Stalking Ivory

by Suzanne Arruda

  The deep, purring voice caught Jade completely off guard. She’d been expecting Avery’s mellow tenor, not Harry’s rumbling baritone. She spun around in an instant, her fists clenched at her sides.

  If Harry noticed, he pretended not to. “Good morning, ladies. I came to invite you to dinner tonight. Lord Dunbury as well, of course.”

  “Harry,” Beverly said. “Good morning. I’m afraid you gave us a bit of a start.”

  “My apologies.” He touched his hat brim in an attempt to be polite. “I wanted to catch you all early before you left camp. Guess I didn’t bother to think of the consequences of intruding on you so suddenly.”

  Jade let out a muffled snort, which Harry ignored as he did her pugilistic stance.

  “So will you join me and my crew for dinner?” He sounded hopeful, almost pleading.

  Beverly picked up on it immediately. “Avery just left to hunt for the pot now, but I can answer for him. We’d be delighted to come.”

  Jade snatched the negatives from Beverly’s hand. “I won’t be able to join you. I have work to do.” She turned her back on Harry and entered the darkroom tent. The last thing she wanted to do was dine with him. Beverly’s lilting voice chattered briefly outside, followed by Harry’s muffled response. The tent flap moved aside, and Beverly stepped in.

  “Why did you refuse Harry’s dinner invitation?”

  Jade scowled and nodded to the entrance to indicate she had no wish for Harry to overhear her conversation.

  Beverly waved her arm in dismissal. “Oh, Harry has excused himself to visit with Biscuit.” She took a moment to scrutinize Jade’s face. “You look like hell, Jade. Those dark circles under your eyes are as big as saucers. Didn’t you sleep?”

  Jade shrugged. “Yes, but fitfully.”

  “Bad dreams again? What was it this time, more plane crashes?”

  “No. Stampeding elephants and…” She paused as she recollected parts of her dream. “Colridge was in it and the commissioner, but I’m stumped if I can figure out why.”

  Beverly patted her friend’s back. “Who knows? But you still haven’t explained why you don’t want to dine with Harry.”

  “I don’t care to break bread, or antelope, or anything else with that man. I don’t much like him and I certainly don’t trust him, Bev.”

  Beverly shook her head, making her curls jiggle. “Then wouldn’t it be a good idea to see what he’s up to?”

  Jade’s head snapped up. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”

  Beverly shrugged. “Jade, darling, I do not consider Harry an enemy, but if you do, then by all means keep an eye on him.”

  Jade pursed her lips as she considered the situation, then nodded. “All right, but you tell him. Seeing him again will only ruin my appetite for breakfast.” She picked up some cans of developer and rearranged them in a pretense of being busy.

  Beverly laughed at her. “I already told him you’d come. He’ll stop by to get us in midafternoon.” She left before Jade could retaliate.

  Jade stuck her head out of the tent and shouted after Beverly, “He’d better not serve any blasted tea!” She went back into the darkroom tent for a while and considered the advantages of inspecting Harry’s camp. She had no idea what sort of people he was leading on his safari or how competent they were at shooting game, but hunters liked to brag. She could find out if they’d killed any of her elephants, especially the calf. Jade frowned at the thought of the calf. Few hunters would brag about shooting a baby. She knew Harry wouldn’t.

  Harry said they were just scouting right now. Was he lying? How hard would it be to hide the ivory? Large tusks would be obvious, but baby ivory would be easy to stow out of sight. For a moment, she considered the chances of slipping through Harry’s camp while Beverly and Avery kept the others occupied. Then she quickly discarded that idea. Hascombe was no fool. He’d know what she was up to. After a little more consideration, Jade decided the best way to find out about the baby ivory was to ask the porters and gun bearers. If she couldn’t get to them, perhaps Jelani could.

  A smirk stole across her lips. Surely Harry would like to show off Biscuit to his people, and she couldn’t take Biscuit without taking Jelani along. No one would pay any attention to an African boy. To many arrogant whites, the Africans were simply scenery or part of their safari equipment. And even if they did notice him, they wouldn’t think twice if Jelani sat to talk with their men.

  After a breakfast of leftover bustard on flat bread and a mug of fragrant hot coffee, Jade and Chiumbo, who also acted as Jade’s personal gun bearer, left camp to check on her cameras. To her delight, both of the two set for day photographs had been tripped. She hoped the pictures had been taken yesterday afternoon or early this morning and not overnight, but if the flashlight picture showed promise, she’d set them all up for night shots in the future. That old tusker’s dust-bathing grounds ought to do well for a shot.

  Jade checked the cameras for condensation and saw that the lenses were dry. She decided to reset them both in hopes of another day shot and bring them back into camp on her return trip to avoid undue exposure of the lenses to the mountain mists until she saw her results. After making the rounds, she and Chiumbo headed up the mountain with her fourth camera in hand in the hopes of photographing the old bull again.

  The problem was finding the bull. Jade knew he sometimes trailed the main herd, but it could be anywhere by now. Based on their last route, the cows might be heading up to the big crater lake at the top of the mountain. If that was the case, he’d be in his favorite bath, water lilies clinging to his back.

  Jade scanned the trees for telltale signs of recent elephant passage, looking for broken branches, stripped bark, and polished tree trunks where a large body had rubbed against them. She found some of those indications, but none looked fresh. She pointed up a steep incline and suggested to Chiumbo that they try a shortcut in hopes of catching the herd on the other side of the ridge. He shook his head and led her a few yards to the right into the forest. Then he pointed to a dinner-plate-sized, steaming manure pile.

  Fresh droppings!

  “Good job, Chiumbo. Someone’s been through here recently.”

  The trail they found followed the contour of the land around the southern side of the crater, with sharp ravines appearing on their right as the mountain sheered off. More scat littered the ground ahead of them, giving testimony to the number of elephants that had followed this path. Chiumbo took the lead, cautioning Jade to proceed slowly. A trail this fresh meant the elephants could be very close, and the last thing they wanted was to stumble into them. A week ago the idea of running smack into a herd of elephants without knowing they were there would have seemed ludicrous to Jade, but not anymore. She’d witnessed firsthand how silent these massive beasts could be.

  That day, she’d been waiting in her first blind, built from brush and set on the ground to the side of a dust-bathing area, when several elephants had emerged like ghosts from the forest right in front of her. The old lead cow had stopped short of her blind and waited, swaying gently from side to side, agitated but not dangerously so. The unexpected blind clearly puzzled her, and as much as she wanted to spray her back with the red earth, she had no intention of leading her troop into danger. Caution eventually won out and the entire herd stepped back into the forest’s shadows as silently as they’d appeared.

  The saplings along this current trail had been stripped of their branches, and several larger trees bore fresh scars where a thick bough had been pulled down and snapped off to give access to the tender shoots at the tip. This must have been where the herd fed last night, Jade mused.

  Chiumbo stopped suddenly and pointed ahead. Elephants! Dozens of them! Jade froze. At present there was no breeze, so the herd didn’t have their scent, but breezes shifted and twisted in the forest. They’d do better to move off the trail and up into a tree, where they could watch in relative safety.

  Jade pointed to a heavily buttressed tree and C
hiumbo nodded. The elephants couldn’t easily knock it down if they were spotted, and they should be able to see the herd from above. Jade uncoiled a span of rope from her pack and made several loops along its length and another at the end. She next tossed the looped end over a stout branch, slipped the entire coil through it, and pulled. With the rope firmly attached to the branch, they could use the other loops as hand-and footholds to climb.

  Chiumbo went first. Jade waited until he was in the branch before she tied her day pack to the rope. After Chiumbo hauled up the pack, he lowered the rope again for Jade to climb. Both of them managed to get into the tree without making undue noise, but Jade wasn’t sure the elephants would have paid it any mind anyway. The beasts were clearly absorbed in watching their leader.

  From her perch, Jade could barely see the old cow for all the Spanish moss hanging in her way, so she climbed up another tier of branches for a better view. The matriarch kept sweeping her trunk across the trail in front of her, each pass removing a layer of leaf litter. When the leaves had been cleared away, she started dragging away sticks, first small ones, then larger. Jade watched, fascinated, then signaled to Chiumbo to hand up her camera. This was too good to miss. What is the old girl digging up? An old blind?

  To her amazement, a gaping hole appeared as the cow hauled away a slender branch. Jade focused and took her photograph. The cow had detected a trap dug in the middle of their trail and deftly uncovered it. From her perch, Jade could see several sharpened stakes in the bottom of the pit, intended to impale the victim, and judging from the size of the hole, elephants were the victim of choice. Once the leader exposed the entire dimensions of the trap, she stepped aside while each of the other cows and the younger bulls took turns inspecting it. Then the entire herd simply walked around the pit and continued on its way.

  Good heavens, thought Jade. If the elephants hadn’t uncovered the trap, she and Chiumbo might have fallen in and been speared. “Come on,” she said, “we need to do something about that pit.”

  Jade scrambled back to the bottom branch, and after lowering the pack with the rope, she removed the rope and let it drop to the ground. She couldn’t afford to leave the rope behind. They’d need it to get in and out of the pit safely. Chiumbo voiced her thoughts before she could.

  “We must pull up the stakes, Simba Jike,” he said. “The elephants will stay away, but other animals might fall in.”

  “I wish we could fill it in,” added Jade, “but the poachers probably spread the dirt around rather than leaving it in a pile for the animals to see. Blaney Percival told me about these pit traps, but I never expected to see one.”

  She tied the rope to a nearby tree, letting the loose end dangle into the pit. Then both she and Chiumbo climbed down it. The trap was only four feet deep, but that was more than enough for an elephant to become impaled. They rocked the stakes back and forth to loosen them in their holes, then yanked them up and tossed them out. “We need to get rid of these where no one will find them easily. I don’t want anyone resetting this trap. We can fill in the hole later.”

  “I saw a water hole,” said Chiumbo. “It is not very full now, but we can toss them into the mud. They will soon be covered.”

  “Good idea.” Jade hefted one of the six stakes and followed Chiumbo, who carried two. After two trips, they returned to the pit and threw in the smaller twigs and branches until the hole was only three feet deep.

  “A leopard can jump out of that,” said Jade, “although I doubt a rhino or buffalo could.”

  Chiumbo pointed at the lengthening shadows. “Simba Jike,” he said softly. “The day now shifts into afternoon. We do not have tents or food. We must go.”

  Jade nodded. “You’re right, of course.” She took a swig of water from her canteen and handed it over to Chiumbo to drink. “The others will get worried if we’re late. I’m supposed to dine at Hascombe’s camp with them this evening anyway.”

  They gathered their supplies and were headed back along the trail when the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps came from a ravine on their left. Instantly Jade flattened herself against the rocky ground and motioned for Chiumbo to do the same. They were just in time. Less than a minute later, eight Abyssinian raiders marched into view beneath them.

  Sharp volcanic rocks pressed and bit into Jade’s and Chiumbo’s stomachs, but they endured the discomfort without a sound. Any movement, any noise, meant discovery from the band of raiders passing below. The first man carried no other burden than his elephant gun, and since it lay cradled across his arms, it appeared that he didn’t anticipate any serious confrontation on their route. The next six labored under the weight of two creamy white ivory tusks. One of them had a rifle slung over his shoulder, while the others carried bows. An eighth man trailed with a bow in his hands, an arrow nocked and ready.

  Jade waited until the rear guard had just passed below her before she dared to raise her camera. The shutter’s click sounded as loud as a gunshot to her ears, and she ducked back down immediately. Luckily the men grunting beneath the weight of ivory made more noise than the camera, so none of them noticed the click.

  Once the raiders marched out of sight, Jade and Chiumbo retreated down the elephant trail and hastened back to camp. They stopped only long enough to pick up her other cameras, which had been tripped during the day.

  The pair arrived in camp by midafternoon, and Biscuit immediately bounded to Jade and butted his head against her thigh. Beverly looked up from the Tarzan book she was sharing with Jelani, smiled, and started to wave. The wave and her smile immediately vanished when she saw Jade’s scowl.

  “What happened this time?” asked Beverly. “Did one of your cameras break down?”

  Jade shook her head. “We ran into raiders.” She watched Beverly’s jaw drop in shock. “Close your mouth, Bev. You look like a codfish.”

  Beverly jumped up from her chair and followed Jade to the darkroom tent. “See here, Jade. You can’t just waltz into camp with news like that, then wander off. Come back here this instant.”

  Jade emerged from the tent empty-handed. “I have every intention of telling you all about it. Where’s Avery?”

  Beverly waved her hand in the general direction of the supply tent. “He’s smoking his pipe and cleaning his rifle.”

  “Well, go get him. I’m not telling this twice.”

  Beverly returned shortly, dragging her husband by the arm, and Jade launched into her narrative. She kept strictly to the facts as she related direction, number, and weapons. “That may be all of them,” she said in summary, “but we can’t be certain. No one should take any chances.”

  Beverly rolled her eyes. “By ‘no one’ I presume you mean everyone except yourself.”

  Jade didn’t reply, and Beverly let out an exasperated string of mildly vulgar words. Jade arched her brows in surprise. “There is an impressionable child present in the camp, Beverly, or have you forgotten about Jelani?” She pointed a finger at the boy, who sat on his own, engrossed in the Tarzan book.

  “If I may be so bold as to intrude my opinion,” Avery began. He held his pipe in one hand and used it like a lecturer might use a pointer. “I suggest we talk about this with Mr. Hascombe’s people at dinner this evening. Once we have more information, we can better examine all our options.”

  “To hell with Hascombe’s opinion,” groused Jade. “I don’t trust him.”

  “As we are all only too aware,” added Avery. “But it doesn’t lessen the need for his experience. He’s lived in the Protectorate all his life. We are relative newcomers. And,” he added quickly before Jade could jump in with another rebuttal, “trust him or not, he deserves to know what’s going on.”

  Jade conceded his final point with a soft grunt.

  “If we knew where Captain Smythe’s patrol was, we could alert him,” suggested Beverly.

  “Probably gone back to Isiolo to gather up the rest of his men,” said Avery. “He can’t very well arrest a gang of poachers with his one man.” />
  Jade took a deep preparatory breath. “Maybe that bloody Hascombe knows where he is. Whether he does or not, we should send a runner with a message to either Marsabit Post or Kampia Tembo to alert whoever is on duty there.”

  Beverly grinned. “That’s the spirit, Jade. And I’m sure Harry isn’t as bad as all that. You simply—” She stopped abruptly when she saw the scowl on Jade’s face. “Yes, well. You had better get cleaned up. We’ll be leaving shortly, I’m sure.”

  Jade passed a hand through her bobbed black hair. “I have no intention of cleaning up for Hascombe. I’m going to catch a nap while I can, since once we get back tonight I plan on developing my film.”

  “Jade!” scolded Beverly.

  Jade ignored her friend’s tone and slipped into her tent. “Wake me when that horse’s backside gets here.”

  The “horse’s backside,” as Jade termed Harry, showed up an hour later and led them to his camp. Jelani walked alongside Jade while Biscuit alternated between tugging at his lead and butting the pair from behind. Avery and Beverly followed Harry, who managed to sidestep every one of their questions about his safari members’ identities.

  “I would rather wait for formal introductions,” he explained. “However, I can tell you that they are not professional hunters.” He directed that comment at Jade. “One man is a banker and another is in manufacturing. Motors, I believe. I’m not sure about the third man. Part of the idle rich, I suppose.”

  Beverly expressed her astonishment that he would know so little about the people who’d hired him, but Harry declared that as long as their checks cleared the bank, he was satisfied. Harry’s “three miles” turned out to be as the crow flew. The path itself took a few more tortuous turns before they entered his camp.

  Three men and three women lounged in canvas folding chairs set around wooden camp tables, and Jade took them in instantly. Two of the women were Jade’s age or younger. One had chin-length, sandy blond hair carefully coiffed in marcelled waves. The other young woman was a peroxide blonde who looked as if she was trying to imitate the more modern screen actresses. Her bobbed hair lay straight except for two tight curls on her forehead, one over each eye. If the effect was intended to be “vampish,” it looked more ludicrous to Jade. She dismissed both of them as silly.