Mark of the Lion

by Suzanne Arruda

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  THE PREMISE FOR THIS STORY COMES from an interesting tale. Bror von Blixen (husband of Out of Africa author Isak Dinesen, and a famous hunter/author in his own right) was once asked to shoot a particularly troublesome hyena. The tribespeople claimed it belonged to a witch and feared revenge if they tackled it themselves. Blixen shot the animal but only wounded it at first. He followed the trail, flushed it from some brush, and shot it again. Baron Blixen claims that when he finally came near the carcass, there was no hyena, but a man with two bullet holes. This tale and similar stories of vengeance animals can be found in The Tree Where Man Was Born, by Peter Matthiessen, and in Death in the Long Grass, by Peter Hathaway Capstick.

  Any of the books that Jade found or looked to find in Gil Worthy’s library will also give the reader insight into colonial Africa. All of these can be borrowed through interlibrary loans. Other excellent and more accessible resources include any of Elspeth Huxley’s books, such as The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard, as well as books by Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham. Osa and Martin Johnson wrote several books on life in 1920s Africa, including the famous Four Years in Paradise and I Married Adventure. Information on the Johnsons is also available at the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum, which has an excellent Web site (www.safarimuseum.com) and an even more magnificent research library in the museum in Chanute, Kansas.

  For more information on women ambulance drivers, the reader can start with Gentlemen Volunteers, by Arlen J. Hansen. There is a chapter devoted to women drivers and tremendous resources listed in the back of the book. An excellent fictionalized version is Not So Quiet . . . , a novel by Helen Zenna Smith. This novel, printed shortly after World War I, was banned in some places for being too controversial.

  Suzanne Arruda, a zookeeper turned science teacher and freelance writer, is the author of several biographies for young adults. She has published science and nature articles for adults and children and is a regular contributor to a weekly newspaper supplement. An avid hiker and outdoorswoman, Suzanne lives in Kansas with her husband, twin sons, and a small menagerie of pets. You can reach her at www.suzannearruda.com.

  Jade del Cameron’s adventures

  continue in Suzanne Arruda’s

  STALKING IVORY

  Available from New American Library

  Read on for an excerpt. . . .

  AFRICA—January 1920

  “Many people who consider themselves experts on Africa have no more experience than what they read in an Edgar Rice Burroughs’ book. The genuine article is much more intriguing.”

  —The Traveler

  THE LAST ELEPHANT COW SMACKED HER baby on the rump with her trunk, and the calf squealed and trotted after the rest of the herd.

  “I’m betting if it hadn’t been for that lovesick bull elk, I wouldn’t be stuck up in this tree with you, Bev, hiding from elephants.”

  Jade del Cameron watched her friend’s wide-eyed reaction with a great deal of amusement. The herd had passed beneath them, brushing their bulky sides against the stinkwood tree’s trunk. Jade’s former ambulance corps comrade Beverly Dunbury had clutched an overhead limb for dear life, her blue eyes bugging out of her head. Once the pachyderms melted back into the forest, Bev relaxed her grip on the branch and sank onto the blind’s planking. The scent of bitter almond hung heavy in the air from the bruised leaves. Jade shifted in the tree blind and resumed setting up her equipment for a night shot.

  “You will simply have to explain that to me,” Beverly whispered as she fanned herself.

  “Of course. Several years ago there was this big bull elk hanging around my family’s ranch in New Mexico. Eight points at least. That’s the size of his rack, his antlers.” She paused to see if Beverly understood and decided she didn’t. “It shows he wasn’t a calf and not a real old-timer, either. Anyway, it seems he fell head over hooves in love, so to speak, with one of our horses, and—” Jade cut her narrative short as a loud trumpeting ripped through the forest. “Whoa, now. Speaking of bulls, that sounds like our big old fellow. Gads, but I want to get a good photograph of him. He’s so ancient that his tusks nearly cross each other. Probably would if he hadn’t broken one of them.”

  “Too far away to hunt up tonight,” added Beverly’s husband, Avery, from the other side of the tree blind. “Is this contraption really going to take pictures?” Avery inquired. He put down his book and scooted over the narrow planking to inspect the work in progress.

  “It did in Nairobi, but we’ll get our field test tonight,” Jade said. “In theory it should. At least I’ve rigged it correctly up here.” She patted the Graflex gently.

  “When did you test in it Nairobi?” asked Beverly. “Did you set something up by the pond at our house?”

  Jade chuckled, her voice warm and mellow. “Now what would I photograph at your house, Bev? I’d have done better at Neville and Madeline Thompson’s coffee farm. At least that looks African. You’ve turned yours into a proper English estate with all those rosebushes.”

  “You might have taken a picture of whatever ate all her peacocks,” suggested Avery. “Lion, I suspect.”

  “Well, unless you wanted to offer him another peacock as bait, I doubt I’d have seen him. No, I rigged up a test line outside of the Muthaiga Club. Put it near some of the cars during the party Lord Colridge threw for his son Edmunde’s homecoming.” What an evening that had been, most notable for the conversation she’d had with Blaney Percival, the Protectorate’s chief game warden. It had all seemed so incongruous: her dressed in her best apricot-colored gown, Mr. Percival in evening kit, surrounded by half of Nairobi society, discussing elephants and dangerous poachers as casually as the others talked of dinner parties and flirtations.

  “I wouldn’t recommend this sort of trip to a woman, but I believe you could tackle it, Miss del Cameron,” Blaney Percival had said over the blare of the gramophone.

  Jade’s skin tingled as he spoke those words. “Would I find many elephants?” she asked. “More than at Mount Kenya?”

  “Undoubtably, and I’ll even send word to Isiolo to let the patrol up there know you’re coming. In return, though, I want you to do me a favor. . . .”

  “Jade! Pay attention, I’m trying to talk to you.” Back in the present, Beverly put her hands on her hips and scolded Jade. “You’re a sneaky little devil! I’d wondered where you’d gone off to during the dancing and why you looked so smug when you came back. All this time I’d hoped you were off having a romantic tête-à-tête with someone.”

  Jade snorted and adjusted the camera’s lens again, then shouldered the roll of wire. “All that remains now is to anchor the trip wire across the trail. Cover me, Avery.”

  Avery Dunbury hefted his Mannlicher rifle and scouted the surrounding brush for any hidden danger. “All clear.”

  Jade shinnied down the stinkwood tree. The daughter of a New Mexican rancher, she always felt more at home in the wilderness than with crowds of people, and her current position as a writer and photographer for The Traveler suited her temperament well. Her first assignment, after her stint as a frontline ambulance driver with the Hackett-Lowther unit in the Great War, took her on safari in Tsavo near Mount Kilimanjaro and gave her a taste for Africa and its wild expanses. Unfortunately, as she was also searching for a murderer at the same time, it exposed her to the seamier side of Nairobi’s population.

  That was why, when Jade had accepted another assignment in Africa from her editor, she had specifically requested to photograph wildlife in an area relatively uninhabited by people. She would have been the first to admit that what she really wanted was to be as far away from humanity as possible and this seemed the easiest way to do it. She’d had enough of people to last a lifetime. Of course Beverly, and Beverly’s husband, Lord Avery Dunbury, didn’t count. They were friends. They now owned some land and a beautiful stone house a few miles outside of Nairobi, and since they planned to make British East Africa their home, Jade had let them tag along.r />
  As she eyed the thick woods surrounding the game trail, she knew she’d gotten as close to her wish for isolation as possible. Mount Marsabit was as remote an area in the Protectorate’s northern frontier as she could have wanted. The heavily forested volcanic craters were an oasis of wildlife in the middle of desolation. To the southwest lay the Kaisoot Desert; to the east the Chalbi; and to the north, the even more inhospitable black lava wastes of the Dida Galgalla desert. Somalia sat two hundred miles east and Nairobi, with all its pretension, was at least a blessed 250 miles away as the crow, or in this case the cape rook, flew.

  Unfortunately, other people sometimes stalked these forests, and Jade’s conscience reminded her that she hadn’t come just for the solitude. A distant echo of rifle reports emphasized both points. Blaney Percival had told her about this hidden spot when she asked for a good location to photograph elephants. In return, she promised to relay information on the current poaching. So far she hadn’t seen any evidence, but she didn’t kid herself. Where there were this many elephants, there would be poachers.

  Jade chose an African olive tree across the game trail and tied the wire around its trunk. Then she ran the thin strand a few inches above the ground to her stinkwood tree blind, passed it under a spool that she’d staked into the ground, and tossed the rest of the coil up to Beverly.

  “Does this end go to that little switch?” Beverly asked.

  Jade scrambled back up the tree using a rope ladder and reached a hand up for Avery’s assistance. “That’s correct,” she answered as she swung a leg over a floorboard.

  Avery lowered his rifle and studied the setup. “I see. Rather ingenious actually. I wondered how you planned to take a photograph in the dark without being here.”

  “Hopefully this switch at the battery will set off the magnesium flash powder in that pan at the same time as the shutter is released,” Jade explained. She gingerly slipped a nooselike piece of wire over the shutter release.

  “But won’t the elephant, or whatever strolls by, just pull the whole contraption out of the tree?” asked Beverly.

  “I’ve anchored the camera down with clamps. The trip wire is close enough to the ground to be stepped on, but if an animal did snag a foot on it, the wire is so thin, it should snap as soon as it pulls any farther than I’ve allowed.” Jade stepped back and examined her work. “At least under the weight of an elephant,” she added. “I’m counting on smaller animals missing it entirely. Just keep your fingers crossed and pray I’ve set the focal plane correctly.” Jade fussed with a rubberized hood that covered most of the camera. “I’m more concerned with moisture on my lens than anything.”

  “The long rains aren’t due for another month at least,” Avery reminded her.

  “That doesn’t stop the fog every morning,” Jade replied as she gave a final tug to the hood.

  At the instant she leaned down, something whizzed a few feet above her head, the sound punctuated by the crack of a distant rifle.

  “Thunder and blazes!” exclaimed Jade.

  She dropped the pack, snatched up her Winchester, and bolted for the rope ladder as more reports exploded in the distance.

  “Jade!” yelled Beverly as she grabbed her friend’s sleeve. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Let go, Bev,” Jade said, her voice low and husky with anger.

  “No! Avery, help me hold Jade.”

  Avery grabbed for Jade’s right arm, pulling his head back to avoid being clobbered by a rifle butt when she tried to swing free of his grip.

  “Blast it, you two,” Jade snapped. “Let me go. Someone’s shooting at us.”

  “We’re not letting go,” retorted Beverly, “until you settle down and act like a rational human instead of a wound-crazed buffalo.”

  When Jade didn’t immediately agree, Avery added, “I have rope if I need it, Jade. Be reasonable. Much as you may enjoy it, you cannot go off into the forest and pummel someone.”

  Jade exhaled with a tremendous sigh, her shoulders sagging as she admitted defeat. “All right. I promise. But,” she added as her friends released her, “they better hope I don’t find them.”

  Beverly behaved more stoically. “Settle yourself, Simba Jike. We don’t have a game permit for shooting nearsighted hunters.”

  “You don’t need a permit to shoot hyena, jackal, or jackass,” countered Jade. “If I hadn’t bent over at just that moment, that bullet might have gone through me rather than the tree. Worse yet, it nearly hit my newest Graflex. People heal up, but a shot like that would be fatal to a camera.”