A Pride of Lions (11 page)

“We’ll have to wait here,” he called up to Johnny. “Hang on a second, I’m coming aboard to collect a few garments and any food you have.”

“I haven’t got much,” Johnny answered.

Hugo made a face. “I should have brought some supplies with me. Never mind, some
askaris
will be coming as soon as they can get the transport organised. Get back to the camp as fast as you can, Johnny. We’ll need the gear first thing in the morning. We should have coped with these fellows all right by then.”

Johnny gave him the thumbs-up signal to show that he had understood. I watched Hugo clamber on board. He threw out a couple of heavy coats, a Red Cross box, and a packet of American rusks that Johnny took with him wherever he went. A minute later his head appeared.

“Here, catch!” he called to me.

I reached up and accepted the cold box. It was quite heavy and was therefore gratifyingly full of cold drinks. It gave me great confidence to know that whatever else might happen, at least we wouldn’t go thirsty.

Hugo came down out of the plane again. Johnny roared the engines while we hurried away to a safe distance. The plane shook violently, shot forward, and took off in a cloud of red dust. When it had gone out of sight, we were completely alone in an empty world.

Hugo looked about us. “I think that tree will do—”

I looked where he was pointing. If there was one thing I hated, it was climbing trees! “Up that?” I said faintly.

Hugo grinned. “I’ll look after you!” he promised.

It was, after all, not a very difficult tree to climb. It had convenient, sticky-out branches that allowed me to get right up amongst the new green leaves at the top. It was another matter to find a comfortable perch for myself when I was there, but I did the best I could, rolling up one of the coats as a makeshift cushion.

Hugo made a complete circular tour of the tree, bidding me hide the cold box better and making one or two adjustments to his own hiding place before he climbed up into it.

“Not bad,” he said, as he wedged himself firmly into position. “Let’s hope they’re not too long. I have a feeling that we shall get cramp if we’re here for the night.”

I prised open the cold box. “Have a beer?” I suggested.

He accepted a Tusker lager, opening it with a gadget attached to the knife he wore at his belt. “What are you having?” he asked.

I giggled. There was something quite idiotic about our position, miles from anywhere, lying in wait for dangerous men, sitting in a tree and swigging beer.

“I don’t like beer much,” I said. “I think I’ll have a Fanta.” I passed a bottle of fizzy orange over for him to open it. It was deliciously cool to drink, sliding down my throat. I was beginning to enjoy myself.

“Where did you learn to shoot?” Hugo asked me. “Did your father teach you?”

I squinted down to the rifle I was looking after. “I suppose,” I said, “that if anyone taught me, it was Martin—”

“Oh!” said Hugo.

“It was self-defence!” I said hotly. “Kate turned out to be a natural shot and that put all the Freeman men on the defensive. Martin used to spend hours practising every day!” “And you with him?” Hugo suggested sweetly.

I blushed. “Not exactly,” I said.

He gave me a mocking glance. “What were you doing then?”

“Well,” I began, “to be quite honest, I’m not much good with any gun—”

“Now she tells me!”

“So,” I continued bravely, “nobody was prepared to waste much ammunition on me.”

“In fact,” Hugo said witheringly, “you don’t know how to fire the thing?”

“Oh yes!” I assured him eagerly. “You point it and then you pull the trigger!”

He closed his eyes in horror. “You
squeeze
the trigger! Very gently! And without shutting your eyes!”

“Well, I expect I can do that too!”

“My dear girl, I shouldn’t expect anything of the sort!”

I grinned. “There’s no need to be unkind,” I reproved him. “Doubtless, when I’m frightened enough I shall be capable of anything!”

“Doubtless!” he groaned. “I only hope you can restrain yourself from shooting me!”

“I’ll do my best,” I reassured him kindly. “Anyway, I’m sure you’re more than able to defend yourself. Your rifle is bigger than mine!”

He groaned again. “Have you never seen a .416 rifle?”

“No,” I admitted, “I don’t think I ever have. Is that what you used on the elephant? I suppose it would make rather a mess of a man.”

He finished the last of his beer and disposed of the bottle in a convenient hole in the tree.

“The idea,” he said gently, “is not to murder these ignorant butchers, but to arrest them and train them to better things.”

I raised my chin, quite prepared to argue the point. “They murdered that elephant,” I said.

“Granted, my love. But the guilty men are sitting safely on the coast, making all the money.”

Enchanted by this form of address, I was silent. I glanced down at my watch and saw that it was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. If the poachers were waiting for the cover of darkness before they came back to the scene of the crime, we were in for a long wait and my legs, from the knees downwards, had already gone to sleep. But nothing would have induced me

to complain about our position. Hugo, I thought, had enough to put up with without having a moaning female companion as well.

It is possible to see further in the evening light. The glare is less hurtful to the eyes, and a warm, golden glow takes possession of the land. From my perch in the tree, I thought I could see about twenty-five miles, perhaps more, in any given direction and, wherever I could see, I could see the trees felled and stripped of their bark by the elephants. It could only be a matter of time before they ate themselves out of their own home. I said as much to Hugo.

“You’re probably right,” he said. “It began with the railway, so they say. The elephants helped themselves at night to the water that was kept beside the lines for the steam engines. This meant that they didn’t have to migrate to other feeding grounds to find water. The worst of it is that we’ve made matters worse by creating all these artificial water-holes in Tsavo. The land never gets a rest.”

“So what’s the answer?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. We may have to close down the water-holes at certain times of the year to force the elephants out of the park. It
might
help, but it certainly wouldn’t if they all get killed the moment they go outside. That’s why your father’s attitude, and other farmers like him, is so hopeful to their future.”

I smiled and stretched my aching limbs. ‘You’d like my father,” I said.

“Would I?” He sounded amused.

“I think so. On the surface he has more in common with Mr. Doffnang, but underneath he has more in common with you.”

Hugo grunted. “I’m intrigued,” he said.

I wondered if it would be greedy to help myself to another cold drink and decided that it would. “On the surface,” I said with love, “he has a deep distrust of anything attractive, but he has flashes of brilliance which he thinks are obvious to anyone. Only you can’t be sure which things he will mistrust and which he will welcome. But
underneath—”
I hesitated, considering the problem. “Underneath he is a part of all Africa. He says that anything natural can’t be wrong, that all we need is space to live and the ground under our feet. He should have had sons, like the Boer that he is, but he only had me.”

“And you think I’m like that?” Hugo put in.

I blushed. I had forgotten that I had made the comparison. “A bit,” I said. ‘You’re part of Africa too.”

He gave me a surprised, flattered look. “I certainly ought to have lusty sons around me at this moment, instead of only you!” he teased me.

I looked away, hotly embarrassed. “You’ll have to get married first.”

His laughter rang out across the empty land. “So I will! But raw Africa is harder on a woman than it is on a man—”

“The dominant male?” I murmured.

“Not exactly. But it isn’t like living in Nairobi or Mombasa, is it?”

I chuckled, “Praise be for that!”

He gave me a quick look of interest but said nothing. The time could not have gone slower. I tried swinging my legs and was rewarded by the sharp prick of pins and needles in my feet. At last the light was beginning to fade and an orange glow had seized the sky, broken only by the silhouettes of the surrounding vegetation.

The vultures still circled over the dead elephant and other scavengers, led by a pack of hyenas, began to move in. Otherwise we had no visitors beyond a single rhinoceros who was feeding on the tasty thorn trees below. The grinding of his teeth on the thorns was clearly audible, but he was far too myopic to spot us. Only when he moved down-wind did he scent that there was something strange about our tree. He came charging up to within a few feet of us and then stopped, pawing the ground in front of him. He was uncertain now and relying on his senses of smell and hearing to help him overcome the handicap of his nearly blind eyes. He stormed away, sniffed | he air, his ears twitching, then charged back again towards the tree.

“Damn,” said Hugo. “If anyone is watching, he’ll give our position away.”

Although he had spoken in a whisper, the rhinoceros had heard him. He drove his horn into the tree and retired angrily to a discreet distance. Then his contempt for us overcame his prudence. He turned his back on the tree and expelled a powerful jet of urine over the base of the tree from about twelve feet away. This done, he trotted off into the bush, apparently well content that we were of no immediate danger to him.

Hugo and I gave a sigh of relief. It was now practically dark. Only a faint light over the western horizon showed where the sun had set. The strange sounds of the night had already started. A bush-baby’s eerie cry rang out quite close by, nearly dislodging me from my perch. I could feel my pulse beating madly and the odd pricking sensation on the back of my hands that fright produces.

“Hush!” Hugo whispered harshly.

I listened more frantically to the sounds all about us, wondering what he could have heard. The butt of the rifle rested comfortably in my groin and it occurred to me that I had no idea whether it was loaded or not. It was too late to ask Hugo though, for now I too could hear some muffled footsteps coming towards us, signalled by the call of an owl that was too perfect to be real.

I sat up sharply, suddenly cold. Now that the moment had come, I wished myself anywhere but where I was. I was
frightened
! I stared out into the darkness, knowing that the poachers were coming closer, but quite unable to see anything at all. They would see us more easily, I thought, for our skins were white. The tree seemed a very fragile protection against their sharp eyes.

Hugo was apparently unmoved. There was no movement at all from his side of the tree, but I knew his eyes were fixed on the dead hulk of the elephant, waiting, waiting for what?
They were there!
I knew they were there, so why didn’t he do something? Was he going to go on waiting until they had seized the ivory and departed?

It seemed not. His muscles were tensed as hard as the tree in which he sat. Then slowly, very, very slowly, he took a strong grip on the bough in front of him and, completely silently, dropped down on to the ground below.

If I had been frightened before, I was now scared stiff. I hugged my rifle to me, fondly imagining that I was going to give

Hugo some kind of cover as he moved forward. But he didn’t move at all. Beyond him, I too could see the corpse of the elephant. I could smell it too. The strong smell of elephant mixed with the already rotting flesh where the flies had been at work round the wounds that the poachers’ spears had made in the thick grey skin.

Then, from nowhere, came the poachers. They walked steadily in a line, one behind the other, dressed in torn shorts and singlets, a few with a blanket tied at the corners around their shoulders. They were armed with the weapons of a former age: bows and arrows; long-bladed spears; and the all-purpose machete, used for digging, fighting or gardening, the
panga.
Hugo was undoubtedly right. The guilty men were the rich ones, making all the money while they sat on the coast, secure behind their cover of genuine businesses that hid their remorseless greed. These were the fools, dazzled by the colour of the coins they would never see, exploited as surely as the poor animals they murdered.

The men stopped a few yards away from the elephant. There was a moment’s discussion as they noticed the circle of hyenas, snarling dares at each other to close in on the dead beast, but united in resisting any attempt by the poachers to take their meal away from them. Hyenas look so cowardly—they are often mistaken for such, but they have unlooked-for depths when they are attacked and it was clear that the poachers were unwilling to tangle with them.

The endless African discussion went on and on. The rise and fall of their voices was a natural part of their way of doing things. All would be heard. All would give lengthy advice as to what they should do. They would begin with the youngest amongst them and end with the eldest before any decision would be made. This, I thought, was my opportunity to follow Hugo down on to the ground. Gently, I rocked backwards and forwards, hoping to restore the circulation to my legs. I was not as neat as Hugo had been, but somehow I scrambled down on to the ground, still clutching the rifle to me. My foot scraped against the bark of the tree, but none of the poachers even looked round. Hugo did, though. He made a quick gesture for me to come up behind him.