by Helen Wells
Ed Smith came up to the group and was introduced to the newcomer.
“Now that you’re here,” Bob said, “you may as well stay for dinner and spend the night. It might interest you to see what we’ve done.”
Krynos bowed and protested he did not want to put them to any trouble.
“There’s plenty of room in my tent,” Smith suggested, “if you can locate another cot, Jeff.” Jeff nodded.
“In that case,” Krynos said, “I accept with pleasure.” He looked around at the hospital building and the spruced-up huts. “It isn’t often that you see a village like this back here in the jungle. You people have worked miracles; and I will admit that I’d like to look around.”
“Feel free to wander around the place all you please,” Bob said.
“I’ll lead the guided tour,” Smith offered, “since all you people probably have work to do.”
Bob, Cherry, and Jeff went off to attend to their various duties. Krynos took his duffel bag from the jeep and carried it into Smith’s tent. Then the two of them set out on an inspection tour of the installation.
Night comes down fast on the equator, with hardly any twilight at all. It almost seems as though it is full daylight one minute and complete darkness the next. And the last light of the sun had just disappeared over the distant mountains when another car came roaring up the trail and into camp.
“This certainly is our day for company,” Bob remarked, peering through the gloom at the approaching headlights. Then a small truck rolled into the light that bathed the eating area, and stopped. This time it was Long Jack Robertson who stepped out of the cab.
“Hello, folks,” he greeted them, a big grin on his face. His khaki clothes were stained with dust and sweat; and the double brim of his wide safari hat sagged down just the way a professional hunter’s should, Cherry thought.
“I brought you some fresh meat for the pot.” Jack snapped a few words in Swahili to Tomi, who was stirring the coals in his grill getting ready to cook dinner. Broad-shouldered, muscular Tomi hurried around to the back of the truck and lifted out an antelope.
“Your cook will know what to do with it,” Jack said. He dropped his long body into a canvas chair.
“Jack, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Bob told him. Then he introduced him to Jeff, Chuck, and Krynos. “I believe you’ve already met Ed Smith here.”
“No, can’t say that I have,” the hunter replied as they shook hands.
“Hmm!” Cherry said to herself. “What about that evening in the New Stanley?” But she didn’t voice her thought out loud. Here were two deliberate lies in the same afternoon. She had seen Krynos at the airport, and Smith talking with Long Jack in the hotel lobby. Krynos looked like the sort of man who might want to hide something. But not Long Jack, Cherry thought. He appeared straightforward. She was puzzled.
Long Jack was talking. “I’ve got a party in camp just about two miles from here, so I thought I’d run over and see how you were making out.”
“Gun hunters or camera hunters, Jack?” Bob asked.
“Camera hunters this time. Americans. A man and his wife. And pretty wealthy Americans too, judging by all the luxuries we brought along—bathtubs, a portable electric system, a refrigerator, and whole cases of fancy canned food.”
“It looks as if you’re having a vacation instead of a safari,” Bob suggested.
“Not so you can notice it,” the hunter said. “I’ve taken more risks with this camera chap—Porter is his name—than with most of the trophy hunters I’ve guided.” He thought for a moment. “Just the other day, for example, over on the Serengeti Plain. You remember it, Bob. We hunted there with your dad.”
Bob nodded.
“Well, Porter had said that he wanted a motion picture of a charging rhino. So that afternoon, cruising around in the Land Rover, we found one grazing all by himself. He was a big one, too, and he looked mean. We drove up to within a hundred yards or so of him, and my client set up his tripod. The old rhino got wind of us, and started swaying his shoulders and pawing up the ground. I stood just behind and a little to the left of Porter with my big double-barrel .460 rifle ready to shoot if I had to. My client began to grind his camera, and then the old boy charged straight for us.”
Cherry was listening, wide-eyed, to the hunter’s story.
“Then Porter spoke up, calm as if he did this every day,” Long John went on. “‘Remember not to shoot until I say so’ he said. ‘I want him to get as close as possible.’
“The beast was coming at us like an express train, with that hooked horn low and his little pig eyes squinting, and his weight making the ground shake. When he was about thirty feet away, I thought Porter had either forgotten about giving me a signal, or was too scared to speak. And I was just squeezing my hand on the trigger, when the old rhino skidded to a stop, looked at us for a minute in a sort of puzzled way, and then trotted off to one side as though he thought the whole thing was pretty silly.”
Cherry whistled. “My goodness! Do you mean he stopped charging, just like that?”
“Rhinos are odd beasts, Miss Ames,” Jack explained. “They do unpredictable things, and nobody knows what goes on in those strange little brains of theirs. Anyway, Porter was tickled to death about getting such a good picture. But I don’t mind saying the whole thing gave me quite a turn. I didn’t dare try to help my client with his camera equipment lest he see how badly my hands were shaking.”
While everyone laughed at Jack’s story, the hunter was looking intently at Ed Smith.
“You know, Mr. Smith,” he said at last, “I believe you and I did meet briefly in Nairobi a week or so ago. You’re a photographer too, aren’t you? And didn’t you ask me something about getting some safari pictures for a magazine?”
Smith looked sheepish. “Yes,” he said, “we did meet. But since you seemed to have forgotten, I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
“Sorry, Mr. Smith.” The hunter smiled apologetically.
Cherry felt a little ashamed of her earlier suspicion of Long Jack and Smith.
“Actually,” Smith went on, “I’d like to talk some more about a safari sometime. For instance, would I have to buy a hunting license if I wanted you to back me up with a gun the way you did Porter?”
“That all depends,” the hunter began.
Bob got to his feet. “I’ve got a few things to do before dinner,” he said.
“And I’d better look at Kavarondi’s evening report,” Cherry said.
Jeff and Chuck also remembered last-minute chores, and soon the hunter was left explaining licenses and other safari details to Smith, as Spiro Krynos puffed on a long cigar.
Listening to the radio news after dinner had become a sort of nightly ritual, and Cherry never ceased to be amused at the messages. When they were over, Long Jack took his leave, saying that he wanted to see his clients safely bedded down for the night.
Then Bob flipped the radio switch to “send.” When he got the operator in Nairobi, he said, “This is Dr. Barton in Ngogo. Will you please get a message to Major Welsh at the United States Military Air Transport office that I will have another shipment to go to the Abercrombie Institute in Washington, D. C., on tomorrow’s plane?”
The voice on the other end repeated the message and then clicked off.
“I wish,” Bob said, when he had hung the mike back on its hook, “that I didn’t have to take tomorrow off to go into Nairobi. I wanted us to begin the next series of Tryparsamide injections, Cherry. But those blood samples have to get off on schedule.”
“I guess Jeff or I could go,” Chuck suggested.
Ed Smith spoke up. “I was going to go to town the next time one of you did. I’d like to see how that latest batch of film I left at Keeler’s turned out. So I’ll drive your car in and leave your package at the field.”
“Good,” Bob said. “Just deliver it to Major Welsh at Eastleigh, but be sure you get it there before three o’clock.”
The next morning, as
soon as breakfast was over, Mr. Krynos said to Bob:
“Thank you so much for your hospitality, Doctor. But I think I had better be off. I want to drive over to Nisi, on Lake Victoria, and I feel I should get an early start.”
“You’re welcome any time,” Bob replied, pleased.
“I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed my visit with you. It has been a most happy coincidence.”
“A coincidence?” Bob asked. “I don’t quite…”
Krynos smiled. “Oh, I mean meeting the hunter with the curious name—what was it, Long Jack?—and hearing his adventurous stories. And also Mr. Smith, here, who has told me about the pictures he is taking.”
“I’ll go get your bag,” Smith volunteered. “I’m taking off, too, in a little while, but I’m going the other way.”
Ed Smith went into his tent and came out in a moment with the trader’s duffel bag.
“There you are,” he said, putting the bag into the back of Krynos’ car. He stuck out his hand. “Nice to have met you.”
Krynos said goodbye all around, and in a few minutes his jeep had disappeared through the trees down the trail.
About an hour later the photographer walked into the lab where Bob and Cherry were putting the tubes of blood specimens into a cardboard box and carefully packing them in cotton. He had a small canvas airlines bag in his hand. Cherry wondered if the bag held films.
“Well, I’m all set to go,” Smith said.
Bob wrapped the box in heavy brown paper, tied it securely, and addressed it. Then he repeated his instructions as to how Smith was to find Major Welsh at the MATS office.
“Don’t worry,” Smith assured him, “I’ll see that it gets there safe and sound.”
He carried the package out to Bob’s Land Rover, put the package and his bag on the seat beside him, and roared out of camp.
It was almost sundown when Ed Smith returned. “I got your carton to the MATS people on time,” he said, “and then spent most of the rest of the afternoon at Keeler’s. You’ll be happy to know that my pictures turned out swell. I airmailed them to the office in New York.”
As he was talking, Cherry’s sharp eyes spotted a dark reddish-brown stain on the sleeve of his bush jacket.
“What happened?” she asked curiously, pointing to the blotch. “It looks like blood. Did you cut yourself?”
Smith looked at the stain, and for a moment seemed at a loss for words. “Why—I—no—” he stammered. “I didn’t cut myself.” Then he smiled. “We were fooling around with developing chemicals in Keeler’s darkroom and I guess some splashed on my arm. And the heck of it is,” he said wryly, “it probably won’t wash out.”
That was odd, Cherry thought. Her brother Charlie was a camera bug, and had his own darkroom back home in Hilton. But she had never seen any developing chemical that was a dark red!
CHAPTER X
The Yellow Stone
BUT CHERRY’S CURIOSITY ABOUT ED SMITH FADED AS nothing unusual happened. The days at the jungle hospital sped swiftly by. They were happy days for Cherry, filled with the sights and the sounds and the wonderfully clear sunshine of tropical Africa.
“Why do people persist in calling this Darkest Africa?” she asked Jeff late one afternoon after work, as they were strolling along the river. “I will always think of it as Brightest Africa.”
The days were filled, too, with a rewarding sense of accomplishment. All of the trypanosomiasis cases were responding to the treatment that she and Dr. Bob administered. Most of the patients that had been brought into the ward in a coma had come around nicely. Many of them were allowed out of bed to walk about in the sunlight of the compound for a little while each day. Best of all, only three new cases had developed—and they proved to be light ones that Bob’s medication had caught in time.
Chuck Warner had gone back to Nairobi two days ago to go to work on another Abercrombie assignment. But Jeff stayed on as a permanent member of the Ngogo staff. Ed Smith had also continued to hang around, snapping his cameras incessantly. “This will be the greatest African story Click has ever published,” he said to Cherry one evening. “And you are going to have a starring role in it.”
“I can do without your flattery,” Cherry thought. She still did not like Smith. Yet maybe, after all, she had jumped to some hasty conclusions about him, Cherry told herself. He did seem like a pleasant, friendly man, at least on the surface.
Then one morning Long Jack Robertson drove into the village in his safari truck. Again he brought a goodsized antelope that he said was “meat for the pot.”
“I took my people over to the Ngorongoro Crater for a couple of days,” he said at lunch. “And Mr. Porter had the time of his life. He practically worked his cameras to death.”
“I don’t wonder,” Bob said. “I remember Ngorongoro as the most fabulous place in Africa—or most likely in all the world.”
“What an odd name,” Cherry remarked. “And what makes it so fabulous?”
Long Jack looked thoughtful. “Ngorongoro is the crater of a long-dead volcano. Its walls are a thousand feet straight down, and at the bottom is a lush, level meadow that is about fifteen miles across. You get down to it from the rim by a narrow winding trail. And once you’re there, it’s like a paradise. The herds of animals have been completely cut off from the rest of the world for centuries, and the animals themselves are perfect specimens. I guess Ngorongoro is what all of Africa must have looked like before the white men and the trophy hunters swarmed in to spoil it.”
“If you and I ever do make that camera safari I was talking about,” Ed Smith said, “that’s the first place I want to go.”
“Look here,” Long Jack said, snapping his fingers, “that gives me an idea. I only have three more days with the Porters until I take them back to Nairobi. And I had planned to safari down through the bush country west of here to give Porter one last crack at elephants. Why don’t you come along? I’m certain my client would welcome some advice from a professional photographer.”
Smith looked eager. “You’re sure it would be all right with your people?”
“Sure I’m sure. The Porters are nice. You’d be somebody new to talk to. And, as I said, you could give him some valuable tips.”
Ed Smith look pleased. “In that case, I can’t resist. It will give me some atmosphere shots to round out my story. I’ll pack a duffel bag and be with you in half a minute.”
“When are you and I going to make another safari, Bob?” the hunter asked. “Bathtubs and electric lights and refrigerators are O.K. But every now and then I like to get out on a shooting trip and rough it with a chap like yourself who likes to hunt the hard way.”
“Not right away, I’m afraid,” Bob replied. “But I promised Miss Ames a camera safari after our work here is cleaned up.”
“That’s fine, Bob. You know where to reach me.”
Smith came out of his tent laden with his camera and his bag.
“Let’s go,” the hunter said. Then to Bob: “I’ll drop Smith off in a couple of days on our way back to town.”
He stepped on the starter and the truck rolled down the trail and out of sight.
As usual, Kandi was underfoot that afternoon, pestering Cherry about chores that he could do for her.
Cherry patted the top of his curly head. “Well now,” she said, “one thing you can do that would help us a lot would be to go over and straighten up Mr. Smith’s tent. See that everything is tidied up and the bed is made. Mr. Smith will like that when he gets back from his trip.”
The boy eagerly ran off. She forgot all about him until, an hour later, he came rushing up to her as she was leaving the clinic after her regular inspection tour.
“Look, Missy Sherry,” he said. “Kandi find another pretty pebble.”
Cupped in his outstretched palm was a large canary-yellow stone that gleamed in the afternoon sun. She took it from him and inspected it closely. It was smaller than the piece of quartz the boy had picked up at the river, but it ha
d a more lustrous sheen. There seemed to be highlights in it that caught the sun’s rays and threw them back into her eyes.
“Did you get this down by the river where you found the other one?” she asked curiously.
“No, missy. Kandi find it under Mista Smith’s cot in his tent.”
Cherry was stunned. Disconnected incidents flashed through her mind—the news of finding rough diamonds—Ed Smith’s excitement when Kandi thought he had found a diamond near the river—little Mr. Krynos lying about being at the Nairobi airport. And Krynos had received something there from Gus Fisher—who was Smith’s one-time pilot. Her head spun. Like a jigsaw puzzle that had been cut out of a cubist painting, no part fitted into another. And yet there must be some meaningful pattern. If only she could find it!
“Will you let me keep this pretty stone for a little while, Kandi?” she asked. The boy grinned happily and nodded Yes. “Now you run off and play.”
Cherry found Jeff Jordan working on the water-filtering plant that he and Chuck had installed.
“Do you remember the stone Kandi found in the river that day?” Cherry asked. “The one I thought might be a rough diamond.”
“Sure,” Jeff said. He stopped tinkering. “But I told you this isn’t diamond country. Why?”
“Well, what do you think of this one?” Cherry showed him the yellow stone.
Jeff looked at it for a moment. Then he held it up to the sun’s light and squinted, with one eye shut. His face grew serious. He turned the stone round and round in his fingers, looking more quizzical all the time. Then he peered at her, his forehead wrinkled.
“Where did you get this one, Cherry?”
Cherry decided that for the time being she had better keep her confused thoughts to herself.
“Ask me no questions,” she told him, “and I’ll tell you no lies—don’t ask me just yet, anyway. But what do you make of it, Jeff?”
“Well,” Jeff said slowly, “I said that I was no trained mineralogist. But this looks to me like the real McCoy. If I had to make a wild guess, I’d say this is an honest-to-gosh rough diamond.”