I’m in the hiding place I’ve made out of long grass and branches, for watching animals and birds around the waterhole, without them seeing me. I know I should get back to the camp and lay tables. Just a few minutes more, and I will.

I hide because I’m the intruder here. So is Theo Ngcongo in his bakkie. I can see its grey gleam about fifty metres along from me. I’ve heard he has to monitor the animals that come to the waterhole, the new-boy job that no-one else wants to do.

He doesn’t know I’m here.

I’m thinking about how he looked last night just before he walked away from me. I made him look like that, with my words. I upset him, that boy in the bakkie.

Then I’m not thinking any more. I’m feeling, sensing. Something … a difference … an addition. I try to sort out if it’s something I’ve smelled, or heard, or glimpsed at the corner of sight.

Then I realise the noise that has added itself to all the insect sounds and bird calls is only the distant snarl of an engine. I turn my head and see it, a four-by-four of some sort, appearing over a rise and bouncing across the veld, too far away to tell me anything else.

Then it stops suddenly. There’s something urgent about it when it moves again, reversing fast. Next its driver brakes again, just for a second, and throws it round in a half circle. I watch it racing off, back the way it has come.

Escaping, it looks like.

From what? I can’t see anything. Then it hits me: the gleam of Theo’s bakkie. Is that what alarmed the driver?

I stand up. Theo probably won’t have noticed the vehicle, so many metres away from where I am and with his attention on the waterhole.

I’m right. I see he’s holding binoculars up to his eyes, trained on the waterhole. I start running. I can think of one major reason for the person or people in the four-by-four to be retreating in such a rush.

Theo sees me as I get near the bakkie. The windows are open.

“Hey, Lubela!”

“Listen. Something happened.” I pull open the passenger side door and climb in.

He turns serious. “Please tell me it’s not another rhino?”

“Could be connected,” I say and tell him what I saw. “It looked like whoever it was didn’t want you seeing them.”

“Me, or you?”

“No, I was hidden.”

“I was just wondering where you’d come from. It’s awesome. You weren’t there, and then suddenly you were. Like certain animals.”

That makes me feel good.

“We should see if we can catch up with them, don’t you think?”

I’m worried he’ll think he should stay at his post, but a moment later we’re racing through the bush in the bakkie. Theo has only one hand on the steering-wheel because the other is busy with his phone.

He says, “We should let Mr Shakwane and Mr Rieker know. Or maybe you already called them?”

“No airtime. I mostly don’t even have my phone on me.”

“What if something happens? If you get into trouble out here?” He throws me a quick look, curious but also anxious.

“I won’t,” I say.

He breathes out a laugh. “I believe you.”

I can hear he really does. I like that.

Now he’s talking into his phone, telling Mphakati what I’ve seen and where we are, on the rough, two-groove track away from the waterhole.

“They’re on their way,” he tells me when he’s done. “They’ll try to cut them off up ahead.”

“Hey, listen, Theo,” I say as we roar round a clump of bushwillow. “Not saying sorry or anything like that, but just saying I didn’t mean to upset you. What I said last night.”

He sends me a fast look.

“It wasn’t you.” He’s looking straight ahead again. “Well, it was in a way. But only because you said what my mother wants me to think. What I do think a lot of the time, even though I try not to.”

“That it’s cruel to her? You being here, doing this?”

“After what happened to my dad. I know it sounds selfish, but it’s my life, you see.” Theo is emphatic, but somehow sad as well.

Now I’m thinking he needs someone on his side, so I say, “Maybe your mother will stop being so afraid, if nothing happens to you for a long time.”

“Or if I turn out to be too soft for this life.” Harshness in his voice. “For being a ranger.”

“Left, left!” I shout. “See, the grass? They drove off this part of the track. What are you talking about, ‘too soft’? Like Dean Shelford is getting to you? I heard him yesterday.”

“We should let Mr Shakwane know we’re leaving the track.”

He spins the steering-wheel to avoid another clump of bushwillow. His arms are thin but I see the muscles working under his skin, which gleams in the sunlight that is flooding the bakkie cab.

“Maybe I should do it,” I say because the terrain is rough but also because hearing my voice will annoy Mphakati. “You need both hands for driving.”

I’m ready to be angry if he insists on doing it himself, but he doesn’t. I smile when he tells me that Mphakati is listed as ‘Mr Shakwane’ on his phone. Then I stop smiling, thinking about how I can’t respect Mphakati the way Theo does, because he doesn’t respect me.

I know I sound sullen telling Mphakati where we’re headed, and it doesn’t help, the way he growls questions at me. Clearly he doesn’t trust me to have it right.

I look at Theo as I end the call. Resentment surges again. It’s not just things like the bakkie and the gun. They give him so much else, the people here. They give him respect. I mean, they take him seriously. That’s what respect is. They believe he has the skill to become a ranger.

Mphakati and Bram believe it. Not Dean, obviously.

“Dean Shelford?” I remind Theo of what we’ve been talking about, and maybe I do it partly out of resentment, but I’m also curious. “How come he thinks you’re soft?”

I wonder if he’ll answer me, because maybe it’s humiliating for him, having me know what Dean thinks. Then he pushes out a big breath, more than a sigh, the sound of exasperation, but whether with himself or Dean, I wouldn’t know.

“The bush keeps throwing up these, like, tragedies, you know? Major and minor. Baby animals abandoned because they’re sick, wounded animals … the rhino. Some of these things – upset me. And I’m not good at hiding what I’m feeling.”

I look at his face that’s somehow angry and anxious at the same time, and I decide it can’t hurt me to tell him what I think. “Hey, Dean probably laughs at that sort of thing. He couldn’t care, and I’d say caring is part of what makes a good ranger. Same as a good tracker.”

Light comes back into Theo’s face. “I keep thinking I have to do something extra, apart from caring, to prove myself. Or else get out. Quit.”

“Prove yourself to who? A stupid show-off like Dean? Mphakati and Bram think you’ve got what it takes.”

He’s opening his mouth to answer me, when a new noise tears the air apart. Rifle fire, crackling up ahead.

***

Tell us what you think: Who is doing the shooting, and at what target?