Wilbur Smith - Assegai

Buck fever! He had recognized the symptoms of uncontrollable excitement that can overpower a novice when first presented with dangerous big game. He opened his mouth to order him to hold his fire, but the Winchester roared and the barrel jumped high in the air. Leon saw the bullet nick the hump on the back of a very large bull at the edge of the pool and fly on to strike the cow standing directly behind him in the rump. He realized that the heavy recoil of the Winchester had thrown Kermit off balance and for the moment he was unsighted. Before he could recover, Leon fired two quick shots, smoothly recycling the bolt of the Jeffreys without lowering the butt from his shoulder. His first bullet hit the wounded bull just below the boss of his horns and the animal dropped, dead before he hit the ground. The second caught the wounded cow just as she was gathering herself to rush back up the bank. It struck the base of the skull at the juncture with the spinal column. The beast flopped nose first into the white sand and lay still.

On Leon’s left side Hennie was working with machine-like rapidity, firing into the herd of milling, panic-stricken animals. At each shot one went down. Kermit recovered from the recoil of the Winchester and saw that the bull he had fired at was dead, as was the cow behind it. He let out a wild cowboy yell. ‘Yee-ha! I got two with one shot.’

He raised his rifle again, but Leon shouted, ‘That’s enough! Don’t shoot.’ Kermit didn’t seem to hear him. He fired again. Leon spun around to mark the strike of his bullet, ready to finish off any animal he wounded. However, this time Kermit had pulled off a perfect brain shot and another bull buffalo crashed down.

‘Enough!’ Leon shouted. ‘Stop firing!’ He pushed down the barrel of the rifle as Kermit tried to raise it again. Below them the herd thundered up the far bank of the riverbed and crashed away into the bush, leaving nine dead buffalo lying around the pool.

Kermit was still shaking with excitement. ‘Hell’s bells!’ he panted. ‘That was the best fun I ever had. I got three buffalo with two shots! Must be some kind of record.’

Leon was amused by his childlike jubilation. He could not bring himself to tell him what had really happened and spoil it for him. Instead he laughed with him. ‘Well done, Kermit!’ He punched his shoulder. ‘That was some shooting. I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Kermit grinned at him ecstatically. Not for a moment did Leon realize that with a tiny white lie his life had changed for ever.

By the time they had butchered the enormous carcasses darkness had fallen. Rather than risk a night drive back along the game tracks, which were filled with old tree stumps and antbear holes that could smash the trucks’ suspension, they camped on the riverbank. Ishmael prepared fresh buffalo tongue for their dinner, and afterwards they sipped their coffee around the fire and listened to the hyenas, who had been attracted by the smell of buffalo blood and guts, sobbing and shrieking in the dark bush around their camp. Hennie fossicked in his haversack and brought out a bottle, pulled the cork and offered it to Kermit, who held it up to the firelight. It was less than half full with a pale brown liquid.

‘The President don’t allow hard liquor in the camp. I haven’t taken a real drink in a month. What kind of poison is this?’ he asked cautiously.

‘My aunty in Malmesbury down in the Cape makes it from peaches. Its called Mampoer. It’ll put hair on your chest and load your fun-gun with buckshot.’

Kermit took a swig. His eyes opened wide as he swallowed. ‘You can call it Mam-whatever. I call it a hundred-per-cent proof moonshine.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and passed the bottle to Leon. ‘Have a blast of that, pardner!’ He was still euphoric, and Leon was even happier that he had allowed him to claim the buffalo kills. The bottle went around the fire twice before it was empty and all three were in expansive mood.

‘So, Hennie, you’re from South Africa. Were you there during the war?’ Kermit asked.

Hennie considered his reply for a minute. ‘ Ja , I was there.’

‘We read a lot about it in the States. The newspapers say it was something like our own war against the South. Damn hard and bitter.’

‘For some of us it was worse than that.’

‘Sounds like you were mixed up in the fighting.’

‘I rode with de la Rey.’

‘I read about him,’ Kermit said. ‘He was the greatest commando leader of them all. Tell us about it.’

The Mampoer had loosened the tongue of the usually taciturn Boer. He became almost eloquent as he described the fighting in the veld, where thirty thousand Boer farmers had stretched the military might of the greatest empire the world had ever seen almost to its limits.

‘They would never have forced us to surrender if that bloody butcher Kitchener had not turned on the women and children we had left on our farms. He burned the farms and shot the cattle. He herded all the women and children into his concentration camps and put fish-hooks into their food so they coughed up blood before they died.’ A single tear ran down one of his weathered brown cheeks. He wiped it away and excused himself brokenly. ‘Ag! I am sorry. It’s the Mampoer, but they are bad memories. My wife, Annetjie, died in the camps.’ He stood up. ‘I’m going to turn in. Good night.’ He picked up his blanket roll and walked away into the darkness. After he had gone Kermit and Leon sat quietly for a while, their mood sombre now.

Leon spoke softly: ‘It wasn’t fish-hooks. It was diphtheria that killed them. Hennie can’t understand that on our side it wasn’t deliberate, but the Boer women had always lived out on the open veld. When they were crowded together they had no idea of hygiene. They didn’t know how to keep the camps clean. They became filthy plague holes.’ He sighed. ‘Since the war the British Government has tried to make compensation. They have poured millions of pounds into the country to rebuild the farms. Last year they allowed free elections. Now a government under the two Boer generals, Louis Botha and Jannie Smuts, runs the country. Never has a victor treated the vanquished with such generosity and magnanimity as Britain has shown.’

‘But I understand how Hennie feels,’ Kermit said. ‘There are many people in the south of our country who, even after forty years, have not been able to forget and forgive.’

The following morning Hennie behaved as though the conversation had not taken place. After they had breakfasted on coffee and the remains of the cold tongue, they climbed into the heavily laden trucks. The trackers and skinners sat on the bloody buffalo joints. Kermit cajoled Leon into letting him drive one truck and Hennie followed in the second.

Once again Kermit’s mood was gay and carefree. Leon found him a pleasant companion. They had so much in common. They were both passionate about horses, motor-cars and hunting and had much to talk about. Although Kermit did not elaborate, he hinted that he had a father who was rich and powerful and dominated his life.

‘My father was just the same,’ Leon told him.

‘So what did you do?’

‘I said, “I respect you, Dad, but I cannot live under your rules.” Then I left home and joined the army. That was four years ago. I haven’t been back since.’

‘Son of a gun! That must have taken some guts. I often wish I could do that, but I know I never will.’

Leon found that the better he came to know Kermit the more he liked him. What the hell? he thought. He shoots like a crazy maniac, but no one’s perfect. During the conversation he discovered that Kermit was a keen naturalist and ornithologist. He would be if he’s at the Smithsonian, Leon reasoned, and told Kermit to stop the truck whenever he spotted some interesting insect, bird or small animal to show him. Hennie kept going and disappeared into the distance ahead.