We had gone only a few yards when he stopped us. "You wait here," he said. Then he sipped from the flask and offered it to the beautiful, dark-haired girl. She drank deeply and handed it back. He waved it to her with his satyr-like smirk, that she finish it. He watched until she was through, then his left hand slid up to her neckline, grasped the material of the dress and tore down with one powerful gesture.
She staggered back, nude and startled. Daphne roared with laughter, clasped her around the waist again and held out his right hand. "Nellie, my rifle. You wait here. Keep your heads down. No fair peeking, eh, Suchane?"
Annellica threw one of the two rifles she was carrying at him, muzzle up. He caught it with a slap of his huge paw and pulled the girl forward with him. She was reassured, now, and giggling with anticipation.
Somehow the lecherous display was more revolting out here in daylight. I mistook Annellica's paleness for humiliation, and I didn't blame her. Why did he have to drag one of his damned concubines out here?
We knelt down obediently, and before Daphne's head disappeared he turned and shouted back, "If the wampus gets by me, remember, no gut shots, Frost."
I muttered to Annellica, "The man has nerve, anyway."
"You confuse bravery with selfishness. He insists on the first shot—won't trust another member of a hunting party to hold his fire. He always stalks out ahead like this," Annellica explained tensely.
I had noticed that the niece carried no weapon. Which brought up another question. "Does he always mix his pleasures?" I asked.
She was in the act of withdrawing a long telescopic sight which she must have had bound to the inside of her thigh. As she mounted it to her rifle with feverish haste she answered, "He is not mixing his pleasures. Suchane is bait."
Before this could sink in completely a shrill, feminine scream tore faintly into the gusty wind and found us. I leaped to my feet. Half way to the edge of the jungle, some hundred yards from us, I watched Daphne pushing the olive-skinned girl ahead of him with rough shoves. A deeper color spread from her neck and swathed one shoulder and her side.