William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

His eye caught some faint writing on the top margin. “Report of Captain G.H. Cobb,” he read. “Account of imprisonment and escape.” He turned the pages with new interest, thinking that here would be some significant clues, but there was no more writing. Another frustration. He felt mildly disappointed.

There was a rattle of falling stones from somewhere high on the kopje. They all looked up at once.

“ Get him! ” von Bishop shouted excitedly at the started ruga-ruga. They had seized their rifles. “Go on, you idiots!” von Bishop shouted again. He tried Swahili. “Get him I tell you!” What was Kikuyu for ‘catch’?

One of the ruga-ruga yelled something in their gibberish language. He brandished his rifle in the air like a spear. Von Bishop mimed grabbing movements in desperation. Why couldn’t they understand? How did Deeg speak to them? Dutch? Afrikaans? “Yes,” he yelled exasperatedly, baffled by their reticence. Every second counted in this darkness. “Go on, yes?” he gestured at the black mass of the hill. “Catch?” He tried Swahili again. No effect. “Quickly, for God’s sake catch him.” This was ridiculous. Cobb was getting a head start while he floundered around with languages.

Then one ruga-ruga suddenly turned and shouted something to the other two. The three of them scrambled off into the dark, up the rocky slope of the hill. For several minutes he could hear them calling out to each other, and heard the slither and fall of the stones dislodged by their feet. Then their cries became fainter. It sounded to him as if they were now on the other side of the hill. Soon he could hear nothing above the endless noise of the crickets.

He threw some more wood on the fire and sat down. He stared glumly at the flames. He felt tired. He still held the book, he realized. He reached forward and dropped it on the fire. It burnt away to ashes very quickly. It was a kind of evidence, he supposed. Theoretically, he shouldn’t have destroyed it. He pursed his lips and rubbed his nose.

He poked at the ash brick which was all that remained of the book, letting the flakes crumble and fall into the embers of the fire. He thought suddenly of Cobb, out there alone on the dark plain, running. Running frantically from the ruga-ruga. He shivered with sympathy. The man would be terrified out of his wits, any man would. You could die from that sort of terror. Racing blindly through the night, heart pounding, lungs bursting, tripping and falling over, the shouts of your pursuers in your ears.

♦

Von Bishop woke up just before dawn. He felt stiff and hungry. There was a lemon-grey lightening in the east. He relit the fire, took some mealie-flour cakes from his saddle bag, spread them with the last of his raspberry jam and ate a lonely breakfast.

The ruga-ruga didn’t return for another hour or so. Von Bishop saw them first in the distance, coming round the side of the hill, just the three of them in single file. So Cobb got away, he thought, briefly elated for some reason. But then the prospect of another day’s chase made him miserable again. Still, Cobb knew about the China Show. He had his duty to do.

He built up the fire and then took his rifle from his saddle holster. He would try and shoot a bird or a small antelope for the ruga-ruga. It was a safe bet that they wouldn’t move off again until they had eaten.

The ruga-ruga marched into the hollow between the two spurs of rock ten minutes later. Von Bishop sat on a boulder, his rifle between his knees. The leading man, he noticed, had unslung his blanket and carried it over his shoulder like a sack. Perhaps they’ve got their own food, he thought, bending down to remove a speck of dust from his rifle bolt.

There was a soft heavy thud and von Bishop looked up. A yard from the toe of his left boot lay the severed head of Gabriel Cobb, his nose pressed uncomfortably into the dusty earth, his staring eyes and gaping mouth swarming with tiny insects.

Temple rode between Wheech-Browning and Felix. A hundred yards up ahead his two askari trackers paced easily along, leading their mules, following the conspicuous trail left by von Bishop and his men. They had been up early that day and had made good progress. Temple calculated that they were only two or three hours behind von Bishop now. He stood up in the saddle and stared ahead over the grass plain. Up here on the plateau the morning mists lingered. There was still something of a haze on the horizon, softening the details of the landscape.

He looked round at the faces of his two companions: Wheech-Browning sleepy and stupid; Felix tense and expectant. They made a strange group, he thought.

“You said this von Bishop man was the same one who commandeered your farm, didn’t you?” Wheech-Browning asked.

“That’s right.”

“I thought he was your neighbour. Did you have some kind of feud going, or something?”

“No,” Temple said. “Not until he destroyed my farm.” Temple looked grim. “What kind of man is it, I ask you, who one day can talk to you about sisal farming — in a perfectly interested and friendly way — and then, the next moment, steal away your livelihood?” Temple looked to Felix for a reassuring reply but he clearly wasn’t listening.

“Sounds like a shrewd businessman to me,” Wheech-Browning said with a squawk of laughter.

“Just what do you mean by that?” Temple said in a steely voice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sorry, I’m sure,” Wheech-Browning said huffily. “But you did ask.”

Their argument was interrupted by a shout from one of the askari scouts. The man stood at the base of a stone kopje a little way to the right. They wheeled their mules and rode over. In a hollow between two spurs of rock were the remains of a camp fire. Temple dismounted and ran his fingers through the ashes.

“Ouch,” he said. “Still hot. They can’t be more than an hour away.” He picked something out of the ashes. “Looks like a piece of leather binding from a book. What do you make of that?”

Felix held up a sack. “Empty. Is this von Bishop’s camp? Or Gabriel’s?”

Temple looked around. There was a pile of droppings from a mule. “Von Bishop’s,” he said. There was also a small rough mound of freshly dug earth. “I don’t think your brother would bother to bury his rubbish.”

“Who left the sack then?”

There was a shout from Wheech-Browning who hadn’t dismounted.

“About half a mile away,” he called. “Masses of birds wheeling around.”

Temple and Felix remounted and trotted after Wheech-Browning. True enough, a dozen kites and vultures circled and flapped above something in the grass. They saw Wheech-Browning get off his horse and run forward, windmilling his arms and shouting. Five or six birds shrugged themselves awkwardly into the air. Temple and Felix dismounted a few yards off and walked through the grass towards Wheech-Browning. A subdued droning noise filled the air from thousands of flies. The grass sterns all around them were blackened and weighed down with a fruit of shiny bluebottles and duller blowflies. Each step raised a temporary cloud, like a thick animated dust.

Wheech-Browning stumbled towards them, his face white.

“Good Lord,” he said. “Christ. It’s a body.” He put his hand on his throat. “No head.”

“No head?” Felix said with alarm.

“Bloody flies!” Wheech-Browning said. “Where do they all come from? A huge empty plain. That’s what I want to know.”

Temple walked forward with Felix. He looked across at him. His face was slightly screwed up, as if he were walking through a cloud of smoke or gas.