The Leopard's Prey (2 page)

This male had proved wary, and after two nights of sniffing and snarling around the outside of the cage, he’d slipped away and stalked the village instead. The Kikuyu said they’d heard his asthmatic “chuff” outside of the injured man’s hut.

Jade hadn’t been with the men those first two nights. So when they and two of the closest settlers, Alwyn Chalmers and Charles Harding, said the cat would now turn man killer and needed to be shot, Jade intervened with this solution, which now had her questioning her sanity. If the cat wanted a human, she argued, let it smell and see a human in the cage. For obvious reasons, no one else had volunteered to be the literal “scapegoat.”

Perhaps Jade had never really believed that the leopard would turn man-eater just because it had tasted human blood. It sounded like an old wives’ tale. In fact, she doubted the cat would even approach a cage with a human in it. But the settlers wanted the animal eradicated, and the expedition didn’t want to waste any more time trying to capture this pair. She was their last chance. Wild Africa, Jade noted, was disappearing, one animal at a time. She intended to save these two leopards even if it meant shipping them to a new home in Cincinnati or New York.

So why are my palms sweating?
Jade knew why. She felt vulnerable. What if the leopard threw itself on top of the cage? Would the lashings hold against one hundred to one hundred forty pounds of snarling muscle? Did she trust the men to immediately release her once the animal was caged next to her?
Why the hell didn’t I bring my rifle?

Of course, there wasn’t room to aim and fire, and anyway, the purpose was to save the cat, not kill it. With her right hand she reached down to the sheath on her boot, her fingers grazing the smooth antler-bone knife hilt. If she had to, she could cut the lashings and escape.

Just relax. Cutter and Anderson are out there.
The two Americans seemed competent enough. Or maybe it was just their thick Chicago accents that gave the illusion of toughness. Both of them were solidly built, but could they handle a furious leopard?

Take a nap. It’s going to be dawn soon.
Hard to nap when her heart was pounding one hundred times a minute. She felt her lungs constrict, as though the walls were closing in on her. She tugged at her shirt collar and gasped.
It’s the cage!
That was it. Suddenly she needed to get out, to feel air on her face and space around her body. Unfortunately, the release pin was on the outside.

She shoved her slender fingers up through the narrow gap and felt for the toggle. Nothing!
Where’s the blasted pin?
Jade forced her hand up farther, her knuckles scraping the rough wood, drawing blood. Her fingertips grazed the toggle, and for the first time, she wished she’d cultivated long fingernails.
Just a little farther.
There! Her index finger had the pin. She started to push it when she heard a tubercular cough.

Leopard!
Jade jerked her fingers back inside the cage as something powerful brushed up against it. The soft glow from the gibbous moon, which had previously penetrated her compartment, disappeared as the leopard’s body blocked it. The animal sniffed, short whuffing snorts, as he analyzed her scent. When he exhaled, the hot scent of stale carrion flooded the enclosure. Jade instinctively pressed her back against the opposite side as the leopard snarled, the sound deep and rasping like a heavy saw through hard timber.

The cat pushed his shoulder against the cage, testing it. The lashings creaked under the pressure, and Jade felt subtle movement in the wood along her spine. Her sanctuary shifted a fraction but held. She slid her knife from its sheath and waited for the next jolt.

It came from on top when the leopard jumped up to try to gain entry from above. The limbs groaned, but the green wood didn’t crack. Jade heard the cat’s claws scrape against the cage as he tried to find a point of entry. In the moonlight, she could see his form more clearly than before. She thought she detected a thinness about his middle. The animal was more than hungry. He was ravenous. His raspy snarls grew in volume. So did his repeated scratching and probing.

A thin piece of leather snapped, two limbs separated and a paw appeared above her. His claws swiped at empty air as he tried to reach her. Time to get him off the roof. She reached up with her knife and pricked the soft padding. The leopard withdrew the paw with an angry scream and jumped off the cage and away from her.

He landed near the open door, and for the first time, the two stared at each other. The leopard’s eyes glowed with the night shine of a nocturnal animal, reflecting every fragment of moonlight back at her. Jade knew the men were getting worried out there, and if it was anything like what she felt, they would soon finish off this cat. No doubt the only reason they hadn’t tried to shoot it yet was fear of accidentally shooting her. She needed to draw the animal in. Jade pricked her finger on her knife-edge, and let the scent of her own blood fill the cage.

The cat stalked her with an unnerving slowness, his broad head low between his shoulders, pausing after each step. His pale amber eyes never left hers, hypnotizing his prey into immobility. Beads of cold sweat formed on Jade’s brow. She could literally feel them ooze out of her pores, a creeping sensation. She didn’t move. There was no place to run.

Another step and the cat hit the release catch. The door dropped, but the animal had hesitated again and it only hit him across the top of his rump and tail. The capture crew didn’t know that. They only heard the door swing downward followed by a high-pitched snarl.

Jade heard the men jump from the trees.
He’s going to back out of the cage and kill them!
She needed to bring him in all the way. She forced her hand, the one she’d pricked, through the narrow openings and swiped at the cat, taunting him. A splinter made a fresh gash and a few drops of blood landed on his nose.

“Come on,
chui
,” she yelled, goading the leopard with his Swahili name. “Dinner’s waiting.” The scent of blood drove the starving and infuriated animal to a fever pitch. He charged forward, slamming into the partition just as Jade jerked her hand back into her compartment.

She knew the men were now sliding the wooden beams across the door to secure it, but she couldn’t hear them. Her senses only noted the hideous, enraged screams and those eyes—those furious, smoldering yellow eyes, glowing with hatred.

Jade didn’t wait for the men to pull the pin and let her out. She sliced the lashings from her side of the prison and tumbled out into the African night, gasping for air.

One cat, one bit of Africa was saved from a death sentence, but somehow, Jade doubted that he’d ever be grateful to her. She heard a truck door slam and looked up to see one of her bosses approach. Brooklyn-born Hank Daley was built like a wrestler whose muscles had gone to flab over the years. His five foot six inches were capped by a sun-reddened face and receding hairline. A seven-inch scar on his right arm and a missing pinky finger on his right hand testified to his having survived some difficult captures in the past.

“That was one hell of a job, Jade,” he said, hitching up his pants. “I thought for a moment we were going to lose one of my men. You’re quite a daredevil.” The forty-three-year-old second-in-command pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket, struck a match on a boot nail, and puffed away. Together they watched as the other men loaded the cage and the furious cat into the truck.

Jade hugged herself to keep from shivering, not from cold, but as an aftereffect of the rush of danger. She tried to divert herself by asking, “What’s next?”

“Well, there’s that other leopard a little farther north, the one by Harding’s spread,” Daley said, his cigarette bobbing as he spoke. “And I still need a young rhino, some zebra, a baboon or two. Got a line on some ostrich. I also want a cheetah. I understand you have a male. Care to sell him?”

Jade shook her head. “Biscuit’s not for sale, Mr. Daley. He saved my life and the life of a good friend this past January.”

“Biscuit, hunh.” He rubbed his chin stubble. “Well, if you should change your mind …”

“All loaded up, boss.” The speaker, Wayne Anderson, was a bulky, five-foot, ten-inch man with a shock of carrot red hair. He flashed a big smile at Jade. Next to him stood Franklin Cutter, a well-muscled, wiry man with straw blond hair.

“Thanks, Wayne,” said Daley. “You and Frank go in the truck with the cat.” He nodded toward the Dodge truck, now surrounded by the Kikuyu men who stood guard over the leopard, singing a song about a brave warrior. “I’ll take the Africans back with me.”

Jade and her boss walked toward a hill where they’d left the other vehicles, another Dodge truck and Jade’s 1915 Indian Big Twin motorcycle, which she’d purchased after she sold the French Panhard she’d acquired in Morocco that spring. After unloading the leopard at the Nairobi warehouse, the men would drive on to Alwyn Chalmers’ farm and catch what little sleep they could before the next night’s work began.

A soft noise in front of them attracted Jade’s attention. “Someone’s coming.” She made out two figures. One was slender and walked with the erect carriage and sure step of youth. The other clung to him, a hunched form tottering with age.

“Jambo,”
Jade called in greeting.

“
Jambo
, Simba Jike,” said the man, calling Jade by her Swahili name of “lioness.” He was a Wakamba, judging by his filed teeth. Probably from the nearby village. “This woman is my mother. She says she must speak to you.”

Jade turned her attention to the old woman clutching her son’s arm. She wore a leather apron stained red with soil and clutched a monkey fur cloak around her back and shoulders. Her shaved head and gnarled hands showed the liver spots of great age, but what most startled Jade were her dead eyes. Milky white, they managed to lock onto Jade’s own green eyes as though the crone could still see.

“Mother, what did you want?” asked Jade in Swahili. Her son translated.

Immediately the woman spoke two short sentences with a strength and volume that belied her great age and bent figure. Jade’s Wakamba was rudimentary at best, since she’d spent more time recently studying Kikuyu and a smattering of Maasai, but she did catch the word for danger, which she made a point of learning in any language.

“My mother says that you will face danger and must beware. She says you must always watch for the madness in the eyes of a killer.”

Jade felt a cold chill ripple down her spine. She looked into the old woman’s blind eyes, but in her mind, all she saw was the leopard’s hateful stare.

MADELINE THOMPSON SAT astride a sturdy little brown Somali pony called Tea and adjusted her wide-brimmed straw hat so it hid less of her face. Tea danced nervously underneath her, his hind muscles twitching and his tail whipping at the pesky flies that landed on his withers. One must have bitten him, because he bucked slightly. Maddy shifted sideways and made a grab for the saddle, her hat slipping.

“Do you know what to do, Maddy?” asked her husband, Neville. He sat on a very placid white pony that appeared to be dozing. “As soon as I send that stallion past you, you race after him and drive him the rest of the way into the pen beside the mares.”

Madeline fidgeted with her hat again. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Neville. You should be on Tea, and
I
should be riding Crumpet. Tea is too nervous for me.”

“Crumpet’s not fast enough to chase a wild zebra, Maddy. The beast would be past her before she even thought about running. Now just be certain to whoop and yell a great deal and wave your hat around. I’ll be right behind you … er … as soon as I can get Crumpet moving.”

Madeline yanked her hat off her head and muttered under her breath about obstinate men and silly schemes. Two hairpins fell and released a shoulder-length strand of brown hair streaked with gray. Before she could do anything about her hair, she heard galloping hoofbeats coming up behind her. Neville shouted, “Now, Maddy!” and she dug her heels into her mount’s side. Tea bolted forward just as the zebra raced past her.

“I can do this,” she murmured to herself. She swung her hat in a wide circle around her head and she hung on to the reins for dear life. “Whoop! Hyah!” she shouted. Tea responded to the challenge as though this were race week and he was running for the cup.

Just as Maddy thought the zebra was about to go into the fenced area next to a few mares from his harem, a gold-and-black blur raced past her pony’s legs, heading straight for the zebra. Tea reared and Maddy pitched backward onto the hard ground. The zebra spun around to defend itself against this new enemy, and Madeline appeared to be as good a target for his anger as any.

“Roll, Maddy!” yelled Neville, as he slid off Crumpet’s back.

Still stunned, Maddy looked up in time to see a pair of black hooves waving above her and a large, black-spotted cheetah beside her. She screamed and rolled away as the hooves crashed down less than a foot from her midsection. The cat ignored Madeline and nipped instead at the zebra’s hind legs. In the mayhem of snarling, pounding, snorting, and high-pitched whinnies, no one heard the purring roar of an approaching motorcycle.

Neville ran up beside his wife and pulled her to her feet as a lasso landed around the zebra stallion’s thick neck and brushlike mane. The noose tightened, and the zebra turned his fury toward this newest indignity. He jerked his head down and bucked, but the lasso held, mainly because the other end of the rope was looped around a post.

“Cut!” shouted a man standing fifty feet away beside a tripod and a motion picture camera. Sam Featherstone, former American WWI flying ace turned would-be filmmaker, looked up from the lens and grinned at the Thompsons. “That was fantastic!”

“I could use a little help here,” called Jade as she gripped the rope she’d thrown and pulled the still angry zebra toward the pen. “Biscuit,” she called to her pet cheetah, “stop annoying the zebra.” The slender cat, no longer interested in his prey, turned his attention to Madeline.