The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 25

"In the thick bush beyond the gorge. It's poachers for certain. The carca.s.ses are lying within fifty paces of each other. I made a few low pa.s.ses, and the horns have been taken."

"Do you think they are Charlie and Lady Di?" he demanded.

From the air Craig and Sally-Anne had done a rhino count, and had identified twenty, seven individual animals on the estate, including four calves and nine breeding pairs of mature animals to whom they had given names. Charlie and Lady Di were a pair of young rhinoceros who had probably just come together. On foot Craig and Sally Anne had been able to get close to them in the thick jessie bush that the pair had taken as their territory. Both of the animals carried fine horns, the male's much thicker and heavier. The front horn, twenty inches long and weighing twenty pounds, would be worth at least ten thousand dollars to a poacher. The female, Lady Di, was a smaller animal with a thinner, finely curved pair of horns, and she had been heavily pregnant when last they saw her.

"Yes. It's them. I'm sure of it."

"There is some rough going this side of the gorge," Craig muttered. "We won't get there before dark."

"Not with the Land-Rover," SallyArme agreed, "but I think I have found a place where I can get down. It's only a mile or so from the kill." Craig unslung his rifle from the clips behind the driver's seat of the Land' Rover and checked the load.

"Okay. Let's go,"he said.

The poachers" kill was in the remotest corner of the estate, almost on the rim of the rugged valley wall that fell away to the great river in the depths. The landing-ground that Sally-Anne had spotted was a narrow natural clearing at the head of the river gorge, and she had to abort her first approach and go round again. At the second attempt, she sneaked in over the tree-tops, and hit it just right.

They left the Cessna in the clearing, and started down into the mouth of the gorge. Craig led, with the rifle c.o.c.ked and ready. The poachers might still be at the kill.

The vultures guided them the last mile. They were roosting in every tree around the kill, like grotesque black fruit. The area around the carca.s.ses was beaten flat and open by the scavengers, and strewn with loose vulture feathers. As they walked up, half a dozen hyena went loping away with their peculiar high, shouldered gait. Even their fearsomely toothed jaws had not been able completely to devour the thick rhinoceros hide, though the poachers had hacked open the belly cavities of their victims to give them easy access.

The carca.s.ses were at least a week old, the stench of putrefaction was aggravated by that of the vulture dung which whitewashed the remains. The eyes had been picked from the sockets of the male's head, and the ears and cheeks had been gnawed away. As Sally-Anne had seen from the air, the horns were gone, the hack marks of an axe still clearly visible on the exposed bone of the animal's nose.

Looking down upqnoxhat ruined and rotting head, Craig found that he was shaking with anger and that the saliva had dried out in his mouth.

"If I could find them, I would kill them," he said, and beside him Sally-Anne was pale and grim.

"The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds she whispered, "the b.l.o.o.d.y, b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.ds." They walked across to the female. Here also the horns had been hacked off and her belly cavity opened. The hyena had dragged the calf out of her womb, and devoured most of it.

Sally-Anne squatted down beside the pathetic remains.

"Prince Billy," she whispered. "Poor little devil."

"There's nothing more we can do here." Craig took her arm and lifted her to her feet. "Let's go." She dragged a little in his grip as he led her away.

from. the peak of the hill that Craig had arranged as the rendezvous with Comrade Lookout, they looked out across the brown land to where the river showed as a lush serpentine sprawl of denser forest almost at the extreme range of their vision.

Craig had lit the signal fire of smoking green leaves a little after noon, and had fed it regularly since then. Now the sky was turning purple and blue and the hush and chill of evening fell over them, so that Sally-Anne shivered.

"Cold?" Craig asked.

"And sad." Sally' Anne tensed but did not pull away when he put his arm around her shoulders. Then slowly she relaxed and pressed against him for the warmth of his body. Darkness blotted out their horizon and crept in upon them.

ice was so close as to startle "I see you, Kuphela." The va them both, and Sally-Anne jerked away from Craig almost guiltily. "You summoned me." Comrade Lookout stayed outside the feeble glow of the fire.

"Where were you when somebody killed two of my beiane and stole their horns?" Craig accused him roughly.

"Where were you who promised to stand guard for me?

There was a long silence out in the darkness.

"Where did this thing happen?" Craig told him.

"That is far from here, far also from our camp. We did not know." His tone was apologetic, obviously Comrade rout felt he had failed in a bargain. "But we will find the ones who did this. We will follow them and find them."

"When you do, it is important that we know the name of the person who buys the horns from them," Craig ordered.

"I will bring the name of that person to you," Comrade Lookout promised. "Watch for our signal fire on this hill Twelve days later, through his binoculars, Craig picked up the little grey feather of smoke on the distant whaleback of the hill. He drove alone to the a.s.signation for Sally Anne had left three days previously. She had wanted desperately to stay, but one of the directors of the Wildlife Trust was arriving in Harare and she had to be there to greet him.

I guess my grant for next year depends on it," she told Craig ruefully as she climbed into the Cessna, "but you phone me the minute you hear from your tame bandits Craig climbed the hill eagerly and on the crest he was breathing evenly and his leg felt strong and easy. He had grown truly hard and fit in these last months, and his anger was still strong upon him as he stood beside the smouldering remains of the signal fire.

Twenty minutes pa.s.sed before Comrade Lookout moved silently at the edge of the forest, still keeping in cover and with the automatic rifle in the crook of his arm.

"You were not followed?" Craig shook his head rea.s.sure ingly. "We must alwayfbe careful, Kuphela."

"Did you find the men?"

"Did you bring the money?"

"Yes." Craig drew the thick envelope from the patch pocket of his bush-jacket. "Did you find the men7

"Cigarettes," Comrade Lookout teased him. "Did you bring cigarettes?" Craig tossed a pack to him, and Comrade Lookout lit one and inhaled deeply. "Haul'he said. "That is good."

"Tell me, "Craig insisted.

"There were three men. We followed their spoor from the kill though it was almost ten days old, and they had tried to cover it." Comrade Lookout drew on his cigarette until sparks flew from the glowing tip. "Their village is on the escarpment of the valley three days" march from here.

They were Batonka. apes," the Batonka are one of the primitive hunter-gatherer tribes that live along the valley of the Zambezi, "and they had the horns of your rhinoceros with them still. We took the three of them into the bush and we spoke to them for a long time." Craig felt his skin crawl as he imagined that extended conversation. He felt his anger subside to be replaced with a hollow feeling of guilt he should have cautioned Comrade Lookout on his methods.

"What did they tell you?" They told me that there is a man, a city man who drives a motor-car and dresses likea white man. He buys the horns of rhinoceros, the skins of leopards and the teeth of ivory, and he pays more money than they have ever seen in their lives."

"Where and when do they meet him?"

"He comes in each full moon, driving the road from Tuti Mission to the Shangani river. They wait on the road in the night for his coming." Craig squatted beside the fire and thought for a few minutes, then looked up at Comrade Lookout. "You will F tell these men that they will wait beside the road next full in oon with the rhinoceros horns until this man comes in his motor-can"

"That is not possible," Comrade Lookout interrupted him.

why?" Craig asked.

"The men are dead." Craig stared at him in utter dismay. "All three of them?"

"All three," Comrade Lookout nodded. His eyes were cold and flat and merciless.

"But--2 Craig couldn't bring himself to ask the question.

He had set the guerrillas onto the poachers. It must have been like setting a pack of fox-terriers onto a domesticated hamster. Even though he had not meant it to happen, he was surely responsible. He felt sickened and ashamed.

"Do not worry, Kuphela," Comrade Lookout rea.s.sured him kindly. "We have brought you the horns; of your be jane and the men were only dirty Batonka. apes anyway." Carrying the bark string bag of rhinoceros horns over his shoulder, Craig went down to the Land-Rover. He felt sick and weary and his leg hurt, but the draw-string bag cu tung into his flesh did not gall him as sorely as his own conscience.

he rhinoceros horns stood in a row on Peter Fungabera's desk. Four of them the tall front horns; and the shorter rear horns.