When they heard the man starting to walk to the boulder behind which they were hiding, Laura was momentarily caught in a blind, paralysing panic. But when Francis threw the sand into the man's face, she found herself thinking more clearly than she ever had before.

She could well visualize what would happen next. In her mind's eye she saw it. They all got up and ran. But she, two years younger than them and not such a good athlete, would quickly fall behind. She saw a poacher first getting up from where he was sitting at the fire, then easily kneeling down, taking aim. She saw a neat little hole appearing between her shoulders as she fled, her arms flying outwards, herself falling face first in the dirt.

All of this passed through her mind in an instant. It was perfectly clear: if she ran with the others, she was as good as dead.

The poacher, his eyes full of fine grit, was screaming and cursing, blindly stumbling around. Francis and Alice were already almost fifty metres away and disappearing among the bushes.

Aiming at nothing in particular, he started to spray gunfire in all directions. It was a wonder he didn't hit his two companions, who were no doubt already grabbing their own rifles and coming to join him.

Using the noise of the gunfire as cover, Laura gave a single, lithe leap into the dense shrub to her left. She buried herself in loose leaf litter as well as she could, and stayed absolutely still. The three poachers were already running in the direction towards where Francis and Alice had disappeared, cursing and shouting abuse.

Laura remained still for a few more seconds, then cautiously crept from under the shrub. She was covered in dirt and her arms and face scratched, but otherwise without injury.

Her first instinct was to flee as fast as her legs could carry her, but an all-consuming curiosity kept her standing where she was. Here was an opportunity to look around the poachers' camp and see what they had there. Perhaps she could even cause some damage to further thwart them.

She stood absolutely still, listening. Far off, she could hear the poachers, still running away from the camp. From the camp itself, there was not a sound.

What if one of them had remained here? She listened for a few more moments. Surely anyone who remained here would not be hiding away? Either way, whatever she was going to do, she would have to do it fast, because it was not likely that she would have more than a few minutes before the poachers would return. She was not particularly worried about Francis and Alice; she knew how fast they could run.

Cautiously, on tiptoe and barely breathing, she slipped forward and looked around.

The small tent they had seen next to the fire looked very new, and so did the few cooking utensils lying next to it.

These creepazoids are well financed, she thought. These were clearly not mere paupers trying to eke out a living. The whole encampment somehow just looked wrong, and she soon realized what it was. She had seen many documentaries about hunting and gathering societies on television, and she was always struck by how perfectly at home the people looked in their wild and untamed environment. This poacher camp was the exact opposite.

I bet these people know even less about the bush than we do, she thought. They probably come straight from the middle of some big city and have never even been in the lowveld before, let alone in the wild. This thought set her mind at rest further. They would not be able to follow her cousins' tracks.

But that would of course also mean that they would probably soon give up the pursuit and come back here to break up their camp and move away. She could not afford to linger here too long.

Her eye fell on the pile of animal hides next to the tent. She noticed that they were all carefully dried and were the attractive hides of zebras and kudu.

No doubt destined for sale, Laura thought.

Then she saw a patch of yellowish fur among the hides. She took a closer look, and felt her fear replaced by fury. It was the small hide of a not quite fully grown cheetah. These people were simply ruthless, she thought. Endangered species meant nothing more to them than easy cash.

She decided to leave. They might already be on their way back, and she had no doubt that if they caught her here, she would not live longer than it took them to take aim and fire.

She was just turning around to leave when she noticed the horns. Right behind the tent, invisible from the place where they had first hidden when they stumbled upon the camp site, was a sight that made her breath catch in her throat.

Ten horns. Rhino horns. Nine big ones, and a tenth that was barely half the length of her forearm, and clearly belonged to a calf. She recalled the newspaper article that Francis had read to them in the car on their way here.

Ten rhinos, including a calf, have been shot by poachers in the Matumi Sands private game reserve...

And here they are, she thought. Matumi is barely two kilometres from here. These were not just poachers. These were the poachers.

She suddenly froze. She could hear someone approaching, and she had no doubt about who it was. The same low voices, urgently talking. Judged by the sound of their footsteps, they were jogging in her direction. She had no more than seconds.

Without really thinking about what she was doing, she bent down and grabbed the small horn. Then, as fast as she could, she slipped away into the trees and shrubs on the other side of the encampment.

* * *

"What do we do now? We can't just leave her there to their mercy, Alice!" Francis was leaning against a tree, breathing hard.

"We don't know that they have her at all," said Alice. "I never saw her run with us, but things were going so wild, I hardly even saw you. Perhaps she just lost sight of us, or perhaps she is hiding somewhere."

"Well, I'm not waiting around to find out!" said Francis and started back to the poacher camp. He didn't get far before Alice grabbed his arm.

"Francis, if she is back there, there is nothing you can do for her now. We are unarmed. There are three of them there, armed with automatic rifles. What exactly are you going to do?"

"Well, what else would you have me do?" he almost shouted at her. He was blaming himself for the whole mess. "I shouldn't have let this happen. If they kill her it'll all be my fault. We should have gone straight back home when we saw that first track this morning. What were we thinking?"

Alice noticed with dismay that Francis was almost in tears, and she almost started to cry herself. But she forced herself to stay calm.

"Francis, there is only one thing we can do now, and that is to get help. Fast. We have to get back to Uncle Vernon's place and call the police. There will be plenty of time to blame ourselves later, if Dad doesn't kill us first. But right now, we have to keep our heads and do the right thing."

She didn't wait for him, but started jogging towards the hill where they had first spotted the poacher carrying the duiker. From there it would be easy to find their way home.

Francis was still standing under the tree, not knowing what to do.

She briefly halted. "It's getting dark, Francis. We don't have much time. If we get lost, there will be nothing further we can do for her."

Alice was right. As they were fleeing from the poachers, late afternoon had given way to early evening. Within an hour, they would have difficulty finding their way back home, let alone find Laura anywhere.

Francis realized the wisdom of Alice's words. With a last longing look in the direction of the poachers' camp, he shrugged and joined Alice.

Now that they had regained some calm, they paced themselves. Instead of running as fast as they could, they jogged in easy, long strides, keeping their breathing even and comfortable. There would be no point in sprinting until they fainted with exhaustion.

Their route since they had set out in the morning had been more or less circular, and they could be home in an hour if they could keep up their pace.

An hour! It was an eternity, and who knows how long it might be before they could get reinforcements to the scene where they had last seen Laura? How would anyone find her in the dark?

Francis tried not to think of these things and simply kept up his pace, ignoring the sweat burning in his eyes, and the dull ache gathering in his legs.

* * *

Laura was crouched behind a dense shrub, breathing hard. When she had heard the men returning, she had run away as fast as she could, without really thinking where she was going. But she soon realized that they might hear her footsteps in the afternoon quiet, so she had stopped to listen.

Somewhere behind her, she could hear one of the poachers shout. She heard them talking excitedly, and then they started hurling horrible oaths at the bush around them. They must have discovered that the one rhino horn was gone.

Laura wanted to get away. But just when she started to get up to run further, the men suddenly fell quiet, so she waited, hardly daring to breathe. What were they doing?

"Aha!" one of them shouted. Then she realized what must have happened: they had seen her tracks leading out of their encampment. She glanced to her right, and felt herself go cold all over. She had run through a sandy patch of soil, and her tracks were clearly visible. It would not take them long to find her.

She thought hard for a moment. If she had summed them up correctly, these men were not really at home in the bush. They certainly would not be able to follow footprints as Frank Mabuza or even Francis would be able to. She just needed to move to some grassy or stony ground, and then get away as fast as she could.

She didn't know how near her pursuers might be by now, so she slipped away as quietly as she could, even though her overwhelming desire was to sprint away as fast as she could. Towards her left, the ground was overgrown with short grass, almost forming a lawn, and she made her way towards it. Glancing over her shoulder, she trotted over the lawn-like expanse of grass, and slipped behind a large termite mound.

She was not a moment too soon, because scarcely thirty metres behind her, she could hear the men shout in frustration as they lost her tracks in the grass. What next, she wondered. If they decided to run on just a bit further, she would be discovered. She crouched low behind the mound, ready to run, even though she knew it would probably be futile.

Twenty long seconds passed. She could hear the men talk in low voices, deciding what to do next. Then she heaved a sigh of relief. The voices slowly faded away as her pursuers moved back towards their camp. Clearly, they had decided it wasn't worth it. She was glad she had taken the small horn rather than one of the large ones.

Laura forced herself to wait another minute, then she got up and quietly moved away. She could now think about her next problem, namely how to get home in one piece.

Around her, it was rapidly getting dark, she was at least an hour away from home, and she was not all too clear on where she was.

She first put some more distance between herself and the poachers' camp, then turned towards the red glow where the sun had set minutes ago. She knew she was somewhere more or less to the east of Uncle Vernon's house. If she simply kept west, she would sooner or later reach the river they had crossed that morning, and from there on she was sure she would be able to find her way home. Even after sunset, she would still be able to keep her direction by simply noting where the stars were setting.

What worried her far more was what she might run into in the dark. Were there perhaps leopards prowling around here? Lions? What if she ran into the wounded elephant they saw earlier that day?

She breathed deeply, trying to calm her nerves. There was nothing she could do about unknown dangers. She would simply have to keep walking.

Around her, the bush first went to sleep as the birds returned to their roosts, then woke up again as the night-living creatures became active. She could hear the lonely sound of jackals calling to each other, and somewhere ahead, an owl hooted mysteriously. Behind her, the moon slowly rose above the trees, casting a silvery light, and she began to almost enjoy the walk, even though her legs were aching and the rhino horn, which had looked so small and light when she first picked it up, began to feel more and more like a piece of lead.

Crack! The sound of a snapping branch disturbed the evening stillness.

Laura's head whipped to her left. Something large was moving among the dense undergrowth. It was moving fast. She froze, wide-eyed, trying to see, not sure she really wanted to.

She caught a brief glimpse of a large, tawny flank, and heard a rasping breath. It was coming for her, in long, effortless strides. She had a brief thought of some monstrous cross between a lion and a hyena. Then she turned and ran.

It was pointless. The animal moved with incredible speed, and was right behind her.

A tree, she thought frantically. I need to get up a tree!

There was no time to select a suitable one. Right in front of her, she saw a thin, gangly-looking trunk. Like a monkey, she scrambled up it. Would she get high enough to get out of reach?

Her hand closed around a branch. As she hoisted herself up, it snapped, and she fell right in front of the animal.

In a blind panic, she turned around to fight for her life. The animal was howling and moaning, and she felt its hot breath in her face.

Then she was slobbered by a warm, friendly tongue.

"Eugene!" she shouted. "You came to fetch me!"

The dog was beside himself with joy. Howling and yelping, he jumped all over her, licking her hands and face.

For a while, Laura just sat at the foot of the tree, hugging the dog, and shaking with relief. Then she began to think how worried her cousins must be by now.

"They would probably run straight home and go raise the alarm," she said to Eugene, who looked like he understood every word she said. "We have to get home as fast as we can."

She briefly hunted around for the rhino horn, which she had dropped before she scrambled up the tree. It took only a few seconds to find. Then they set off for home, Eugene in the lead, as alert as ever.