The Lion Who Stole My Arm (6 page)

T
hey searched all day without seeing so much as a single paw print — only a few waterbuck
¹
and some birds. That night they camped, cooked canned food over the fire, and talked. The researchers and Issa swapped stories about wildlife and the bush.

Pedru half listened, half slept. He heard Beth say that she had raised an orphan lion cub when she was ten and John say that he was an expert at shooting lions with a tranquilizer gun. He thought he heard Issa say that he’d been chased by a herd of crocodiles. He thought he heard that Renaldo’s cousin was a rich soccer player who was going to build a safari lodge at Madune. “So people from the city can come and see lions,” Pedru thought he remembered Renaldo saying.

But when Issa lay down in the tent next to him and Pedru asked sleepily if crocodiles ever chased people in herds, Issa just laughed, so Pedru knew he must have dreamed about Renaldo’s brother, too.

The next morning, they struck camp before dawn, everyone quietly doing what needed to be done. Already, they were a team.

“That John, he is a good man,” Issa told his son as they took down their tent. “He knows almost as much about the bush as I do.”

As he put the tent onto the roof of the vehicle, John told Pedru quietly, “I wish I had half of your dad’s tracking skill. And you’re no slouch yourself.”

Pedru smiled, but inside he felt bad. He liked John and Beth and Renaldo so much, but would they like him if they knew how he felt about his lion?

Pedru had the best eyes, so he was put on lookout, clinging to the roof of the Land Rover.

“Vultures!” he yelled when they were too faint and far for anyone else to see. Everyone knew that vultures could mean a lion kill.

“That way!” Pedru directed Beth. She drove as fast as she dared — sliding, skidding, bumping.

“Beth could have been a race-car driver in another life,” John said as she swerved to avoid a tree stump.

The vultures were closer now. Everyone could see them, as well as a dark clump of animals on the ground below. Beth parked the Land Rover in the shade of a tree, and everyone got out quietly and climbed onto the roof with Pedru.

“Take a look, Issa,” John said, handing Issa his binoculars. Pedru squinted into the light, impatient to make out what was going on under the spiraling wheel of vultures.

“Here,” said Beth. “Have mine. I need to take pictures anyway.”

Over the last day or so, Pedru had had some practice with binoculars, but he still spent the first few moments getting spider images of his own eyelashes. There! Now he had it. The thrill of being able to see faraway things so clearly made his heart race with excitement.

Lions! Two of them. Young males with growing manes. They had killed a young waterbuck, probably just before dawn, but were now having to defend their kill from a crowd of hyenas. The two lions snarled and spat in fury, and the hyenas heckled and snapped, getting closer and closer.

“They will lose their kill,” Issa said, handing the binoculars back to John.

“Yeah!” John grinned. “That’s what I’m betting on — two hungry youngsters who missed out on breakfast.”

Pedru steadied his hands and looked more closely at the lions. The smaller one, the one with the darker mane, had a notch in its left ear. Pedru felt his gaze traveling down the binoculars and out into the morning air.

You don’t know it,
he told his lion,
but I’ve caught up with you at last.

P
edru watched as the hyenas stripped the waterbuck’s body and cracked its bones for the marrow. There was hardly anything left for the horde of hopping, squabbling vultures. The two lions skulked off and lay in the shade of an acacia a few hundred yards away, just visible through the heat haze with binoculars. The day was still, with no breeze to carry the scent of humans and make the lions wary. With all hope of recovering their kill gone, and no hunting to be done until nightfall, the lions slept. Pedru climbed down from the roof of the Land Rover to join Issa and the researchers, who were quietly planning their attack.

Beth had plugged her camera into Renaldo’s laptop so they could look at her photos of the two young lions and compare them with the ID pictures. Even though the shots were taken from so far away, everyone agreed that the young lions were Puna’s two male cubs, Samir and Anjani.

“So all we need to do now,” said John, “is get close enough to get a tranquilizer dart into Anjani, and his brother too, if we can.”

“How close must you be?” Issa asked John.

“You are speaking to the lion-darting champion of all of Africa here,” John said with a mock swagger, “but all the same, I need to be quite close to be sure of a good shot. Twenty-five, maybe thirty yards?”

“Good — not as close as I thought,” said Issa. “They are very hungry, these lions. We can get them close if we have bait to tempt them.”

“How about this?” Renaldo grinned, holding up a small, dead goat. “I got him out of the freezer just before we left our compound. He’s thawed out now.”

“Mmmm, and getting smelly, too!” said Beth. “Perfect. Where should we put him, Issa?”

Before Issa could answer, Pedru spoke up. He pointed to a short line of trees, beyond the acacia where the two lions slept.

“Those waterberry trees,” Pedru said. “There will be water there, and the lions will be thirsty.”

Issa nodded and smiled. “That is thinking like a hunter, Pedru. Very good.”

The plan was that Issa and John would wait in the trees by the goat, each with a tranquilizer gun. Although Issa didn’t own a gun, he had used one many times and was a crack shot. With two guns, their chances of getting a dart into Anjani, or even darting both lions, were much greater.

“We’ll use this, too,” John said, pulling a small plastic recording device from the back of the Land Rover. “It’ll play the sound of a bush pig squealing. The lions won’t be able to resist.”

When the lions were tranquilized, John would call Beth and Renaldo to bring the collars from the Land Rover.

“You will wait with them. It’s too dangerous for you to come with us,” Issa told Pedru. “I don’t trust these dart things,” he added in a whisper.

Pedru had no intention of being left out of the hunt, even if it meant disobeying Issa, so he didn’t bother to argue. About an hour before dusk, as John and Issa were about to make their way to the waterberry grove with the dead goat, Pedru slipped his hand into John’s pack, took out the recorder, and hid it in his tent. He said good-bye to Issa and John and wished them luck. Then he waited.

The sun sank and touched the horizon. By now John and Issa would be at the grove — too far away to come back to fetch the recorder.

“They’ve left the recorder behind!” Pedru told Beth and Renaldo. “I’ll take it to them. Don’t worry. I’ll take my spear, too.”

He was gone before they could say a word.

The goat was already strung up on a branch, and John and Issa were about to climb to their positions when Pedru arrived at the waterberry trees.

“Thanks a million, Pedru,” said John, looking very pleased. He set the little plastic speaker at the bottom of the goat tree. “Don’t know how I left it behind.”

“I think I know,” said Issa quietly, giving Pedru a hard look. They both knew it was too late now for Pedru to return to the camp alone.

“Can you get up into that tree?” Issa asked.

Pedru nodded. The tree had several trunks growing close together, so by bracing his feet on one and his back on another, he could work his way upward, holding his spear in his one good hand. Pedru was glad there was no time for more questions.

John turned on the playback device, and the sound of squealing bush pig filled the space under the trees and echoed out into the falling darkness.

T
he horrible squealing and the smelly goat together worked like a charm. It wasn’t even fully dark when the two lions skirted the edge of the marsh — probably getting a drink on the way — and almost bounded into the waterberry grove, eager for a meal.

Even in the gray darkness, Pedru could see how thin they were. They looked almost as if one skinny human arm was all they’d had to eat between them since the rains began. They were young and inexperienced, and so hungry that they were not at all wary. Pedru remembered how carefully Puna had crept down the hillside, alert to the slightest sound. Her sons were so different.

Samir, the larger of the two, went straight for the goat, reaching up and batting at it with his paws. Pedru knew that neither John nor Issa would risk a shot at him yet, in case it startled their more important target. But Anjani was still enough of a cub to be curious about anything new. The sound of the bush pig fascinated him. He searched at the foot of John’s tree, scrambling in the dead leaves and bark to find the source of the noise, completely absorbed in what he was doing and completely unaware of any danger. And while he was at the foot of the tree, neither John nor Issa could get a clear shot.

But Pedru could.

Once again, just as on the evening that now seemed so long ago, when Pedru had lost his arm, time slowed to a stop and all the sound — the squealing, the crunch of paws in the leaf litter, even Pedru’s own pounding heart — drained away.

The only things in all the world were Pedru and his lion.

Pedru stared down at the long pale back, streaked with shadows; the springy tail waving like a whip; the dark tufts of mane, much more numerous now than when they had first met; the notched left ear; the huge paws.

Pedru’s arm was lifted, ready, his hand clasped around his sharpened spear. He aimed at a point just behind the left shoulder. He estimated that at this distance he could pierce the animal’s heart. It would be dead in moments. The lion who had stolen his arm was in his power at last. He could take his revenge on this hateful, wicked, evil beast, just as he had planned from the start. The lion had taken so much, so very, very much, of his life and of the lives of many others.

But the lion did not look hateful, or wicked. It merely looked like itself — no longer just “lion,” but Anjani. Puna’s son. The brother of Samir and little Cheli and Seti. A young hunter with a lot to learn, making his way in the world, making mistakes, growing up.