08 Safari Adventure (9 page)

The warden’s attention was arrested by a plot of fresh earth. Not a blade of grass grew in it.

‘If I’m not mistaken,’ he said, ‘some digging has been going on here. Perhaps something is hidden underneath.’

He ordered men to bring shovels and remove the earth. Three feet down there was the gleam of ivory. The men threw out a beautiful elephant tusk. More tusks began to show up as they went deeper. Crosby counted as the tusks were tossed out on the growing pile. The’ total was five hundred and forty.

Crosby took out a notebook and did a little figuring.

‘I ‘d guess that these tusks weigh about sixty pounds each. That comes to 32,400 pounds. Blackbeard has to pay his poachers about twenty pence a pound - he can sell the ivory for one pound eighty pence a pound. That would give him a profit of over £51,500.’

‘I had no idea,’ Hal said, ‘that it was such a big business operation.’

‘And murder on a big scale,’ Crosby said. ‘Five hundred and forty tusks - that means two hundred and seventy dead elephants. Just in one camp, And there are hundreds of such camps in East Africa. You think this trap-line a mile long is something. They are often five miles long, or ten, or fifteen. One discovered near Lake Victoria was seventy miles in length. In a single camp we found the carcasses of 1,280 elephants.’

Hal knitted his brows. It was incredible. He could not grasp such figures.

Crosby went on. ‘Just in this one park we estimate that we lose 150,000 animals a year to poachers. In East Africa as a whole, poachers kill nearly a million animals a year.’ Crosby stopped and smiled. ‘Perhaps I’m drowning you in figures. But I ‘d like you to get an idea of how serious this thing is.’

‘Why don’t the governments of these countries do something about it?’ said Hal.

‘More easily said than done,’ Crosby replied. ‘They can’t afford it. It would take thousands upon thousands of rangers.’

‘But at this rate, soon the wild animals will all be killed off.’

‘Exactly. And that will be the end of the biggest zoo on earth. Ninety per cent of the tourists who come to East Africa come to see the animals. They bring in ten million pounds a year. These countries will be poorer than ever if that revenue is cut off. Man is the most deadly of all animals. During the last two thousand years he has wiped out more than a hundred species. And the rest are going fast. At present two hundred and fifty kinds of animal are on the edge of extinction. Once they are gone, we can never get them back.’

it.

The grass huts of the poachers were burned to the ground.

The tusks, tails, horns, hides, hippo teeth, elephants’ feet, giraffes’ sinews, leopard and lion heads, antlers of antelopes and gazelles, crocodile skins, lion fat, hippo fat, python backbones, feathers of egret, flamingo, ostrich, and crowned crane - all the trophies, including elephants’ eyelashes, were loaded on the trucks. With them went all the snares and traps.

‘What will you do with all this?’ Hal asked. ‘Sell it? It would bring a small fortune.’

‘What it would bring would be blood money,’ said Crosby. ‘We don’t want to make a profit out of murder. Anyhow, I think we’ll accomplish more if we put these things in our museum where visitors from all over the world can see them. I don’t think anybody can look at them without being shocked into doing everything within his power to stop this slaughter of innocent animals.’

Heavily loaded, the cars returned to the lodge. As Crosby and the boys entered the warden’s banda they were greeted by smiling little Judge Sindar Singh.

‘Well, my friend,’ exclaimed Crosby. ‘So good to see you again. Did you have a good trip to Nairobi?’

‘Very good. On my way back to Mombasa now, but just called in to see how you got along with your raid.’

‘It was a great success, thanks to these boys and their crew. Forty-seven poachers are on their way to your Mombasa jail right now. You’ll probably have them in your court tomorrow morning.’

‘Now isn’t that just too wonderful,’ purred the little judge. ‘You can be sure of one thing - in my court they’ll get what they deserve. We’re going to stamp out this poaching - you and I . It’s a disgrace and an outrage and must be stopped. 1 suppose you got their leader?’ ‘Blackbeard? No, I’m softy, he escaped.’ ‘Now isn’t that a pity - a great pity,’ said the sympathetic little judge. ‘How I ‘d like to get my hands on him! He wouldn’t get out of my court without the stiffest sentence that the law allows. How in the world did he slip through your fingers?’

‘He was too foxy for us, I’m afraid. He was wise enough to stay behind his men and while we were arresting them he got away. The dog followed his tracks but lost them in the river.’

The judge looked at Zulu. ‘He’s a fine dog. That Blackbeard must be pretty smart to outsmart such a fine dog.’ He reached out his hand to pat Zulu. The dog sniffed at him, then backed away, growling.

‘Well, I must be going,’ said the judge brightly. ‘What a fine cheetah.! He seems to be making himself at home already. How do-he and the dog get along?’

‘We hardly know yet,’ said Hal. ‘So far, they’ve politely ignored each other.’

‘We’ll see you off,’ said Crosby, and they all walked out with the judge to his car.

Hal noticed something strange about the car. There was no red dust on it.

He had been over the Nairobi road several times. It was a dirt road with murrain stacks along the edge -piles of red earth used to surface the road. You could not travel this road without getting your car covered with red dust.

Murrain was not used on the roads inside the park. There too a car would pick up dust, but it would be white. There was a film of white dust on the judge’s car.

‘How did you escape the red bath?’ Hal asked.

The judge seemed a bit surprised by the question, but he responded quickly enough. He laughed a silky laugh.

‘Yes, yes.’ he said. ‘You certainly get plastered on that road. So I stopped at the petrol station just before entering the park and had the car washed.’ He smiled. ‘Any more questions?’

‘No.’ said Hal, a little ashamed of having quizzed the good judge. But Singh did not appear to be offended.

He spoke to Crosby. ‘Goodbye, Mark. Take care of yourself. I congratulate you on having these boys to help you. Perhaps they’ll even be smart enough to catch Blackbeard. Who knows?’

And he was off.

Zulu and the cheetah were getting acquainted. They were not very polite about it. They drew back their lips, each trying to show what a fine set of teeth he had.

Zulu barked. The dog part of the cheetah growled. The cat part spat.

Each was acting exactly as Nature had taught him to act. The Alsatian is a born police dog. He takes no nonsense from either man or animal. The cheetah is a born hunter of other animals including wild dogs. And this one looked wild enough.

‘Zulu, come here,’ said Roger sharply. ‘And what’s-your-name - I’ll call you Chee - behave yourself.’

Chee who had evidently been planning to make a meal of this dog changed his mind when he saw his young master patting Zulu. He came up on Roger’s other side, nuzzling the boy’s leg and miaowing softly. Roger patted him also.

The two animals were not quite ready to be friends. They suddenly made a lunge for each other between Roger’s legs’ tumbling him on to his back.

‘Chee! Zu!’ Roger jumped to his feet, caught Zulu by the collar and brought him face to face with Chee. Their muzzles were not an inch apart. He held them so, Zu by his collar, Chee by his silky mane. The dog in each of them whimpered. There was no barking this time, no spitting. These fine animals were not stupid. They got the message.

Roger let them go and each retired in a different direction to lie down and think it over.

‘How are we going to feed Chee?’ Roger asked ‘No telling how long he was in that pit. He must be hungry.’

‘That’s easy,’ Hal said. ‘Just tap a vein in your wrist and let him drink the blood.’

‘You think you’re pretty funny,’ said Roger scornfully.

‘No,’ put in the warden, ‘your brother is right. There’s nothing the cheetah would rather have than blood. But it doesn’t have to be yours.’

‘We might let him go and hunt his own food.’

‘If you do that, you’ll probably lose him. If you want him to stick to you, you had better feed him,’

‘But how?’ Roger had a sudden idea. ‘Those animals we brought to the hospital - did any of them die?’

‘No, and we mean to see to it that none of them will die.’

‘Then how…?’

‘Jump in the car,’ said Crosby. ‘I’ll take you where you can get plenty of blood. And nothing will have to die to give it to you. Bring Chee.’

Roger called Chee but the animal did not know his name. Roger went to him and tugged on his mane. Chee took this only as a friendly gesture, and purred.

Crosby laughed. ‘I see you don’t know how to lead a cheetah. Take him by the teeth.’

Roger stared. This time for sure the warden was joking.

‘A cheetah has very long canine teeth,’ explained Crosby. ‘His incisors and molars are very short. You can slip your finger in behind a canine. The short teeth will close on your finger but, if he likes you, he won’t close them tightly enough to hurt. Of course you’re taking a chance - he may decide he doesn’t like you after all. If it works, you can lead him anywhere.’

‘And if it doesn’t work,’ said Hal comfortingly, ‘all you lose is a few fingers.’

Roger gave Hal a savage look. His big brother was trying to scare him. He didn’t need to try hard - the boy was already scared. The nerves crawled around in his back like worms as he very cautiously pressed Chee’s lips apart, then slowly put his finger in between the short teeth and round the canine. This was the craziest tiling he had ever heard of. Surely Chee would bite.

Chee did bite. But it was not a hard bite, only a squeeze. For a full minute, Roger kept his finger in place without making any further move. With his other hand he scratched Chee behind the ears.

Then he began to pull, very gently. Chee unwound himself and got up. Roger waited a moment - then began to move towards the Land-Rover. Chee tightened his grip ever so slightly and followed.

Getting into the car without jerking his hand or exciting his pet was an experience that Roger would not soon forget. In ch by inch, with frequent pauses, he sidled up into the seat, still keeping his fingers in the animal’s mouth. In fact he could hardly have let go if he wanted to. the pressure on his fingers was so firm.

Luckily Chee had already had one ride in the car. No harm had come to him, so now he did not seem to be unduly nervous. He stood up on his hind legs with fore-paws on the car floor. A light spring, and he was in the car between Roger’s knees. His jaws relaxed and Roger withdrew his hand. The fingers were dented but not bruised. The powerful jaws that could crush a baboon’s head as easily as a hammer can crack a walnut had been controlled by the animal’s natural gentleness and intelligence.

Since the lodge was close to the park edge it was only a matter of minutes before the car left the park and came to a stop beside a thorn fence.

This was no trap-line. It was a wall of thorns round a small village.

To keep wild animals out?’ inquired Roger.

‘No,’ said Crosby, ‘to keep cattle in. These Masai are cattle-men. You might call them the cowboys of Africa.

Come in and meet them.’

He led Roger and his cheetah through a thorn gate into the village. Roger had seen some strange villages, but never anything like this. The huts were more like anthills than houses. The only difference was that the homes of the ants were usually bigger and higher. The roofs of these were on a level with Roger’s chin.

‘Look as if they were made of mud,’ Roger said.

That’s about it. They make a framework of twigs, then plaster it over with clay and cow-dung.’

‘But the doorways are only three feet high. Are these people pygmies?’

‘Far from it. Watch.’

A man came out of the nearest hut. To get through the low door he had to bend almost double. When he straightened up he was more than six feet tall - almost as tall as the Watussi Roger had seen in the Mountains of the Moon.

‘Why such low doors for such tail people?’

‘They have a good reason for it,’ said Crosby. ‘If some enemy tries to enter your home, he has to bend far down to get in. He can’t defend himself in that position. He can be knocked on the head or jabbed with a spear before he can get all the way through the door.’

Other men came stooping out of the mud huts. They smiled when they saw Crosby, who was evidently well known to them and well liked.

Each man wore a cowhide cape over his shoulders and nothing else. His hair was plastered with red clay and worn in a short braid over the forehead and a long braid behind. His ears had been pierced and stretched so that they hung almost down to his shoulders and the hole that had been bored in the ear-lobe in childhood had been pulled larger and larger so that in a man of middle age it was big enough to carry a good-sized package. Which was lucky, since a man’s cape had no pockets.

When any man smiled Roger could see that he had two teeth lacking in the lower jaw. He asked Crosby about it.

‘These people sometimes get lockjaw. Then the teeth lock together so that they can’t eat or drink. They knock out two teeth so that if they contract this disease they can still get food and drink into the mouth.’

‘But lockjaw can be cured. Don’t they call a doctor?’

‘They don’t believe in doctors. In fact they don’t believe much in anything that is modern. They stick to their own way of doing things.’

A fine-looking Masai approached Roger with a smile and spat in his face. Roger wiped his face. He looked so astonished that Crosby had to laugh.

The Masai waited as if expecting something.

‘Spit back,’ said Crosby.

Roger could not believe his ears.

‘Spitting in your face is a sign of friendship,’ the warden told him. ‘Don’t keep him waiting or he’ll be offended. Spit back.’