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

that reason he had avoided until now when he was reluctantly driven
into it once again.

The herd moved with less urgency. They had left the pursuit far
behind, and they slowed so that they could feed as they went. The
forest was greener and more lush here on the bottom lands of the
valley. The msasa forests had given way to mopani and giant swollen
baobabs that ns the flourished in the heat, and the old bull could se e
water ahead and he rumbled thirstily deep in his belly. Yet some
instinct warned him of other danger ahead as well as that behind him.
He paused often, swinging his great grey head slowly from side to side,
his ears held out like sounding boards, his small weak eyes gleaming as
he searched cautiously before moving on again.

Then abruptly he stopped once more. Something at the limit of his
vision had caught his attention, something that glistened metallically
in the slanted morning sunlight. He flared back with alarm, and behind
him his herd backed up, his fear transmitted to them infectiously.

The bull stared at the speck of reflected light, and slowly his alarm
receded, for there was no movement except the soft passage of the
breeze through the forest, no sound but the whisper of it in the
branches and the lulling chattering and hum of unconcerned bird and
insect life around him.

Still the old bull waited, staring ahead, and as the light altered he
noticed ther%6;were other identical metal objects in a line across his
front and he shifted his weight from one forefoot to die other, making
a little fluttering sound of indecision in his throat.

What had alarmed the old bull was a line of small square galvanized
sheetmetal plaques. They were each affixed to the" top of an iron
dropper that had been hammered into the earth so many years ago that
all man, smell had long ago dissipated. On each plaque was painted a
laconic warning, which had faded in the brutal sunlight from crimson to
pale pink. A stylized skull and crossbones above the words' DANGER

MINEFIELD'.

The minefield had been laid years previously by the security forces of
the now defunct white Rhodesian government, as a cordon sanitaire along
the Zambezi river, an attempt to prevent the guerrilla forces of ZIPRA
and ZANU from entering the territory from their bases acroSs the river
in Zambia. Millions of anti-personnel mines and heavier Claymores made
up a continuous field so long and deep that it would never be cleared;
the cost of doing so would be prohibitive to the country's new black
government which was already in serious economic difficulties.

"%%ile the old bull still hesitated, the air became filled with a
clattering roar, the wild sound of hurricane winds.