A Time to Die, page 2
While the rest of the pride romped and tussled and fed beneath the bait tree, the sun slid below the tree-tops and the short African twilight was on them.
‘If there is a tom with them, he will come in now,’ Sean breathed softly. The night was the time of the cats, the darkness made them bold and fierce. The light was going even as they watched.
Claudia heard something beyond the grass wall beside her, a furtive brush of some creature in long grass, but the bush was full of such small sounds and she did not even turn her head. Then she heard a distinct and unmistakable sound. The footfall of some heavy creature, soft and stealthy, but very close, and she felt her skin crawl with the insects of fear and the prickle of it up the back of her neck. Quickly she turned her head.
Her left shoulder was pressed up against the thatch wall of the hide, and there was a chink in the thatch an inch wide. Her eyes were at the same level as the hole, and through it, she saw movement. For a moment, she did not recognize what she was seeing, and then she knew that it was a tiny expanse of smooth tawny hide, filling the chink, only inches on the far side. As she stared in horror, the tawny pelt slid past her eyes, and now she heard something else, an animal breathing, snuffling at the far side of the thatch wall.
Instinctively, she reached behind her with her free hand, but never taking her eyes from the chink. Her hand was seized in a hard cool grip. The touch that had offended her only minutes before, now gave her more comfort than she had ever believed possible. She did not even marvel that she had reached for Sean’s hand, rather than her own papa’s.
She stared into the chink, and suddenly, there was another eye beyond, a huge round eye, glistening like yellow agate, a terrible inhuman eye, unblinking, burning into hers with a dead black pupil in its centre, a hand’s span from her face.
She wanted to scream, but her throat was closed. She wanted to leap to her feet, but her legs were dead. Her swollen bladder was like a stone in her lower belly, and before she could control it, she felt a few warm drops escape. That checked her, the humiliation was greater than her terror and she tightened her thighs and buttocks and clung to Sean’s hand, still staring into that terrible yellow eye.
The lioness sniffed again loudly, and Claudia started silently but held on. ‘I won’t scream,’ she told herself.
Again the lioness snuffled beyond the grass wall, and her nostrils were filled with the man odour and she let out an explosive grunt that seemed to rock the flimsy grass walls. Claudia caught the scream in her throat before it could escape. Then the yellow eye was gone from the chink, and she heard the pad of great paws circling back round the hide.
Claudia swivelled her head to follow the sound, and she looked straight into Sean’s face. He was smiling. That was what shocked her after what she had just lived through, there was that devil-may-care grin on his lips and mockery in those green eyes. He was laughing at her. Her terror subsided, and her anger flared.
‘The swine,’ she thought. ‘The arrogant bloody swine.’ And she knew that her face was bloodless and that her eyes were dark and wide with terror. She hated herself for it and she hated him for being witness to it.
She wanted to jerk her hand out of his grip, but she could still hear that great cat out there, still very close, circling them and though she loathed him, she knew that without his grip she would not be able to control herself. So she held on, but she turned her face away, following the furtive sounds of the lioness, so that Sean could not see her face.
The lioness passed in front of the blind. Through the peephole she saw the blur of its golden body, quickly gone, and she saw also that the young lioness and the cubs, alerted by the warning grunt, had disappeared into the undergrowth. The killing ground below the bait tree was deserted.
The light was going swiftly now. Within minutes it would be dark, and the thought of that brute in the darkness was almost too much to bear. Sean reached over her shoulder and pressed something small and hard against her lips. For a moment, she resisted and then she opened and let him slide it into her mouth. It was a cube of chewing-gum.
‘The man has gone mad,’ She was bewildered. ‘Chewing-gum at a time like this?’
Then as she crunched down on to the cube she realized that her saliva had dried out and that the inside of her mouth was seared and puckered as though she had bitten into a green persimmon. At the taste of spearmint, her saliva flowed again, but she was so angry with him that she felt no gratitude. He had known that her mouth was dry with terror and she resented that fiercely.
The lioness growled in the semi-darkness behind the hide, and Claudia thought longingly of the Toyota that was parked a mile back up the track. Almost echoing her thought, her father asked softly. ‘When did you tell the gunbearers to bring the truck?’
‘After the last of the shooting light,’ Sean answered him quietly. ‘Another fifteen or twenty minutes.’
The lioness heard their voices and growled again threateningly.
‘Cheeky bitch,’ Sean said cheerfully. ‘Snarly Sue in person.’
‘Shut up!’ Claudia hissed at him. ‘She’ll find us.’
‘Oh, she knows we are here now,’ Sean replied, and then raised his voice and called. ‘Get away with you, you silly old bitch, go on back to your babies.’
Claudia jerked her hand out of his grip. ‘Damn you! You’ll get us all killed.’
But the loud human voice had alarmed the cat, and for minutes, there was silence beyond the grass wall. Sean took up the short ugly double-barrelled rifle that was propped against the wall beside him and placed it across his lap. He opened the breech of the .577 Nitro Express, and slid the fat brass cartridges out of the chambers, changing them for two others from the loops on the left breast of his jacket. It was a little superstitious ritual of his, that changing of cartridges, he always performed it at the beginning of a hunt.
‘Now, listen to me, Capo,’ he addressed Riccardo. ‘If we kill that old whore without good reason, the game department is going to pull my licence. “Good reason” is when she has already chewed somebody’s arm off, not before. Do you hear me?’
‘I hear you,’ Riccardo nodded.
‘All right, don’t shoot until I tell you, or by God, I’ll shoot you.’
They grinned at each other in the half light, and Claudia realized with disbelief that the two of them were enjoying themselves. These two crazy oafs were actually having fun.
‘By the time Job arrives with the truck, it will be pitch dark, and Job can’t get the truck up to the hide. We’ll have to go down to it in the riverbed. You go first, Capo, and then Claudia between us. Stay close together, and whatever you do, don’t run! For the love of God, don’t anybody run!’
Then they heard the lioness again, padding softly around them. She growled once more and almost immediately her growl was answered from the far side of the hide. The young lioness was out there now.
‘The gang’s all here,’ Sean commented. The sound of voices and the old lioness’s growls had summoned the rest of the pride, and the hunters had become the hunted. They were trapped in the hide. The darkness was almost complete. The sunset was merely a dull red furnace glow on the western horizon.
‘Where is the truck?’ Claudia whispered.
Sean said, ‘It’s coming.’ Then his voice changed. ‘Down!’ he said sharply. ‘Get down!’ And though she had heard nothing, she dropped out of the canvas chair and crouched on the ground.
The lioness had crept up to the front wall again, almost soundlessly, and now she flung herself at it, roaring furiously as she tore at the flimsy structure with her front claws. With horror, Claudia realized that it was coming in on top of her.
‘Keep your heads down,’ Sean shouted urgently and lifted the double-barrelled rifle just as the wall burst open.
He fired, a stunning burst of sound as the muzzle blast swept through the hide and lit the interior with flame, brilliant as a flashbulb.
‘He’s killed the brute.’ Despite her hatred of blood sport, Claudia felt a guilty relief, but it was short-lived. The shot had merely startled the cat and driven her off for the moment. Claudia heard the lioness gallop away into the undergrowth snarling viciously.
‘You missed,’ she accused him breathlessly, with the stink of burnt gunpowder in her nostrils.
‘Wasn’t trying to hurt her.’ Sean opened the rifle and reloaded from the cartridge loops on his breast. ‘Just a warning shot over her bows.’
‘There’s the truck coming.’ Riccardo’s voice was level and unconcerned. Claudia’s ears were still singing from the crash of gunfire, but she could make out the distant beat of the Toyota’s diesel engine through it.
‘Job heard the shot.’ Sean stood up. ‘He’s coming early. All right, let’s get ready to move out.’
Claudia scrambled up eagerly, and then looked over the low grass wall of the roofless hide into the dark forbidding forest around her, and remembered the track that led down to the dry riverbed that served as a road. They would have to travel almost a quarter of a mile in the night to reach the safety of the truck. Her spirit quailed at the prospect.
In the trees not fifty yards away, the lioness roared again.
‘Noisy blighter,’ Sean chuckled, and took her elbow to guide Claudia to the door. This time she did not try to pull away, but instead found herself clinging to his arm.
‘Take hold of Capo’s belt.’ Gently he disengaged her hand and guided it to her father’s belt at the small of his back.
‘Hold on,’ he told her. ‘And remember, whatever happens, don’t run. It will pull them onto you instantly. Cat with mouse, they can’t resist it.’
Sean switched on the flashlight. It was a big black Maglite, but even that powerful beam seemed puny and yellow in the immensity of the forest as he played it in a circle around them. There were eyes reflected in the beam, they glowed like menacing stars, many eyes out there in the dark bush, impossible to tell cubs from full-grown lionesses.
‘Let’s go,’ Sean said quietly, and Riccardo started down the rough narrow track, dragging Claudia with him.
They went slowly, bunched up tightly. Riccardo covering the van with his lighter rifle and Sean in the rearguard, with the heavy rifle and the flashlight.
Each time the torch beam picked up the flash of cat’s eyes in the night, they seemed closer, until Claudia could make out the body of the animal behind the glowing eyes. They were pale as moths in the torchlight, nimble and restless, as they circled, both lionesses closing in now, pacing swiftly through the undergrowth, watching them intently, but turning their heads away whenever the powerful light hit their eyes.
The track was steep and rough, and oh, so long. Each step was an agony of impatience for Claudia as she stumbled along behind her father, not watching her footing, but watching instead those pale feline shapes that paraded around them.
‘Here comes Snarly Sue!’ Sean warned quietly as the old lioness screwed up her courage and came at them out of the night, grunting like a steam locomotive, deafening gusts of sound surging up her throat and out of her open mouth, her long tail lashing from side to side like a hippo-hide whip. They stopped in a tight group, and Sean swung the torch and the rifle on to the charging animal.
‘Get out of it!’ he yelled at her. ‘Go on, scat!’ And the lioness came on, her ears flattened against her skull, long yellow fangs and pink tongue curling between her gaping jaws.
‘Yah! Snarly Sue!’ Sean howled. ‘I’ll blow your stupid head off!’
She broke her charge at the last possible moment, skidding to a halt on stiff front legs, ten feet from where they were bunched and the dust swirled around her in the torchlight.
‘Piss off!’ Sean ordered her sternly, and her ears came erect and she turned and trotted obediently back into the forest.
‘That was a game of chicken chicken,’ Sean chuckled. ‘She was just trying it on.’
‘How did you know that?’ Claudia’s voice was cracked and shrill in her own ears.
‘Her tail. As long as she keeps waving it, she’s only kidding. When she holds it stiff, then look out!’
‘Here’s the truck,’ Riccardo said, and they could see the Toyota’s headlights through the trees as it bumped up the dry riverbed below them.
‘Praise the Lord,’ Claudia whispered.
‘It’s not over yet,’ Sean warned as they moved off down the track once more. ‘There is still Growly Gertie to deal with.’
Claudia had forgotten the younger lioness and now she glanced around fearfully, as she stumbled after her father, hanging onto his belt.
Then at last, they were on the bank of the riverbed, fully lit by the headlights of the parked truck which was standing only thirty yards away with its engine running. She could make out the heads of the trackers in the front seat beyond the blaze of headlights. So close, so very close, and she could not help herself. Claudia let go of her father’s belt, and ran for the truck, pelting wildly through the thick loose white sand of the riverbed.
She heard Sean shout behind her, ‘You bloody idiot!’
And immediately afterwards the fearsome grunting roar of the lioness as she charged. Claudia glanced sideways as she ran, and the great cat was almost on her, coming in at an angle out of the tall reeds that lined the open riverbed. She was huge and pale in the headlights of the Toyota, snake-swift, and her roaring cramped Claudia’s belly and her feet dragged in the thick white sand.
Claudia saw that the charging lioness carried her tail high and stiff as a steel ramrod, and even in her terror, she remembered what Sean had said and she thought with icy clarity. ‘This time she’s not going to stop, she’s going to kill me.’
For a vital instant, Sean had not realized that the girl had run. He was backing carefully down the steep path into the riverbed, with the flashlight in his left hand and the double rifle in his right. He held the rifle by the grip with the barrels tilted up over his shoulder and his thumb on the slide of the safety-catch and he was watching the old lioness out there on the edge of the reed bed as she crawled on her belly towards them. But he was sure that she was now merely going through the motions of aggression since he had stared down her mock charge. There were two of the cubs well back behind her, sitting up in the grass and watching the performance with huge eyes and candid fascination, but too timid to take part. He had lost sight of the younger lioness, although he was sure that she was now the main threat, but the river reeds were dense and tall.
He had felt Claudia bump against his hip, but he thought she had stumbled, not realizing that she had bumped him as she turned to run. He was still searching for the younger lioness, probing the reed-beds with the torch beam, when he heard the crunch of Claudia’s running feet in the sugary river sand, and he whirled and saw her out there in the dry riverbed alone.
‘You bloody idiot!’ he yelled in fury. The girl had been a constant source of irritation and dissent since she had arrived four days ago. Now she had flagrantly disobeyed his order, and he knew in an instant, even before the lioness launched her charge, that he was going to lose her. Getting a client killed or mauled was the blackest disgrace that could befall a professional hunter. It meant the end of his career, the end of twenty years of work and striving.
‘You bloody idiot!’ he vented all his bitterness on the running figure. He barged past Riccardo, who was still standing frozen with shock on the path below him, and at that moment, the lioness burst out of the edge of the reed bed where she had been lying.
The riverbed was brilliantly lit by the lights of the truck, so Sean dropped the torch and swung up the rifle with both hands, but he could not fire. The angle was wrong, the girl was between him and the lioness. Claudia ran awkwardly in the clinging sand, her head twisted away from him to watch the charge, her arms pumping frantically out of time with her legs.
‘Down!’ Sean shouted. ‘Fall flat!’ But she kept running, blocking his shot and the lioness swept in on her, sand spurting under her paws from which the curved yellow claws were already fully extended. She was grunting and roaring with each stride and her tail was carried stiff and straight.
In the headlights, the shadows of girl and cat on the stark white sand were grotesque and black, coming together swiftly, and Sean saw the lioness gather herself for the leap and he watched helplessly over the open iron sights of the rifle, impossible to separate them, impossible to fire without hitting the girl.
At the last moment Claudia tripped, her legs weak with fear collapsed under her and with a despairing wail, she sprawled face down in the sand.
Instantly, Sean zeroed his aim on the creamy chest of the lioness. With this rifle, he could hit two penny coins flipped simultaneously into the air at a range of thirty paces, left and right, both coins before they fell to earth. With this rifle, he had killed leopard, lion, rhino, buffalo, elephant by the hundred – and men, many men in the days of the Rhodesian bush war. He never needed a second shot. Now the target was open, he could with supreme confidence send a 750-grain soft-nosed mushrooming bullet through the lioness from her chest to the root of her tail. It would be the end of the cat, and of the safari, and probably his licence. At the least, it would mean months of investigation and trial. A dead lioness would bring all the wrath of the government, and the game department, down upon him.
The lioness was almost on top of the fallen girl, only a scant few feet of white sand between them, and Sean dropped his aim. It was a terrible risk, but he thrived on risk. He was gambling with the girl’s life, but she had infuriated him, she deserved to take her chance.
He fired into the sand two feet in front of the lioness’ open jaws. The huge heavy bullet ploughed in, sending up an eruption of sand, a solid fountain of flying white grains that for a moment, completely enveloped the animal. Sand filled its mouth and was sucked into its lungs as it roared, sand drove into its nostrils clogging them, and sand lashed into its open yellow eyes, tearing, raking, blinding the lioness, disorientating her, breaking the charge instantly.
Sean raced forward, with the second barrel ready to fire, but it wasn’t necessary. The lioness had recoiled, rearing back violently, clawing at her sand-clotted eyes, toppling over and then bounding up again, and careering back into the reed-bed, barging blindly into the sheer bank, rolling and falling, and struggling up again. The sound of her wild run and agonized roars dwindled.
