Stalking Ivory

by Suzanne Arruda

  “We didn’t hear any of the Germans or Harry,” he said. “Of course, some of them could be in their tents asleep. We did hear a few of their porters talking.” He looked at Abasi. “Could you make out anything they were saying?”

  “I put my ear to the boma and heard the cook talk about the food—that is all.”

  “What do you want to do next, Jade?” asked Sam. “Shall I walk in there? Maybe Abasi could go in. They probably don’t know him.”

  She shook her head. “Jelani’s not in there, but I can do a quick search of the tents. Abasi wouldn’t know what to look for.”

  Sam stared at her, mouth agape. “How do you suddenly know Jelani’s not there?” he asked. “And just how are you planning on waltzing in unnoticed?”

  She put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. Our diversion is on its way now.” As she spoke, a sound like low thunder rumbled closer, and the ground vibrated under their feet. A sapling snapped in a sharp crack, followed by a symphony of trumpet blasts and low, throaty rumbles.

  “Stampede!” breathed Sam. He turned his head towards the sound of the approaching herd. “We need to get out of here.”

  Jade grabbed both his arm and Abasi’s. “No! We’re safe here.”

  The rumbling grew louder and a dusty fog rolled out of the trees near their side of the compound. The musty, acrid scent of large herbivores wafted over them along with the dust. Jade coughed and fanned away the airborne soil. She saw nine adult females and one young male trot out into the clearing. An aging matriarch whose wrinkled skin bore the scars of innumerable encounters with tree limbs led them.

  The herd hesitated for only a moment before they plowed into the boma. Under their combined weight the thorn brush snapped like toothpicks in rapid-fire succession, like a chain of firecrackers going off. The lead matriarch raised her trunk and bellowed once before she curled it around a bundle of stout limbs and hurled them into the exposed compound.

  The cook and the remaining porters yelled in terror and raced out the boma gate and into the forest, thinking only of putting distance between themselves and the rampaging herd. Jade heard a high-pitched, feminine scream and saw Mercedes standing in front of her tent, her open hands in front of her face as though blocking the sight would remove the danger.

  Sam started to rise, but Jade held on to his arm. When he looked at her and tried to remove her restraining hand, she shook her head no. So far the elephants had restricted their assault to the boma wall itself and hadn’t entered the compound. Mercedes was in no immediate danger, but Sam would be if he tried running through the angry herd. Just as he was about to go to the girl’s rescue anyway, the young male tossed a branch with a flip of his trunk. It arched up over one of the tents and landed a few feet away from Mercedes, but it gave her the shock necessary to make her bolt after the porters for the gate and the safety of the forest beyond.

  “Stay here and cover me,” Jade said as she rose and sprinted behind the elephants and into the compound. She had no idea how Boguli had managed to direct the herd there or even keep their rampage down to an assault on the fence, but she knew the diversion wouldn’t buy her much more than a few minutes. Harry and his crew might be near enough to hear the attack and come racing back at any time.

  Her first duty was to make sure that Jelani wasn’t held captive in the camp. She raced from tent to tent, searching for the boy and calling his name. When she verified Boguli’s statement, she darted into Mercedes’ tent and quickly searched all the girl’s clothing for anything with a missing button. Nothing. Jade stopped and collected her thoughts. If the button didn’t belong to Mercedes, then perhaps it was Liesel’s. She had no idea which tent belonged to the peroxide blonde, but she’d make a quick search of each one in turn.

  Outside, the din from the elephants receded. The herd had completed its destruction of the boma fence and was placidly marching off into the forest to resume feeding. Jade had gone through two of the other tents without success when she found a soiled linen blouse wadded up at the foot of a cot. She picked it up and held it by the sleeves. The blouse had identical mother-of-pearl buttons to the one she’d found in the cache, only the top button was missing. Broken threads marked where the button should have been before it was torn away. Had it been ripped off in a fit of passion or in a fight?

  Whose tent is this? Liesel’s? It wasn’t the one that Mercedes ran from. Jade dropped the blouse back onto the ground and headed for the camp table, hoping to find anything to identify the tent’s occupant. She discovered nothing on the woman’s side that bore any identification, so she headed over to the man’s half of the tent. Somewhere there must be some sort of document. A passport? She found what she wanted in a small, wooden cigar box: two passports, husband’s and wife’s. What surprised Jade most was that the blouse belonged not to Liesel, but to the stodgy Claudia von Gretchmar.

  CHAPTER 17

  To the south and west of Marsabit lies the Kaisoot Desert, haven to many animals, especially during the rains. To the north is another matter entirely.

  —The Traveler

  HEAT WAVES ROSE UP from the black rocks, rippling like the ghostly spirits of long-dead slaves. One of the ghosts must have decided to take his vengeance on Jelani rather than risk the ire of a slaver, for it tripped the boy. Jelani caught himself as he stumbled, and avoided falling on the jagged stones.

  The man in front of him stopped, and a second one, traveling behind him, yanked him roughly by the shoulders and half carried, half dragged him to the shade of a large rock pile. Water trickled gently nearby, and Jelani assumed that they had stopped to wait out the day’s heat in an oasis.

  A few small plants had managed to grab a foothold where the water seeped out of a spring before it all evaporated or fled underground away from the sun. One of the camels, the one with the largest ivory load, plodded over to the greenery and ended the plants’ valiant but doomed attempt at survival.

  Jelani wanted to be the springwater and join it in its underground flight before he, too, evaporated in the sun’s raging heat or worse. He blinked away the dryness in his eyes and studied the men milling around the two camels and the spring. They were northern men, not white but not dark like him. They wore knee-length, loose-fitting robes that might have been white at one time, but had long since taken on the dull color of stale water. Below the robes were ragged trousers and sandals.

  He didn’t remember meeting up with them until they were already on the march, but then, he didn’t remember much at all except following Biscuit, hoping to surprise whoever had lured the cat away. He recalled that the person who called Biscuit kept moving farther away, enticing them both on until Jelani knew he’d gone too far. That, and someone putting a sickly-sweet-smelling rag over his face. When he thought about his capture, another memory hovered on the edge of his mind, like a little kestrel fluttering aloft waiting to capture a lizard. He willed the memory to swoop into his consciousness, but it flitted away instead.

  One of the men approached him and thrust a rancid-smelling bag made from a poorly cured goatskin into his shackled hands. Something sloshed inside and suddenly his thirst became a ravenous beast clawing at his innards. The boy fumbled with the leather bung that acted as a stopper. His hands felt numb from the raw leather tightly wrapped around his wrists, but he finally managed to remove the plug with his teeth and spit it into his hand. The water tasted stale and smelled like rotting goat, but he drank anyway. It had been a long march.

  What did he remember? He struggled to clear his head and think. He remembered waking up when someone hiding in the rocks chirped for Biscuit. He remembered grabbing his knife and letting the cheetah follow the sound in the darkness. But the cat soon outdistanced him. He remembered hearing a shot and finding Biscuit lying in his own blood. Then a gloved hand, the sweet scent like a poisonous flower, and more darkness until he came to, flopped on his stomach across the neck of a camel. His head pounded and he vomited right then and there as the beast lumbered along. One man yelled at him, then
grabbed him by the waist and hauled him off the unwashed brute. He remembered his legs buckling under him before he forced them to stay rigid when the same man struck him with a stick and hauled him up on his feet again.

  A gloved hand! These men did not wear gloves. The memory came closer but was still out of reach. He choked down another mouthful of the foul water. What happened to Biscuit? It was his job to look after Simba Jike’s pet cheetah. Is he hurt? He wondered what Bwana and Memsabu Dunbury were doing. Did they know he was gone? Were they coming to find him or would they think he had run away? He shook his head to clear out the bad thoughts. No. They would not think that. But they would have no idea where to look for him, either, especially if Biscuit could not help them.

  Part of him worried that he would be in trouble for letting the slavers capture him. After all, Simba Jike had warned him that there were dangerous men out there, but he never really believed they would hurt him, not while he was with Bwana Dunbury. Underlying all these gloomy thoughts was one mocking, inner voice reminding him that he wasn’t a warrior. Not only had he failed to kill Simba Jike’s enemy, but her pet cheetah might be dead. She would never welcome him back again. He fought the urge to cry, knowing he could not afford to waste water in tears out here in this rocky desert.

  The same man that gave him the waterskin grabbed it away from him and shoved the bung back into the hole. Jelani recognized him as the one who had hit him across the back and shoulders when he could not walk at first. He had a pitted face hidden in part by his short beard. He pointed at Jelani’s feet and yelled something to his companion. When the second man shook his head and laughed at him, the first took out his anger on the boy and pushed him down onto the rocks. Jelani felt the rough stones bite into his buttocks and back.

  The man continued arguing with his comrade, waving his arms and shouting. Finally, the other pulled his knife from a side slit in his robe and sliced off a length of leather from a camel’s worn lead strap. He tossed the leather to the angry man and waved him away. Jelani couldn’t understand their language, but he gathered that his antagonist felt he might try to escape while they waited out the scorching heat. It seemed his companion did not think the boy strong enough or foolish enough to risk attempting such a foolhardy trek. To do so without water meant certain death.

  The man grabbed Jelani’s bare feet and lashed his ankles together. The rough dry leather scraped and sliced into his skin before absorbing some of the blood that trickled out of the fresh wounds. At this point, death in the desert seemed a better option to Jelani than the slavery that surely awaited him. He fought back the rising nausea that came from the rancid water and the pain. He needed to keep his wits about him and think of a way to escape. As the men settled down in the shade of a rocky outcrop to doze, Jelani led his mind back over the lessons he’d learned reading the fables and settled on one in particular.

  “OVER THERE. That’s one of the cars.” Jade leaned forward and pointed to a block-shaped object in the distance.

  After running through Harry’s camp, Jade had declined Sam’s offer to again search the poachers’ cache for the boy. When he pressed her for a reason, all she would say was that Jelani wasn’t there, that he’d been taken north. So they hurried back to the Dodge, tossed in their blankets, and drove down the rockiest and most hazardous part of the mountain while it was yet light, continuing after nightfall until a protruding branch smashed a headlamp. At that point, Jade perched on the hood and scouted the ground ahead with her flashlight. Now in midmorning, they contended with rising heat waves that parched their throats and distorted their vision.

  “I see it.” Sam hit the accelerator and sped across the rocky ground to the Overlander and the porters left to guard it. Two flat tires explained why the Dunburys hadn’t taken both vehicles.

  “Jambo,” called Jade in greeting. “Did you find Jelani? Where is Bwana Dunbury?”

  The man who also served as cook shook his head and pointed to the northeast. “Bwana and Memsahib Dunbury found some fresh camel dung over that way. Maybe camel herders, maybe not. Bwana and Memsahib went on, hoping to find them. Maybe they have the boy.”

  “Where’s Chiumbo? Is he with them?” she asked.

  A dark arm rose up from the seat and waved to Jade. “I am here, Simba Jike. I am fine.” He struggled to rise to a sitting position. “Memsabu Dunbury said the road north would be hard on me, so she made me stay here. Take me with you. I will make those bad men pay when you find them.” He waved a knife by the hilt.

  Jade shook her head. “No, my friend. Lady Beverly was right. You must stay here and rest.” Seeing the disgruntled frown on his face she added, “We may need you later. You had best be strong again then.”

  “Has Biscuit returned?” asked Sam. If they could find the cat, he could track the boy. The cook shook his head.

  “Maybe Avery and Bev found Biscuit already,” suggested Jade as they drove on. She peered out into the rocky ground ahead. “It’s not going to be easy to see their trail, especially once it gets dark.”

  “Looks like they thought of that, Jade,” said Sam. “Look out there.” He pointed at a glittering piece of metal, flashing in the sun. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a can. They’re leaving a bread crumb trail for us to follow.”

  Sam, Jade, and Abasi pushed on into the barren territory between Mount Marsabit and Abyssinia. The Dodge jolted and lurched over black volcanic rock, and Sam stopped every half hour so he and Jade could check under the hood and the car for items that had vibrated loose. Part of the exhaust pipe took a direct hit, but they escaped any major damage. Most of the razor-sharp rock was the size of river gravel, and Sam did his best to avoid the larger chunks that could irreparably damage their oil pan.

  Nothing relieved the monotony: no wildlife, no vegetation beyond a rare thornbush, and no sign of the Dunburys, Jelani, or Biscuit. Anxiety grew first as a lump in Jade’s throat, then swelled into a dull, rhythmic pounding in her temples.

  Morning turned to afternoon, and the shadows lengthened as well as the distance between the Dunburys’ tossed-out cans. Even their ability to spot these diminished as the shifting shadows from innumerable small rocks played tricks on them. At times their pace slowed to a crawl as all eyes searched for the next marker that let them know they were on the right trail. Jade finally perched on the car’s hood for a better vantage point and used her binoculars to enhance her search. By sunset they lost the cans and found the Dunburys instead.

  Beverly raced forward and enveloped Jade in a crushing hug. “Thank the Lord you’re here,” she said. “Abasi, you did very well. Thank you so much.”

  Jade gently pushed Beverly away and studied her face. Water marks smeared her grimy face where a few tears had trickled down across the volcanic soot. Those marks spoke volumes to Jade. They hadn’t found Jelani, dead or alive. “Any sign of the boy at all?” she asked.

  “None,” said Avery as he put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “But we found Biscuit. Someone shot at him, and the bullet nicked a lung. They must have left him for dead when they took Jelani.”

  “Is it serious? Can he track?” asked Jade. As much as she liked the big cat, her main concern was having him to locate Jelani. Her throat tightened in a knot of panic, and she fought it down. If anyone has hurt that boy, they’d better pray I don’t find them.

  “We patched him up,” continued Avery. “The wound doesn’t appear to be septic. See for yourself.”

  He pointed behind her, and Jade turned in time to receive Biscuit’s head butt against her thigh. It was as if the cheetah had heard Jade’s voice and wanted to reassure her himself. She stroked the cat, knelt down, and inspected the wound under the full bandage wrapped about the cheetah’s barrel-shaped chest. The cat strained against his lead, which was tied to the car’s rear axle.

  “We’ve had to keep him tied up tightly in the car,” said Avery. “Even wounded, he wants to find Jelani. Every so often, in between camel droppings, we let him out to sniff a trail for us.�
�

  “Speaking of wounds,” said Beverly, “did you see Chiumbo? How is he?”

  Jade assured her friends that Chiumbo was doing well and anxious to wreak vengeance on the kidnappers. “Now tell me everything,” she said when she finished her brief report. “How do you know you’re on the right track and why on earth did you stop?”

  Avery pointed to the car. “Had to stop. Everything’s come loose under the bonnet, the carburetor is completely fouled, and one of my tires is shredded.” He looked at his watch. “We’ve been here for nearly six hours trying to put it all back together.”

  “As to being on the trail,” continued Beverly, “we weren’t sure for quite a while. All we could do was look for those blasted camel droppings and assume they were from whoever took Jelani. I hate to think how much time we wasted going back and forth looking for those. But when we found Biscuit, we knew our assumptions were right. Then we found this.”

  Avery held up a glove and a rag for them to see. “These were in the rocks close to where we found Biscuit.”

  Jade took the man’s leather work glove and the rag and noticed a trace odor, sweet but noxious. She took a hesitant sniff, then jerked back her head immediately. “Chloroform!”

  “That’s what we suspected,” said Beverly. “Someone held this rag laced with it to Jelani’s face. Probably wore the glove to keep the chemicals off his hand. We also found this.”

  Beverly reached in her trouser pocket and pulled out a dirty bloodstained handkerchief. “This was under Biscuit. Jelani must have put it there to try to patch up the cheetah. That’s probably when the slavers captured him.” Her voice quavered and a gut-wrenching sob broke from her throat.

  Avery pulled his wife to his chest in an enveloping embrace. He caressed her back and kissed the top of her head. “Hush, darling. They won’t kill him or even hurt him. They want him alive and healthy to bring a higher price. And now that Sam and Jade are here, they can continue on and find him. It’s going to be all right.”