by Wilbur Smith
He sensed that Elsa Pignatelli wanted to be reassured not by him, but by the man to whom she was inexorably being drawn. Tactfully he withdrew into silence and watched them fall in love with each other without realizing what was happening to them.
The hum of the engine of the returning Toyota startled them. Shasa glanced at his watch with disbelief.
"Good gracious, it's lunchtime already, and we have settled nothing."
"We have two weeks in which to talk,' Elsa pointed out, and rose to her feet. 'We can pick up again from here tomorrow morning." As the three of them came back into the boma, Sean was already at the bar table mixing Pimm's No. i in a crystal jug. He prided himself on his personal recipe.
"Good news, signora,' he called. 'Can I wheedle you into a festive Pimm's?" She smiled a refusal. 'I'll have my usual Badoit water with a slice of lemon. Now, tell me the good news." 'The leopard fed again last night. judging by the sign, he came in early, half an hour before sunset. So he's starting to get careless and bold, and he's huge. He's got paws on him like snow-shoes." 'Thank you, Sean. You always find good cats for me, but never so soon. This is the first day of safari." 'Take a nap after lunch, just to settle your nerves, and we'll go into the hide around three this afternoon." Isaac offered Elsa her mineral water on a silver tray, and then distributed the tall glasses of Pimm's to the musical accompaniment of tinkling ice, and Sean gave them a toast.
"To a big old tom leopard death at the base of the tree.' The professional hunter's horror was the cat down from the tree and waiting wounded in the tall grass.
They all drank the toast, and immediately afterwards Shasa and Elsa fell into a quiet but intent conversation that excluded the younger Courtneys.
Garry seized on the opportunity to take his elder brother's arm and gently lead him out of earshot.
"How are you feeling, Sean?' he asked.
"Fine. Never better.' Sean was puzzled by this uncustomary brotherly concern.
"You don't look fine to me.' Garry shook his head. 'In fact it is fairly obvious that you are sickening for a go of malaria, and those ribs-" "What sort of crap is this?' Sean was getting annoyed. 'There's nothing wrong with my ribs that a couple of codeine won't fix."
39e iyou won't be able to hunt with Signora Pignatelli this evening." "The hell I won't. I've set up this cat, and he's a beaut--2 'You will stay in your tent this evening with a bottle Of chloroquine tablets beside your bed and, if anybody asks, you have a temperature of a hundred and four in the shade." 'Listen, Big Shot, you've screwed up my elephant already. You're not going to do the same with my leopard." "Pater will hunt with the client,' Garry said firmly. 'You are staying in camp." 'Pater?' Sean stared at him for a moment before he started to grin. 'The randy old dog! Pater has the hots for the widow, has he?" "Why do you always make it sound so vulgar?' Garry asked mildly. 'We are trying to do business with Signora Pignatelli, and Pater needs to develop the relationship to a point of mutual trust. That's all there is to it." 'And when those two geriatric nymphos mess up the leopard, old S)ean will be the one who has to go in to clean up.) 'You told me that Signora Pignatelli never misses, and Pater is as good a hunter as you any day. Besides which, you aren't frightened of a wounded leopard, not the fearless Sean Courtney - surely not?" Sean scowled at the jibe, and then bit back his response. 'I'll go set it up for them,' he agreed, and then smiled. 'To answer your question - no, Garry, I'm not frightened of a wounded leopard, or of anything else. Bear that in mind, old son."
Shasa lay stretched out on his camp-bed with a book. The safari camp was one of the few places in his existence where he had the opportunity to read for pleasure rather than for business or political necessity. He was reading Alan Moorehead's Blue Nile for the fourth time and savouring every word of it, when Garry popped his head into the tent.
"We have a little problem, Pater. Scan's having a go of malaria." Shasa sat up and dropped the book with alarm. 'How bad?' He knew that Sean never took malarial suppressants such as Paludrine or Maloprim. Sean preferred to build up his immunity to the disease and only treated symptoms. Shasa, knew also that there had recently appeared along the Zambezi a new strain of 'P Falciparum' that was resistant to the usual drugs, and which had a dangerous tendency to mutate into the cerebral and pernicious form. 'I should go to him." 'Don't worry. It's responding to chloroquine already, and he's asleep. So you shouldn't disturb him." Shasa looked relieved, and Garry went on smoothly: 'But somebody will have to hunt with Signora Pignatefli this evening, and you have more experience than I do."
The hide was in the lower branches of a wild ebony tree, only ten feet above ground-level. Sean had raised it, not to protect the hunter, for a leopard could climb and be in the tree. with him before he drew breath, but rather to provide a wider field of view across the narrow stream to the bait-tree.
Sean had chosen the bait-tree with infinite care, and Shasa nodded approval as he surveyed it. Most important, it was above the prevailing easterly evening breeze, so the hunter's scent would be wafted away. Also it was surrounded by dense shoulder-high riverine bush that would give the leopard confidence in his approach.
The main trunk leant out over the riverbed at a slight angle to give the cat an easy climb to the horizontal branch twenty feet above the ground from which the carcass of the impala antelope was suspended by a short length of chain. The foliage of the ebony tree was dense and green.
That would also give the leopard confidence to climb. However, the horizontal branch was open, with a window of blue sky beyond it which would silhouette the leopard as he stretched out and reached down to pull the stinking bait up to him.
The hide was exactly sixty-five yards from the bait-tree. Sean had measured it with a builder's tape, while earlier that afternoon Elsa Pignatelli had sighted and fired her rifle at the marked range behind the main camp. Shasa had set up the target at precisely sixty-five yards, and she had put three shots into the bull's-eye, forming a perfect clover-leaf pattern with the three bullet-holes slightly overlapping each other.
The hide was built of mopane poles and thatch, and was a comfortable little tree-house. Inside were two camp-chairs facing the firing-apertures in the thatch wall. Matatu and the Samburu tracker laid out blankets and sleeping-bap, tucker-box with snacks and a Thermos filled with hot coffee.
Their vigil could last until the dawn, so they were provided with a powerful flashlight that drew power from a twelve-volt car battery; a hand-held two-way radio to communicate with the trackers; and even a china chamberpot with a tasteful floral pattern to allow them to last out the night without discomfort.
When Matatu had set up the furnishing of the hide to his satisfaction, he scrambled down the ladder and he and Shasa had a last brief conference beside the Toyota.
"I think that he will come before dark,' Matatu said in Swahili. 'He is a cheeky devil and he gorges like a pig. I think he will be hungry tonight, and he will not be able to withstand his greed." 'If he does not come, we will wait through until the dawn. Do not return here until I call for you on the radio. Go in peace now, Matatu." 'Stay in peace, Bwana. Let us pray that the memsahib kills cleanly. I do not want this spotted devil to feast on my liver."
3"
The trackers waited until the hunters had climbed into the hide and settled down, before they drove the Toyota away. They would park on the crest of the valley two miles distant, and wait for the sound of gunfire or the call on the two-way radio.
Shasa and Elsa sat side-by-side in the two camp-chairs. Their elbows were almost, but not quite touching. The sleeping-bags were spread over the chair-backs, ready to draw over their shoulders when the temperature began to drop. There were rugs over their laps. Both of them wore leather jackets, some protection not only against the cold, but also against sharp curling claws in an emergency.
Elsa had her long rifle-barrel thrust through the firingaperture, ready to raise the butt to her shoulder with the minimum of movement. It was a 7-millimetre Remington magnum loaded with a 175-grain Nosle
r bullet that would cover the sixty-five yards to the bait-tree at three thousand feet per second. Shasa had the big eight-bore shotgun as a back-up weapon.
Designed for shooting wild geese at long range, it was a devastating weapon for close work.
As the beat of the Toyota engine faded, the silence of the bushveld descended on the river valley. It was a silence that whispered with tiny intimate sounds: the gentle sigh of the breeze in the leaves above their heads, the stir of a bird in the undergrowth along the river, the far-off booming shout of a bull baboon that echoed faintly along the rocky cliffs at the head of the valley and the tiny ticking sounds of the termite legions gnawing away at the dry mopane poles on which they sat.
Both of them had brought books to while away the hours until dusk, but neither of them opened them. They sat very close to each other, and they were vitally aware of each other's proximity. Shasa felt as comfortable and companionable in her presence as though they were old and trusted friends.
He smiled at the fancy. He turned his head surreptitiously to glance at Elsa, and she had anticipated and was smiling at him already.
She turned the hand that lay on the arm of the chair between them palm uppermost. He took the hand in his own, and was surprised by the smooth warm feel of her skin and by the sharp emotion her touch evoked. He hadn't felt like that for many a long year. They sat side by side holding hands like a pair of teenagers on their first date, and waited for the leopard to come.
Although all his senses were tuned to the subtle sounds and signs of the wilderness, Shasa's mind was free to wander through the junk-room of memory. He thought about many things in those quiet hours as the sun turned across the blue dome of sky and sank towards the jagged line of hills. He thought about the other women he had known. There had been many of those.
He had no way of knowing how many, the passage of time had rendered most of them faceless and nameless. just a very few would remain with him for ever.
The first had been a sly-faced little harlot. When Centaine had caught them at it, she had scrubbed him in a scalding tub of Lysol and carbolic soap that had taken the skin off his most tender parts. He smiled at that far-off memory.
The other that stood out in his memory was Tara, mother of all his children. They had been antagonists from the very beginning. He had always thought of her as the beloved enemy. Then love had wrested the upper hand, and for a time they had been happy together. Finally they had become enemies again, true enemies. Their enmity had been inflamed rather than mitigated by that brief illusory period of happiness.
After Tara there had been fifty or a hundred others - it did not really matter how many. Not one of them had been able to give him what he sought, nor had they been able to alleviate the loneliness.
Recently, in middle age, he had even fallen into the age-old trap of seeking immortality in those young feminine bodies that were themselves in the flower of their youth. Though the flesh was sweet and firm, he had found no contact of the mind, and could no longer match their energy. Sadly he had left them to their booming mindless music and their frenetic search for they knew not what. He had walked on alone.
He thought of loneliness then, as he did so often these days. Over the years, he had learnt that it was the most corrosive and destructive of all man's ills. Most of his life he had been alone. Although there had been a half-brother, he had never known him as a sibling and Centaine had raised Shasa as an only child.
In all the multitude of humankind that had filled his life, the servants and business associates, the acquaintances and sycophants, even his own children, there had been only one person with whom he had been able to share all the triumphs and disasters of his life, one who had been constant in her encouragement and understanding and love.
However, Centaine was seventy-six years old and ageing fast. He was sick to his soul of the loneliness and afraid of the greater loneliness which he knew lay ahead.
At that moment, the woman who sat beside him tightened her grip on his hand as though she empathized' with his despair. When he turned his head and looked into her honey-golden eyes, she was no longer smiling. Her expression was serious, and she held his gaze without shift or embarrassment. The sense of aloneness faded, and he felt calm and at peace as he seldom had in all his fifty-odd years.
Outside their little tree-house, the light mellowed and flared into the soft glow of the African twilight. It was a time of magical stillness, in which the world held its breath and all the forest colours were richer and deeper. The sun sagged like a dying gladiator, and bowed its bloody head below the forest-top. The light went with it, the outlines of the forest trunks and branches faded and softened and receded.
A francolin called in the gloom. Shasa leant forward in his seat and looked through the firing-aperture in the thatch wall. He saw the dark partridge-like bird perched on a dead branch on the far side of the river.
Its bare cheeks were bright scarlet, and it cocked its head and looked down from its perch and made that creaking sound like a rusty hinge which was the special warning: 'Beware! I see a killer cat." Elsa heard the call and, because she also knew the African wild and understood the meaning of it, she squeezed Shasa's hand briefly and then released it. Slowly she reached forward for the pistol grip of the rifle, and achingly slowly lifted the rifle to her shoulder. The tension in the hide was a palpable charge that held them both in its thrall. The leopard was out there, silent and secretive as a dappled golden shadow.
They were both adepts in the art of the hunter, and neither of them moved except to blink their eyelids and keep their vision clear in the failing light. They drew and released each breath with infinite care, and heard the pulse of their racing hearts beat in their eardrums.
The light was going faster, while the unseen leopard circled the bait-tree.
Shasa could imagine him in his mind's eye, each deliberate stealthy pace, the paw raised and held aloft and then laid down again softly, the yellow eyes endlessly turning and darting, the round black-tipped ears flicking to catch the faintest sound of danger.
The outline of the bait-tree receded, the carcass of the impala hanging on its chain was a dark amorphous blob. The open window of sky above the bare branch dulled and bruised to the shade of tarnished lead, and still the leopard prowled and circled in the dark thicket.
Shooting light was almost gone, night came on apace, and then suddenly the leopard was in the tree. There was no sound or warning. The abruptness of it was a little miracle that stopped both their hearts and then sent them racing away at a mad pace.
The leopard stood on the branch. However, he was only a darker shape in the darkness, and even as Elsa laid her cheek to the polished walnut wood of the butt-stock the darkness was complete and the shape of the leopard was swallowed up by the night.
Shasa felt rather than saw Elsa lower the rifle. He stared through the aperture, but there was nothing to see, and he turned his head and laid his lips against Elsa's ear.
"We must wait until morning,' he breathed, and she touched his cheek in agreement.
Out in the darkness they heard the clink of the chain links. Shasa imagined the leopard lying belly down on the branch, reaching down with one front paw to hook the carcass and draw it up, holding it with both front feet, sniffing the putrefying flesh hungrily, thrusting its head into the belly cavity to reach the lungs and liver and heart.
In the silence they heard the tearing sound of fangs in flesh, the grating and splintering of rib bone, the ripping of wet hide, as the leopard began to feed.
The night was long, and Shasa could not sleep. As the hunter, his was the responsibility of monitoring each of the leopard's movements. After the first few hours, Elsa's head sagged against his shoulder. Moving stealthily, he slipped his arm around her, pulled the down-filled sleeping-bag up snugly over her shoulders, and held her close while she slept.
She slept quietly, like a tired child. Her breathing was light and warm against his cheek. Even though his arm went dead and numb,
he did not wish to disturb her. He sat happy and virtuous in his discomfort.
