Mark of the Lion (6 page)

Her father’s foreman and ranch hands had sequestered some Roman candles to shoot off in celebration. Jade was in the living room of the big stone house with her parents when the explosions began. New Mexico suddenly dissolved into the French front lines. After first hitting the floor behind the chair, she raced out into the night, searching for her ambulance. Later that night, she woke screaming from a nightmare in which she carried David’s bloody body across fields of broken airplanes.

That was when her father suggested it was time to put David to rest, and the only way to get rid of the burden was to carry out his last request. He convinced her she didn’t know everything about David, including any illegitimate siblings tucked away somewhere. He also said she needed independence, so he contacted an old editor friend who decided that her language skills and adventuresome nature made her ideal to write travel articles for his magazine. Jade went back to London in February and began the search for David’s brother.

Together, Jade and Mr. Jacobs had surmised a few key points: the second son was four or more years younger than David and was sired in East Africa during Gil’s first trip. The name on the packet hinted that the young man’s name was Abel, and since Gil wanted to pick up a trail in Tsavo, the son might still live there. Now here she was in Nairobi with the second ring and the sealed packet tucked away with her clothes. As far as she knew, she was still a thousand miles away from a conclusion, but she’d made her resolve, and that was the first step towards the end and her own recovery. The chicken bone dropped from her hand onto the carpeted floor as Jade slipped into an uneasy sleep filled with diving planes and wild hyenas with eyes glowing like the stone in David’s ring.

“GRAB YOUR RIFLE AND HEAD FOR the flume!”

A loud shout woke Jade with a start, and she jolted upright in her chair. When she realized the room was dark, she reached for her pocket watch to see the time.
Funny. I don’t remember turning out the lights.
Perhaps Jelani had come back for the tray and, seeing her asleep, had switched them off. She glanced at the table beside her. No, the tray was still there. She felt her way to the far wall and flipped the switch. Still, no lights.

The power must be out.
More shouts from the street drew her onto the upper veranda. A crowd milled below in the fading daylight. Several men called for help at the generator flumes, and suddenly Jade had the urge to tag along. She grabbed her leather notebook and ran out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Outside, people raced for cars and horses. She spied a slender middle-aged woman and a tall man walking towards a box-bodied car. Jade ran after them. “Please,” she called, “may I ride with you to the generator?” The pair turned and looked at her in openmouthed surprise. “I’m an American reporter for
The Traveler
,” she explained. “I’d really like to see what’s happening. May I ride with you?”

The lady whispered in her husband’s ear. He nodded, and the woman responded with a broad smile. “Delighted, Miss …”

“Jade del Cameron.”

“Miss del Cameron,” the lady repeated as though tasting the words. “Please do get in. A reporter. Gracious me. This should be a novel addition to your piece.”

The gentleman helped them both into the car, a put-together job made from at least three models, including a Dodge and a Wolseley. Jade got in the back. The man slid behind the wheel next to his wife, and they sped off down the dirt streets of Nairobi and into the wild plains beyond. Several people in cars and on horseback preceded them.

The lady turned in her seat and shouted to be heard above the noisy motorcar. “I’m Madeline Thompson.” One hand clamped her flimsy ribboned hat on her head and the other indicated the driver. Jade noticed the woman’s rough hands and lightly browned arms as the sleeves of her blue cotton dress fell back. She looked to be in her mid-thirties though the sun had done its best to advance her wrinkles. Obviously a working woman, not averse to tackling manual labor. Jade warmed to her immediately.

“This is my husband, Neville Thompson,” the lady continued. “We’re coffee farmers. Our place is north of here near Thika.”

“Delighted to meet you,” Jade shouted back. “Just what is going on? What are we racing to in such a hurry?”

“Oh, well, it ought to be good sport, really,” called Mr. Thompson. “You see, Nairobi means sweet water in Maasai. Anyway, the town has a flume of sorts that carries some of that water to a generator to make the electricity. Sometimes something gets into the ditch and stops up the water.” He gestured back towards the town and the car veered right. Neville replaced both hands on the wheel. “That is why the lights are out.”

“Do you mean something like a log?” asked Jade. She jotted a few notes in her book. The car bounced, and her pencil skidded across the paper.

“No,” answered Madeline gaily. “Something as in a buffalo or other large animal. Maybe it can’t get out or maybe it’s just obstinate and doesn’t want to. Anyway, here we go.”

“I knew this was a good time to come into the city for supplies, Maddy,” said Neville. “And here you were afraid there wouldn’t be anything of interest going on.” He laughed.

“You’ll have to forgive us, Miss del Cameron,” said Madeline. “The society life of a coffee farmer is different from that of some of the more genteel set in Happy Valley. We take whatever fun we can have.”

“I understand completely, Mrs. Thompson,” said Jade. “I was raised on a ranch. I know what work and isolation do to pique a person’s appetite for adventure.”

Madeline’s brown eyes widened. “Did you hear that, Neville?” she said. “I told you this looked like an interesting young lady. An American, too,” she said while trying to discreetly take in Jade’s dark olive complexion, green eyes, and wavy bobbed black hair. Her own long sun-bleached brown hair was escaping in strands from an elaborate bun. “Are you by any chance an Indian?”

“Maddy!” snapped her husband. “Don’t be impertinent.”

Jade stifled a smile. “It’s all right, and no, I’m not. Sorry.” Jade saw the disappointed pout on Madeline’s face and made a quick decision. Normally a private person, she realized if she wanted strangers to confide in her, she’d have to go first. “My mother is full Spaniard, and my father is some Spanish-Irish-French mix. In short, I’m a mutt.”

“Well, you’re lovely,” said Madeline. She nodded to Jade’s hair. “Very smart. Is short hair the fashion in America?”

“I really can’t say,” answered Jade. “I drove an ambulance in France during the war. For some of us, it became a matter of practicality.”

“Drove an ambulance,” Mrs. Thompson repeated with awe. “Neville, did you hear? Miss del Cameron drove an ambulance in France during the war.”

“I say,” Neville called back to Jade. “That’s bloody exciting. Red Cross?”

“No. Hackett-Lowther unit,” answered Jade. She held on to the car seat as the vehicle jolted over the remains of a termite mound. “Mostly British girls. I was at Winsor College for a year and joined up. We were attached to the French Third Army at the front lines.”

“Bloody marvelous,” he exclaimed. “Madeline, she must stay with us for a while. You can be my wife’s latest pet, Miss del Cameron,” he added over his shoulder.

Jade didn’t care to be anyone’s pet, but the opportunity seemed too good to pass up. Making personal inroads without having to use stuffy letters of introduction seemed nothing short of miraculous. Besides, these people were anything but pretentious, an affectation she hated. And if they’d been farming a long time, perhaps they knew about other pioneers, including Gil Worthy. Jade had decided not to openly announce her mission until she could glean more information. When she held at least of glimmer of knowledge of who the principal characters were in this melodrama, then she’d openly admit her underlying purpose.

Madeline joined her husband’s cause with a wholehearted urgency. “Neville is quite right. I would
love
to have you stay at our farm. Of course, it’s nothing so nice as the Norfolk. The town people call the Norfolk the House of Lords. We’re more the House of Commons, but we do have a good cook and a spare room. Do say you’ll join us.” Mrs. Thompson nearly jiggled in her seat from excitement.

“I’d be delighted,” Jade replied. “As long as you’re sure I won’t be any bother.”

They both poohed the idea, exclaimed their own delight at her agreement, and pressed her for information about America.

“Ah, here we are,” exclaimed Neville just as Jade began to tire of repeated inquiries concerning wild Indians and desperadoes.

They’d driven about fifteen miles out of Nairobi to Ruiru, a small river crossing that boasted a hut or two. Papyrus waving plumed tufts in the air like a Persian cat’s tail announced the welcome presence of water.

“There’s a dam here,” Madeline explained as she straightened her hat, “and a flume carries the water down to Nairobi’s generator.”

Several Africans in rust brown robes and carrying spears stood next to the flume, staring down into it and shouting,
“Kiboko.”

“Kiboko,”
echoed Jade. “Doesn’t that mean hippopotamus?”

Neville hopped out and reached in back for a double rifle, the ever popular Enfield. “Correct, Miss del Cameron. Perhaps you and Maddy should stay here. Hippos are a nasty lot when they’re angry, and they
always
seem to be angry.”

Mrs. Thompson frowned at her husband’s back and looked at Jade to see what she would do. Jade watched the growing number of people and decided, no matter how dangerous the hippo, the greater danger sat more with high-spirited and heavily armed hunters shooting each other in the cross fire. In that case, she’d be no safer from a stray bullet by sitting in the car than standing at the flume.

“I’m going to take a look,” Jade said. The two women joined the growing ranks of spectators at flumeside. Out of that crowd, three men argued over resolving the situation.

“Well, are we going to shoot it or not?” demanded an old man dressed in black-tie evening attire. He carried a Mauser rifle and looked as if he thought this was a formal safari. His drooping white walrus mustache jiggled as he spoke.

“It’s not full grown,” answered a slender young man. He wore jodhpurs and riding boots, and his smooth baby-face features made him look more like a teenaged boy who should be under adult supervision than a hunter. Jade recognized him as the young man at the Norfolk who preferred the hyenas eat natives rather than his cattle, and felt her right fist tighten again.

“What bloody difference does that make?” retorted a third man, whose khaki trousers and bush jacket showed signs of heavy wear. Impatience marked his voice, and his broad shoulders strained his shirt. Not a man to make angry, thought Jade.

“Well, it hardly seems sporting to just shoot a young hippo stuck in the flume, Harry,” retorted the young man. “Besides which, we’ll have to haul out a deadweight.”

“Better a deadweight than being gored by the blighter,” argued Harry, the man in the bush jacket. He took a wider stance and flexed his powerful arms.

Mr. Thompson joined in the debate. “Now see here, chaps,” he said. “Roger has a point. If this were a full-grown bull or even a cow, we’d have no choice but to shoot it in the ditch. But this bloke’s too young to be territorial over some harem. I’ve got rope. I say we haul him out. Let the natives send him packing with a spear point in the rump.”

A loud crack ended the argument when the walrus-mustached man in evening attire shot the beast. “Can’t trust a hippo at any age,” he said as he lowered his weapon, “especially a frightened one. Get your rope, Thompson. Let the natives pull it out. I daresay they’ll appreciate the meat. If not, it will give the hyenas something to chew on besides my goats for a change.”

Harry pulled his wide-brimmed hat tighter on his head and scowled. He muttered a few curses that encompassed everything from hippos to meddlesome old coots, then stomped over to his horse, a beautiful black creature, and galloped back to town.

Jade looked questioningly at Madeline, who leaned towards her conspiratorially. “Never mind Harry Hascombe. He’s been here long enough that he fancies himself the best shot in Nairobi. Probably didn’t like being robbed of his chance to show off in front of a new lady.”

Jade looked around and spotted no other women besides herself and Mrs. Thompson. “Me?” she asked. “I doubt he even saw me.”

“Oh, Harry noticed
you
all right. Harry’s a hunter in more ways than one, Miss del Cameron. He’s just gone back to Nairobi to sulk a bit. He’ll be all right in the morning.”