09 Lion Adventure (9 page)

They had not been away from their post for more than a half-hour. Yet in that short time two more men had been taken.

Tanga waited near the balloon to tell them the news.

‘Where were you?’ he demanded angrily.

‘Mombo village. We saw a lion going there - thought it might be a man-eater. But it turned out to be their protector.’

‘You didn’t shoot it?’

‘Of course not.’

‘If you had, the whole village would be down on you.’

‘But this killing - how did it happen?’

‘The lion sneaked up through the grass. Nobody saw it coming. It grabbed one man and made off with him. The man’s buddy attacked the lion with a crowbar. The lion knocked it out of his hands, leaped on him and broke his neck. He died instantly. Then the lion killed the other man and dragged him off into the woods.’

‘What kind of lion was it?’

‘A very large male with a black mane.’

‘I’m sorry we weren’t here,’ Hal said. ‘But when we saw the lion on the way to the village we felt we had to do something about it.’

‘I can understand that,’ Tanga admitted. ‘But I must say you are having a streak of very bad luck.’

He went back to the station, shaking his head.

Walking with head bowed, Tanga almost collided with a tall young black. He looked up and recognized Basa of the village of Gula.

Basa had not yet noticed him. His gaze was fixed upon the basket a hundred feet above. The boys were just climbing into it.

A terrible hate was stamped on Basa’s face. If a look could kill, Hal and Roger would have fallen dead at that instant. Basa held a bow and on his back was a quiver of arrows. The dark brown stains on the shafts showed that the arrows were poisoned. The boys, confined to the basket, were sitting ducks for those arrows. But Tanga could not believe that the handsome young Negro was thinking of murder.

But he smelled trouble. It was part of his job to avoid trouble. There were no police in this area. The station master was the only public official except for the district officer, King Ku. If there was any violence brewing in this young man’s mind Tanga should know about it.

‘Good morning, Basa. You look as if you didn’t like our white friends.’

Basa saw him for the first time. He mumbled a reply and started to move away.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Tanga. ‘Is anything wrong?’

Basa stared at him bitterly. ‘You ask me that? You know what happened.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My father. You know he was killed.’

‘Yes. A lion with a black mane killed him.’

‘No. It was those two.’ He pointed aloft. ‘They killed him.’

‘How do you make that out?’

“The lion entered their tent. It was an easy shot. They could have killed it. They let it get away. It went into the next tent and got my father. They were to blame. They killed my father.’

‘Oh, come now,’ said Tanga, ‘You’re letting your hate run away with you. Their revolver was knocked out of reach. They did the best they could.’

‘With pancake flour?’ said Basa sarcastically. ‘What a way to fight a lion. No excuse you can make for them is good enough. Their neglect and stupidity killed my father. And they will have to pay for it.’

Tanga laid his hand on the young man’s arm. ‘Basa, listen to reason. If you think you have any case against them, take it to court. Don’t appoint yourself judge and executioner.’

‘Court!’ sneered Basa. ‘You know very well that is not the way of our tribe. If a man is killed, his son must avenge his death. He cannot leave it to any court or judge or jury. He must do it himself. And if you have any respect for the customs of our people, you will not interfere.’

‘I respect your customs,’ Tanga said. ‘But let me warn you, if you make one move to carry out your threat I’ll put the handcuffs on you myself and you will be on your

way to the Nairobi jail. Think it over. And try to change your mind about these boys.’

‘Why should I change my mind?’

‘I’ll give you a good reason. Did you realize that if it hadn’t been for Hal Hunt your father’s body would have been eaten by hyenas and jackals? His skeleton would be lying there now if Hunt had not come and told you what had happened. He made it possible for you to give your father a proper burial in your own village. Think about that. And remember that you have been educated. You belong to the new world of justice, not to the old world of vengeance. Now go, and don’t let me hear any more about this.’

Muttering angrily, Basa turned on his heel and strode off towards the village of Gula.

A strong wind had come up. The Jules Verne was tugging at its trail line. The basket bounced under the feet of the two lion scouts. The dangling rope ladder whipped back and forth like the tail of a tiger. It was dangerous to stay up - it would be dangerous to go down. Anyone tossing back and forth on that ladder might lose his grip and be dashed on the stones below.

Roger looked up at long black fingers of cloud clutching at the great bag.

‘Should we go down or stick it out?’

‘Six of one and half a dozen of the other/ said Hal. ‘Look at those animals.’

The change in the weather had electrified everything that could move. A herd of zebras ran at full speed across the veld for no apparent good reason. Impalas that seemed to have wings in their heels soared over anthills ten feet high. The excited screaming of baboons came down the wind from the forest a quarter of a mile away. Lions that had been sleeping in the sun were roused by the chilling wind and began prowling about restlessly. The boys kept their binoculars trained on them - they might or might not be man-eaters.

‘Elephants!’ exclaimed Roger.

A herd of forty or fifty of the great beasts was charging up the hill towards the village of Gula. Like a typhoon they swept in among the mud huts, not troubling to go around them, but plunging through and over them, flattening them to the ground as if they were castles of sand. Men and women came shrieking from the huts.

‘Come on!’ said Hal and slid down the trail line promptly followed by Roger. Hal led the way at a run to the station.

‘Tanga,’ he panted. ‘Elephants raiding Gula. Send up your men - with pans.’

Then he and Roger raced to the village. Tanga acted promptly, and within a minute railway men began to stream up the path, each armed with a weapon that elephants keenly dislike - a tin pan.

They found the villagers running about aimlessly like ants whose nest has been disturbed. The elephants were now in the village gardens, rooting up and devouring the vegetables, tearing down the coffee and fruit trees, eating and destroying, trampling with their great feet the crops that meant the difference between life and death for the village.

Hal hastily took command of the men, lining them up side by side, then ordering them forward like an army, each one hammering on his pan with a stick or stone or bis knuckles if he had nothing better.

The combined din was terrific and rose even above the trumpeting of the elephants. The men of the village joined in, banging on native drums.

They were so occupied when Black Mane came on the scene. The wise old man-eater knew very well how to let elephants do a part of his work for him. When a man-eater sees a herd marching towards a village he falls in behind it. The men of the village rush out to drive away the elephants and are so busy they do not notice the skulking lion. The man-eater is then free to seize anyone who has been left behind.

In a hut at the edge of the village a woman bent over a cooking-fire. Her husband had gone to join the fight against the elephants. In his haste he had not quite closed the door. The woman’s father, old and ill, lay on a straw mat.

Silently, Black Mane pushed open the door, passed across the room, and fastened his jaws upon the ribs of the helpless man. The first the woman knew of it was when her father cried, ‘Lion’s got me.’

She turned to see her father being dragged off the mat by the enormous lion. She was a brave woman. She tore a burning log from the fire and struck the lion in the face.

Black Mane was not used to being treated in this way, especially by a woman. The flying sparks burned his eyes and the smoke made him sneeze. He dropped the man, sat back on his haunches, and looked at the woman with surprise as much as to say, ‘Don’t you

know you’re only a woman? You’re not supposed to act like that. You’re supposed to scream and run away.’

Her unexpected attack had made him forget the man. With his eyes still smarting painfully, he walked out of the hut. He would try again somewhere else.

The woman ran to her father. His eyes were closed. She spoke to him but he did not answer. The great fangs had reached his heart. She gathered him in her arms and wept.

So the men found her when they returned after driving out the elephants. And they saw Black Mane scratching at the door .of another hut. They called on the official lion-killers, Hal and Roger, the only men who carried guns.

Not quite the only ones. There was also Dugan who had been attracted to the scene by the trumpeting of the elephants and the thunder of pans and drums.

Hal motioned the men to stay back and keep quiet. He and Roger crept towards Black Mane, still scratching at the door. They must get near enough for a really deadly shot.

Dugan stood by the village headman and watched. ‘They’ll never do it,’ he said. ‘They don’t know one end of a gun from the other.’

‘How about you?’ the headman said. ‘Can’t you do it for us?’

‘Of course I could. But it’s not my job.’

‘It was your job, until they came.’

Yes, thought Dugan, it was my job until those two babes in the woods took it away from me. Here’s my chance. If I kill that lion, Tanga will get rid of these children and take me back. He drew his revolver.

‘Don’t you need to get closer?’ said the headman.

‘Nonsense. I can do it from here.’ He raised his gun and fired.

Black Mane, alarmed by the report, and feeling the swish of the bullet through the hair on the back of his neck, bounded away. Hal and Roger fired instantly but the great animal was already behind an anthill and when he could be seen again he was well on his way to the forest, proceeding at a speed almost equal to that of a cheetah.

A groan of disappointment rose from the railway workers and the men of Gula. A wailing sound came from the hut where a woman held her father’s body in her arms.

‘Doggone that Dugan!’ said Roger. ‘If he hadn’t interfered that lion would be dead by now. Where is that son of a gun? We ought to have it out with him.’

But Dugan, ashamed of his failure to hit a standing target, had again done his famous vanishing act.

The railway men were streaming down the hill to their job. The villagers were chattering excitedly.

‘What are they saying?’ Hal asked the headman.

‘They say you will never kill that lion. It is not really a lion. It is a wizard that has turned himself into a lion. It has a lion’s body but a man’s brain. We know much about these things in Africa. We know that a man who is dead and buried can dig his way out of the soil and become a lion. We know that a witch doctor can turn a stick into a lion and it will kill and then turn back into a stick. We hear lions talking together in real man-language. We know that a bullet turns to water when it strikes a witch-lion. We know that in a village of three

hundred people beyond that mountain the chief died and became a lion and began to kill and eat the people. They had to abandon their village, burn it to the ground, and move to another place far away. We know there is great magic in the lion. A charm made of his claws makes you bullet-proof. If you tie it around your leg it gives you great speed. A collar made of his neck-bones brings you luck. A necklace made of his whiskers is rich in magic. If you eat his eyes you can see better. If you eat a lion’s heart you will have great courage. The lion who kills men has strong magic. I know the white man has magic and I hoped yours would be stronger than the lion’s. How ignorant I was!’

And how ignorant you are, thought Hal. The headman of a village should be leading his people up into the light, instead of which this man was stumbling along with them in the dark.

‘Is there a school in Gula?’ Hal asked.

‘No school. Why should we have a school? We have the wisdom of our fathers and of their fathers.’

Hal’s eyes swept over the village. Even the huts that had not been trampled by the elephants were poor things of mud and straw. How little had been accomplished by the wisdom of all the fathers. His heart went out to these people. They were as good stuff as could be found anywhere, but they needed education and opportunity. And what a sad mess they were in now - with half of their huts ruined and about a third of the gardens destroyed. At least he had been able with the help of the railway men to save the place from total destruction - but he had not prevented Black Mane from taking another victim.

On the way back to the balloon, Hal and Roger had to go through the patch of woodland.

As they walked through the half-dark of the big trees, they heard the rustle of bare feet in the leaves behind them. They turned to face Basa.

This time the powerful young black carried no bow and arrow. Hal hoped it meant that Basa had decided to be more friendly. His hope was dashed when Basa drew a murderous-looking long-bladed bush-knife from its sheath.

‘Now I have you where I want you,’ he said with a sinister smile. ‘No one will disturb us here. Now you will pay.’

‘Basa,’ Hal said, ‘can’t we forget all this and be friends? We are sorry for what happened to your father, but we were not to blame.’

‘You killed him,’ Basa retorted. ‘And then there is what happened today. You allowed your lion to kill another of our men.’

‘What do you mean, our lion?’ put in Roger hotly. ‘You talk as if we sent him.’

‘The man who was killed was one of the chief elders of our village. It was your job to protect him and all others from man-eaters.’

Roger was about to reply angrily but Hal checked him. ‘No use losing our tempers,’ he said. ‘Basa, there is truth in what you say. So far we have failed to catch the black-maned one. But we have done what we could. Didn’t we come this morning to help you drive out the elephants?’