The Last Leopard

by Lauren St. John

  “You can go on ahead if you like,” she told him. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  “Would that be all right?” Ben asked Red and Jeff.

  “No problem,” said Red. “We’re almost there anyway. Watch yourself, now.”

  “Sure?” Ben bounced to his feet. “Great, I’ll see you in a few minutes.” He jogged off up the steep track.

  The climbers were impressed.

  “He’s very fit, your friend,” commented Red. He switched off the gas stove and poured the coffee. Jeff munched on a sandwich and rummaged through his backpack. He wanted to show Martine a photograph of his children.

  Ben grew smaller and smaller. He reached the top of the ridge and stood outlined against the rainbow and the hazy gray sky, mist roiling up all around him. As Martine watched, he leaned over the smoking void as if he was trying to see into the very heart of it.

  Ben was the least annoying boy Martine knew, but she suddenly felt very irritated with him. What was he thinking, doing something so risky? His mum and dad would have a fit if they saw him teetering so precariously on the brink of a waterfall. Her heart began to thud in her chest.

  “Sugar?” queried Red.

  “What?” Martine blurted out. In her anxiety, she’d forgotten about both coffee and climbers. “Oh, excuse me. No sugar, thanks.”

  She took the mug from him, sipped some coffee, and looked back at the ridge. Ben was no longer there. She shaded her eyes and scanned the horizon in case the clouds of mist and spray had temporarily obscured him, but he was gone.

  Martine flung down the coffee and leaped to her feet.

  “Ow!” cried Red as the scalding liquid splashed him. “What the heck do you think you’re doing?”

  “He’s fallen,” Martine heard herself say in a grown-up voice that didn’t belong to her. “Grab a rope, he’s fallen.”

  And then she was off up the twisting, rocky trail, running faster than she’d ever run in her life, her breath coming in short, painful gasps. When she reached the top of the ridge, it was immediately obvious what had happened. A jagged section of the overhanging bank was missing, as if a gap-toothed dinosaur had taken a chunk out of it. As Martine approached, a fresh shower of shale crumbled into the void.

  “Ben!” she called, hoping against hope that there was a perfectly rational explanation for his disappearance. Red and Jeff were moving swiftly up the slope with their climbing gear. She lay flat on her belly, so that if another section of the bank broke off, some part of her might be left on solid ground, and crawled toward the edge. The thunder of the waterfall filled her ears and mist drenched her face.

  Steeling herself, she peered over the side. The cascading rush of water ended over a hundred feet below in a foaming, sucking whirlpool. A ring of spiky rocks surrounded it like a fence of spears. The chances of Ben surviving either were zero.

  “Ben!” screamed Martine hysterically. “BEN!”

  “Martine!” Ben’s voice was so faint that it was barely audible against the roar. It seemed to come out of the ground beneath her stomach. “Down here!”

  Martine wriggled forward. There was nothing to grip on to and the yawning cavern gave her a strong feeling of vertigo, as though it were pulling her over the edge.

  “Here,” Ben called again, and that’s when she saw him. He was about thirty feet below, clinging to the withered gray trunk of a bonsai-shaped tree that grew sideways out of the rock. He didn’t appear to be injured, but he was soaking wet and very pale. Several of the tree’s shallow roots had been ripped from the rock by the force of his fall, and the trunk sagged ominously.

  “Ben!” cried Martine. “Ben, hold on. Help is on the way.”

  This time Ben didn’t reply or move his head, in case the mere act of talking severed the tree’s fragile grip.

  Martine was inching her way back to safe ground when the climbers ran up.

  “Where is he?” Red asked briskly. His eyes widened when Martine pointed over the brink.

  The men went smoothly into action. With the ease of professionals accustomed to dealing with life-threatening situations, Jeff constructed a pulley system, using two jutting rocks as anchors, while Red made a harness from the other end of the rope and lowered it down to Ben. As he worked, he talked to Ben in a soothing, almost jokey way, explaining clearly to him what he needed do.

  “Ben, I want you to pretend you’re a spy. You’re surrounded by laser lights which will trigger an alarm if you cross them. The only way for you to escape and get the bad guy is if you put this invisible cloak over your head—only you have to do it very, very slowly, using incredibly tiny movements. Great. You’re doing brilliantly. Now slip the rope under your arms. Pull it a little tighter . . .”

  Without warning, several more roots ripped free from the rock. Ben lurched forward, almost losing his balance. He lay doubled over on the wet, slimy wood, breathing hard.

  Red’s tone never altered. “Oops, don’t worry, we’ve got you. Now I want you to sit up very, very slowly—remember the laser lights, you don’t want to set off the alarm. Okay, hold on to the main rope with both hands and keep as still as you can. Ready, Jeff? Good. Here we go.”

  Just as Ben’s feet lifted clear of the gray trunk, the entire tree detached itself with a cracking noise that sounded like bones breaking. Wood, stone, and moss plummeted into the smoking gorge. All four of them watched the tree shatter and nobody said a word. The thought that Ben could have fallen with it and been crushed by the force of water, impaled on the spear-like rocks, or drowned in the whirlpool far below, was too hideous to contemplate.

  Red whistled through his teeth as he and Jeff hauled Ben up over the edge and onto solid ground. “That was a bit too close for comfort,” he said, “but you’d make one helluva spy!”

  Martine was in such a state that she hardly knew how to react to Ben’s safe return. “That could have been you,” she said, throwing her arms around him. “You could have fallen down there.”

  “But I didn’t,” Ben told her, gently extricating himself. There was a tremor in his voice, but otherwise he seemed remarkably calm. Aside from a few scratches and bruises, he was unhurt. He offered his hand to the climbers. “Thank you so much for your help. I don’t know what we’d have done without you. I’m sorry for causing you so much trouble and for delaying your climb.”

  “No trouble,” Red assured him. “Good thing we were around.”

  Jeff eyed Ben’s soaking clothes. “You need to get those off and get dry as soon as possible. We’ll walk to the campsite with you—you know, to make sure you get back in one piece. The mountain’s not going anywhere.”

  “We’re fine,” Ben and Martine responded in unison.

  “Thanks for offering,” Martine added hastily, in case they seemed ungrateful. “My grandmother’s waiting for us in one of the log cabins down in the valley. Don’t worry, we’ll go straight there. She was planning to light a fire, and she’ll make Ben some rooibos tea or soup and get him warm.”

  But the climbers insisted on taking them to the gates of the campsite before saying their good-byes. “It isn’t that we believe you can’t get there quite safely by yourselves,” Jeff said. “It’s just that Ben has had a terrifying experience, and the combination of shock and cold can be as dangerous as any fall.”

  “Thanks for the coffee and for rescuing Ben,” Martine said when they reached the campsite and the climbers turned to go. “Sorry I burned you, Red.”

  He smiled down at her. “No worries. All’s well that ends well,” he said, and Martine marveled at the way he and Jeff were able to take a near-catastrophe in their stride.

  It was only when the climbers were out of sight and Martine and Ben were alone that they began to take in what had happened. What could have happened. Ben started shivering quite badly and Martine, who felt responsible because she’d sat drinking coffee while Ben went to the ridge on his own, was wracked with guilt.

  “It’s because we were apart,” she said in anguish. “I should ha
ve stayed with you. Grace warned me. She said that any time we were separated during this journey, danger would follow us.”

  “I know Grace is very wise,” said Ben, removing his wet fleece and rubbing his arms to generate some body heat, “but it was nobody’s fault but mine. I stood on the edge of a waterfall. It was a dumb thing to do. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be in bits and pieces at the bottom of Rainbow Ridge right now.”

  Martine tried to block the image from her head. “It was Red and Jeff who saved your life,” she reminded Ben as they started down the path to their cabin. “I was so scared I could hardly even speak.”

  “No,” Ben said, “it was you. They had the equipment and the expertise, but if you hadn’t acted as quickly as you did I wouldn’t have been around to save.”

  Martine had a sudden flashback of Ben as she’d last seen him before his fall. “Why were you so close to the edge? What were you trying to prove? You seemed to be leaning right over it.”

  Ben gave an embarrassed laugh. “This is going to sound crazy. It’s just that . . . it’s just I thought I saw something, that’s all. A picture—a sort of drawing. It was on the rocks, practically hidden behind the curtain of water. I couldn’t really see it clearly, but it looked like a spotted wild cat of some kind. A leopard or cheetah or jaguar or something. I went closer to take a better look and that’s when the ground gave way beneath me. I guess it was just my imagination.”

  Martine’s mouth went dry. She tried to think of a suitable response, but none came. “We have to stay together,” was all she could manage. “Promise me we’ll stay together.”

  Ben saw that she was serious. “Okay, okay,” he said, putting a reassuring hand on her arm. “I promise.”

  4

  The remainder of the journey to the Zimbabwean border was uneventful. It wasn’t particularly scenic, consisting mainly of long stretches of dry bush and scrubland; the fast, scary highways of outer Johannesburg, and ugly mining towns—dorps, Gwyn Thomas called them. Martine and Ben dozed until they reached Messina, where they stopped for a lunch of Hawaiian burgers decorated with juicy rings of pineapple, and fries slathered with spicy tomato sauce, all washed down with chocolate milkshakes.

  Back in Storm Crossing, Gwyn Thomas refused to allow Martine to eat fast food, and she was at great pains to make it clear that this was a special one-time vacation treat. Martine had to hide a smile when the meal arrived and her grandmother tucked into her burger and fries with relish while doing her best to pretend that she really wasn’t enjoying it at all.

  “It’s pretty good, considering that it’s fast food,” she remarked innocently to her grandmother.

  “I’ve had worse,” Gwyn Thomas admitted grudgingly, eyeing a passing ice-cream sundae with what looked a lot like envy.

  She’d said very little about the incident at Rainbow Ridge, largely because Martine and Ben had said almost nothing about it themselves. On the way down the mountain, they’d decided that to mention Ben had nearly been killed falling down a waterfall would jeopardize the whole trip, which even Martine was now looking forward to. They’d told the truth but not, as judges say in courts of law, the whole truth. Ben had been very open about how he’d unwisely stood too close to the edge of the bank and tumbled headfirst into the water. He’d just left the word fall off the end of water.

  He and Martine had been mildly scolded for taking unnecessary risks, but Gwyn Thomas’s main concern had been getting Ben dry and making sure he had hot tea, a hearty dinner, and an early night in the cozy log cabin. Apart from being stiff and sore, he was as good as new the next day, and the trio were in high spirits when they reached the Zimbabwe border in the early afternoon.

  “Are you treasure hunters or leopard hunters?” the customs official demanded when he heard that they were on their way to Matopos. He studied them suspiciously over the tops of their passports, which he held fanned out like a poker player with a handful of aces. “Treasure hunters, I think. You want to come to Zimbabwe to get rich?”

  “We’re doing nothing of the kind,” snapped Gwyn Thomas, trying and failing to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “We’re on our way to take care of a sick friend.”

  “Ah, you are Good Samaritans?” He gave a smile worthy of a toothpaste ad. “In that case, you are most welcome to Zimbabwe.”

  It was a three-hour journey to Matopos, which stretched to four when they visited six different gas stations in the hope of finding fuel in Bulawayo, the nearest city. They drove through wide, curiously old-fashioned streets, overhung by jacaranda and flamboyant trees. Everything seemed to be in an advanced state of disrepair. There were potholes in the roads big enough to swallow whole cows. A friendly attendant at one of the garages where they stopped told them that the electricity worked for only four hours a day and often the water would go off for days at a time.

  “How do you manage?” Gwyn Thomas wanted to know.

  “We make a plan,” he told her, and laughed.

  Martine knew almost nothing about Zimbabwe, except that it bordered South Africa, was shaped like a teapot on the map, and was the home to one of the seven natural wonders of the world, the Victoria Falls. Martine hoped the waterfall was a long way from where they were going. She was not in a hurry to see another one.

  She’d learned a couple of new things in the few hours since they’d crossed the border. The first was that it cost millions of Zimbabwe dollars to buy three drinks. Martine had watched in disbelief as her grandmother counted out the notes.

  The other was that Bulawayo was the Ndebele word for “place of slaughter.” The gas attendant told them that the city was named after Lobengula’s first big battle when he came to the throne—a battle in which his warriors were victorious. Martine thought it a creepy name for a town.

  Their failed search for gas meant that they had to leave Bulawayo with the tank almost empty. Gwyn Thomas tried to put a brave face on it. “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” she said. “The reserve tank usually lasts for ages and we don’t have far to go.”

  It was early evening when they reached the gates of the Matopos National Park. A park official unfolded himself from a makeshift table as they pulled up. He and three uniformed guards had been playing a game of checkers using bottle caps and a piece of cardboard on which they’d drawn squares with a red pen. Their rifles lay on the ground beside them.

  “Good evening,” he said formally. “It is after six p.m. The park is closed to visitors.”

  “But it can’t be,” cried Gwyn Thomas. “We’ve driven all the way from Cape Town. We need to get to a ranch on the other side.”

  “Eeeh, I’m sorry for that,” said the official, sounding genuinely sympathetic. “You must spend the night in a hotel in Bulawayo and come back tomorrow.”

  “We can’t possibly do that,” she told him. “For one thing, we can’t afford it, and for another we’re almost out of gas.”

  “You have no fuel?” He tutted disapprovingly. “It is not a good idea to come to the Matobo Hills with no fuel. Then you must sleep in your car and wait for morning.”

  “But my friend is expecting us,” said Gwyn Thomas despairingly. “Sadie—Sadie Scott at Black Eagle Lodge.”

  Behind her, Martine saw the guards exchange a look, although what the look meant she couldn’t tell.

  “Sadie Scott?” repeated the official. There was a split second’s hesitation before he continued warmly: “Why didn’t you just say so? Allow me to direct you.”

  He drew the route on a tourist map, waved them through the open barrier, and the Matobo Hills were finally in front of them.

  From the outset, Martine had expected the national park to be a disappointment. She’d been looking forward to hearing more about the Ndebele king’s lost treasure, but as far as the rocks were concerned she’d been convinced that everyone was making a fuss about nothing. After all, how interesting could piles of boulders be? She’d pictured one or two particularly impressive rocky hillocks of the type Southern Africans called ko
pjes and pronounced “kopies,” maybe with monuments on the top, or one or two balancing rocks. Instead, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of geological marvels.

  There were great stacks of teetering boulders—many leaning at angles that defied gravity, or sitting on perches a bird would have had difficulty balancing on. There were individual rocks as wide and high as mountains, and others shaped like animals or castles or faces. Some were thickly encrusted with jade and silver lichen, or streaked with orange or lime stains, as though they’d rusted in the rain. Others were smooth, gray, and bare, with mysterious spaces between them suggesting caves or tunnels or vast, rainwater-filled hollows as big as Olympic swimming pools. Threaded through the rocks or surrounding them were green tufts of African bush.

  It was an awe-inspiring sight, and there was not a soul to witness it but the three of them.

  “You’d think there’d be lots of tourists here,” observed Ben.

  “You would think that,” agreed Gwyn Thomas, “but I suppose people are nervous of coming to a place where it’s hard to find gas. I have to tell you that I’m beginning to feel the same way.”

  The sun was setting, turning the tops of the rocks copper. Martine had never seen such a wild, lonely place. It made Sawubona seem as tame as a suburban garden.

  “Look!” Ben said. A kudu bull and two kudu cows were watching them with wide, almond-shaped eyes. As the Land Rover passed, they took fright and loped away through the bush.

  The park ranger’s map indicated that they should turn shortly after passing a great baobab tree. Gwyn Thomas steered the vehicle off the main road and bumped along a steadily deteriorating track. The needle on the gas gauge crept farther into the red. All three of them noticed it happen, but nobody said a thing. The towering rocks seemed to close in on them. The potholes and craters worsened until Martine was sure that every tooth would be shaken loose from her head. Her grandmother fought to control the bucking vehicle. Martine felt for her. She was plainly exhausted.