by Frank Coates
‘And bwana?’
‘Sleeping.’
Ndorobo always asked, but Edward never joined them on safari. In these matters he chose to let his young wife do as she pleased.
She stood, pushed her fringe back, and captured it under the rim of her hat.
‘Bring Jonathan and Benard,’ she said. ‘We go.’
In the Kenyan highlands, dawn never comes languidly from sleep. It leaps upon the landscape like a ravenous beast, devouring morning mists, tossing golden dawn colours into sleeping valleys.
Jonathan had arrived at the house owl-eyed, but as soon as Dana handed him the Rigby, he slung it over his shoulder and was immediately alert. Not so the young Benard, who shuffled his feet and let the snout of the shotgun dip dangerously close to the dirt until Jonathan gave him a poke.
Ten minutes from the house, Ndorobo spotted the lion’s spoor in the damp soil and pointed it out to Dana. The huge pug mark, missing a claw on the front left paw, proved that the lion that had been stalking Edward’s cattle for weeks was still around. Ndorobo had told her it was an old male with a limp, the likely result of a battle lost while trying to retain leadership of the pride. ‘He old. Very angry,’ the little man had said sagely, making a pantomime of the old male skulking away, leaving his harem to the younger, stronger victor. He shook his head sadly, and added, ‘Very angry, that old one.’
Without the pride to assist in the hunting, the old lion had grown hungry and in desperation had found easier game on the Northcotes’ farm. He had taken two calves and a heifer in the last month.
Ndorobo scuttled among the grassy tussocks in a widening circle, head down, his skinny rump bobbing, until he found what he was seeking. A second set of pug marks told him the remainder of the story, which he shared with Dana without speaking a word. He swept his hand from the hills to the valley and pastureland. The big male had come out of the Aberdares, used the rocky outcrop on the property’s northern boundary for reconnaissance, and passed the point they were now standing before heading to the home pasture where the herdsmen had confined the cattle for safety. Another gesture indicated the uproar from the dogs — the barking that had awoken Dana around midnight — at which time the wily predator had retreated back into the hills to await a more favourable opportunity to seize one of Edward’s cattle. Ndorobo pointed the way.
Since arriving in the White Highlands nearly five years before, they had always been Edward’s cattle because, as he seldom neglected to remind her, his was a landed family. Her antecedents were tinkers and fortune-tellers, as was obvious from her olive skin and emerald eyes. In any case, her motivation was not to save Edward’s precious cattle: the lion had broken into the enclosure where she kept her thoroughbred mares and killed one before the staff chased it away.
It was the third time she’d made the journey into the hills in search of the old killer, and she was determined to avenge her loss by making it her last.
Ndorobo headed towards the hills, with Jonathan and the Rigby a pace ahead of Dana. He carried the rifle as all good gun bearers should — over the shoulder pointing forwards, with the butt towards Dana. It meant that the Rigby was in arm’s reach and in a position ready to be immediately fired. Benard took up the rear with the back-up heavy-calibre shotgun.
They climbed towards the east where the sun was still mercifully concealed behind the high timbered slopes. Even the previous farm owners, in their enthusiasm to supply the colony’s insatiable demand for good timber, had made no attempt to clear this rough and broken land, smothered in meandering vines. It remained an outpost of the forest: a reminder of the wilderness that lay beyond the next valley. Occasionally a mist, or the remnants of a cloud, floated past them down the slope, tangling itself in the lianas and wrapping the roots of the soaring podocarpus trees in diaphanous silks.
They approached the crest of the first ridge and sunlight began to spear through the thinning trees. Dana shielded her eyes, but she did so reluctantly, not wishing to miss the first moment when the glorious panorama was revealed.
Suddenly the ground gave way in a downward tilt. The trees parted and the morning breeze, Edward’s zephyr, was chasing the mist away, revealing the verdant pasture with only the occasional giant podocarpus or cedar thrusting into view. This was where Edward had been fattening his cattle and where the old lion had found them easy pickings, before the herd was moved closer to the homestead.
The valley swept past their vantage point through an arc from Mt Kipipiri, carrying a tributary of the Malewa River northwards before it made its long sweeping bend to the west to join Lake Naivasha. On the far side of the valley rose the Aberdare foothills, the first part of which was the formidable and almost impenetrable bamboo forest. It was in this valley that Dana would have to take the lion. To hunt it in the forest was madness.
Dana and the gun bearers rested while Ndorobo inspected the trail ahead. He soon returned, his head bobbing with excitement.
‘Hapa chini!’ he said, pointing into the valley. ‘Simba!’
Dana needed no Swahili to understand he’d found the lion. She and the others hurried after him to the rim of the valley, where Ndorobo stopped and pointed downwards. Straining her eyes for many moments, Dana saw what appeared to be a grass clump move. She took her field glasses from Benard, and focused them on the movement. It was her lion, but it was in a clearing and would be impossible to approach without being discovered.
Ndorobo had the answer. He pointed out a game path that swept away to the north and would keep them behind a small ridge until reaching the valley floor. On the north side of the lion there were at least a few small shrubs and trees that would offer some cover. The wind was favourable. Dana nodded and they hurried on behind Ndorobo, who moved across the slope as if floating a few inches above it. The others struggled to keep up.
Dana was perspiring when they reached the broad flat plain. There was a succession of scrubby bushes ahead, but the lion, if it were there at all, was lost in the grass, which stood three feet high in parts.
Ndorobo seemed to know exactly where it was concealed and led her on without hesitation. After a few moments he stopped and held up his hand, listening. After the exertion of the stalk, where she was almost doubled over to remain below the grass height, Dana could hear nothing but the blood pulsating in her ears.
Satisfied, Ndorobo continued, this time signalling to her that the lion was close and that they should be very silent.
He took a brief glance over the grass tops and nodded. Dana raised her eyes slowly. The old male lion was still in the clear, but only fifty yards from it was the beginning of the bamboo that ran up the side of the hill parallel to the lion’s path. It appeared to have spotted them.
Jonathan silently handed her the Rigby. Keeping her eye on the lion, she took aim, waiting for it to show more of its flank, but it held its position, staring at them.
Dana knew the best range to attempt a lion kill was no more than sixty yards. She estimated the lion was just under a hundred yards away — the absolute limit recommended for a free-standing shot with the Rigby.
The lion opened its jaws, yawned, and ran its tongue around its lips. It then turned towards the bamboo.
Bill Judd swore that a lion always gave one last look before disappearing into cover.
Dana smiled over the gun sights as the lion paused before the bamboo, turning for one last glance at its pursuers. It was the target she needed and she slowly squeezed off a shot.
The lion grunted in pain and surprise. It staggered, but didn’t fall, then took two large bounds, disappearing into the wall of bamboo.
‘Damn!’ Dana muttered.
She now had no choice but to follow it into the bamboo forest, where only one of them could emerge alive.
Dana faced the wall of bamboo. The culms were the thickness of a man’s leg. It seemed impossible that a full-grown male lion could have penetrated it, but upon closer inspection she could see slender pathways meandering among the golden poles.
‘Yes … I see it,’ Dana said, nodding in acknowledgement. ‘And it’s not going to be easy to find him, is it?’
Ndorobo shrugged to indicate it would be wise not to try.
‘I have to go in after him,’ she said to herself, though by their expressions she could see that Jonathan and Benard had heard her.
‘You don’t have to come,’ she said, and took the Rigby from Jonathan. ‘Wait here until I get back.’
She pressed through the bamboo poles without further thought. It didn’t pay to think about the wounded lion, lying invisible somewhere in the almost impenetrable green forest.
For her first fifty tentative paces she could see no more than five yards ahead, but then the bamboo thinned and there were patches where the old stalks had been flattened, probably by an elephant, and she could see twenty, even thirty yards ahead. Provided she spotted the animal in time, she had enough room to fire off a shot before it was upon her.
She stepped carefully. The bamboo was like a cocoon, trapping the heat and blanketing all sound. The short panting breaths were surely too loud to be hers. Sweat trickled from her forehead and down the back of her neck, saturating her shirt.
A sharp crack stopped her. She couldn’t say from what direction it came, but it was close. She waited for another, but nothing more came. She moved on, cautiously stepping over the fallen poles, but at the same time trying not to take her eyes off the space ahead.
Another sound, this time from behind her.
She swung about to find Ndorobo there, his finger to his lips. A few paces behind him was Jonathan, shouldering the double-barrelled shotgun.
Her relief gave way to a moment of anger. She might have shot them, but when Jonathan gave a small shrug she forgave him, and nodded. Their support gave her courage and she moved ahead again with a little more determination.
After a hundred yards, Ndorobo gave one of the little tongue-clicks he used to attract her attention. Dana could see no sign of trouble ahead and turned back to him. Ndorobo’s eyes were fixed on a thicket of young shoots, and he slowly raised his pointed finger to it.
Dana could see nothing.
She blinked away a bead of sweat, and suddenly the lion was full in her vision, bounding towards her.
She swung the Rigby to her shoulder, fixed the front bead on the lion’s charging body and, without consciously aiming, fired first one barrel and then the second.
The lion careened on, carried forwards by its massive bulk, but its legs had gone and it tumbled to a halt not more than ten feet from her. Dead.
Ndorobo danced around the body, making high-pitched keening sounds, then he slid his knife from its scabbard and, lifting the lion’s massive head, held the knife under its throat. He cocked his head to ask the question.
‘No,’ Dana said. ‘I don’t want his head. Or his mane.’
The lion’s mouth hung open, revealing his enormous fangs. One of his large incisors was missing. She found the fang beside a small pointed stone that the lion must have struck with its jaw as it crashed to the dirt at her feet.
She picked it up and studied it. It was a clean break at the gum line. It might have been the incisor that ended her life if her shot had gone astray.
She slipped it into a pocket on her vest.
CHAPTER 17
Sam returned to Kenya just when the world developed a taste for coffee. Prices were on the rise and the growing prosperity in Europe and America assured continuing expansion of the market. The Kenyan highlands had the perfect climate for it and many white settlers, including some of Sam’s new business associates, had planted coffee there.
Growing coffee didn’t interest Sam greatly, but the highlands’ refining facilities, consisting of a number of small and inefficient sites, did. He could see an opportunity to form a coffee cooperative where the growers agreed to send their beans to a single efficient refinery and share the savings.
He drew up a partnership deed with a number of big growers, who agreed to send their coffee to Sam for refining. Others promised financial support. In the meantime, Sam bought a coffee farm with good prospects to realise a sizeable capital gain when the refinery arrived and made it more profitable.
Sam made an appointment with George Caruthers, the manager of the Nairobi branch of the Bank of South Africa, and a member of the Muthaiga Club, to formalise the bridging finance.
Caruthers showed Sam the contract, the details of which had already been informally agreed in the convivial atmosphere of the club.
‘It all seems to be in order,’ Sam said. ‘We plan to start without delay.’
‘I can assure you, Sam, the bank is behind you all the way. And if I may say so, I’ve seldom seen a better business case than yours. Well done.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now, if I could have your signature here, and here,’ the banker added, pointing to the contract.
‘I just need to correct the name. Williams,’ Sam said.
‘Oh, is it not Samson Williams?’
‘I was using the name Williams in America. But since this is a legal document, I’d better use my real name, Wangira.’
Caruthers straightened in his chair. ‘Wangira? But that’s a … a native’s name.’
‘Kikuyu, to be exact.’
Caruthers’s smile faded and his usually florid face paled. ‘But … then … um, it’s not possible … I mean, I’ll have to change the contract papers.’
He scooped the documents together.
‘You’ll have to leave them with me,’ he said, obviously annoyed. ‘You should have told me.’
‘I didn’t think about it until now. But what’s the problem? Isn’t it just a matter of correcting what we have here?’
‘Oh, no,’ Caruthers said. ‘We have to have them retyped.’
He told Sam it would take another couple of days to renew the papers.
Sam was annoyed about the delay, but when he returned to the bank later that week, a teller told him that the bank’s offer had been withdrawn.
Sam insisted on seeing the manager, but when he did, Caruthers simply said the bank had reconsidered its exposure to the coffee market and had decided not to proceed further. The matter was beyond his control.
Three days later, Sam went to the Muthaiga Club for the usual Friday evening gathering of his associates. Only John Drew was there; he had been Sam’s strongest supporter and the driving force behind the syndicate. Sam was relieved to see him, and was confident Drew would have a suggestion on how to handle the setback.
‘You should have told us, old man,’ Drew said.
‘What difference does it make if I’m an American or not? It’s still a good idea, and I’m prepared to put up nearly half of the money.’
‘Ah, but well … You see, we thought it was American money. And we assumed there was other American money backing you.’
The discussion went nowhere.
Early the following week, Sam bumped into Kenyatta on River Road.
‘You know, Wangira,’ he said after a brief greeting. ‘You are so stupid … Did you actually believe these white fellows would do business with a Kikuyu?’
Sam was taken aback that Kenyatta could even know about his business arrangements. He struggled to make a reply to the effect that he had no idea what Kenyatta was talking about.
Kenyatta smiled. ‘It’s really quite a small town, you know. And there are Kikuyu ears everywhere.’
‘You can’t always believe what you hear,’ Sam said dismissively, hoping to close the matter, and curtly said goodbye.
‘It’s an unwritten rule. Whites don’t lend to blacks,’ Kenyatta said, not yet ready to let the matter drop. ‘I know. I’ve seen the Bank of South Africa’s books. Not a single African name on them. A few Indians. But not a Luo, a Kamba, or a Kikuyu anyw
here.’
‘You seem to know a lot about the country’s business world, Kenyatta. And with that Savile Row suit, you look like a proper English businessman yourself. What line are you in?’
‘The only business that matters a damn,’ he said. ‘Politics.’
Now it was Sam’s turn to smile. He knew of Kenyatta’s political activities. ‘A Kikuyu in politics. What a waste of time. I understand there’s actually a written law against that.’
‘Presently. But that will change. In time. Eventually there will have to be a lot of change. You know that.’
Sam shrugged. He was still smarting from Kenyatta’s taunts and didn’t want to continue the conversation. He started to move away.
‘You’re a bright fellow, Wangira. There may be a place for you in the Kikuyu Central Association.’
Sam knew of the KCA and Kenyatta’s role as general secretary; he’d recently been promoted from editor of the association’s newspaper. Sam had read a few issues. They were quite mild. The administration seemed happy to ignore them.
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied.
‘Think about it,’ Kenyatta insisted.
Sam might have been interested, especially after his treatment by the bank and his former business partners, but not with Kenyatta in charge.
‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ Sam continued down River Road.
‘One day you’ll see the need for us,’ Kenyatta called after him, determined, as usual, to have the last word.
Sam was shocked by the treatment of people who were prepared to go into business with him when they thought he was a black American, but not when they found out he was a countryman. He’d seen the ugly side of racism in America, and hated it, but until that time he’d believed the whites in Kenya to be guilty of the lesser crime of paternalism. Now he could see it for what it was: racism pure and simple.
It disheartened and disillusioned him, but it was the institutionalised discrimination by the bank that got him angry.
