A Spear of Summer Grass (17 page)

My head snapped up. “I beg your pardon?”

“The porters need to eat. I don’t waste my shooting permits on bush meat. Get going. Gideon will point you in the right direction.”

He crossed his arms and stood with his feet planted wide apart, a pirate Colossus, grinning at me. I swung around and stalked away, knowing he was watching me with every step.

14

I shot a sizeable antelope for the cooking pot, and the men smiled their appreciation. The cook made it into some sort of stew with gourds and onions and they devoured it by their own fires, one for each tribe. They had piled their fires high with green matter causing them to smoke heavily, driving away the insects that would have plagued them. They would sleep under the stars, but two tents had been pitched on level ground, one for me and another for Ryder. Tusker refused to sleep in a tent, choosing the car instead.

“No, thank you,” she said when I offered to share. “I have had quite enough experience of snakes in the bush. It makes me drink just to think about it. A nice day’s hunting and no sooner do you fall asleep than something comes slithering into your tent to bed down between your legs. No, thank you, indeed.”

Ryder’s mouth was twitching hard, and I looked away so as not to laugh. Tusker excused herself and I rose from the fireside, wrapping a length of Masai cloth about my shoulders. Gideon had presented it to me before trotting off to make a bed for himself under the trees, and I was glad of it. Nights on the plains could be cool.

“Delilah,” Ryder called as I reached my tent. I paused.

“Yes?”

He looked up from where he lounged, hands laced behind his head, legs crossed at the ankle.

“You might get scared,” he said evenly. “There are noises in the bush, scary things with teeth and claws that go bump in the night. You might need protecting. I could help with that.”

“Don’t worry,” I said sweetly. “I have my gun. If I hear anything coming toward my tent, I’ll just shoot first and worry about what it might have been later.”

He was still laughing when I shut myself in my tent.

The next morning we picked up the track again and it veered sharply south. Ryder was quiet, his mood solemn, and Gideon must have sensed it. He didn’t ask for poetry and I doubt he would have gotten any if he had. Ryder grew even quieter as we approached an outcropping of rock. Gideon fell back with the headman and the porters and together they kept to the track. Only Ryder struck off, heading straight toward the rocks. I followed him, and he slowed, matching his pace to mine. I did not ask where we were going. The rocks rose straight before us, grey and weathered, the only real landmark in this part of the savannah.

We stopped at the foot and I saw where a cross had been carved roughly into the rock. Ryder took off his hat as we moved close. He passed his hand over it, tracing the lines, first down, then across. He laid the flat of his hand over the stone, palm to rock, and remained that way for several minutes. Then he gave a great sigh and backed away to stand next to me. His hand brushed mine, but he did not reach for my fingers.

“Is this where your wife is buried?”

The question seemed to surprise him. “Eliza? No. This is my father’s grave.”

“Why is he here and not the churchyard?”

“Because this is where I killed him.”

He clapped his hat back onto his head and swung around to rejoin the group. I strode after him, matching him step for step. “You can’t just say something like that and walk off, you know. What happened?”

He took in a deep breath then blew it out slowly. “Elephant attack. He was hunting and got too close to a cow, the biggest female I’ve ever seen. Each tusk was two hundred pounds and he wanted the ivory for a trophy.” His jaw was set as he told the story, grinding out the words as if each one hurt to give. “He slipped as he made the first shot. She was on him before he could fire again. I shot her twice and she rolled to the side, but it was too late. She’d already torn him open from neck to groin. It was just a matter of time.”

“So you shot him to put him out of his suffering.”

“You can dress it up to sound noble, but the ugly truth is that I put a bullet straight between his eyes. I did it because he asked me to.” His gaze had gone flat and cold. “He wanted to do it himself, but she had crushed his fingers. He couldn’t pull the trigger on his own revolver.”

I shook my head. “Don’t tell me any more.”

“You asked, princess. Don’t you want to hear it all? Don’t you want to know that we fought just before he took that shot? I told him she was too close and he didn’t need another damned trophy. I called him an old fool. Those were the last words I said to him, you know. He asked me to kill him and I did it and I forgot to tell him I was sorry. I forgot to tell him I loved him. I forgot to tell him that everything I know about being a man I learned from him. I forgot everything I should have said, and then he was dead and it was too late. It will always be too late.”

I slipped my hand in his, and that small touch seemed to release something within him. The coiled tension eased, and his shoulders lowered. His jaw softened and he took out his handkerchief and handed it to me.

“Don’t you ever carry your own?”

I shook my head and wiped at my eyes. I held it out, but he shook his head. “Keep it. I like to think of you owning something of mine.”

He dropped my hand then and we walked back to the others who were still filing slowly across the wide African plain.

Late that afternoon we were walking sluggishly, full after a good lunch and feeling the pull of the warm sun towards the occasional shadow of an acacia. Suddenly, Gideon began speaking rapidly in Swahili to Ryder who bent swiftly over the tracks. Ryder turned to me, smiling broadly.

“We’ve got him and another. He’s found a mate.”

There in the soft soil, next to the pug marks of the large male, were the smaller prints of a female, sometimes bounding ahead, sometimes circling flirtatiously behind. Ryder explained that we had to move forward cautiously until we found them.

“You don’t want to sneak up on a mating pair,” he told me. Gideon took out the ash bag and sifted out a handful to toss lightly into the air. The wind was favourable and we moved forward, signalling to the porters and Tusker to stay behind. They began to set up camp as we followed the lions.

We heard them before we saw them. Just past a little rise, the land dipped down to a small
lugga.
There was scant vegetation, just a few thornbushes and an acacia, but there was some shade and it was here that the lions had decided to copulate. Gideon circled slightly to the left and made a series of swift hand signals while I stayed with Ryder.

“We won’t go any closer and we won’t take him now,” he said, his mouth against my ear.

I shrugged slightly and he put a finger to his lips then gestured for me to watch. The lioness had apparently just decided to succumb. She was crouching low, flicking her tail back and forth under the lion’s jaw, teasing him. With a low roar he flung himself forward, covering her as she dug her claws into the earth. He bit her neck, holding her down in submission as he pushed himself into her. She gave a little mew and turned her head, nuzzling at him. He was monstrous, a solid thing of muscle and bone and sinew and far larger than I had expected him to be. Even at a distance, I could feel the ground shake with the violence of his thrusting.

All at once, it was over. The lioness turned on him, letting out an impatient roar and lashing his nose with her claw. Blood spurted from his nose and he snarled at her as she whipped her tail, giving a low growl in response. They fought, first one lunging, then the other, and occasionally rolling around, raising a cloud of dust to powder them both. Then just as suddenly as they began the fight, it was finished. The male shook his head, the blood running freely from his nose. The female crept near, licking it, nuzzling. He turned his head, aloof to her attentions. She moved past him, graceful as a dancer, tantalizing him with the tuft at the end of her tail, again flicking it gently under his chin. He growled and she turned to walk past again, sinuous, inviting. He lowered his head and she moved past a third time, shifting her hips. At a sound from him she crouched, moving her tail aside as he lunged to cover her again.

Ryder touched my arm. “Best go while they’re occupied,” he murmured. We crept away and he signalled to Gideon to meet us at the encampment.

“If you’re sure that’s the man-eater, why didn’t you take him?” I demanded.

“Oh, I’m sure. He’s missing a toe on his back foot. No mistaking him.”

“Again, why didn’t you take him?”

Ryder’s lips twitched. “I thought instead of a last meal he might like a last—”

“Never mind,” I said.

He laughed. “Relax, princess. He is our man-eater and we’ll get him tomorrow. But he’ll be mating with that female for the next two days. I just thought I’d give him a chance to get cubs on her before I shot him.”

“You think more lions are a good thing? When they eat people’s children and cattle?”

He swung to face me. “I’m not a scientist, and I’m not a historian, but I can tell you those lions were here long before we were. And they won’t be here much longer if everybody starts treating them like vermin. Now, I’ve got no problem taking out a lion that’s a nuisance. But just because he’s a man-eater doesn’t mean his cubs will be.”

“But they might,” I pressed.

“Then I’ll kill them, too. Happy?”

“No! You are the most contradictory person I’ve ever met—a white hunter who doesn’t like to hunt?”

He sighed. “Delilah.” The softness of my name stopped me in my tracks. He was looking at me, really looking, as if the strength of that looking could teach me to understand him. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I saw what happened in the States when people were given free rein to hunt buffalo. There used to be millions of them roaming the plains. Now they’re gone, vanished into nothing, and with them went all the tribes that used to survive on them. It’s a whole way of life that just isn’t there anymore, and that’s a tragedy. It’s more than a tragedy, it’s a crime, only no one is ever going to swing for it. The one thing Roosevelt did right was to create protected parkland and preserves. Maybe, just maybe, some of the kind of wilderness I grew up in will survive. But there’s nobody to do that here. It’s all too new, too much chaos and too much arguing. Nobody is putting aside parkland and nobody is protecting the way of life that’s been here for thousands of years.”

He took a step closer, his tone urging. “Don’t you see? Those zebra we saw yesterday are part of something bigger, a huge migration that moves over these plains in a vast circle every year. First the wildebeest come, then the zebra, then the small gazelles. There’s a rhythm to it, a rhyme and a reason that makes you believe in a god when nothing else will. And when people stay out of it, the system works just fine. Some of the hooved stock are lost to the lion and the leopard, but most aren’t. Most survive, and so do the cats, and so do the people who live out here. It works, at least it did until the white folks came in and started taking it apart. Now there’s only so much time left until it’s all undone.”

He stopped and drew a deep breath. “The odds are long that the lioness will even conceive. And if she does, most of the cubs probably won’t even make it to adulthood. But if one does, then I will have undone what I have to do when I kill that man-eater. I can bring everything back into balance, and when this place goes to hell, when there’s nothing left on this plain but memories and regrets, it won’t be all my fault. Can you understand that? Will you understand that?”

He was standing so close I could see the gold flecks in the blue of his eyes. I opened my mouth, but he turned. “I shouldn’t have preached. Come on. Let’s see what Tusker rustled up for dinner.”

Tusker’s cook produced a marvel of a meal, and while Ryder went to the porters to discuss what would happen during the next day’s shoot, Tusker and I lounged by the fire with pink gins. The nightjars were calling and the crickets sang as the ripening moon rose. Tusker threw her head back and inhaled deeply.

“Breathe in Africa, child. It’s the most revivifying place I have ever been.”

“Did you grow up here?”

She gave a short, barking laugh. “God, no. I was brought up in England, a proper little debutante, making my curtsey to the Prince of Wales and filling in my dance card. I broke out as soon as I could. Told Balfour I would marry him if he took me right out of England. It was an escape plan, you see.”

“Escape?”

“From all of it, the expectations and the decorum and the polite smiles hiding vicious tongues. I’d had my heart broken, you see. Fell in love with the wrong chap and he crushed me right down to the bedrock. Nothing left but humiliation.”

“And Balfour picked up the pieces?”

“He did. A good fellow, was Balfour. For a poofter.”

She took a long sip of her cocktail and I blinked at her. “He was a homosexual?”

“Oh, as flouncy as they come! But I didn’t care. It meant he would never bother me in the bedroom, and that’s all I wanted. So I married him and he brought me here. We got on quite well together. Poor dear, he always had schemes for making money and none of them ever worked. But we rubbed along together and we were happy enough.”

“What became of him?”

She flapped a hand. “Same thing that happens to all of us, dear child. He got dead.” She took another deep drink. “It was blackwater fever that took him. A nasty business, that. It comes after you’ve had malaria too many times and it can kill you. A man can only withstand so many bouts of blackwater fever before his body just gives out and he drops dead. Poor Balfour died his first go-round with it. But Ryder is stronger stuff. I imagine he’ll make it through another time or two before he goes.” She frowned at her glass. “I think I need topping off. What about you, dearie?”

I held out my glass and she poured. “What did you mean about Ryder? He’s sick?”

“Not now. Got the constitution of an ox. But he’s had blackwater fever three times. No man lives through five.”

“Is there any way to prevent getting it?”

She shrugged. “Kill all the mosquitoes? It’s the mosquitoes that cause it, you see. It starts with the malaria. Just after the rains, when the weather is warm and damp, he takes precautions. Usually heads up to the hills, gets up too high for the mosquitoes to be a nuisance. But there are no guarantees. Oh, don’t look so grim, child! He doesn’t think twice about it most days. And why should he? Out here you can be right as rain and step on a cobra and that’s it, your number is up and you’re singing harmony in St. Peter’s choir.”