She was distressed to see how ill and worn he looked now that hope had left him. Finding no word that could help, she urged him to come to his breakfast. To her surprise he consented. Together they started downhill. Archie stumbled. In his disappointment, the fever was mastering him. He stumbled again. Norah took his arm and led him to camp. With Changalilo's help she put him to bed. He seemed affected by her care for him. It gave him the momentary illusion that nothing had happened and that their life together had not been interrupted except perhaps by a night's dreaming. Hugging the illusion, he fell asleep.
Towards evening the slanting rays of the sun entered his shelter and woke him.
Two facts permeated his waking consciousness—a body sore in every bone and a mind that grappled with the possibilities of Norah's offer to come back to him—'if he wanted her.' How he wanted her! Was there anything else he wanted?
But ever his reason forbade him to listen to his affections. Whenever he smothered his common sense, retribution followed. Of course it had been mad to think he could make a husband for Norah, and it was mad to think he could hold her now.... But as yet nothing need be determined. His first job was to get them out of this ... but there was something that had to be done at once. What was it? ... Damn this fever.... Oh, yes! Johnny, the fundi, had reported a herd of eland in the hills behind the ruins. With the rains coming, they would not stay there. He must get one that evening and have the meat dried into strips, as a stand-by on the rafts.
Painfully he lifted himself out of bed and, his head swimming with weakness, got into his clothes. How heavy his .420 weighed! Pity the handy little .303 had been smashed up by that wounded bull! A near shave it had been!
He looked about for a native to carry his gun, but the camp was empty. Resting the heavy rifle on his shrinking shoulder, he walked shakily into the hills.
He looked up at the sun and saw that in under two hours it would be dark. There was not much time. As he walked he searched the ground for spoor. Padded footprints on a stretch of sand showed where one of the smaller cats had stepped in the night. A genet probably; too small for a serval. Norah had had a tame genet on the farm. 'Fred' it had been called. He remembered the little blind thing he had bought for a shilling from a native who would have eaten it. It used to sleep all day in Norah's pocket; she had nursed it through infancy, waking in the night to feed it on warm milk and water, but it had died while still a kitten, bitten by a native dog.
Norah had always a liking for the little wild things of the forest; some feeling of kinship, maybe....
His eye rested on the delicate footprints of a dwyka. The antelope's bound had impressed its hard, slender toes into the baked earth. The tracks were a day old ... was it thinkable that Norah and he would be able to take up their life together from the point where she had dropped it? Would memory let them? Was this ... adventure of Norah's a mere episode that they could both forget or did it mean more?...
He'd thought there were leopards about and those scratches on the bark of that muputa tree showed where a leopard had sharpened his claws. Leopardess, more likely, to judge by the height.... It was too rocky ahead, he would have to work round behind the mission. There wasn't a breath of wind, so it didn't matter which way he came at the game....