Endangered

by Linda Chaikin

  Vince, however, seemed in no such mood. Sable glanced at Kash, but his expression gave nothing away. After a moment he stood and threw the dregs of his coffee into a shrub and looked up at the stars.

  “It’s been a long, hot day,” he said and looked toward the river.

  Sable laughed. “You’re not serious…. What if you meet up with a crocodile?”

  “I’ll stand guard,” said Mateo from the quiet background, and she looked toward the Maasai rather surprised. She hadn’t even seen him, he was so quiet as he stood near a doum palm.

  “How about you, Vince?” said Kash tonelessly. “Water’s delightfully cool.”

  “Thank you, no. I’ll rough it.”

  Kash whistled as he went out to the Land Rover and caught up his bag from the back, and minutes later went off with Mateo.

  Sable thought of a cool swim to get rid of the dust and perspiration that clung to her and frowned to herself. Men had everything easy. Among twenty men, there’d be no bath for her and Kate until they reached her father’s camp. Not only that, but Kash’s disappearance with Mateo left no moment for her to speak with him alone. Unless …

  Did he expect her to follow? She glanced about. Vince must have decided it was safe to leave, since his threat to her attention had walked off into the African night.

  Sable hesitated. It wouldn’t look proper to go trailing after Kash after he’d made it clear he was going for a swim.

  She stood, rather irritated in mood, and felt her soiled clothing sticking to her skin. She swatted at a mosquito and, turning her back rigidly toward the river, picked her steps carefully across the camp to the tent she shared with Kate. Kate hadn’t worried about smelling sweet; neither would she.

  ****

  Sometime in the night she awoke to the patter of rain on the canvas and the dripping sound it made on the sand. Still fully clothed, she raised her head and listened…. There was another sound outside the tent. She tensed and looked over at Kate, who was not there. What had Kash said about not leaving the tent at night? Where was Kate! She was far from foolish and would never take needless risks.

  A little groggy from lack of sleep and the smothering heat, she fumbled to find her flashlight and crawled through the tent opening. Was Kate ill?

  The rain was warm and plopped on her head, wetting her face. Kate would never be foolish enough to decide to take a bath in the river while all the crew were retired to the trucks and tents, would she?

  Sable moved cautiously across the path until she stood in the middle of the camp, glancing around for some sign of the direction her sister might have taken. A flashlight flicked on and off in the distance but looked to be coming from above the ground. Sable began walking toward it. She came within sixty feet of a half-dead acacia tree and stopped. “Kate?”

  “Don’t move!” rasped Kate from up the tree.

  Sable stopped abruptly. From somewhere beneath the tree, she heard a growl, and a large dark form spun around, scampered across the sparse growth, then crouched not more than ten feet in front of her, its golden eyes fixed on her provocatively, its ropy tail slashing from side to side in the tall grass.

  Kash had once told her to never put a lion in a compromising position, never to threaten it. Had she already broken a rule? A bolt of fear sent her heart thudding, and she broke into a nervous sweat.

  The lion’s vocalization had shown surprise, but it turned threatening when its hindquarters crouched down. It could easily lash out and tear her open from shoulder to waist.

  “Lord Jesus,” gasped Kate from the tree branch, “please help us—”

  Sable could not move even if she had wanted to. Her legs were rubbery.

  Where was Kash? Vince? Anyone! Then she realized no one would come, since Kash had warned them not to leave the tents and wouldn’t be expecting an emergency.

  The lion was keyed up, its ears perked forward, body held low, tail thrashing up dust. Then—with a loud straining grunt, the lion sprang into the air as Sable’s throat constricted. It whirled around and, playfully hoisting a simple chunk of wood between its teeth, strutted down to the riverbank from where it had come and disappeared.

  From the tree branch, Kate burst into relieved tears, and Sable sank slowly to the grass and simply sat there, too weak to move.

  Kate scrambled down from the tree, ran to Sable, and grasped her. Helping Sable to her feet, they clutched each other and stumbled back into the small dark tent.

  “I’m sorry—” said Kate, trembling, her hands cold and clammy as she stroked Sable’s bent head. “I…I had to go out.”

  Sable only shook her head and rocked to and fro, the lion’s golden eyes still staring at her from the darkness of her mind.

  Kate fumbled to produce a waterskin. “Here—take this.” She gave Sable a small white pill.

  Sable asked no questions. Her fingers were shaking so badly she could hardly get the pill into her mouth.

  Kate lowered Sable to her sleeping bag, then sitting beside her, rubbed the tension from between Sable’s shoulder blades.

  “Kash will never speak to me again if he knew what happened to you.”

  “If…if the Lord hadn’t been with us, I’d be dead now,” whispered Sable. “No one could have made that lion turn around and sprint away except the One who had kept Daniel.”

  Silence enveloped them, and the rain was still plopping on the canvas.

  “Yes—” said Kate with sudden enthusiasm, and then, as if overwhelmed by the experience that had turned into deliverance, she laughed.

  “Remember that Sunday school song—the one you used to sing all the time and I used to hold my ears ‘cause I didn’t like it?” Then she began to sing it in a shaky voice tinged with both laughter and tears—

  “Dare to be a Daniel, dare to stand alone, dare to have a purpose firm, dare to make it known—”

  Sable laughed, too, and sniffed back her tears. She had wanted Kash to come and save her from the lion, but the Lord had been there. His deliverance, His awareness of every detail of her life—even blundering into a dangerous situation in the dead of the African night—was now far more precious.

  The pill began to make her relax, and she closed her eyes, the name of Jesus sweet as honey on her lips.

  “I’m going to show the film in Samburu….” she murmured sleepily. “Nothing will stop me.”

  Fifteen

  The next morning they drove to Samburu, taking the track north from Meru. Soon they were climbing among the acacia trees that were lifting their flat heads over the plain. Thorn trees and scrub grew thickly together, and in the distance outcrops of red rock looked down upon them from an elevated position with stark raw beauty.

  “Look,” said Kate from the backseat, “over there.”

  “Elephants,” said Mckib.

  Kash slowed the Land Rover. Sable counted five fully grown elephants, two with very small calves under their bellies. There were seven youngsters in all, some of them half grown. The largest elephant, the matriarch, guarded the others from behind, and she paused as though uncertain whether to enter the clearing when she picked up the scent of humans and noise coming from Browning’s two trucks. The elephant turned and faced them, her ears fanned wide, her trunk elongated, feeling the air. The trunk moved to and fro, testing. A small breeze stirred the leaves. The adults had surrounded the calves, trunks waving, all of them undecided.

  Sable glanced back at Browning’s hunters and felt an angry frustration settle in her chest as though she might expect them to be stroking their hunting rifles and drooling to themselves. She glanced at Kash and saw his moody expression. He stepped on the accelerator, and Sable looked behind to make certain the trucks and van followed.

  Relaxing a little more, she settled back and anticipated the delight of seeing her father again after so long a time. Perhaps he’d even driven in from the wilderness camp to meet them at Samburu Lodge.

  “That’s Isiolo to the right of the river,” Kash told her, and she followed his ge
sture to the small township that divided the two game reserves. He then turned onto gravel, and three giraffes stood motionless by a thorn tree, munching the topmost branches. As the Land Rover passed, they galloped off with a stiff but graceful gait that enabled them to keep their heads at a constant elevation. A blue-gray ostrich stood alone, the breeze ruffling its feathers. She saw little else of wildlife now. Ten miles farther on, when Kash turned left at a fork in the track, they slowed as they neared some thatched huts: the entrance to the Samburu Game Reserve.

  They drove over the bridge that crossed the river, and on either side, shrubs and trees and wildlife abounded. Doum palm were everywhere, and what was called mswaki, Swahili for the toothbrush bush, the leaves of which were used by the locals to polish and keep their teeth white.

  The Samburu Reserve was a wildlife park rich in species not always seen elsewhere in Kenya. The thin-striped Grevy’s zebra, the reticulated giraffe, and the gerenuk, a graceful, long-necked gazelle that browsed high in tall bushes by standing on its hind legs.

  “It’s called giraffe gazelle,” said Kash, “and gerenuk is Somali for ‘giraffe-necked.’”

  He pointed out a Beisa oryx with its long, pointed, straight horns. “A predator is unwise to attack an oryx.”

  There were leopards, too—and they caught a picture-perfect scene of a slim spotted cheetah racing past umbrella acacias and champagne-colored savanna grass while gaining on an unfortunate gerenuk.

  Samburu was officially two reserves: Samburu on the north bank of the Uaso Nyiro River, and Isiolo-Buffalo Springs Reserve on the south bank.

  “The Uaso is Maasai for ‘river of brown water,’ and it divides the two reserves. And ‘Samburu’ means ‘butterfly,’” said Kash.

  The feel of lush tropics surrounded the river as Sable’s delighted gaze fell upon some elephants bathing in the water. The full river flowed past a stand of trees growing thickly on the bank, and the glistening wet bodies of crocodiles appeared greenish as they swaggered out of the water’s edge to soak up the sun on the bank. A huge gray hippo with its pink mouth wide open like a cavern stood motionless in the river.

  The water looked muddy to Sable as they drove into the main grounds. The lodge was larger than Kenyatta and spread out along the Uaso banks, where the main building reminded her of a round satellite-like lounge. It extended out over the water where guests could watch an occasional leopard come to quench its thirst.

  She noticed rooms on both sides of the building, and Kash mentioned that the dining room was decorated in Spanish decor.

  As they got out of the Land Rover, big black baboons were scampering about the roof like greeting clowns, and half-tame birds flitted among the lower tree branches, their bright summer shades of raspberry, watermelon red, and shamrock green glinting in the waning sunlight. Hearing the mad, boisterous screeching mingled with delicate, cheerful song was more than her mind could take in, and she laughed as Kate covered her ears. Above, the sky glowed like burnished copper.

  So this was Samburu—“butterfly.” Deeper into the reserve toward Marsabit was the home of the large-tusked elephants and her father’s research camp, which waited with mystery.

  Tomorrow they would drive the last leg of the safari to haul the supplies and open the medical and Christian relief camp to serve the Samburu and the Turkana nomadic tribes. While Kate’s medical work would win friends, Sable would strive to show the JESUS film and in between times work with her father to help document the behavior of the elephants.

  “I’d just as soon reach Dad’s camp tonight,” said Kate. “I wonder why Kash wants to stay at the lodge?”

  Sable, too, wondered and stood watching the trucks arrive and park farther down the river. Browning opened the door and climbed down, and soon the back door slid open and the rank members of his crew swarmed about the trucks and van like locusts, unloading their belongings for the day. Sable stared at the truck-trailer belonging to Browning and thought again of Seth’s camera and film. Was it in there?

  Mckib, returning from the lodge without Kash, informed them they had rooms until the next morning, when they would leave for Skyler’s camp.

  “You mean rooms—with a shower?” asked Kate with exuberance.

  “And sheets,” grinned Mckib. “Rest of us be camping out near the river. The crew’s got to get set up before it gets too dark. It ain’t safe to meander after nightfall. No one in his right mind wanders on foot in lion country.”

  Sable glanced at Kate, who smiled and, picking up her overnight bag, hurried toward the lodge—and undoubtedly the shower. Sable was prepared to quickly follow when Mckib took hold of her arm and said in a low voice, “Kash says to meet him out here tonight. Bring the things you’ll need. You’ll be gone a few days.”

  Sable was surprised. “We’re leaving?”

  “You and him is.”

  “Well—what does he want, did he explain?”

  “He’ll explain tonight, what it’s about. Just trust him, he says. Says to meet him after you have supper, around eight-thirty. And not to say anything to Vince or Browning.”

  ****

  A message arrived at their room from Vince, asking both Sable and Kate to join him, Browning, and Kash for dinner.

  That Kash would be there seemed confusing, since Mckib hadn’t mentioned it. What need to meet Kash on the grounds if he were to be seated at the table during dinner? She didn’t think Kash would show in the dining room, and Sable eased her way out of the invitation.

  “Browning!” she wrinkled her nose. “I’d rather keep company with a hippo for supper. You go, Kate, and make an excuse for me to Vince, would you?”

  “What! You’re going to leave me alone with them? For how long?”

  “I don’t know,” she said evasively. “Until I meet Kash as he asked. But don’t wait for us.”

  “I won’t want any dinner by the time I’ve put up with Browning for two hours. Did Kash say why he wanted you to meet him alone?”

  “No, but I’ve learned long ago he’ll have his sound reasons. Will you cover for me or not?”

  “You know I will, but the old ‘headache’ routine doesn’t work nowadays. What shall I say, and at the same time keep from compromising my integrity?”

  Anxious to get away, Sable glanced toward the back stairs that led down from their room onto the lower terrace. She had another plan besides meeting Kash, one of her own.

  “Don’t explain. Tell Vince I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Before Kate could respond, Sable left their room and hurried silently down the wooden steps until she came to the terrace. A few tourists were out with night binoculars and paid her no mind as she passed through the small gate, down two more steps, and out onto the grounds.

  Careful where she walked and using her flashlight to scan the path, she went quickly away from the lodge toward the river, where the vehicles were parked. She neared Browning’s truck-trailer. As she’d expected, the crew were off somewhere loading up on beer. A small gas lamp flickered in the trailer window, so she knew Browning was still inside getting cleaned up for dinner. Sable concealed herself behind one of the trees and flicked off her flashlight, waiting for him to leave.

  Luck seemed to be on her side. A few minutes after eight the door opened, and Browning stepped out in a clean shirt and khaki trousers. In the light that shone down from the string of lanterns suspended over the front grounds of the lodge, she could see his golden hair still wet from his first bath since they had left Amboseli Reserve.

  She smothered her feeling of dislike and watched him saunter across the grounds toward the brightly lit dining room, where Kate and Vince would be waiting for him.

  When he had disappeared inside, Sable stirred from behind the tree and walked quickly toward the trailer. A glance about the area showed that there were no guards.

  She went up the step to the door and tried the latch. As she had hoped, it was open, the light still burning. Evidently he didn’t expect to be gone long.

&nbs
p; She closed the door behind her, trying to calm her heart. The odor of cologne and stale beer and cigarette smoke affronted her nostrils. Swiftly she began her search, opening cluttered cabinets and drawers on a built-in bureau. Finding nothing worthy of her efforts, she turned to the boxes stacked about the walls. Guns and rifles, ammunition, magazines….

  She turned to the small closet and opened the latch. Instead of clothing it was another gun rack, and at the bottom were a pair of boots—

  The door behind her opened, and she whirled. Browning stared at her, his shock visible; then the creases in his tan face curled into a nasty smile.

  “Well now, hello. Looking for something, sweetie? Maybe I can help you find it.”

  He stepped inside, his head almost touching the low ceiling, and shut the door behind him. He stood there, watching her with a smile, his eyes unpleasant.

  There was no logical excuse to make, and she wouldn’t favor him by cowering.

  “I’m to meet Kash outside now, so you’d better pretend you didn’t find me here and let me pass without a scene.”

  His teeth flashed in a deeper smile. “Why, of course, Miss Dunsmoor. Would I be rude enough to force you to stay without your consent?”

  She took her eyes from his and glanced at the doorknob. His big brown hand clasped it firmly.

  She took a step in his direction, but he didn’t move.

  “You said I could go.”

  “Sure. After you tell me what you were looking for.”

  “Maybe I was looking for the key to the truck—to check the supplies.”

  “Maybe, but you weren’t. You haven’t bothered to check on them before, why now? ‘Sides, you know they’re safe. Kash would see to that. And it so happens he has the key, as you know.”

  She hadn’t known, but it would do no good now to deny it.