Stalking Ivory (16 page)

“I heard running feet coming from behind, but before I turned to look, I felt a stab in my leg. After that, the earth did not behave right. It tilted and the sun got dark. I could not see, and I fell.” He closed his eyes and gingerly rubbed his temple where a large welt pushed up against a bandage. “I think I heard a leopard scream and an elephant, but I am not sure.”

Jade placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled. “You were lucky, Chiumbo. Rest now.”

The big man grabbed her wrist and held it like a vise. “Simba Jike, I hear you are staying. You must take great care.”

She patted his hand. “I will, Chiumbo. I promise. And,” she added in order to relieve some of his worry, “I won’t be alone. Mr. Featherstone will be with me.”

Chiumbo smiled. “Ah,” he said. “Yes, that is good. That is how it should be.”

“Everything is packed, Jade,” said Beverly as Jade finished her good-byes to Chiumbo. “Avery put all the canned foods in our vehicles and left you with all the jerky and dried fruits.”

“Good. We can’t risk drawing attention with a fire to cook.” Jade slapped the front of Sam’s Dodge. “Let’s get this wagon train a-moving.”

True to their plan, they drove along as a caravan, Avery in the lead Overlander with Jelani, Beverly driving the second Overlander with Chiumbo, and Sam and Jade following in Sam’s Dodge truck. The few remaining Wakamba men walked alongside the slow-moving cars. Since all the extra petrol needed for the return trip had been left in caches along the way, the men had much less to carry, and so were able to help push the cars over the rougher spots. Once when a rock hung up Avery’s rear axle, everyone but Beverly and Chiumbo got out and lifted the car’s rear end up and over the hurdle.

Sam didn’t attempt to drive the Dodge over that rock. Instead, he decided it was a good opportunity for them to go their separate ways. Jelani, who had already made it clear he didn’t want to stay with the Dunburys, sat slouched in the front of the Overlander, chin on his fists in a sulk. Biscuit, panting, lay stretched out on top of the chop boxes behind him.

“Jelani,” said Jade, “you are good and brave and
very
clever, but I cannot put you in this danger that Bwana Sam and I must face.” She held up her forefinger to his lips. “No argument. I have a job to do and I cannot do it if I am worried about all of you or,” she added, “if I have Biscuit underfoot. I’m depending on you to keep him with you.”

Jade reached into her trouser pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. She held it in front of her and waved it to capture everyone’s attention. “I drew a map to the hidden weapons and to the poachers’ cache. Give this to the officials at the government station. If you see Captain Smythe before then, give it to him.” She handed the paper to Beverly. “I also explained how to reach the crater lake. Sam and I will bivouac there.”

Beverly held the folded sheet in her right hand and stared at it silently. Finally, one lone tear dropped on the paper, rolled down a crease, and plopped to the ground, splattering in the dust. Jade turned to Avery, who gave a limp smile as though he didn’t know whether to be distressed or apologetic about his wife’s emotional state.

“We’ll meet you at Archer’s Post,” said Jade. “But leave word at each station along the way just in case there’s a change in your plans. You ought to run into someone sooner than later. I hate to think our runner had to go all the way to Isiolo for help.”

“Right,” said Avery, his voice tight when Jade hugged him. He shook hands with Sam, who clapped him on the back. “Don’t stay around here more than a few days. It’s too dangerous.”

“Don’t you fret at all,” said Sam. “Just get Chiumbo and the boy squared away and leave the rest to us.”

“You’d better not let Jade get into trouble, Sam,” said Beverly as she choked back a sob. “She needs a keeper, you know.”

“You can count on me, Beverly,” said Sam. “I grew up on a farm in Indiana, so I’m an expert at handling varmints.”

“Hey!” exclaimed Jade. Then Beverly chuckled and Jade decided that Sam had called her a varmint only to break the somber mood.

Avery started singing one of the newer songs. “How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm—”

“After they’ve seen the Serengeti,” finished Jade. She slapped the door of Beverly’s car. “Off with you, now.”

Jade and Sam watched as the others bounced and jostled their way down the slope, heading towards the desert and grasslands below. She knew they’d stop at the wells near the base to refill all the radiators and water
debes
before continuing south around the mountain to Kampia Tembo, where they’d left their first cache of fuel. If Chiumbo was still without a fever, they would pause for a brief rest, and leave again before dawn rather than risk missing a patrol in the pitch-black of night.

“Let’s go before someone sees us,” Jade said. Sam nodded and climbed back into the idling Dodge.

“Are you sure there’s a clear path to your lake, Jade?” he asked after he turned the vehicle around. “Because I don’t believe we’re going to be able to lift the truck over rocks on our own.”

She shook her head. “That would be a waste of fuel and water, not to mention time. All we want to do is get the truck hidden away somewhere between here and the lake. We can carry what we need the rest of the way. Besides,” she added, “I’m not sure how trustworthy your Dodge is.”

“I’ll have you know, my dear Miss Jade, that Black Jack Pershing himself used a fleet of Dodge vehicles to chase down Pancho Villa in that border war. I should have thought you’d have known about that since you’re from the Southwest. Rumor has it that Villa was so impressed, he ordered one for himself afterward.”

Jade put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. “Now that you mention it, I do remember reading about that.”

Sam grinned, tilting the ends of his untrimmed mustache. “I’d have thought you’d have written one of your famous piss-sonnets about it,” he said, referring to the limericks and humorous poems she had composed during the war.

Jade snapped her head around and scowled at him. “How do you know about my piss-sonnets? And now that I think about it, what did you mean this morning when you told Harry that he, if anyone, should know about making room for a wounded man in a car? You knew about his broken leg.”

“I’ve been here a few days, Jade. Avery and Beverly told me a little about their last adventure.”

Jade blew out a short, huffing breath, like a disturbed rhino. “Sounds to me like they talk too much. Let’s get moving. I suddenly feel exposed here.”

Sam inched the car forward. “Does your knee hurt?”

“What?!” She pivoted a quarter turn and banged her elbow against a canvas day pack balanced behind her. The force knocked loose several papers, which slid partly out. Jade started to push them back into place when several lines of text caught her eye.

“What’s this?” She pulled out a sheet and read the first lines of typewritten carbon copy aloud.

She snorted in disgust. “What a lot of driveling, purple prose.” She flipped past several pages and read again.

Jade glared over the top of the paper at Sam, who pretended ignorance to everything but the dried-grass path in front of the car. “Bev told me that Madeline gave her the carbon copy,” she said. “Just how did it come to be in your possession, Mr. Featherstone?”

Sam took a deep breath, gripped the steering wheel more tightly, and stared straight ahead. “Do you mind telling me how far I’m supposed to drive?”

Jade ignored his question. “Did Beverly send this to you? Did she bring you out here to meet me? Because it sounds like just the thing she’d do.” Jade wadded the carbon copy back into the satchel and turned back around, arms folded across her chest. “No wonder you know so much about Harry and my knee.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes, each staring straight ahead until Sam broke the tension. “I suppose I’d better tell you everything. I told you I met Avery during the war while we were both on leave in Paris, and that we kept up a sort of correspondence. I wrote to him to toss around the idea of my making a moving picture about buffalo. That’s all true.”

Glancing sideways at Jade, he took in the stony set of her jaw and the snap in her eyes. “The next thing I knew, they told me to get out to Africa as fast as I could. They jumped all over the idea of my filming wild animals and natives. Told me they knew this wonderful American girl I had to meet. Sent me that manuscript and said everything in it was true. I didn’t know that they kept it a secret from you till I got out here.” He looked over at her again. “That’s the gosh-honest truth.”

Jade closed her eyes and sighed. Once again she grabbed the ring that she wore hidden under her shirt like a talisman. “I’m sorry Bev led you astray. I’m sorry you had to leave your camera and equipment back in their car. Maybe in a day or two, when this is over, you can get on with making your motion picture.”

Sam didn’t respond at first and the silence built up again, oppressive like the late-morning heat. “I met David, too, when I was on leave. Seemed like a good man.”

Jade nodded, her hand still clutching the ring. “I’m sorry, Sam. It’s just that—”

“I know, I know,” he said. “You already told me. I haven’t got a leg to stand on.”

The Dodge jerked and bounced along over the hard ground, occasionally dipping down into wallows hidden by patches of grass. The grassland ran in a strip a few hundred yards wide, like a buffer between the desert below and the mountain forests rising to their left. Finally, Jade pointed to a break in the trees on the left.

“Turn in there. We can see how far up it takes us. If my estimate is correct, the crater lake is at the other end of this trail.”

Sam turned into a five-foot gap in the trees where generations of pachyderms had bullied their way through the forest. The trail rose upward in switchbacks forged by lead matriarchs who had found the easiest path to and from the lake. During the wet season, the elephants came down and fed in the lush grasslands. Now in the lull between rains, they had migrated back up into the forest to avoid the sun’s heat and to find food in the succulent growing branches and fruits. No elephants had passed this way for nearly ten months and young saplings sprang up in their way, fertilized by giant droppings. Sam drove around them where the trail permitted. Several times Jade got out and walked ahead of the car, hacking at the growth with a panga. Finally, they reached a point where the car couldn’t make further progress without considerable assistance.

“We’ll leave it here,” Jade said.

“I suggest we make this our home base,” said Sam as he stepped out of the car. He pointed to a large, red-trunked tree beside the trail about twenty feet away. Its thick branches radiated out like wheel spokes with secondary branches creating an interlacing framework.

“We can sleep up there for protection. The lowest branches look to be a good seven feet off the ground. I’ve got a stout hammock in the back and we can drape a tarp over some upper branches in case it rains.” He saw Jade’s frown and added, “Or we can go on to your tree blind, carry back its wooden planks, and nail them up there.” When she gave the tree another once-over, he pressed his point. “Anyway, it’s convenient. We won’t have to haul a lot of gear with us. We’ve got enough water in the
debes
already, so we don’t need to find more at present. It also affords a faster escape if we need it.”

“But I told the Dunburys we’d be at the lake. If they get word to Smythe or someone at the government house…”

“Then they’ll probably come past here on their way up,” finished Sam. “At least that’s how you drew the map, right?”

Jade nodded. “All right. You’ve convinced me. I guess I thought I’d eventually find Boguli up there, but I don’t know why.” She studied both her rifle and the captured bow before making a choice and tucked the bow with the arrows under a canvas tarp.

“As I said before, your old native is probably long gone by now,” said Sam as he examined his own rifle.

Jade hung her flashlight from her belt, checked her Winchester for ammunition, added a few rounds, then stuffed more into her pocket. She tucked some jerky into a canvas sack along with a cake of dried dates, and slung the sack and a canteen around her shoulders. Sam picked up his rifle and another canteen and the two of them headed up the trail towards the crest. After an hour’s hike, Jade picked up a smaller game trail that meandered east towards the poachers’ cache.

Very little stirred along their path, except for the insect life that seemed to thrive in the afternoon humidity. A brief rain shower reminded them that the long rains would start in a month if not sooner. At that point the elephants, annoyed by the constant
plop
,
plop
of water from the trees, would once again depart from the mountain and feed on the freshened grasslands at the southern base. That was probably when the Abyssinians would also leave. Jade wanted to see the murdering troop all in irons before she vacated the mountain.