"Smith, Wilbur - Ballantyne 04 - The Leopard Hunts In Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

reached the nearest group of cows, he extended his trunk and blew it
over them.

Instantly they spun away, instinctively turning downwind so that the
pursuers" scent must always be carried to them. The rest of the4 herd
saw the manoeuvre and fell into their running ormation, closing up with
the calves and nursing mothers in the centre, the old barren queens
surrounding them, the young bulls pointing the herd and the older bulls
and their attendant askaris on the flanks, and they went away in the
swinging, ground-devouring stride that they could maintain for a day
and a night and another day without check.

As he fled, the old bull was confused. No pursuit that he had ever
experienced was as persistent as this had been.

LOA

It had lasted for eight days now, and yet the pursuers never closed in
to make contact with the herd. They were in the south, giving him
their scent, but almost always keeping beyond the limited range of his
weak eyesight. There seemed to be many of them, more than he had ever
encountered in all his wanderings, a line of them stretched likea net
across the southern routes. Only once had he seen them. On the fifth
day, having reached the limits of forbearance, he had turned the herd
and tried to break back through their line, and they had been there to
head him off, the tiny upright sticklike figures, so deceptively frail
and yet so deadly, springing up from the yellow grass, barring his
escape to the south, flapping blankets and beating on empty paraffin
tins, until his courage failed and the old bull turned back, and led
his herds once more down the rugged escarpment towards the great
river.

The escarpment was threaded by elephant trails used for ten thousand
years by the herds, trails that followed the easier gradients and found
the passes and ports through the ironstone ramparts. The old bull
worked his herd down one of these, and the herd strung out in single
file through the narrow places and spread out again beyond.

He kept them going through the night. Though there was no moon, the
fat white stars hung close against the earth, and the herd moved almost
soundlessly through the dark forests. Once, after midnight, the old
bull fell back and waited beside the trail, letting his herd go on.

Within the hour he caught again the tainted man-smell on the wind,
fainter and very much more distant but there, always there, and he
hurried forward to catch up with his COWS.

In the dawn they entered the area which he had not visited in ten
years. The narrow strip along the river which had been the scene of
intense human activity during the long-drawn-out war, and which for