III

THE TRADER OF LAST NOTCH

In Manicaland, summer wears the livery of the tropics. At the foot of
the hills north of Macequece every yard of earth is vocal with life,
and the bush is brave with color. Where the earth shows it is red, as
though a wound bled. The mimosas have not yet come to flower, but
amid their delicate green--the long thorns, straight or curved like
claws, gleam with the flash of silver. Palms poise aloft, brilliant
and delicate, and under foot, flowers are abroad. The flame-blossom
blazes in scarlet. The sangdieu burns in sullen vermilion. Insects
fill the world with the noise of their business--spiders,
butterflies, and centipedes, ants, beetles, and flies, and mysterious
entities that crawl nameless under foot. A pea-hen shrieks in the
grass, and a kite whistles aloft. A remote speck in the sky denotes a
watchful vulture, alert for any mishap to the citizens of the woods,
and a crash of twigs may mean anything from a buck to a rhinoceros.
There is a hectic on the face of nature.

The trader of Last Notch went homewards to his store through such a
maze of urgent life, and panted in the heat. He had been out to shoot
guinea-fowl, had shot none and expended all his cartridges, and his
gun, glinting in the strong light as he walked, was heavy to his
shoulder and hot to his hand. His mood was one of patient protest,
for the sun found him an easy prey and he had yet some miles to go.
Where another man would have said: "Damn the heat," and done with it,
John Mills, the trader, tasted the word on his lips, forbore to slip