before breakfast," Claudia told him icily.
"all right." Sean gri
"Sounds like a fun place for a vacation," Riccardo said. "How about breakfast, Job?"
Job brought them plates of eggs and bacon and fried French bread followed by mugs of strong, aromatic coffee. They ate off their laps, glassing the forest through their binoculars between mouthfuls.
"You're a pretty good cook, Job," Claudia told him.
"Thank you, ma'am," Job answered quietly. He spoke English with only a slight accent. He was a man in his late thirties, with a tall, powerful physique and wide-spaced intelligent eyes in the handsome moon face typical of the Matabele and their Zulu origins.