Free Sunset at Sheba by John Harris

vaguely at the space around them.
    Sammy nodded silently. There was a quiet, unhesitating sureness about him, a definiteness of purpose in his movements that inspired confidence. Taking out a yellow bandanna handkerchief, he removed his hat and passed the handkerchief round the brim, not looking at it, his eyes moving down the valley.
    The land seemed empty, bare and rolling, covered with thin brown grass dried through the summer by the shimmering heat of the sun. The ridge beyond them rose slantwise, rough-edged like a saw where small outcrops of rocks broke through the surface and edged the skyline.
    The Argentino stood in silence, snorting softly through its nostrils, nuzzling at the dried blood on its foreleg where it had cut it climbing out of a donga the night before, and Sammy’s hand moved gently along its neck, soothingly, feeling the greasy sweat where the reins lay. Then he licked a finger and held it up thoughtfully.
    ‘What wind there is, is coming from the west,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s good. We can keep the sun behind us and stay downwind at the same time. Won’t affect the shooting neither.’
    Polly stared around her at the endless horizons. The exhilarating climate lifted her heart and for the first time in her life she knew the pull of a different existence from the one she had lived in the saloons and bars of Plummerton with their smell of stale smoke and spilt liquor, and the dusty plush and gilt furnishings.
    ‘You know,’ she said grudgingly, ‘this place’s maybe got something after all. I’m beginning to see why we could never get you home, Sammy.’
    He nodded. ‘Some men’s for towns,’ he said shortly, ‘and some’s for the veld.’
    She sniffed the air, noticing in it a freshness she had not caught during the heat of the previous day. ‘It’s sort of clean-smelling in the morning before the dust gets up, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You’ve got to get up early to get a proper whiff of it.’
    He nodded again.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
    He grinned. ‘Nobody ever shot anything who told it he was coming first. They’ve got ears like you. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. That’s the way to pick up a buck.’
    He grinned at the startled indignation on her face.
    ‘You’ve got to learn,’ he said. ‘Only born fools stay fools all their lives.’
    She shut her mouth with a click at the implied rebuke and he nudged the Argentino ahead of the cart. She flicked the reins across the grey mare’s back and followed him, her lips clamped, trying hard to behave with his taciturnity and finding it, with her normal capacity for endless chatter, difficult to the point of being exhausting. Fully awake now though, her nose in the air and sniffing, she felt keenly the space around her, and for the first time was curiously content simply to be there.
    As they reached the top of a fold in the ground, he reined in - not sharply, but gently, with an instinctive movement as though he never moved awkwardly or in any abrupt way that might break the rhythm of his movements.
    ‘Springbok down there,’ he said softly. ‘Moving slow. They like to loiter when they’re undisturbed.’
    She stared into the floor of a shallow valley, a vast basin with sloping sides, the purple hills like clouds beyond it. Other folds opened out from the main valley, some veiled in this mist, others just touched by light, and all filled with a curious blue glow that came from the milky vapours, so that they seemed to be looking into the depths of clear water. The ground before them was studded with ant heaps and a few karroo flowers, their foliage grey-green against the red soil.
    Polly strained her eyes, trying to see what Sammy saw. ‘How do you know there’s springbok?’ she asked.
    ‘I can see ‘em,’ he said, a hint of surprise in his voice.
    Polly stared again. ‘You got damn’ good eyes!’ she retorted, unbelieving.
    ‘Practice,’ he said. ‘I can