06 African Adventure

by Willard Price

  Roger’s jaw hung a little farther open. Was his father going a bit barmy?

  ‘Dead feet,’ his father went on. ‘The paws of a dead leopard strapped to the feet of a man. You remember that the grass wasn’t flattened down as it would be by a leopard. It stood two feet high, as it would if a man’s legs had brushed through it. That man was trying to mislead us so that we shouldn’t find the real leopard. Later we saw the man - dressed in a leopard skin.’

  ‘But why - why should he try to lead us off - and why does he dress like a leopard?’

  ‘Because he belongs to the Leopard Society. That’s a band of killers. It’s not so active here in Uganda, but we are very close to the Congo border and it’s strong in the Congo and all through Central and West Africa. It’s a very secret society. When a man joins it he is given a leopard skin to wear, leopard’s paws for his feet, and steel hooks strapped to his fingers so that he can claw his victims. He is taught that he can actually change into a leopard at will. And since he belongs to the leopards, he must defend all leopards. He must kill anybody he is ordered to kill. Especially he must kill anyone who kills a leopard.’

  Roger’s forehead was puckered with the effort to understand all this.

  ‘So he led us off the leopard’s trail,’ he said. ‘Then we saw him - and he ran. But when we found him again he had changed into a leopard.’

  His father smiled. ‘He didn’t change into anything. He was a man, and is a man. Then we heard the real leopard,

  and Hal stalked it. And there it is.’ He glanced at the dead animal on the bank.

  ‘And where’s the leopard-man?’

  ‘Who knows? Probably skulking around in these woods waiting for his chance to do us in for killing his brother beast.’

  ‘A comforting thought,’ said Hal. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Chapter 3

  Mystery of the missing tracker

  As they turned to go, a flash of one of the lights revealed two more leopards - but very small ones - emerging from a hole in the trunk of the baobab and running to their dead mother to suckle. Mewing like oversize kittens, they nuzzled against the quiet, wet body.

  ‘Poor little duffers,’ Hunt said. ‘We’ll take them back to camp and see if we can’t fix up some substitute for mother’s milk.’

  ‘Let me carry them,’ said Roger. ‘Will they claw me?’

  ‘Not likely. They’re too young to be afraid of you.’

  Roger, a little gingerly, with a proper respect for both claws and jaws, gathered up the two babies, one in each arm.

  ‘And we’ll take the big cat too,’ Hunt said. ‘Some museum will be glad to get that skin.’ He signalled to the Africans to take up the body. When they showed no sign of obeying, he did not press them.

  ‘Well, Hal, it’s up to us.’ He drew some cord from the pocket of his bush-jacket and tied the feet together, while Hal found a fallen branch that could be used as a pole. The pole was run through between the looped feet, and with Hal at one end and his father at the other, the 100-pound cat was raised from the ground and began its journey to camp. The two lights were kept sweeping here and there, on guard lest the leopard-man should be lying in ambush.

  ‘And how about the male?’ said Hal. ‘Isn’t he apt to pounce on us when he sees us carrying off his family?’

  ‘A male lion would be after us in a minute,’ said Hunt. ‘But a male leopard isn’t a family man. After he’s started things off, he lets mamma take care of the children and herself. He’s probably miles away, hunting.’

  Roger, carrying the cubs, was suddenly startled by a cold nose against his wrist. He expected to feel teeth next, for this must be the father of the cubs. Should he drop the little animals and run? He peered down into the gloom. The animal he saw was not quite like a leopard - no, it was just the big Alsatian, Zulu.

  The dog was a handsome female, owned by Mali. Though a lady, Zulu was every bit as strong, courageous and beautiful as a male. And she went beyond a male in her affection for anything small on four wobbly legs. Before coming on this safari, she had had to leave a litter of pups. Unable to mother them, she now seemed to want to mother the leopard cubs, and kept sniffing at them and nuzzling her nose into -their fur as she trotted alongside.

  It was a relief to come out of the dangerous dark into the warm glow of the camp-fire lighting up the circle of tents.

  ‘Bring a cage for the cubs,’ Hunt said. ‘A large one, so they’ll have plenty of room to play.’

  Mali and Toto hauled down a lion cage from one of the trucks. Hunt padded a large clothes-basket with a warm blanket and pushed it into one corner of the cage. Then the cubs were introduced to their new home. Just before the door was closed, Zulu slipped into the cage.

  ‘Come out of there,’ commanded Mali. But the dog whined and retreated to the far side.

  ‘Suppose you let her stay,’ suggested Hunt. ‘Let’s see what she has on her mind.’

  Mali closed the door. Zulu, with ears cocked forward, studied the two balls of fur. She sat on her haunches and seemed to be lost in thought. Then she came forward and sniffed at each in turn. They did not seem exactly hike pups, but they were just as helpless. Certainly they needed somebody to look after them.

  She went over by the basket. Looking back at the cubs, she gave out a series of little yipping barks which plainly said, ‘Come here!’ The cubs did not understand. They lay quiet and frightened on the cold, hard floor of the cage.

  With a business-like air, Zulu walked to one of the cubs, gripped the fur at the back of the neck in her teeth, and lifted the squirming animal from the floor. She seemed to find it a bit heavier than she had expected. She carried it to the basket and laid it down on the blanket. Then she brought the other cub and laid it beside the first. There was still room in the large basket for herself. She stepped into it, lay down in a half-circle, and drew both cubs against her. After a protesting mew or two, they snuggled close to her, evidently enjoying the warmth of her body, because an African night, even near the Equator, can be cold.

  In the meantime Hunt was treating the scratches on Hal’s arms and chest. Luckily Hal’s heavy bush-jacket had prevented the claws from going very deep.

  ‘Just scratches,’ Hal said. ‘Never mind them.’

  ‘ ‘Just a scratch’ from a leopard’s claw can be serious if it isn’t attended to,’ his father told him. ‘The claws can be highly poisonous, because the leopard eats dead animals and particles of the decaying flesh remain in the claws. Hold steady.’

  He cleaned out the wounds with boiled water and applied a strong antiseptic. Mali returned from a search in the bushes with some leaves and roots which he proceeded to pound until they gave out a thick, white milk. This was smeared on as a poultice and covered with bandages.

  But one cut in the left arm was too deep and wide for such treatment. It had to be sewn up, and Hunt, searching through his medical kit, discovered that his supply of catgut thread needed for sutures was exhausted.

  ‘We will use ants,’ suggested Mali. Hunt had often heard of this art, for it is practised by primitive tribes all over the world, but he had never seen it done. He watched with great interest as Mali poked into one of the anthills so common in Africa and stirred up the white ants, better known as termites, until the warriors rushed out. He seized one of these and squeezed it until its jaws opened wide. With skilful fingers he drew together the edges of the cut in Hal’s arm, then placed the open jaws one on either side of the cut, where they bit savagely like two pincers, completely closing the wound. He broke off the ant’s body, leaving the head in place and the jaws locked. They would remain locked until the wound healed, when the ant-jaw stitches could be removed.

  More ants were used in the same way until a row of heads extended the full length of the cut. Hal and his father looked on with admiration as the skilful black fingers put the last ant-clamp in place, then applied the milky poultice and a final bandage.

  Wounds so treated generally heal without difficult
y, but Hunt took the added precaution of giving Hal a strong hypodermic injection of penicillin.

  No one thought it worth while to go to bed, for dawn was already streaking the east with rose and silver.

  One of the mysteries of the night had not yet been solved. What about the tracker, Joro? He had been ordered to go along on the hunt. But when he was needed to read the tracks, he was not there. Why had he stayed in camp? Or had he stayed in camp?

  Tell Joro I want to see him,’ John Hunt told the cook, who was going round from tent to tent with cups of steaming coffee.

  ‘Joro is not here, bwana’

  ‘But he must be here. He didn’t go with us.’

  The cook seemed surprised. ‘He wasn’t with you? Where else could he have been?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I want to know. There he is now.’

  The cook turned and looked across the camp ground. Joro was just coming out of the bushes. Evidently hoping he would not be seen in the half-dark of dawn, he crept like a cat to his tent and slipped inside. As usual, his chest and back were bare, his only garment a well-worn pair of safari pants. He seemed to carry some sort of bundle under his arm.

  ‘Ask him to come here,’ said Hunt.

  When Joro came, Hunt was impressed by the drawn, haggard face and hate-filled eyes of his tracker. It was not the first time he had noticed this bitterness in the man’s face, but it had never been so marked as now. But Joro was a good tracker, and this was the first time he had definitely disobeyed orders.

  ‘Joro,’ said Hunt, ‘I asked you to go with us last night. Didn’t you hear me?’

  Joro answered sullenly, ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘Where were you all night?’

  ‘Here, of course.’

  ‘But they say you were not in the camp.’

  ‘They are mistaken. I was in my tent, asleep.’

  ‘But I saw you come out of the brush just a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Yes, bwana. I went out early to look for you.’

  Hunt saw that this line of questioning was getting nowhere.

  ‘Joro,’ he said, ‘what do you know about the Leopard Society?’

  That question went home. Joro was visibly shaken. His voice was unsteady as he replied, ‘I know nothing of it, bwana.’

  It was plain that he was deeply disturbed. Hunt was sorry for him. He could not answer this man’s hate with hate, for he was not a hating man. He realized that Joro was somehow in the grip of terrible forces and the good and bad in him were struggling against each other. Here was a man to be pitied and helped, not feared or fought. Joro, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, said, ‘May I go now?’

  ‘Joro,’ said Hunt kindly, ‘you are in trouble. You don’t want to tell me what it is. That’s quite all right. But remember, in this camp you are among friends. If you ever need us, all you have to do is ask.’

  ‘I won’t need you,’ Joro said with a sudden flash of anger, and left the tent.

  Chapter 4

  Cubs’ breakfast

  Hunt went out into the morning sunshine and breathed deeply. The air was sweet with the scent of dew on the grass and all the better for the fragrance of bacon and eggs cooking over the open fire. Hal and Roger joined him. Together they looked at the miracle that is fresh every morning in the African big-game country.

  In the low rays of the just-risen sun the animals were coming down to the river to drink.

  Animals, animals, animals, of every shape and form, animals by the hundred, by the thousand, were on the move.

  ‘I never dreamed it would be like this,’ Hal said.

  ‘No one can believe it until he actually sees it,’ said Hunt. ‘Every time I come to Africa it strikes me as hard as it did at first. You often read nowadays that wild life is disappearing, and it’s true in a way - but you can see that there’s a lot of it left.’

  ‘Looks as if all the zoos in the world had just been let loose,’ said Roger, as he made a complete turn-about, his eyes sweeping over a sea of bobbing heads, every head containing the same thought - breakfast-Nibbling at shrubs or high grass as they went, or seizing smaller animals if they were meat-eaters, they ambled down towards the river. On the other side of the river, too, they could be seen coming down from the hills to meet at the river’s bank.

  Hunt pointed out those that passed close to the camp, and named them. The big eland was cram-full of dignity and majesty. The graceful, streamlined impala was full of fun, jumping six feet high over bushes instead of troubling to go round them. The ungainly wildebeest (in crossword puzzles it is called the gnu) flounced about awkwardly like a fat old lady trying to do the twist. The little duiker (which means diver, because he dives through brush) did not go round bushes like the stately eland, nor leap over them like the impala, but plunged straight through.

  And still they came - zebras frisking like horses, long-faced hartebeest, springing klipspringers, dik-diks almost small enough to put in your pocket, waterbuck, bush-buck, kob, oryx, and those lovely gazelles which they would see all over East Africa, the Grants and the Tommies.

  A giraffe went by, his long neck angling into the sky like a derrick. He paused to pick some tender young leaves from the top of a tree. Then he went on to the river. How would he get that high head of his down to the water?

  The giraffe lowered his head, but even when it was as far down as he could get it, it was still several feet above the surface. He knew by instinct how to solve that problem. He spread his front feet wide apart so that his body slanted down from tail to neck like the roof of a house. Then his lowered head easily reached the water. Every gulp ran up his neck in a bulge as big as a cricket ball.

  ‘Lions!’ exclaimed Roger. Two big, tawny beasts with heavy manes, who looked as if they belonged in Trafalgar Square, walked along with heads down.

  What seemed strange to Roger was that gazelles and waterbuck a few feet away from the lions paid no attention to them.

  ‘Why aren’t they afraid?’ asked Roger. ‘I thought all animals were afraid of lions.’

  ‘See those sagging bellies?’ Hunt said. ‘The lions have eaten during the night. They are full and satisfied, and the antelopes know it. So why should they be afraid?’

  One of the lions let out a sudden roar that seemed to shake the ground. Roger expected to see him spring upon one of the passing animals. Surely his father must be wrong; a roar like that must mean business. But the animals still gave no heed to the King of Beasts. Hunt saw the bewildered look on his son’s face.

  ‘A lion roars after he has had his dinner,’ Hunt said. ‘Perhaps it’s his way of saying thank you. It means he is satisfied, content with himself and with the world. If you hear a lion roar during the night, you don’t need to be scared. It’s the lion that doesn’t roar that you need to be afraid of. When a lion is hungry he creeps up on his victim without making a sound.’

  Until now all the animals had politely gone round the camp, not through it. But suddenly two huge black objects that seemed as big as locomotives came blundering straight into the camp ground. They squashed one of the tents, and two Africans popped out of it squealing with terror.

  The two monsters went straight on through the camp-fire, kicking pots and pans in all directions and spattering eggs, bacon, and coffee over themselves and the astonished cook. Out they went on the other side and down through the bushes to the river. A troop of terrified baboons fled out of their path and went galumphing into the woods where the leopard and her cubs had been found the night before.

  It is easy to scare an African, but after the danger is over he just as easily laughs. And now the whole camp rang with laughter over the confusion that had been caused by the two living locomotives.

  As they cackled and giggled, they went to work putting up the badly battered tent, and the cook collected his

  kitchenware, raked together the scattered embers of his fire, and started all over again to prepare breakfast. But everyone kept a sharp eye out for more rhinos.
/>   ‘Why did they barge through the camp?’ Hal wondered.

  They probably didn’t even realize there was a camp,’ Hunt said. ‘Rhinos are just about the stupidest animals in Africa. They have very poor eyesight. Those two brutes probably didn’t see the tents or the fire. They simply knew there was a river down below, and nothing was going to stop them from getting to it.’

  A plaintive mew came from the cage of the baby leopards. The dog had been let out earlier to take her morning run. Now she was back, looking into the cage and whining softly. The two cubs stood on their hind feet, with forefeet clawing the wire screen as they looked out at her and mewed.

  ‘How about breakfast for the cubs?’ said Roger.

  ‘That’s a bit of a problem,’ his father said. ‘They need their mother’s milk, but since she is dead we’ll have to mix up some powdered milk. Then we’ll warm it a little over the fire.’

  This was easily done. But it was not so easy to work out how to get the warm milk into the cubs. Some was poured into a dish and placed inside the cage. The cubs smelt it eagerly but evidently had no idea of how to lap it up.

  ‘What we need is a couple of feeding-bottles with rubber nipples that they can suck, just as they have been used to feeding from their mother. But I’m afraid we won’t find anything like that in camp.’

  ‘Can’t we spoon-feed them?’ said Roger.

  ‘We’ll try it.’

  Roger opened the cage and drew out one of the cubs. It wriggled and snarled, but did not try to bite or extend its claws. Roger held it firmly while his father placed his hand beneath the jaw, and pressed his thumb into one cheek and fingers into the other. That would open a cat’s jaws, or a dog’s. But the leopard’s jaws were too strong and remained tightly closed.

  Now Hal got into the act. While Roger held the animal and his father poised the spoon, Hal took hold of the upper and lower jaws, confident that he could pull them apart.

  They would not budge. All the strength of the small animal seemed to be concentrated in those jaws.