1972 - A Story Like the Wind (8 page)

It was a significant illustration of how deep Koba’s picture of her people lay in his imagination that despite concentrating on his examination of the wound, he could not help marvelling at the shape of the injured leg. What a lovely muscular calf it had!

What delicate, slender ankles like those of the
tssessebe
, the fastest antelope in Africa whose name, given of course by the Bushmen, conveys the sound of the wind created by its own speed whistling through its shining coat of titian hair. And how small and well-shaped were the feet! It was almost as if he could hear in the midst of his urgent preoccupations the voice of old Koba in his ear saying: ‘You see, as I have always told you, you will know the true men of my people by the smallness of their hands and feet and the beauty of their legs. He is one of my own—help him as I helped you!’

However, the problem was too pressing to leave time for pursuing the luxuries of imagination. The terrible wound was bleeding far too much for any further delay. Somehow he had to stop it and use all the first-aid knowledge that everyone at Hunter’s Drift, in a world without doctors, learned from early childhood. He thought at once of the handkerchief in his pocket, the red cotton kerchief he wore round his neck in the early hours of the morning and evening, and the white woollen vest underneath his bush shirt. Discarding his shirt, he pulled off the vest, made a soft pad out of it and placed it around the wound, tied his own handkerchief and kerchief together and used them to wind around the pad firmly enough to keep it in position for the time being.

He had hardly done this when the man opened his eyes to speak again in a blurred, gasping voice which frightened François into thinking that he might be dying. But all that he was doing was trying, in broken sentences, first to warn that there was a leopard about and to say that all night long he had been threatened by the animal; and then to plead with François not to let him fall into the hands of any black man or other strangers.

François quickly reassured him on this last point because he shared the man’s fears himself in that regard. Then immediately he took precautions about the leopard, perhaps just in time, because he noticed that Hintza was already aware of something dangerous creeping up on them under cover of the bush near at hand. He was indeed trying to attract François’s attention, pointing with his head and tail a-quiver in the direction of the grass and shrub beyond the marula trees.

‘Good Hin,’ François whispered to him. ‘Watch! I’ll get the gun at once.’

Quickly reassuring the Bushman that he would never let him fall into strange hands, he stepped over the trap, picked up the gun and joined Hintza. The dog by this time was standing beside the Bushman with the ridge of hair along the supple and tawny back erect and electric, while there came from him an angry murmur of protest at the self-restraint imposed upon him by his training, preventing him from dashing into the bush to grapple with the invisible enemy.

‘Beware, it’s
Xkdueydken
[the leopard] coming back again. Take care!’ The Bushman, obviously an experienced hunter, exhorted François in words fainter and uttered with greater difficulty than before.

This was a complication François would have given anything to avoid at that moment. He could hardly have thought of anything more dangerous. He would even have preferred to meet a lion just then, not only because it was easier to hit, but also because as a rule at that hour of the day it was capable of being discouraged from attack. Lions, unlike leopards, felt more relaxed in the day than at night and consequently were more placid and also lazier.

Leopards on the other hand were essentially nocturnal. They did not see at all well by day and accordingly felt insecure. Brave as they were they were inclined to panic in daylight and became more aggressive than at night, for which their senses were so superbly attuned. This applied particularly when hunger drove leopards, against their instinctive preferences, to search for food by day. And obviously this leopard, of which the Bushman had warned him, would not have contrived prowling around the trap all night and into the first light of day, if it were not extremely hungry.

François clearly had to be ready for the worst. Even so, he might not have been ready if it had not been for Hintza. The dog’s attitude suddenly had changed significantly. Instead of looking deep into the bush in front, his head was slowly tilting upwards, his tail sinking into line accordingly, until tip of tail and point of his quickened nose, creased and quivering with apprehension were aligned, like the needle of a compass, on the middle of a particularly dense spreading tree which stood ahead of them with an enormous branch thick in leaves leaning over the track just in front of François’s head.

The play of light and shade among the leaves upon the tree was itself as dappled and spotted as a leopard’s coat. No leopard could ever have chosen better camouflage for a line of attack. Alternatively watching Hintza and then the tree, Francis’s eyes were ultimately rewarded. Suddenly a substance too solid for either leaf or shadow moved. The outline of the back of an animal chequered with sun and shadow, emerged crawling slowly along the branch towards them. As François identified it, the animal suddenly halted, crouching so low that its head appeared resting on the branch. Watching it so intently Fran-fois’s eyes had become more accustomed to the nuances of shapes, shades and colours of the bush in front of him. The leopard was enormous, his coat now a flicker of lamplight among the black leaves. He was obviously gathering himself to spring.

Knowing he did not have a second to lose François brought the great old muzzle-loader, held all the while at the ready, to his shoulder. As Mopani Theron had so carefully taught him over the years, in the circumstances he wasted no time on careful aiming but shot by instinctive pointing, his eyes not on the gun but on the head of the leopard, knowing that the aim of the gun would automatically follow his eyes.

Before setting out at dawn he had rammed so big a charge of gunpowder down the gun that the recoil of the shot sent François reeling backwards with such force that he nearly fell over. However, he recovered his balance and quickly reloaded the gun with the sound of the shot, which had boomed out in the early morning silence like a cannon, still reverberating in his ears, and a dense cloud of blue gunpowder smoke drifting between him and the trees. All the time he kept his eyes fixed on the trees ahead, particularly as Hintza appeared to have vanished. His sense of danger was still so acute that he felt that he was reloading his gun with nightmare slowness, although he realized later that he had never done it faster.

By the time the gun was reloaded and no leopard had as yet hurled itself at him, he moved carefully forward through the haze of smoke. There, not fifteen yards away, was Hintza with his teeth in the throat of an obviously dead male leopard, holding it down unnecessarily to the earth. François had never seen a bigger leopard nor, indeed, one with so beautiful a coat.

Calling off Hintza, he returned immediately to the Bushman because he was certain that the sound of the gun would have been heard at Hunter’s Drift and that by now !#grave;Bamuthi and perhaps several of the other herdsmen, would be alarmed and already on their way with assegais at the ready, to see what had caused the shot.

If he were to keep his promise to the Bushman (and he knew how vital it was for the little man that he should do so) he had to get him out of the way at once. He had no time to explain. He just ran to him and said: ‘You must please trust me and try to stand on one leg and come with me, quick.’

The Bushman, weak as he was, immediately allowed François to help him to his feet. The quality and texture of the indomitable spirit of the man showed in the fact that he did so without even a whisper of a groan. Obviously he had caught the note of danger in François’s voice and was anxious to do his part. François’s arms about him, he hopped on one leg down the track for about fifty yards, although each hop must have caused him acute agony. There, as François knew of old, he would find close to the track a deep ledge of rock protruding from the foothills down into the floor of the valley. Once at that place, he led the Bushman quickly away from the track into the bush, found the ledge and there made him lie down on the ground, right at the back of a deep and dark recess.

Exhorting him to wait and stay absolutely quiet until he could return, François doubled back to the leopard with Hintza at his side. Though he never knew how he managed it, he dragged the heavy carcass all the way to the trap, found another stout lever of wood to suppress the spring, inserted the front leg of the leopard into the jaws of the trap, removed the lever and allowed the jaws to snap back firmly. He then quickly rolled the boulders away, threw the wooden stump deep into the bush, tore off a branch of a broom-brush, swept away the smear left by dragging the leopard along the track, threw the branch away and ran down the track towards home as fast as he could.

It was just as well that he did so because not a quarter of a mile down the track came !#grave;Bamuthi, shield on his arm and his great hunting assegai,
u-Simsela-Banta-Bami
, at the ready, trotting towards him with three other Matabele herdsmen similarly armed in single file behind him.

The relief on !#grave;Bamuthi’s face, seeing François and Hintza coming safely towards him, was most moving. The reaction, however, vanished when his relief changed to anger because of the fear aroused by the gun-shot and the realization that Fran-fois must have set out alone into the bush at so dangerous an hour.

‘To play at the man, Little Feather,’ he admonished François, his dark face for once grey with emotion, ‘before one has ceased to be a boy, is a black deed indeed.’

‘Black’ has the same symbolic meaning for Africans as for Europeans, and François knew that !#grave;Bamuthi used it here to indicate in the strongest way possible that he had done a misguided, if not wicked thing.

François had been feeling rather pleased with himself. Perhaps understandably, he thought that he and. Hintza had acquitted themselves rather well and deserved congratulations rather than condemnation. He was ready, therefore, in his high-spirited fashion, to give !#grave;Bamuthi back as good as he had got.

But !#grave;Bamuthi gave him no chance. The dark, grey-haired Matabele was following up his remark not in mere anger but also with scorn. Standing, and resting with his arms on his great ox-hide shield, somewhat out of breath because he was no longer young and had come faster than he cared for, he looked down at François and said in his most biting manner: ‘And now, having interrupted our morning’s work, I suppose all you have to tell us is news of the death of some miserable old baboon?’

Had François not been so young he would have been able to explain to !#grave;Bamuthi what had happened. But now, wounded in his self-respect, and also anxious to get on with his mission of helping the Bushman as soon as possible, he answered scorn with scorn:

‘If you are all so anxious to get on with the mere milking of old cows,’ he said tartly, ‘send the others back to do what children can do as well as men. And you, Old Father, come with me to see just what sort of baboon we have killed.’

François’s tone immediately made !#grave;Bamuthi aware of the fact that there was more to this than mere youthful irresponsibility. He took the hint, sent his followers back to get on with the milking and followed François back along the track towards the marula trees, wishing only that François was not in quite such a hurry compelling him to trot when he himself, now that the crisis appeared to be over, would have preferred a more dignified and stately approach.

He did not know of course that François had a secret, all-compelling reason for hurrying as he had never hurried before. Soon they were back at the trap where silently François stood aside, leaning on his gun without even deigning to indicate the great leopard. He lay there, his coat of gold covered as in some ancient script of life with the ink of his own spots and the scribbles of shade penned upon it by the pointed thorn growing beside the track. !#grave;Bamuthi was free to see it for himself.

He let out a deep, sonorous ‘
Yebo!
’—the Sindabele cry which combines astonishment with praise when confronted with an unexpected revelation.

For some minutes he stood staring down at the leopard, his eyes wide with praise and dark with new thought. After a while he looked at François and Hintza and back again at the dead leopard, until at last all the mixtures of contradicting emotions caused by the events of the morning were transcended in one generous overwhelming conclusion.

He reached out, put his arm affectionately on François’s shoulder and said. ‘Unwise as the deed was, Little Feather, I was wrong to call it black. Perhaps the man is already hastening to meet the child. Now please run back and tell them all what they will be glad to hear at home. I will stay behind, skin the leopard, salt the skin, peg it out in the shade and prepare it myself so that you could have it in your room for your children and grand-children to see how you crossed the frontier alone this day,’—the Sindabele phrase for becoming grown-up.

Glad as François was that once more all was well between them, this was the last thing that he wanted to happen. He was absolutely certain that !#grave;Bamuthi’s experienced old eyes would soon notice how contrived was the set-up of trap and leopard. Also how all round the track and grass, despite the precautions he had taken, were signs to show that far more than the trapping and death of a great leopard had taken place at the foot of the massive clump of marula trees, once more black and swaying with vultures.

‘No, Old Father,’ he said to !#grave;Bamuthi. ‘No. You and I will go back home together. I would like to finish this work which I began and do the skinning myself. I shall leave Hintza here to watch and see that the vultures gathered in the trees above do not spoil the carcass, while I hasten to get all that is necessary for the skinning. And you, I hope, will be good enough Old Father to show me afterwards how properly to preserve so great a skin.’