The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Two to one, the filly to win by a tit,’ howled the RAF bomber-pilot ecstatically. He had also fuelled up on the cheap champagne.

  The gaudy dress had wrapped itself around the bull’s head. It served to goad him beyond mere anger into the deadly passion of the corrida bull facing the matador’s cape. He swung his great armed head from side to side, the dress swirling rakishly like a battle ensign in a high wind, and exposing one of his wicked little eyes – which lighted on the honourable minister of education, the least fleet-footed of the runners, who was making heavy weather of the slope.

  The minister was carrying the burden of flesh that behoves a man of such importance. His belly wobbled mountainously beneath his waistcoat. His face was grey as last night’s ashes, and he screamed in a girlish falsetto of terror and exhaustion, ‘Shoot it! Shoot the devil!’

  His bodyguards ignored the instruction. They were leading him by fifty paces and rapidly widening the gap.

  Craig watched helplessly from his grandstand position on the transporter, as the bull lowered his head and drove up the slope after the fleeing minister. Dust spurted from under his hooves, and he bellowed again. The blast of sound, only inches from the ministerial backside, seemed physically to lift and propel the honourable minister the last few paces, and he turned out to be a much better climber than sprinter. He went up the trunk of the first jacaranda like a squirrel and hung precariously in the lower branches with the bull directly beneath him.

  The bull bellowed again in murderous frustration, glaring up at the cowering figure, tore at the earth with his front hooves, and gored the air with full-blooded swings of his vicious, white-tipped horns.

  ‘Do something!’ shrieked the minister. ‘Make it go away!’

  His bodyguards looked back over their shoulders and, seeing the impasse, regained their courage. They halted, unslung their weapons and began cautiously closing in on the bull and his victim.

  ‘No!’ Craig yelled over the rattle of loading automatic weapons. ‘Don’t shoot!’ He was certain that his insurance did not cover ‘death by deliberate rifle-fire’, and, quite apart from the fifteen thousand dollars, a volley would sweep the area behind the bull, which included the marquee and its occupants, a scattering of fleeing women and children and Craig himself.

  One of the uniformed bodyguards raised his rifle and took aim. His recent exertions and terror did nothing for the steadiness of his hand. The muzzle of his weapon described widening circles in the air.

  ‘No!’ Craig bellowed again and flung himself face down on the floor of the trailer. At that moment a tall, skinny figure stepped between the wavering rifle-muzzle and the great bull.

  ‘Shadrach!’ whispered Craig thankfully, as the old man imperiously pushed up the rifle-barrel and then turned to face the bull.

  ‘I see you, Nkunzi Kakhulu! Great bull!’ he greeted him courteously.

  The bull swung its head to the sound of his voice, and very clearly he saw Shadrach also. He snorted and nodded threateningly.

  ‘Hau! Prince of cattle! How beautiful you are!’ Shadrach advanced a pace towards those vicious pike-sharp horns.

  The bull pawed at the earth and then made a warning rush at him. Shadrach stood him down and the bull stopped.

  ‘How noble your head!’ he crooned. ‘Your eyes are like dark moons!’

  The bull hooked his horns towards him, but the swing was less vicious and Shadrach answered with another step forward. The shrieks of terror-struck women and children died away. Even the most faint-hearted stopped running, and looked back at the old man and the red beast.

  ‘Your horns are sharp as the stabbing assegai of great Mzilikazi.’

  Shadrach kept moving forward and the bull blinked uncertainly and squinted at him with red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘How glorious are your testicles,’ Shadrach murmured soothingly, ‘like huge round boulders of granite. Ten thousand cows will feel their weight and majesty.’

  The bull backed up a pace and gave another half-hearted toss of his head.

  ‘Your breath is hot as the north wind, my peerless king of bulls.’ Shadrach stretched out his hand slowly, and they watched in breathless silence.

  ‘My darling,’ Shadrach touched the glossy, wet, chocolate-coloured muzzle and the bull jerked away nervously, and then came back cautiously to snuffle at Shadrach’s fingers. ‘My sweet darling, father of great bulls—’ gently Shadrach slipped his forefinger into the heavy bronze nose-ring and held the bull’s head. He stooped and placed his mouth over the gaping, pink-lined nostrils and blew his own breath loudly into them. The bull shuddered, and Craig could clearly see the bunched muscle in his shoulders relaxing. Shadrach straightened and, with his finger still through the nose-ring, walked away – and placidly the bull waddled after him with his dewlap swinging. A weak little cheer of relief and disbelief went up from his audience, and subsided as Shadrach cast a withering contemptuous eye around him.

  ‘Nkosi!’ he called to Craig. ‘Get these chattering Mashona monkeys off our land. They are upsetting my darling,’ he ordered, and Craig hoped fervently that none of his highly placed guests understood Sindebele.

  Craig marvelled once again at the almost mystical bond that existed between the Nguni peoples and their cattle. From that age, long obscured by the mists of time, when the first herds had been driven out of Egypt to begin the centuries-long migrations southwards, the destinies of black man and beast had been inexorably linked. This hump-backed strain of cattle had originated in India, their genus bos indicus distinct from the European bos taurus, but over the ages had become as African as the tribes that cherished and shared their lives with them. It was strange, Craig pondered, that the cattle-herding tribes seemed always to have been the most dominant and warlike: people such as the Masai and Bechuana and Zulu had always lorded it over the mere tillers of the earth. Perhaps it was their constant need to search for grazing, to defend it against others and to protect their herds from predators, both human and animal, that made them so bellicose.

  Watching Shadrach lead the huge bull away, there was no mistaking that lordly arrogance now, master and beast were noble in their alliance. Not so the minister of education, still clinging, catlike, to his perch in the jacaranda. Craig went to add his entreaties to those of his bodyguards, who were encouraging him to descend to earth once more.

  Peter Fungabera was the last of the official party to leave. He accompanied Craig on a tour of the homestead, sniffing appreciatively the sweet odour of the golden thatching grass that already covered half the roof area.

  ‘My grandfather replaced the original thatch with corrugated asbestos during the war,’ Craig explained. ‘Your RPG-7 rocket shells were hot little darlings.’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter agreed evenly. ‘We started many a good bonfire with them.’

  ‘To tell the truth, I am grateful for the chance to restore the building. Thatch is cooler and more picturesque, and both the wiring and plumbing needed replacing—’

  ‘I must congratulate you on what you have accomplished in such a short time. You will soon be living in the grand manner that your ancestors have always enjoyed since they first seized this land.’

  Craig looked at him sharply, searching for malice, but Peter’s smile was as charming and easy as always.

  ‘All these improvements add vastly to the value of the property,’ Craig pointed out. ‘And you own a goodly share of them.’

  ‘Of course,’ Peter laid a hand placatingly on Craig’s forearm. ‘And you still have much work ahead of you. The development of Zambezi Waters, when will you begin on that?’

  ‘I am almost ready to do so – as soon as the rest of the stock arrives, and I have Sally-Anne to assist with the details.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Peter. ‘Then you can begin immediately. Sally-Anne Jay flew into Harare airport yesterday morning.’ Craig felt a tingle of rising pleasure and anticipation.

  ‘I’ll go into town this evening to phone her.’

  Peter Fungabera clucked w
ith annoyance. ‘Have they not installed your telephone yet? I’ll see you have it tomorrow. In the meantime you can patch through on my radio.’

  The telephone linesman arrived before noon the following day, and Sally-Anne’s Cessna buzzed in from the east an hour later. Craig had a smudge pot of old engine oil and rags burning to mark the disused airstrip and give her the wind direction, and she touched down and taxied to where he had parked the Land-Rover.

  When she jumped down from the cabin, Craig found he had forgotten the alert, quick way she moved, and the shape of her legs in tight-fitting blue denim. Her smile was of genuine pleasure and her handshake firm and warm. She was wearing nothing beneath the cotton shirt. She noticed his eyes flicker down and then guiltily up again, but she showed no resentment.

  ‘What a lovely ranch, from the air,’ she said.

  ‘Let me show you,’ he offered, and she dropped her bag on the back seat of the Land-Rover and swung her leg over the door like a boy.

  It was late afternoon when they got back to the homestead.

  ‘Kapa-lala has prepared a room for you, and Joseph has cooked his number-one dinner. We have the generator running at last, so there are lights and the hot-water donkey has been boiling all day, so there is a hot bath – or I could drive you in to a motel in town?’

  ‘Let’s save gas,’ she accepted with a smile.

  She came out on the veranda with a towel wrapped like a turban round her damp hair, flopped down in the chair beside him and put her feet up on the half-wall.

  ‘God, that was glorious.’ She smelled of soap and she was still pink and glowing from the bath.

  ‘How do you like your whisky?’

  ‘Right up and lots of ice.’

  She sipped and sighed, and they watched the sunset. It was one of those raging red African skies that placed them and the world in thrall; to speak during it would have been blasphemous. They watched the sun go in silence, and then Craig leaned across and handed her a thin sheaf of papers.

  ‘What is this?’ She was curious.

  ‘Part-payment for your services as consultant and visiting lecturer at Zambezi Waters.’ Craig switched on the light above her chair.

  She read slowly, going over each sheet three or four times, and then she sat with the sheaf of papers clutched protectively in her lap and stared out into the night.

  ‘It’s only a rough idea, just the first few pages. I have suggested the photographs that should face each text,’ Craig broke the silence awkwardly. ‘Of course, I’ve only seen a few. I am certain you have hundreds of others. I thought we would aim at two hundred and fifty pages, with the same number of your photographs – all colour, of course.’

  She turned her head slowly towards him. ‘You were afraid?’ she asked. ‘Damn you, Craig Mellow – now I am scared silly.’

  He saw that there were tears in her eyes again. ‘This is so—’ she searched for a word, and gave up. ‘If I put my photographs next to this, they will seem – I don’t know – puny, I guess, unworthy of the deep love you express so eloquently for this land.’

  He shook his head, denying it. She dropped her eyes to the writing and read it again.

  ‘Are you sure, Craig, are you sure you want to do this book with me?’

  ‘Yes – very much indeed.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said simply, and in that moment Craig knew at last, for sure, that they would be lovers. Not now, not tonight, it was still too soon – but one day they would take each other. He sensed that she knew that too, for though after that they spoke very little, her cheeks darkened under her tan with shy young blood whenever he looked across at her, and she could not meet his eyes.

  After dinner Joseph served coffee on the veranda, and when he left Craig switched out the lights and in darkness they watched the moon rise over the tops of the msasa trees that lined the hills across the valley.

  When at last she rose to go to her bed, she moved slowly and lingered unnecessarily. She stood in front of him, the top of her head reaching to his chin, and once again said softly, ‘Thank you,’ tilted her head back, and went up on tiptoe to brush his cheek with soft lips. But he knew she was not yet ready, and he made no effort to hold her.

  By the time the last shipment of cattle arrived, the second homestead at Queen’s Lynn five miles away was ready for occupation and Craig’s newly hired white overseer moved in with his family. He was a burly, slow-speaking man who, despite his Afrikaner blood, had been born and lived in the country all his life. He spoke Sindebele as well as Craig did, understood and respected the blacks and in turn was liked and respected by them. But best of all, he knew and loved cattle, like the true African he was.

  With Hans Groenewald on the estate, Craig was able to concentrate on developing Zambezi Waters for tourism. He chose a young architect who had designed the lodges on some of the most luxurious private game ranches in southern Africa, and had him fly up from Johannesburg.

  The three of them, Craig, Sally-Anne and the architect, camped for a week on Zambezi Waters, and walked both banks of the Chizarira river, examining every inch of the terrain, choosing the sites of five guest-lodges, and the service complex which would support them. At Peter Fungabera’s orders they were guarded by a squad of Third Brigade troopers under the command of Captain Timon Nbebi.

  Craig’s first impressions of this officer were confirmed as he came to know him better. He was a serious, scholarly young man, who spent all his leisure studying a correspondence course in political economics from the University of London. He spoke English and Sindebele, together with his native Shona, and he and Craig and Sally-Anne held long conversations at night over the camp-fire, trying to arrive at some solution of the tribal enmities that were racking the country. Timon Nbebi’s views were surprisingly moderate for an officer in the elite Shona brigade, and he seemed genuinely to desire a working accommodation between the tribes.

  ‘Mr Mellow,’ he said, ‘can we afford to live in a land divided by hatred? When I look to Northern Ireland or the Lebanon and see the fruits of tribal strife, I become afraid.’

  ‘But you are a Shona, Timon,’ Craig pointed out gently. ‘Your allegiance surely lies with your own tribe.’

  ‘Yes,’ Timon agreed. ‘But first I am a patriot. I cannot ensure peace for my children with an AK 47 rifle. I cannot become a proud Shona by murdering all the Matabele.’

  These discussions could have no conclusion, but were made more poignant by the very necessity of an armed bodyguard even in this remote and seemingly peaceful area. The constant presence of armed men began to irk both Craig and Sally-Anne, and one evening towards the end of their stay at Zambezi Waters, they slipped their guards.

  They were truly at ease with each other at last, able to share a friendly silence, or to talk for an hour without pause. They had begun to touch each other, still brief, seemingly casual contacts of which they were both, however, intensely aware. She might reach out and cover the back of his hand with hers to emphasize a point, or brush against him as they pored together over the architect’s rough sketches of the lodges. Though she was certainly more agile than he was, Craig would take her elbow to help her jump across a rock-pool in the river or lean over her to point out a woodpecker’s nest or a wild beehive in the tree-top.

  This day, alone at last, they found a clay anthill which rose above the level of the surrounding ebony and overlooked a rhino midden. It was a good stand from which to observe and photograph. Seated on it, they waited for a visit from one of the grotesque prehistoric monsters. They talked in whispers, heads close together, but this time not quite touching.

  Suddenly Craig glanced down into the thick bush below them and froze. ‘Don’t move,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Sit very still!’

  Slowly she turned her head to follow his gaze, and he heard her little gasp of shock.

  ‘Who are they?’ she husked, but Craig did not reply.

  There were two that he could see, for only their eyes were visible. They had come as silently as l
eopards, blending into the undergrowth with the skill of men who had lived all their lives in hiding.

  ‘So, Kuphela,’ one of them spoke at last, his voice low but deadly. ‘You bring the Mashona killer dogs to this place to hunt us.’

  ‘That is not so, Comrade Lookout,’ Craig answered him in a hoarse whisper. ‘They were sent by the government to protect me.’

  ‘You were our friend – you did not need protection from us.’

  ‘The government does not know that.’ Craig tried to put a world of persuasion into his whisper. ‘Nobody knows that we have met. Nobody knows that you are here. That I swear on my life.’

  ‘Your life it may well be,’ Comrade Lookout agreed. ‘Tell me quickly why you are here, if not to betray us.’

  ‘I have bought this land. That other white man in our party is a builder of homes. I wish to make a reserve here for tourists to visit. Like Wankie Park.’

  They understood that. The famous Wankie National Park was also in Matabeleland, and for minutes the two guerrillas whispered together and then looked up at Craig again.

  ‘What will become of us?’ Comrade Lookout demanded. ‘When you have built your houses?’

  ‘We are friends,’ Craig reminded him. ‘There is room for you here. I will help you with food and money, and in return you will protect my animals and my buildings. You will secretly watch over the visitors who come here, and there will be no more talk of hostages. Is that an agreement between friends?’

  ‘How much is our friendship worth to you, Kuphela?’

  ‘Five hundred dollars every month.’

  ‘A thousand,’ Comrade Lookout counter-offered.

  ‘Good friends should not argue over mere money,’ Craig agreed. ‘I have only six hundred dollars now, but the rest I will leave buried beneath the wild fig tree where we are camped.’