08 Safari Adventure (8 page)

Then it came - the long tongue licking his cheeks, dog fashion. But unlike a dog’s tongue, this one was quite evidently made of coarse sandpaper. It would take the skin off his face in no time.

‘Now, Fido,’ he said, trying to keep his trembling voice low and calm. ‘Down, Fido, down.’ He slowly raised his hand and scratched the animal’s neck. Dogs liked that and so did cats. He wasn’t so sure about birds.

The cheetah turned its head and seized his wrist in its jaws. Those terrible teeth could cut off his hand as easily as they could crush a rabbit. But he did not pull away. And the cheetah did not bite. The rascal was acting exactly like a dog that wants to play.

Roger put up his other hand and rubbed the beast behind the ears. The cheetah dropped the wrist and made a lightning change from dog into cat. It turned on its cement mixer. It rubbed its head against Roger’s and its purr sent vibrations through his whole body.

Then it jumped down and went bounding about, chirping with pleasure. Its legs appeared to be made of steel springs. It could leap ten feet high with ease. Roger was anxious lest in one of its jumps it should come down on a poisoned stake. But every time it came down near a stake it skilfully twisted its body so as to avoid it. Then it would dash up to Roger and bunt him - and since it weighed more than he did, the bunt was nearly hard enough to knock him off his feet.

When he had had enough bunts he tried to give the playful animal something else to do. He pulled a root out of the earth wall and tossed it to the other end of the pit. The cheetah was after it in a flash. Roger thought he had never seen anything move so fast. The animal picked up the stick and raced back with it and laid it down at Roger’s feet. Then it looked up at him, ears erect, eyes full of fun.

“That’s a good dog,’ Roger said. ‘Nice pussy.’

He began to see why the animal was called a ‘hunting leopard’. It could very easily be trained to hunt game like a hound… Perhaps it would even hunt poachers - like a bloodhound.

Roger heard voices.

“Where can that kid be?’

‘When I left him he was digging a grave.’

‘Where was that?’

‘Near the supply van. But he’s not there now.’

‘Do you suppose he could have fallen into one of these pits?’

‘Let’s hope not. If he fell on the stakes he’d be dead by this time.’

Roger recognized the voices - Hal and the warden were looking for him.

He didn’t want to be rescued. He had been having so much fun with the cheetah that he hadn’t bothered to think how he was going to get out of this pit He just wanted to go on playing with his new pet.

‘Roger - are you there?’ Hal was peering down through the brush. Roger heard him say to Crosby, 1 can’t see a thing - it’s so dark down there. But I thought I heard something move.’

He sounded so distressed that Roger took pity on him. He couldn’t let his loving brother worry. He was just about to call back when he heard Hal say, ‘It would be just like the stupid little runt to fall into one of these things.’

Just for that, thought Roger, I’ll let you worry a little longer, you big clown. I don’t need you. When I am good and ready I can get out of here all by myself.

He ran his hand over the wall of the pit, hunting for roots that would help him climb to the top. He found nothing that would bear his weight.

He heard Hal and the warden moving away. Sudden panic seized him. ‘Hal!’ he called.

‘Did you hear anything?’ he heard Hal say.

‘Not a thing.’

‘Just a moment.’ Crunch, crunch - Hal’s footsteps as he returned through the brush. Then his voice, ‘Roger!’

‘What can I do for you?’ inquired Roger with mock politeness.

‘You son of a gun! What a scare you gave us! Are you on a stake?’

The cheetah chose this moment to miaow. It sounded like a cry of pain.

‘The poor kid is on a stake. We’ve got to do something fast. I’ll get a rope.’

‘I’m afraid it’s too late,’ Crosby said. ‘That poison works fast.’

But Hal was already on the run to the supply van. He returned at once.

‘I’m going to let this rope down to you. Do you have enough strength left to tie it round yourself?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Roger as weakly as possible.

Down came the end of the rope. A sudden mischievous idea struck Roger and he almost laughed

aloud. He put the rope round the cheetah’s body just behind the front legs and tied it.

‘All right,’ he called.

The rope tightened. ‘WoW, he’s heavy,’ Hal said.

“The stake is holding him. We’ll have to pull harder to get him off it. Now, both together.’

Up went the cheetah. For him this was a new style travel and he didn’t like it much. He snarled, and it was a real snarl this time, not a purr. It was an angry, growling, spitting cat whose head came up through the hole in the faces of the rescuers. They almost let him drop again, so great was their surprise. The cheetah scrambled out on to solid ground, showing an excellent set of savage teeth.

‘A leopard!’ cried Hal. Then he saw his mistake. ‘No, a cheetah,’

Then he heard Roger’s laugh, clear and strong. It was too hearty a laugh to come from anybody with a stake through his midriff.

Hal and the warden looked at each other grimly. ‘You young devil!’ Hal called. ‘Wait till I get you out of there.’

That sounded like trouble. Roger was tempted to stay down until Hal cooled off. But how about the cheetah? Perhaps it would run away. He didn’t want to lose it.

He needn’t have been afraid of that His new friend came back to the edge of the pit and looked down, whining. It danced about, showing every sign of pleasure when Roger was drawn up to the surface.

If Roger expected to be greeted like a prodigal son and have his big brother weep on one of his shoulders and the warden on the other, he was disappointed.

‘Bend him over,’ said Hal. ‘Let me get a crack at him.’

The warden seized the young rascal behind the shoulders and bent him double over his knee. Hal spanked until his hand ached. He was stopped only by a sharp bite behind and a tearing sound as the cheetah laid open the seat of his trousers.

Then the three men sat down on the ground and laughed while the cheetah, seeing that things had changed for the better, pranced joyfully around them.

‘He seems to have taken quite a liking to you,’ said Crosby. ‘It’s lucky you got him before the poachers did. That gorgeous hide would be worth a couple of thousand dollars in New York. Cheetah coats are even more fashionable just now than coats of leopard skin.’

‘Nobody’s going to wear his coat,’ said Roger, ‘except himself. I’m going to keep him for hunting.’

‘He’ll make a wonderful hunter. A cheetah has a poor sense of smell, but marvellous eyesight - and he can go like the wind. He’s easily trained - if he likes you. Never whip him. Never even scold him. He gets his feelings hurt very easily and then you can do nothing with him. Treat him well and he’ll treat you well. He’s nothing like a leopard - a leopard may become cross as it grows older, a cheetah doesn’t. He’s as faithful as a dog. You see, he’s used to men - it’s something that has grown into his nature because he has worked with men for more than four thousand years.’

‘Four thousand years?’

‘At least as long as that. On ancient Egyptian monuments you see pictures of men using cheetahs for hunting. Even today in Egypt cheetahs are used as watchdogs. Indian rajahs put a hood over the cheetah’s eyes just as a falconer blindfolds a hawk. They take a hooded cheetah with them on the hunt. As long as the hood is on, the cheetah is quiet. When they come within sight of wild game, they take off the hood. The cheetah looks round, sees the prey, and goes after it like a bullet. When it catches up with the animal, it gives it one pat on the side. It looks like a very little touch, but it’s enough to knock the animal flat. Then the cheetah picks it up, even if it is a good-sized antelope, and carries it back to the hunter. It still hangs on to its prey. I bet you can’t guess how they make the cheetah drop it.’

‘By saying “Drop it”?’

‘It might not understand that order. But there’s something it does understand. Gently pinch its nose. That shuts off its breathing and it will drop whatever is in its mouth.’

‘Is it any good for catching poachers?’

‘As good as any ranger. Better than a ranger - because it has better teeth. And gets over the ground three times as fast. We’ll try it on the next poacher we see.’

The safari men set free all the animals that were still alive, and strong enough to stay alive.

The seriously injured were placed in the lorries to be taken to the hospital. Those nearly dead of starvation and thirst were given food and water at once.

The young, dying because their mothers had been killed, got special attention. A large cage was reserved for orphans. It was rapidly filled with as strange a crowd of babies as ever came together in one place - infant elephants, rhinos, wobbly little antelopes, lion cubs, and fluffy little monkeys.

The men went down into the elephant pits, rooted out the poisoned stakes, put them in a pile and burned them. One wall of each pit was broken down so that if an animal fell in, it could climb out.

The rescuers went from gap to gap of the mile-long thorn fence and collected every wire snare.

They broke up every devilish trap - the ‘drop spear’ set in a tree and triggered so that it would fall upon an animal passing below; the crossbow so arranged in a tree that just a touch of an animal’s foot to the trigger-line in the grass would bring a poisoned arrow plunging down into its back; the cruel spiked wheel that would let an elephant’s foot in but not out and poachers could then take their time removing his tusks and tail, then leave him to starve to death; the ‘ant trap’ set on the side of an ant hill so that the angry, two-inch-long ants would swarm over the trapped animal and devour it, after which the tusks could be more easily removed; the ‘crippler’ that when stepped on would fly up and break the animal’s leg, making it impossible for him to escape the poachers - all the infernal devices that a diseased imagination could invent to inflict pain and death.

‘Let’s burn the fence,’ Hal suggested, and the warden agreed.

The dry thorns leaped into flame and soon a bonfire a mile long was blazing.

Now the poachers’ camp must be destroyed. First the contents of all the grass huts were brought out and put side by side.

‘Never saw anything like it in my life,’ Hal exclaimed as he looked at a collection of more than three hundred elephant feet that had been hollowed out to make waste-paper baskets.

In another pile were scores of leopard heads. Every one would have brought the poacher king several thousand dollars. The man from America or Europe who goes on a shooting safari in Africa hoping to get a leopard and mount its head on the wall at home to impress his friends, is apt to be out of luck. He is not likely to see a leopard, since it is a night animal. He gets tired of hunting for one. He finds it much simpler to go into a store in Nairobi and buy a head. Then he can take it home and mount it and claim that he shot it, and who will know the difference?

Here was a fortune in leopard heads. They would never get to the walls of would-be killers. Beside them was another fortune - a carpet of cheetah skins pegged out to dry. They would never adorn the backs of thoughtless women - sweet, kind women, quite unaware that they were the cause of the slaughter of beautiful animals.

Roger’s cheetah, miaowing softly, nudged the skins with his nose as if urging them back to life.

‘What in the world are those?’ said Roger, staring at a large number of wooden bowls filled with curious curly hairs. ‘Elephants’ eyelashes,’ said Crosby. Roger looked at him suspiciously. The warden must be joking. ‘You wouldn’t kid me, warden?’ ‘Not a bit.’

‘But who would want an elephant’s eyelashes?’ ‘They’re very popular all the way from here to Singapore. Superstitious men think that if they carry a little bag of these eyelashes they will have as many children as there are hairs in that bag. They’re supposed to give you all sorts of magic powers. One pygmy chief I know traded fifty-two hundred pounds of ivory for the eyelashes of a single elephant. Some gangs of poachers make a business of killing elephants just to get their eyelashes. Dhows sail across the Red Sea to get eyelashes -they can be sold for high prices in Arabia because of the belief that a bag of eyelashes worn on a string round your neck is a sure protection against bullets.’

Near by was a pile of rhino horns that towered over Roger’s head.

‘What are they good for?’

“The Indians and Chinese pay big money for them. They grind them up into a powder. They mix the powder into their tea and drink it down.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘They think it makes them as strong as a rhino and as brave as a lion.’

‘Does it have any such effect?’

‘Only on the imagination. No physical effect. But the effect is very serious in Africa - it means that the rhino is disappearing. The rhino is one of the most interesting animals in Africa. Too bad if it has to go.’

‘Look out,’ cried Roger. ‘You almost stepped on a big snake.’

It lay in the grass, a gleaming stretch of brown and yellow more than twenty feet long.

‘A python,’ Crosby said. ‘He’s dead. The poachers hadn’t got round to skinning him yet. Of course python skin is worth a lot of money. Shoes can be made out of it, and belts, and handbags - all sorts of things. The flesh is good to eat - tender as chicken. But the best part is the backbone.’

He stopped and smiled, while Roger cudgelled his brain to think what anybody could possibly do with a python’s backbone.

‘African women make a necklace of it.’

‘Just for decoration?’

‘No. Another superstition. They think it’s a cure for sore throat. Sometimes they make a belt of it. If you wear that round your tummy, you’re supposed never to have indigestion.’

‘How wild can you get?’ was Roger’s comment.

‘Pretty wild,’ admitted Crosby. ‘Look at the stuff in these gourds. That’s hippo fat - they use it as a pomade to slick down their hair. And that over there is lion fat. They rub it on for rheumatism.’