Searching for any movement; listening for the slightest sound; looking for the reflection of light off glass or other telltale signs that somebody was already out there. Waiting for him, watching him. From here, the dirt road that ran past his gate was barely visible. It snaked its way between the stunted thorn bushes and dry pans that lay to the east of his farm; a deeper channel of packed golden-brown dirt against the bleached landscape, defined only by its borders and the tyre tracks left by the occasional utility vehicle heading that way. If Meintjies were to notice the faraway dust plume that signalled an approaching car, he would have ample time to get away. To climb into his battered Isuzu bakkie and simply take off, sticking to the little-used farm tracks that only he knew well, where he could drive as fast as the bakkie would travel, but where deeply eroded dongas and hard-to-see tyre-grabbing banks of sand would make speed impossible for the unwary traveller.
