Koerikei was referring to the Cederberg mountains. Roeloff felt hope surge in his heart.
‘The mountains are many, and long. It would take days to find them.’
‘You have to go right to the end. When you look down from the top and see grass and trees and the land changing, you will know that you have found them.’
Roeloff got on his horse.
‘Thank you.’
‘You are sure you will not stay longer? We have seen springbok not far from here. With your gun we can kill one and have food for many days.’
Roeloff smiled.
‘I’ll come again, and we’ll hunt. If I find anything on the way out, I’ll shoot twice to let you know I’ve killed one.’
Tau handed him an ostrich egg container.
‘You can spare it?’
‘Yes.’
Roeloff knew she was lying, but took it out of respect.
‘Go safely, Eyes of the Sky. If you see rain, tell it to come this way.’
‘Thank you, and thank you, old father.’
Then he was gone, galloping quickly over the veld. The visit had refreshed him, rested his horse, and he was eager to find the sheep and then go home. An old route he’d once taken with Twa came up on his left, and a feeling of longing welled up in him. He was less than an hour from the place where he was born. His thoughts went for a moment to his family, the people on Kloot’s Nek, then he forced them out as he’d done so many times in the past.
It was late afternoon when he stopped near a clump of thorn bushes to rest and have something to eat. What had attracted him to this particular spot he didn’t know, but he found a recent upheaval of sand, as if something had been unearthed and reburied. He looked more closely and saw that someone had squatted there, the heels dug deeply into the sand, the footprints narrow and small.
He got down on his knees and started to burrow with his hands. Minutes later he lifted out an ostrich egg from the sand, warm from nestling in the baked earth, with a tiny hole in it and a wad of dry grass stuck in it to stop it up. The hunters had ostrich eggs with water buried all over the Karoo for passing travellers.
‘So you’ve been here, and had a drink.’
He reburied the egg and got to his feet. He was tempted to leave there some memento of his presence, but decided against it. They would think the water poisoned, and it wasn’t his intention to thwart a lifesaving tradition.
Where are you, Zokho? Are you near?
He walked around, inspecting the ground, and found tracks leading to a clump of bushes hardly two hundred yards to his left. His heart hammered against his chest.
‘Zokho!’
There was no answer, only the soft swoop of a lone vulture overhead.
He walked towards the spot where he thought she was hiding. It was different from the time he’d found her alone in the veld. Then there was wild expectation and Zokho had run to him. Now there was distance and guilt.
He reached the bush and went behind it. She wasn’t there. He went to a second, smaller bush, and found her crouched with her head between her knees. If he hadn’t been looking for her, he would have gone right past, so well did she blend in with her surroundings.
‘So. This is where you have run to.’
She got up and, without acknowledging him, started to walk. The kaross was tied around her waist, and there was no sign in the taut belly to show that she’d recently given birth, except for the breasts, large and pearlike, streaking milk.
He came up alongside. ‘I’m talking to you.’
She continued walking.
He stepped in front of her.
‘Why have you run away? Left our baby?’
She scratched at something in the sand with her stick.
‘I’m talking to you, look at me!’
The digging stick dropped from her hand and she looked up. Had she been angry or hurt, it would have shown feeling, but she looked at him as if she was seeing him for the first time.
‘You have nothing to say?’
She took the kaross from her waist and threw it over her shoulders to cover her breasts, closing herself off to him.
‘I told you I didn’t want to stay on the farm.’
‘That’s why you left our child by himself?’
‘That and other things.’
‘What other things?’
