Stalking Ivory

by Suzanne Arruda

  “He’s lucky they didn’t shoot him in a vital spot,” commented Avery.

  “Maybe they didn’t intend to kill him outright,” replied Jade. When the others expressed surprise she explained. “I think we were supposed to find him near death. Someone wants us to leave in a hurry, which they know we’ll do if one of our own is seriously injured. If he were found dead outright, then we might stay and try to take revenge.”

  “Their plan worked, then,” said Beverly. “We’re leaving.”

  “Yes, you are,” said Jade. “We cannot risk your baby, or Chiumbo’s life, or Jelani’s.” She raised a hand to silence Jelani before he could protest. “You’re going, too,” she told him in a tone that brooked no argument. Jelani mumbled something unintelligible and walked away.

  “I presume you’re planning on staying behind, Jade,” said Avery.

  “Correct. Somebody needs to keep an eye on these people. Who knows where they’ll be by the time you get help sent up from one of the government posts? With any luck, our runner has already reached someone and they’re on their way. In that case, I won’t be far behind you.”

  “But you don’t even know who ‘these people,’ as you call them, are,” argued Beverly.

  “I have a pretty good idea. The money I found points to German East Africa. Money also points to a bank and, hence, a banker.”

  “You suspect von Gretchmar of running guns?” asked Avery. “What about Vogelsanger or Mueller? They seem to have money.”

  “I’m not sure who’s running them, but I suspect someone’s at least financing their purchase. Jelani found one of the same coins inside Mercedes’ tent this morning when he and Sam paid them a visit.” She looked around for the boy. “By the way, where did that boy run off to now? I want to thank him for finding the coin.”

  “I saw him head towards Chiumbo. One coin is rather thin evidence,” suggested Beverly.

  “I agree,” replied Jade. “But it’s certainly more than a coincidence. I need to be free to move around so I can find out if these rifles are coming in or going out, who’s delivering them, who’s picking them up, that sort of thing. There’s more than poaching at work here. There are two men dead already.”

  “That’s right,” said Avery. “They killed that Abyssinian you caught, too. I’d forgotten about him.”

  “Well, I haven’t, and I can’t imagine these poachers would kill one of their own if only ivory were involved. It would be more likely that they’d just lie low until we left.”

  “My bet is on Hascombe,” said Sam. “He’s cheated you before.”

  Jade arched her brows in surprise. “I thought you just met Harry. How do you know about what he’s done before?”

  Beverly jumped into the breach. “I’m sure Avery or I told Sam something about Harry since he’s been here. Anyway, I don’t agree that Harry’s behind it. He’s a British citizen after all. And a good hunter,” she added. “He wouldn’t risk a livelihood leading safaris by killing all the game or doing something illegal. Didn’t you tell me his people bought licenses?”

  “That’s what he said,” answered Sam. His tone indicated he didn’t believe Harry for one minute. “He hired himself out to Germans after all. Maybe he made some signal to those porters of his to shoot Chiumbo.”

  Jade rolled her eyes in exasperation. Men! “The war’s over, Sam. The kaiser lost. The world goes on. Besides, those porters had loads of ivory, not bows and arrows.”

  “I think your idea of their financing the operation may be more likely,” said Avery. “You said you opened at least two crates of rifles and one of ammunition. It’s not bloody likely anyone could sneak that past Harry.”

  “Which is one of the reasons I’m not entirely convinced he’s innocent,” said Sam.

  “Speaking of not innocent, I have something I want you to look at, Bev,” said Jade. She ran to her photo tent and returned with a negative in her hand. “Take a look at this.”

  Beverly held the negative to the light and peered at it as she tried to make sense of the image. Suddenly, her eyes widened. “Oh, my word. That’s Claudia von Gretchmar! But,” she added as she squinted more closely at the negative, “who is the man she is, um, cavorting with?”

  “That’s what I hoped you’d be able to tell me,” said Jade.

  Avery and Sam both took turns studying the negative until Beverly took it from her husband. “That’s quite enough, don’t you think? I have my doubts that you were examining the unknown man in the picture.”

  “I can’t tell,” said Avery. “I presume it’s her husband.”

  “It’s not,” said Jade. “He’s balding.”

  “Probably Hascombe,” said Sam. “I don’t see that it has much bearing on this, though.”

  “I agree,” said Avery. “So what’s your plan, Jade? When do we leave and how do you manage to stay on without being discovered?”

  Jade pocketed the negative. “We need to leave as soon as we can, for Chiumbo’s sake, and it has to look like all of us are going. If we start packing now, we should get out of here early tomorrow. I’ll make a run over to Harry’s camp and inform him of our plans. Then I’ll leave with you, in case someone is spying, but I’ll double back and hide out in a new location closer to the poachers’ cache. We can tuck away some supplies in one of the blinds close by.”

  “What about me?” asked Sam. “Am I supposed to leave as well? Or do I get to have a say in this?”

  Jade remembered the recent staring contest and knew that Sam would not back down easily if he didn’t like her plan. Beverly was in a family way and Avery was only too glad to be able to move her to safer quarters. Bev, on the other hand, was willing to go because she didn’t want to see Jelani hurt or Chiumbo suffer infection. But Sam? Jade had no hold over him.

  “You’re your own man, Sam. You could set up your own camp and continue to make your movie.”

  He looked straight into Jade’s eyes with a rakish smile that said, I have you over a barrel, and both you and I know it. He glanced quickly over to Beverly and winked before answering. “I could stay on my own,” he said. “Or I could pretend to turn tail, too, then sneak off and help you. At this point, I think you’re going to need it.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Elephants are creatures of habit. They follow the same trails their ancestors took, feed off the trees that their mothers showed them as calves, wallow in the same pools. They also don’t like to be disturbed in any of these activities. If they feel threatened, they will abandon habit and move on. More than anything else, they seem to seek security.

  —The Traveler

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING before daybreak, while the others loaded chop boxes and hauled them down the rocky hill to the two Willys-Knight Overlanders parked a half mile from camp, Jade gave the engines a once-over. She’d tightened and adjusted everything the day they’d set up camp, but she wanted nothing to go wrong with their trip to safety. Chiumbo needed as little stress and strain as possible, and while she couldn’t eliminate tire damage on the lower mountainside, she could at least reduce problems under the hood.

  Sam did the same for his Dodge truck parked nearby. Then the two of them packed up the essentials of dried jerky, dates, raisins, gasoline, water, and ammunition and carried it down the hill to Sam’s truck. At Beverly’s insistence, they also accepted a small medical kit complete with iodine and rolled bandages. Over this, they tossed their blankets and a tarp. All the tents went in the Overlanders along with most of Jade’s cameras. The fourth one, set for a night flash, was too far away to retrieve in a hurry.

  Maybe when this was over, Jade thought, there’d be time to finish her elephant photo study, but she knew the long rains were coming and her chances were fast decreasing. If she returned the next dry season, it would be alone. She wouldn’t risk Bev’s baby up here.

  They decided first to notify Harry’s camp. Then Sam would drive off with the rest of them, but only until he and Jade could safely double back and work their way towards the crater
. They’d make a base camp there from which they could keep an eye on the poachers.

  “How’s Chiumbo holding up?” asked Jade when Beverly finished changing his bandages.

  She put her hand on her stomach and grimaced while she tried to master her morning nausea. “Well enough. The wound still looks clean. It smells clean, too, for which we are both grateful.”

  Jade put her hand on Bev’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. “You’re a good trouper, Bev. Always have been. But you really should take a rest now. Let Avery and our men finish up.”

  “Thank you, Jade. I believe I shall sit down for a moment.” She plopped herself under a shade tree after a quick scan for hidden snakes or scorpions. “Oh, but I could go for a cup of hot tea right about now.”

  Jade screwed up her face and stuck out her tongue. “Tea? Bleah! You keep that up, Bev, and you’ll turn your baby into a snooty Brit!”

  Beverly laughed. “I’ll brook no comments about Brits from a blasted Gypsy. By the way, you never finished telling me that story.”

  “What story? Oh! You mean about the elk? You don’t have time for that now. I’ll tell you when I rejoin you.”

  Bev reached up and took hold of her friend’s hand. “No, I don’t want to wait. It may be too…” She stopped, and Jade suspected she was about to say something about it being too late.

  Jade sat down next to Bev and patted her leg. “It’s all right, Bev. But if you really want to hear it, I’ll tell you. Where did I leave off?” She remembered telling a bit more to Sam but wasn’t certain that a discussion of bloated, rotting carcasses was anything Beverly cared to hear in her present condition.

  “Something about your neighbor’s dog being in heat,” said Bev.

  “Ah yes. You can guess the outcome of that meeting,” said Jade with a grin and a nod towards Beverly’s midsection. “We tried to teach the pup, Kaloff, how to herd, but he preferred to fetch in that big, soft-jawed mouth of his, so we mostly kept him around as a pet. I taught him how to fetch the cat whenever we couldn’t locate old Rupert. Well, one day he took it into his huge, silly head that a polecat was just another cat.”

  “He didn’t herd it, did he?” asked Bev.

  Jade nodded. “Herded it as far as that skunk would go, which wasn’t too far. Then after the skunk expressed his, um, displeasure, that idiot dog picked it up and carried it back to us.”

  Beverly put her hands up in front of her open mouth with a look of amused horror. “So what happened?”

  “Jade?” a mellow bass voice called from the edge of camp.

  She turned and saw Sam walking towards her, his limp slight as long as he kept his pace slow. Again she wondered what had happened to him. Had a round of enemy fire penetrated the plane and pierced his leg during a dogfight? Did it hurt his knee, his calf, or his foot? Maybe it was his hip? She never asked because she didn’t want to become involved in his life, or have another source of constant reminders of the late war. But it seemed there was no escaping it.

  “We need to get to Harry’s camp to spread our news,” Sam said. “We’re going to start burning daylight before long.”

  Jade looked at Beverly and held out her hands in a gesture of futility. “Sorry, Bev.”

  “Sam is right, Jade. You want to catch them all while they’re still in camp. You should take Biscuit and Jelani with you again. The Germans have gotten used to seeing the boy, I think, and might be suspicious if he’s not there. Besides, the cheetah will run after you anyway.”

  So, once again, Jade found herself standing in Harry’s camp, Jelani and Biscuit in tow, with Sam acting ostensibly as their guard. Harry and Heinrich Mueller sat at the camp table, mugs of coffee in their hands and a platter of biscuits between them. One of the camp servants brought over a second platter of grilled meat, and the fragrant aroma of food and coffee made Jade’s mouth water. The two men rose on her entry, but sat down again as she told them to continue their breakfast. She wondered where everyone else was. Possibly sleeping in.

  “I see you didn’t bring that blasted camera, Featherstone,” Harry groused. “Afraid I’d smash it?” he asked as he inserted a slab of meat between two halves of a biscuit.

  “Back off, Hascombe,” Sam replied. “We’ve got more important things to do here.”

  “Gentlemen!” scolded Jade to prevent further outbursts. She took a deep breath and tried her best to smile pleasantly. “Sam’s right. We came by to tell you that we’re leaving. One of our men is in need of medical attention.” She decided not to be specific in the hopes that any guilty party might inadvertently give himself away.

  “Such a bother, these native men,” said Mueller. “But if you have an elephant license that you have not used, I would buy it from you.” When Jade didn’t offer any, the man resumed eating his breakfast as though they’d already left.

  Harry scowled at the man’s insensitive comment. “I’m sorry to hear this, Jade,” he said. He set his sandwich back on the table, stood, and walked over to her. “What happened? Snakebite? Malaria?”

  She shook her head. “Neither. Just a wound but we don’t want it to become infected.”

  “Well, maybe I have some medicine in our kit you can use,” Harry offered. “How bad is it?” He took her right hand and held it in his own.

  “We don’t need your medicines, Hascombe,” Sam said. “We can treat our own men.”

  Harry released Jade’s hand and flexed his arms as though he were easing out a cramp. “Apparently not, Featherstone,” he replied coolly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be leaving. I thought you came in to make some motion picture. Afraid to stay on your own?”

  Sam gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. “Hascombe, you’re going to push too far.”

  “We need to make room in one of the Overlanders for our man to be comfortable, so Sam graciously offered to help us haul back some of the gear,” Jade said.

  Sam folded his arms across his chest and smirked. “You should personally know about that, Hascombe, right? Didn’t they have to do that for you last year when you broke your leg?”

  “Stop it!” snapped Jade. “Both of you, back down.” If she hoped to gain any additional information during this visit, she was mistaken. “You should take precautions, Harry. The poachers are still out there and it’s just possible they don’t like our being in their territory.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Jade.” He started to clasp her hand again, saw Sam take a deep breath, and thought the better of it. “Is that what happened? The poachers went after one of your men?”

  “Um, he’s not talking yet, so we don’t know. I’m just passing along some friendly advice. Your people all seem to be intent on bagging their set of tusks, and the poachers might not appreciate any competition. That’s the impression I got from Captain Smythe.”

  “We’ll likely be leaving in a day or two ourselves,” admitted Harry in a lower voice, as if he didn’t want Mueller to overhear. “There are too many people in this group for my taste. They don’t stay together, and they don’t follow orders. I’m surprised someone hasn’t been eaten or gored yet.”

  “Anyone in particular?” asked Jade.

  “The men are bad enough. Vogelsanger took off before dawn with Liesel Mueller. Blasted Germans act as if they won the bloody war. But the women are worse. That Mercedes is a useless little creature, and her mother is…” He flung out his arms in a gesture of complete bewilderment.

  “Maybe you just don’t know how to handle women, Hascombe,” said Sam. Jade nearly responded by kicking him in the foot, but stopped herself as soon as the side of her boot contacted his. Somehow it seemed cruel to attack someone’s injured leg. She jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow instead.

  Harry snorted. “You’re no expert yourself, Featherstone, but,” he added with a flash of teeth, like some predator just before taking a bite, “I do appreciate your sacrifice. You’re giving up completing your picture to protect Jade. I’d hate to see anything happen to my best girl.”

 
Jade nearly belted Harry herself for that last bit, and it was Sam who tugged on her arm to pull her away. “We need to get moving,” he said, then looked around. “Where’s Jelani?”

  JELANI DIDN’T WANT TO LEAVE with Bwana Avery and the others. He wanted to stay with Simba Jike, and he knew that her concern for Biscuit’s safety was just a story she made up to get him to go with Bwana and Memsabu Dunbury. It was not that he didn’t like them—he did very much—but his place was protecting Simba Jike. And so he hoped to find out something important to tell her, something that would make her realize that she needed him and must keep him nearby. He would remain with her and find the man who shot his friend Chiumbo. Then he would kill the evildoer and be a true warrior.

  The last time he came here with the American man, he found a coin in the tent of the young memsabu. Perhaps he would find something else there. He decided to take Biscuit to the lady’s tent. If she was inside, he would let her pet the cheetah and maybe she would talk to the cat. White people often talked to animals and told them secrets.

  As Jelani approached the tent, he heard a man’s voice raised in anger, followed by a woman’s tearful sobs and plaintive entreaties. He stopped and listened, but the voices spoke a language he did not know. It was not his native Kikuyu tongue nor the King’s English. Neither was it the “kitchen Swahili” most people used to talk to someone of another tribe or skin color. He recognized the man’s voice as that of the young woman’s father. Fathers often scolded daughters. Perhaps she had not cooked his meal correctly. Then he remembered these women did not cook.

  Another thought crossed his mind. Memsabu Simba Jike spoke many languages. Maybe she would know what the words meant. He hoped they didn’t speak a secret one like he did with Simba Jike the other night. Then Jelani caught a word he recognized: “nine.” That much he knew at least. It was a number, one less than the fingers on both hands. He crept closer to the tent and listened, softly repeating some of the other words to himself so as to remember them.