The Leopard's Prey (26 page)

Jade climbed back out of the plane and set to work gathering stones for a fire ring. She didn’t need to look far. There were dozens of big ones less than seventy yards from the plane. She made several trips and lugged back enough volcanic debris and another armload of dried branches to make three rings about a foot in diameter each. She placed one several feet in front of each wing tip and another past the tail.

The sun’s bottom just kissed the horizon. She had about ten minutes of daylight left before she was plunged into the dark African night. There was no dusk this close to the equator. Knife in hand, she slashed off every dead branch she could find and several greener ones. Her boot kicked a dried buffalo chip and she made a search for them, retrieving more than a dozen. Then, just as the sun set, she pulled a match from her bag and lit the first fire.

Above her, the stars made their appearance as she lit the last stack of wood and dried dung. The dried chips burned, but the fire didn’t produce much light. Well, it would have to do. She didn’t have anything else to contribute.

A few glowing eyes blinked in the dark. One stared long enough that she hurled one of her smaller rocks at it. The jackal yelped and ran off. In the distance, a hippo splashed its way onto shore for a nocturnal feed. Another pair of eyes blinked from the underbrush as the animal coughed. Jade felt the hair on her arms stand on end.

Leopard?
She pulled her flashlight from the bag and played it over the grass. The little spotted genet blinked, hissed, and ran away.

Jade shut off the light and told herself to relax. There weren’t supposed to be many large predators out here. But every pair of glowing eyes made Jade think of the leopard.
He’s in a cage in Nairobi, for the love of Pete.
Why did she feel as if she was losing her nerve? She’d been in the bush alone before.

Yeah, but always with a tent and gear and always because it was where you planned to be. This time you’re stuck because you cracked up Sam’s plane.
She reminded herself that it wasn’t really cracked up. The rip could be easily fixed with some good linen cloth and glue. And once they drained the fuel tank and cleaned out the line, it would fly good as new. She climbed back into the plane and tried to lean back and look up at the brightening constellations, not an easy trick in a cramped cockpit. Seeing the black sky made her think of Sam.
He has eyes like that.

She missed him and wished he was with her to share the night sky. She wanted to sit beside him by a decent fire and feel his strong arm around her shoulders. She wanted to hear his laugh and have him sing one of his funny old songs in that gravelly deep bass. Avery had once laughed at Sam’s singing voice, said it sounded like a bull elephant grumbling, but Jade liked it. It had a raspy, scratchy undertone, which, while not musical, was intriguing. She had told Sam his voice reminded her of olives. You either liked them or you didn’t, and if you did, you weren’t sure why, but you did for the very reason that they had an indescribably distinct taste.

Sam.
She’d hated to leave his side this morning; he had looked so pallid and broken. Her mind fretted, thinking of the worst possible ramifications of malaria. Some forms flared with alarming frequency. Others ended in the deadly blackwater fever. As she prayed for Sam’s health, she realized how much he meant to her. She knew then that losing him would turn Africa into an empty place, one she’d never feel at home in again.

He’ll be fine,
she told herself.
Probably never have
another attack.
But what then? Before, at the Thompsons’, he’d seemed upset and at least part of that emotion was directed at her. Was it simply a result of his illness, or because she’d danced with Anderson? Either way, she’d find out what this
shauri
was about. She’d do that just as soon as she cleared Sam’s name of those murder suspicions.
And how do I do that when I’m stuck out here?

Jade closed her eyes and drifted to sleep. Maybe it was a change in the predawn air or the faint whiff of tanned leather and ocher in the air, but Jade woke to the prickly sensation that she was being watched.

She was surrounded by nine Maasai warriors.

CHAPTER 14

Mature warriors and junior elders, acting as mentors, live in the manyatta,
where these “fire-stick elders” teach the warriors about Maasai customs.
Joining them are the warriors’ mothers and a few girlfriends.
No uninitiated boys may enter.

—The Traveler

THE NURSE MUST have slipped him some sort of sedative, for Sam didn’t wake up again until just before daybreak. Promptly at five a.m., Avery reappeared with his shaving kit, a mirror, and half a roasted chicken. The latter was tucked into a napkin in his kit.

“Had to sneak it past the ward nurse. Quick, eat while she’s still at her desk.”

Sam glanced at the nurse at the far end of the room. She sat hunched over some paperwork, writing. He devoured one leg quarter and a part of the breast without taking his eyes off her. As soon as Sam finished, Avery wrapped the remainder of the chicken in the napkin and shoved it back into the recesses of the leather kit. Then he whipped up some lather in a mug.

“Can you do this, or shall I act as barber?” Avery asked.

“I’ll do it,” said Sam. “If that doctor comes back round, I want to look fit enough to get out of here.
You
might take off half my mustache.”

Avery held the mirror while Sam lathered up and then carefully swiped the thin blade over his face. He took extra care around his mustache, keeping it to a thin line. When he was through, he felt more tired, but less diseased.

“Thanks, Avery. I feel like a new man.”

“And you look as helpless as a newborn.”

“Surprised the nurse hasn’t run you off yet. How did you get in this early? Did you bribe her?”

Avery grinned. “Better. I held up a note from your doctor saying I had permission to act as your valet before your release.”

“That was pretty decent of the doctor,” said Sam.

Avery laughed. “The doctor knows nothing about it. But who can read their signatures anyway, right?”

Sam smiled. “Avery, you old devil. You’re a forger.”

“It’s a skill every lord should have. But it looks as though my luck might be running out.” He nodded to the corner, where the night nurse was showing her notes to the day nurse. “Looks like a changing of the guard and the end of my early visit.”

“Stick it out, man,” said Sam. “If you leave, it’s just me and my gloomy thoughts.”

Avery squirmed in the chair as though he felt as uncomfortable listening to a man’s confidences as his backside did sitting on the hard seat. “I say. None of that now. You’ll be out today and soon back in the saddle.” When he saw Sam’s frown, he crossed his legs and settled himself for the long haul. “Let’s have it. Best to spit it out.”

“Jade never came back yesterday to see me.”

“Is that all? Hell, Sam, she’s probably out roping more wild zebras or capturing an entire pride of lions. Or she came back and you were asleep.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” said Sam. “Although that’s part of what worries—” He stopped as a ruckus at the door attracted everyone’s attention.

JADE PEERED OUT of the cockpit and saw shapes, cutout silhouettes tacked against a black sky and backlit by dim firelight. A ring of men surrounded her, each standing storklike on one leg, the sole of the other foot resting against the inside of the knee. Gradually, she realized that only one man faced her. The others looked out onto the grassland and rocks. The man facing her stepped into the dim firelight and looked up at her.

She’d only known two Maasai before, Ruta and the old tracker and witch Memba Sasa. Ruta had been a handsome man with a proud carriage and a strength of mind and body. The man facing her reminded Jade of him. He wore his shoulder-length hair like thin ropes twisted with red ocher and animal fat. Most were pulled behind and held in some as yet unseen clasp. The top ropes, however, were directed forward as forelocks. They came together in a tight twist, making a triangle, the point falling between the eyebrows in a metal disk.

The warrior wore an ocher-stained leather apron wrapped around his loins and a red cloth as a short toga across one shoulder. When the breeze ruffled his cloak, Jade glimpsed a well-muscled chest, bare except for a thin crisscross of beads, and an armlet of colorful beads bound his upper right arm. His legs were coated with pale pink earth with rippling stripes of skin showing through. Above the knee, he wore a thigh bell made from metal strips tied with leather thongs. At the moment, a thin shank of bone locked the strips into place and kept them from jangling. Jade knew that, on the hunt, the shank would be pulled, allowing the metal to clang together. The noise would confuse a lion, driving it where the warrior wanted the beast to go.

Almost as striking in appearance as the man was his oval shield. Made of stretched hides, it was painted in bold white and red patterns, chevrons, rippling lines, and dots. To complete his regalia, he held a spear as long as himself and carried a bundle of wild sage leaves, clamped under one armpit as a deodorant. He grasped something that Jade couldn’t see in his left hand.

“Maasai” meant “the speakers of Maa.” She knew some Maa, thanks to her studies, but had never gotten a chance to practice it outside of a book. Ruta never spoke to her or anyone else except Harry Hascombe. But for all of Ruta’s pretenses, she’d learned that he understood both Swahili and some English. She took a chance that this man might have had dealings with colonists before and could speak Swahili as well, in case her Maa failed her.

“Jambo,”
she greeted in Swahili, then added the traditional Maasai greeting,
“Kesherian ingishu,”
literally, “How are the cattle?”

The man watching her didn’t move. Jade didn’t know if she should get out of the plane or not, but somehow it seemed cowardly to stay there and she knew the Maasai were not a cowardly people. They wouldn’t respect caution in others. She stood and lifted a leg over the side and found the stirrup, swung the other leg out, and jumped down. Then she went around the wing toward the propeller. The warrior walked forward, holding his spear erect, and stopped three paces from her. He extended his left hand and offered her a clump of green grass, a peace offering.

“Jambo, Simba Jike,”
he said, and proceeded in kitchen Swahili peppered with a few English words. “We welcome the slayer of evil, the friend of my brother.”

“Ruta? Yes. I was friend to Ruta,” Jade said, taking the grass. The Maasai who had been Harry Hascombe’s gun bearer and the caretaker of Biscuit had been a brave man. She had always wondered why he was so far from his own land. This man looked younger by several years.

“That man was my brother. He left the
kraal
the year after I became a warrior. I am Tajewo Ole Ndaskoi,” said the warrior, introducing himself as a son of Ndaskoi.

How did he know that his brother was dead, or for that matter, who she was? Then it occurred to her that Harry Hascombe now led safaris. He’d probably come himself and related the brave death of a fellow warrior.

“We saw this cloth
tumaren
land on the earth yesterday,” continued Tajewo, pointing to the Jenny.

“Tumaren?”
Jade was unfamiliar with the word and wondered if it were Maasai for “bird.”

Tajewo looked around until he spied a dragonfly patrolling inland for food.
“Tumaren,”
he repeated as he pointed to the darting insect. “Tales have come to us of it and the man with the leg of wood that flies in its heart. We came to see this man for ourselves.”

Jade couldn’t tell if he was disappointed that she was flying or not. She did find his description of the plane as a dragonfly remarkably accurate. Most people, in trying to explain the plane to a culture unfamiliar with mechanized flight, called it a bird. But with the two wings on each side and the delicate, long tail, it did more closely resemble the insect.

“Bwana Mti Mguu taught me to fly the
tumaren
, the airplane,” she said, giving it the English word. “I came to find a young rhino, a
kifaru toto
. I found one whose mother was dead.” She pointed in the direction of the young rhino. “I would go back and tell some men, and they would come and save the
toto
. But someone has thrown dirt inside of the airplane and made it foul. It will not fly now and I tore the skin on the wing.” She pointed to the rip in the linen.

Tajewo glanced at the tear, then peered at the motor and the propeller. “The … ar-plane is like the … ah-toe-mubeel?”

“Yes,” said Jade. She pointed to the motor. “The motor makes it fly.”

The warrior nodded, understanding now. He’d seen his share of land vehicles before: trucks and autos driven by Europeans on safari or government agents making certain the Maasai kept to their reserve. “We watched when the ar-plane stopped making its growl. We saw it come down. Then we saw the fires, and thought the Bwana was hurt or his ar-plane was broken. We kept guard during the night.”