They put Musa down onto the wide, firm cushions and made him sit up again, stooping him forward to lower his arms towards the floor.
“Hold this high,” Catherine instructed Thomas as she passed him the IV bag.
She unravelled the full length of the tubing, punctured the IV bag with the attached spike and pinched the drip chamber. As she opened the roller valve and release line, she checked the feed, satisfied there were no bubbles as the fluid began to make its way down the tubing. She then took out a 25-gauge catheter from the white box.
“Now unfortunately Musa, this is going to hurt a little bit. It’s quite a big needle, because you’re young and we need to administer a lot of medicine quickly. Brace yourself.”
She turned over the arm Musa hadn’t been bitten on. She turned to Jelani, who passed her a belt tourniquet he had anticipated she’d need with a smile. She nodded her thanks as she fitted it. She then ran her fingers along the vein and palpated it until she was happy. She swabbed it with an alcohol soaked cotton ball and then opened the catheter. She inserted the needle with a quick push, feeling Musa flinch as she did so. She checked the flashback of blood in the catheter’s hub and smiled with relief before pushing it in a little further. She took a few moments to carefully edge out the needle and nestle the catheter in place. When she looked up again, Jelani was waiting with sterile strips of bandaging and some tape.
“You’ve done this before,” she smiled, taking them and using them to fix the catheter in place.
She took off the tourniquet and checked Musa’s vitals. The boy seemed to be doing well, but he was still looking around the tent at all who had gathered, wide eyed in fear.
“Are you going to kill me Bwana?” Musa stammered.
“Just the opposite,” Thomas nodded.
“If we were going to kill you, we wouldn’t have just wasted nearly a $1,000 worth of antivenin on you,” Jericho growled. “Out of interest, why did we do that? You do realise he was trying to kill you. That snake was intended for you.”
“I figured,” Thomas nodded. “That’s a strange way to thank someone for coming to your village Musa.”
As Thomas looked at the scraggly teen, he couldn’t help but feel a great swell of pity. The boy was clearly gripped by panic. There was something about his demeanour that suggested he was expecting a severe punishment for his actions, and a physical one at that. Even as Catherine fussed over him, the boy flinched at her every touch.
“Musa, we’re not going to hurt you,” Thomas assured him quietly. “But why were you trying to hurt us. Did Kanu Sultan make you do it?”
The boy fixed Thomas with a fearful gaze but nodded silently.
“Where did you get the snake from?”
“It’s his. He collects them,” Musa stammered.
“How long have you been with Kanu, Musa?” Catherine asked.
Musa looked at her. A thick stream of tears began to pour down his cheeks. Catherine sat down by the boy and took his hand in hers.
“I know you’re scared. Would you feel better if I asked the men to step outside for a moment, so we can talk?”
Musa nodded, wiping away the tears with his free arm.
“Gents, why don’t you give us some space? He’s not going anywhere for a while and I don’t think he really wants to hurt his doctor, do you Musa?” Catherine asked, turning back to him.
Musa shook his head violently.
“We’ll be just outside,” Thomas nodded, touching Catherine’s elbow with a caress of his fingertips.
“I still say we should have let the dogs finish him off,” Jericho huffed under his breath as they exited the tent.
Thomas thumped him in the back good naturedly before turning back and closing the door behind him.
“Okay Musa, it’s just us now,” Catherine quipped, checking the drip again.
“Well, just us and a camera,” Kelly added. “Musa, I think you have an important story to tell. I think you’ve been abused and hurt viciously by Kanu. We want to make sure he can never hurt you or anyone else again. But that means telling your story. What d’ya say?”
Musa nodded. Catherine noticed a little colour was coming back to his cheeks. He seemed calmer and more alert. Clearly what Kelly had just offered appealed to him very much. She waited as Kelly quickly set up the camera on a tripod and started recording.
“How long have you been with Kanu Sultan?” Kelly asked. “How did you come to join him?”
“It has just always been. I don’t know how old I was, but my earliest memories are of Kanu taking me from the arms of my mother. She was dead. I remember the hyenas and Kanu driving them away. But when he took me, as we went away they came back and started to eat her. I have been to that place many times since. I know it is where Kanu takes his prisoners to die. He lets the critters of the bush clean up after him.”
“Why did you feel you couldn’t come to us for help?”
“Because...the Bwana. I brought a great evil into his life.”
Musa stopped, fresh tears welling in his eyes and rolling down his cheeks.
“When you say the Bwana, do you mean Thomas?” Catherine asked, surprised.
Musa nodded. “I was so scared, I never knew...” he began to sob almost uncontrollably.
“Nobody here is judging you Musa. Just tell us what happened,” Kelly reassured him.
“It was seven years ago. Kanu walked me into a camp and just left me. He told me that if the Bwana awoke and found me there, he would kill me. I was very afraid, and I cried. Then I saw her, the Bwana’s wife. The one with hair like yours,” Musa pointed at Kelly. “I was so scared, I ran. As fast as I could. When I heard her coming after me, I ran even faster. I didn’t know Kanu was waiting for me. He grabbed me and we left, but he waited until he was sure the lions were coming. It was so quiet. I never heard them take her, but Kanu wouldn’t leave until he was sure. I... I led her to them. It was me.”
Catherine was staring at Musa in shock. She glanced at Kelly, who seemed just as disturbed as she was. They were both processing what they had just been told. If Musa was telling the truth, then it meant only one thing. Kanu Sultan was responsible for Amanda Walker’s death.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Catherine stretched and pushed back against the wooden frame of the chair as she looked out over the kopje, watching a burst of light the colour of a blood-orange begin to creep towards her from the horizon. The night had been cold and she had been restless, but now warmth was returning to both her and the ground with the sun’s arrival. As its reach found the cracks and crevices of the outcrop, agama lizards began to peek out from within. A stunning male scurried out into the open, snatching up a dormant cricket whose senses had been dulled by the cool of the night. Catherine admired his striking cobalt blue body and his pumpkin coloured head. A duller, brown headed and mottled cream bodied female strutted past him awkwardly, flicking her tail hard in his direction as she passed to express her annoyance at his proximity. Both settled a few feet from each other as they took up basking positions. Catherine decided to join them, closing her eyes and letting the warm touch of the sun rest on her skin.
“Did you sleep at all?” Thomas asked as he walked up behind.
“A little I think, how about you?” she replied, reaching out for his fingertips with her own.
“Actually I slept pretty well,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “I think finally knowing what happened to Amanda and why she left the tent helped bring me a little peace.”
“You don’t blame Musa, do you?” Catherine asked, concerned.
“No,” Thomas assured her, smiling softly. “If anything, I’m even angrier on his behalf. Poor kid must have been terrified. He can’t have been any older than five or six at the time. How is the patient anyway?”
“He’s stable and resting. Jelani moved him down to the staff camp, he didn’t seem comfortable in Kelly’s boudoir as it were.”
“What are your plans today?” Thomas quizzed.
“I offered to help Mason with some scouting he wanted to get done. I thought I might get the jump on him and head out early. It would be a shame not to use this light.”
“I’ll let him know, where are you going to be?”
“I thought I’d head back across the river towards the scrub out that way, where we encountered the elephants. It would be nice to see them again.”
“Take the Big Cat and obviously go armed. And take a radio,” he smirked.
“Unlike you, I have no intention to head out anything less than fully prepared,” she grinned back mischievously.
Catherine busied herself putting her pack together, grabbing her camera, binoculars, radio and supplies. She checked in with Mason to make sure she knew where she would be before heading to the car. She started the Big Cat and let it idle for a while as the climate control kicked in, then trundled off slowly towards the river crossing below the camp. She checked in both directions for hippo and crocs before plunging the car into the water, surging through with ease to the other side.
About a mile and a half from camp, as she worked her way along a declining ridge line, she stopped to get her bearings. She climbed out of the cabin and onto the truck bed, where she laid out a map on the cabin roof. She pulled on her sunglasses. Jericho had told her that he thought the elephants had moved west. As she studied the map, she could see that the scrub gave way to forest in that direction, and a little way in there lay what looked like a pristine lake. If the elephants were moving away from the river, this would almost certainly be their next stop, as she knew they would rarely choose to be more than a day’s journey from water.
As she looked down onto the plain she was above, she could see she was likely to be right. The landscape of towering termite hills and patchy scrub was scarred and etched with the ancient trails of elephants that had used the same direct routes, possibly for centuries. She remembered Thomas had told her that what was considered the best road in Uganda had in fact been a well-worn elephant track, just like the ones she was looking at now. She clambered back into the cabin and headed down the ridge in their direction. It didn’t take her long to find further confirmation that she was going the right way. Large dry clumps of dung peppered the wake of the elephants, as did their tracks and imprints in their dust.
She stopped by a slightly older pile of faeces that was now sprouting green shoots of some hidden seeds within. She let out a contented sigh at the sign of a healthy ecosystem in action. For years it had been suggested that elephants could have a devastating impact on a landscape if left unchecked, something that had resulted in their control and cropping throughout much of their range. It was only relatively recently that their true contribution had been realised. Although at first their intrusion into new areas could be seen as destructive, the long term effect was the opposite. Their first and foremost role was in seed dispersal and fertilisation, as she could see in the fertile droppings she was looking at. Fruit trees in areas where elephants had disappeared had been found to be in decline, as their seed pods fell straight to the ground where they would be damaged or destroyed by beetles and other insects. Those that did survive would eventually be killed off by the shade of their parent tree. Although some smaller animals such as antelope did help disperse the seeds, their digestive tract didn’t provide the perfect levels of nitrogen and enrichment that those of elephants did. Even dung beetles played their part, preferring elephant faecal matter to others, and rolling it away into snug burrows that further helped dispersal and germination.
Further to that, the felled, uprooted and damaged trees left in the wake of a herd on the move provided new homes for rodents, geckos and insects that roamed their cracks and crevices. As they naturally cleared paths through forest areas, they would create savannah and scrub, which in turn was more open to another great changer of landscape and new growth, fire. After years of misunderstood management of wildlife and landscapes in the hands of man, a new principal was emerging that she was full heartedly behind. Let nature be nature and get the hell out of the way. Man’s biggest mistake so far with conservation was short-sightedness. Little could be achieved or observed in five years. But given fifty, nature could really do something.
She continued to follow the track-way across the scrub towards the trees up ahead. The path was still wide enough to accommodate the car, and the elephants had opened up the woodland for a fair way in. Concerned that she didn’t want to block the path completely if it became too narrow and she encountered a nervous elephant, she pulled off the track a little way and decided to leave the car in the shade of an impressive baobab tree. Before heading off, she checked her pack and took out the tube of la prairie sun protection emulsion. The expensive sunscreen was something Thomas had found for her. As a redhead, she somewhat envied Thomas’s dark hair and sun resistant skin, but even he looked pale compared to the blonde and bronzed Jericho. With the help of the lotion she would brown a little, and her freckles would come out a little more, which she rather liked. She applied it liberally to her face and arms before putting her sunglasses back on and shouldering the rifle. She slipped on her hat and set her sights on the interior of the forest.
She walked along the dusty trail, stopping every ten yards or so, as Thomas had taught her. She quickly identified the large, almost square footprints of a mature female. She assumed it was a female by the accompanying smaller, more jumbled prints of the calf accompanying it. She could see the mother’s steps were side by side, indicating she was moving slowly to accommodate the pace of her infant. Further along, she found the tracks of two larger juveniles, whose hurried steps betrayed their playfulness as they criss-crossed those of the others.
In the shade of the trees it was much cooler, although a film of sweat still clung to her skin in the humidity. As the scrub and vegetation became thicker, she slowed her approach and became more alert, listening to the haunting sounds of the forest. She froze as the piercing cry of some kind of bird of prey rang out through the branches, instantly bringing silence to the patch of trees she was working her way through. Moments later, the angry replies of what she knew to be yellow-billed hornbills reassured the woodland residents that the danger had passed and the sounds of chirrups, chirps and rustlings returned.
A little further in, she began to pick up the rumblings of her quarry. She threaded her way through the vegetation towards the sounds until she came to a break in the trees. She stopped a good ten yards back. The grass was long enough to hide her if she crouched, and she did so instinctively, edging closer to the opening. At its perimeter, she came to a halt and hid herself by resting against the trunk of a small neem tree with a low, umbrella-like canopy that helped conceal her further. Her heart was beating fast and she could feel the thud of its thunder in her chest. She knew she was smiling and couldn’t help it. It had hardly been a difficult or long walk, but still she found herself breathless and her eyes gleamed and sparkled at the sight before her. This is what she had imagined Africa to be like.
Stretching out in front of her was the natural crater of an eroded and long dead volcano. Its gentle and organic slopes were adorned with lush grasses, punctuated by the many trails of the animals that journeyed there from the forest. The reason they did so, lay at the heart of the crater in the form of a flat, crystal blue lake. She guessed that it wasn’t only the water that drew them, as the volcanic soil would also be an important source of mineral rich clays and salts. She gazed in awe at the accumulated herds.
Nearest was a group of approximately ten Grévy’s zebra mares, who were being watched over by a lone stallion. A little way from them was a Beisa oryx with a young calf. Ordinarily a true desert species, this female had split from the herd and sought the refuge of the crater to give birth and nurture her infant for a few weeks before returning to the more arid environment from which she came. They in turn were kept company by four greater kudu, which she identified from their distinctive white stripes on their backs. Her gaze paused on the bull’s impressive corkscrew spiralled
horns that measured nearly six feet in length. The leisurely grazing of the antelopes was interrupted by the barging, snorting arrival of a pack of giant forest hogs. The huge, heavily built pigs were covered in vast swathes of thickly matted black hair that turned silver along their spines and across their muzzles. Several of the boars sported foot-long tusks on either side of their mouths and would have easily weighed in at 400lbs. The other animals instinctively gave them a wide birth, and the oryx and kudu moved closer to the zebra. They all joined a group of about thirty wildebeest a little further beyond, clearing the view for her.
The elephants were nineteen in number. She counted eleven cows, including the matriarch. With them were four older juveniles and four calves. Her breathing was slow and relaxed as she watched them play and forage together. She felt the knots in her neck loosen and dissipate, and she rolled her shoulders as she let out a long, contented sigh. She reached for her bag and the camera within. That’s when she heard it, or more felt it to be precise. It started with a giddy sensation and queasiness that made her reach out for the support of the tree. As she moved, a deep, penetrating rumble sounded from close by. Her head spun to the right. The thunder came instantly, with a blood curdling trumpet and the cracks of the trees as they parted and splintered in the bull’s wake. Catherine froze as Sefu charged, his ears spread and trunk raised high in a posture of unmitigated rage and threat. At thirty feet, he stopped mid-charge and let out a screeching, ear-piercing bugle. Catherine gasped in fright, but instinct urged her to hold her nerve. Sefu seemed more surprised than enraged now he had drawn closer.
The guttural, reverberating clacking noise the big bull was making sounded gentle, almost inquisitive now. His mighty ears folded back and he shook his wrecking-ball sized head in a gesture she knew indicated delight. Sefu stomped to within ten feet, Catherine unable to move or take her eyes away from his towering form, even though her mind was screaming at her not to make eye contact in case he felt challenged. She could easily have stood beneath his chin with ample room to spare. Sefu stretched out his trunk towards her, taking a big whiff of her scent. Using the prehensile tip of the snout and the softest of touches, the elephant knocked off her hat and brushed a stubborn sticking-up sprout of her hair. He paused, almost resting his nostrils on the out of place strands as he took in a second whiff. Seemingly satisfied, he swung right and moved slowly out from the trees and into the expanse of the crater. Catherine’s lungs seemed to burst as she let out the breath she had been holding. She struggled to suck down air as she watched the colossus that was Sefu move closer to the herd, his trunk and head swinging back and forth in seeming contentment.
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