Running Wild

by Bristow, David;

  This time the bull stopped short, as they almost always did, but just close enough to reach Moyeni with a swipe of its trunk. Horse and rider went flying and though only bruised and not broken, that was the last safari for both of them. The distraught lady from Leipzig was flown out on a private charter from Limpopo Valley Airfield never to return and Moyeni seemed to lose his nerve. Ruff could not bring himself to shoot his favoured steed and sold him to a nice young lady in Gaborone who was looking for a horse for her special needs child, “one that won’t run”.

  The stable roost was now run by Arkle – along with his sidekick Lord Limerick, or Ords as his stable name became – who had been bought at a horse sale in Johannesburg as the replacement for Moyeni. They were Ruff’s two new show horses, both bays, both thoroughbreds. Juliette was the only other person allowed to ride them in order to keep them in shape. Harvey, by then a partner in the business, was allowed to ride Ords.

  Since their arrival, Arkle and Ords had never had to fight for their top spots, their preferential treatment sending a message through the herd. But the two thoroughbreds underestimated the new Boereperd arrival. Where before Zulu might have taken the cautious way out, several years of fighting pitse-ya-nagas for his harem ensured he was never again going to back down for another pitse.

  On the day of Zulu’s recapture, Karl had been mainly a spectator and watched the drama roll with great interest. With a bit of prodding by Ruff and Harvey he had pieced together the story of the ghost horse of Mashatu. Karl developed a fascination with the black stallion and would watch him closely. He began to seek out his company in the corral or stables, often arriving with a small treat.

  They were like two new boys standing together. Karl saw from the first day there was a gentle and accommodating side to Zulu, but also a fierce independence where he would not give an inch.

  Up until that time Karl had ridden mostly Ndlovu, a 16.3-hand Clydesdale-cross with one walleye. His large size, gentle nature and that imperfection was probably what appealed to Karl’s softer side. However, after the arrival of Zulu, he gave the Boereperd his preferred patronage.

  A week after his return, Zulu was deemed fit to go on his first safari with a group of riding-school owners from Joburg who were being wooed for business. Harvey was riding Ords at the sharp end and Karl backing up on big Ndlovu. From the rear Karl watched the horses carefully and noticed that Zulu was calmer than the others whenever they approached dangerous game. Also, he was not just intent on eating whenever he got the chance, but investigated the things around him. The clincher came when they saw their first leopard out on a ride.

  Karl noticed Zulu stopping and turning towards a patch of grass and dead branches. The rider tried to pull him back into line to follow the others and Zulu eventually did so, but reluctantly, which was when the spotted cat broke cover and gave them all a fright and the resulting thrill.

  “Did you see that?”

  “Wow!”

  And the inevitable “What was that?”

  All except for Zulu who had known all along where and what it was.

  On the afternoon they returned from the safari, the horses were rubbed down, allowed to roll in a sawdust pit and then set free in the corral with all the other horses. Clearly some words had gone down between Zulu and Ords on the trail and while the camp was in shutdown siesta time in the late afternoon, sharp sounds of fighting cracked the afternoon quiet.

  The guides and grooms arrived to see Ruff already in among the horses with a stirrup whirling round his head. Zulu on one side and the two show horses on the other were having a go at one another, rearing up and lashing out with front hooves and trying to land bites on one another’s necks. The stirrup iron landed on Zulu’s rump with a heavy thud and he backed off. For the next few days he walked while nursing his lammied leg.

  That was the moment where their mutual disdain turned to open dislike. Ruff gave orders to the staff that his two horses were to be stabled separately from Zulu and the rest, with a special section of corral partitioned off for them. The order was given not only to keep them apart in camp but also to make sure they were never allocated to the same safari.

  Karl had liked what he saw in Zulu from the moment he was recaptured, but now he liked him even more. He’d not only stood his ground against Arkle and Ords, but had been close to giving them a hiding before the boss waded in with the heavy artillery.

  When the dust settled, Karl found Ruff supervising the alterations in the stable and he asked if it would be okay for him ride Zulu as his lead horse.

  “Sure,” replied the boss man, “if you want to hitch your saddle onto a loser.”

  What made Zulu such a remarkable horse even before his escape was that he would intuitively match his riding style to the rider, so that they did not have to try to figure him out. It made them think they were brilliant riders. After his recapture, he was even more attuned to the rider, rather than less so. According to Karl he’d lost what humans call their ego.

  When Karl led the next safari out of camp – or whenever he rode backup gun for Harvey – it was acknowledged that Zulu became the point horse. He might not always ride at the front but when it came to outspanning, he would be the one that stood guard through the night while the horses were tethered to a long line.

  Zulu could sense cats like no other horse that ever worked at Limpopo Valley – and big cats, lions specifically, were the demons of the night. From their roamings around the villages of Botswana they had developed a taste for horse flesh and now these tasty animals had been delivered to them in the game reserve. At night when the horses were tied up they were irresistible.

  The cats would wait until the early hours before making a move. One growl was usually enough to send the entire camp into pandemonium and then it would be easy to take down any horse that bolted.

  But Zulu would sense them long before anyone else. He would stomp and snort to alert whoever was on night watch. With experienced staff the watch would change every two hours through the night, but with guests and interns they needed to be changed every hour to be sure no one nodded off.

  Out in the bush Zulu had also learned some vital lessons about herd life. Such as when a fight was worth taking on – and when not. Which fights could be won and which not. The herd at Limpopo Valley sorted naturally into two factions: those that had known only Arkle and Ords as the bully boys and the others, mainly the older ones, who welcomed the return of Zulu.

  The new horses tended to hang out at the fence that separated the two factions, neck grooming and generally sucking up to mainly Arkle, but also Ords when Arkle was busy. The old guard happily accepted Zulu as their leader. They clustered around him at the far end of the paddock but he did not encourage any close contact.

  The arrival of a cold front heralded the change of season and cast low cloud over the valley. A soft drizzle meant the horses would be stabled inside for the night. Ruff was away at Main Lodge going over budgets with Ratty, his least favourite time of the year with his least favourite person.

  The meeting went on well into the night. For Ratty it was a rare visit to this outlying piece of his safari empire so he liked to make the most of it, and liked to play patronising host by offering good whisky and a slap-up meal for his managers. Which meant Ruff would drink too much and have to sleep over. He despised these “by invitation” visits to Main Lodge but it was part of the job.

  It was a weekend without guests, so the horse camp was on a skeleton staff with Moany on duty in the stables. The old Bushman was happy as could be, alone with his box of Autumn Harvest Crackling wine, his memories and his horses. As he led them into the stables, two at a time, he sang one of the songs of his people:

  Oh our Sister Rain has come,

  Shaking her copper bracelets

  She comes dancing over the dunes,

  Bringing life to all her creatures …

  Unfortunately, he was so full of bonhomie he forgot all about the bad blood in the herd and stabled them will
y-nilly. He never did get the white people’s obsession with one horse, one stable – all neatly in some or other order. “All !Xlam’s creatures,” he would insist. It was only when they heard one of the horses in the barn screaming for its mother that Harvey and Karl came running.

  The two guides found broken timbers, Arkle standing off, shaking and spewing watery mucous out of his nostrils. Zulu had Ords pinned on the ground. Although shorter, Zulu was the stronger of the two and after kicking the stuffing out of the taller horse he’d wrestled Ords over onto his side. The guides managed to break up the fight and check the horses for damage.

  Arkle was their main concern and they were relieved that he showed no outward signs of injury. Ords was not so lucky and had taken the brunt of Zulu’s pent-up rage. The two men nearly broke their backs getting Ords to his feet. His front right knee was gashed open. When it was cleaned they could see there was more serious damage: the fetlock was sliced open, the joint was chipped and the synovial fluid had leaked out, causing bone to rub on raw bone. Zulu was bruised all over, had cuts here and there, but nothing he had not sustained during his wild years.

  Harvey radioed Main Lodge at around midnight. It took ages for the night porter to answer.

  “Get Boss Stevens … No, now! Right now. Tell him it is urgent,” insisted Harvey.

  Ruff arrived an hour later, a whirlwind of dust spinning in the headlight beam. He jumped out of the hard-worked Cruiser and strode over to where he saw his two colleagues standing in a shaft of yellow light outside the stables.

  “What’s up?”

  “Ords.”

  “Arkle?”

  “No, he’s okay, a bit stunned but no harm done,” as the three men marched into the barn where paraffin storm lanterns were blazing as if to spotlight a crime scene.

  Ruff first patted his favourite, sweat-crusted horse before turning his attentions to his number two mount. Harvey gave a run-down of the events as he and Karl had unpicked them.

  “You can always rely on good old Moany,” Ruff said, kneeling down to take a closer look at the injury. There are things in Africa that will not change for all your wanting them to.

  Ruff hissed through his teeth then stood up: “That’s bad, can’t be operated.”

  Then to Karl: “Go get Moany,” he said and marched off to his office.

  It took a while to rouse the old man from his dreams and drag him back to the stables, where he saw Ruff returning with a shotgun. His eyes widened.

  “No ride and you’re hide,” Ruff repeated one of his stable truths.

  They all knew what was coming. Ords had settled down on his side favouring the uninjured leg. There was the inevitable blast that echoed extra loudly inside the covered building, unsettling the other horses and causing a resident three-month wonder to come running outside in just token pyjamas.

  Ruff turned to Moany: “In the morning load him into the Cruiser and tell West to take him out to Mckenzie Koppies, far away from here, where the vultures can have a party. Then come and see me in my office.” Moany was given a sideways promotion that involved buckets and brooms and never again was he left in charge of the horses.

  Then Ruff slid a new cartridge into his shotgun and made his way to where Zulu had been secured. Karl hurried after him and when Ruff pulled back the two heavy gum poles that acted as a gate, Karl squeezed past him and placed himself between the seething man and the unrepentant horse. Ruff had the single-bore barrel half raised and Karl pushed it down towards the ground. Ruff glared but Karl held his ground.

  The order of the stable had been up-ended and Ruff saw one simple way to restore things. Karl disagreed. Something, or someone, would have to give. Ruff gave a short backwards nod of his head to call a ceasefire and walked back to the office building. When they saw the light there go out without a further gunshot, Juliette turned from the window of their room and said to Karl, who was lying in bed not knowing what to expect:

  “I can’t believe it, he’s such a well-natured horse.”

  “He won’t give in, you know that. Nice until you push him.”

  She got in beside him and held him until they fell asleep.

  In the morning, a Sunday, Harvey had set off well before daybreak to fetch two grooms back to work so they could help tidy up things before Ruff emerged. Everyone would be walking on egg shells.

  “I called Sean Trautmann over at Rhodes Heights last night,” he told his senior man over the communal breakfast. Rhodes Heights was a fertile swathe of mountain catchment that straddled the Drakensberg escarpment, rolling away gently westwards to the antediluvian goldfields of Lydenburg but in the east dropping in a single 1 000-metre rock wall to the Lowveld where the Kruger National Park reclined in mal aria.

  Up on the plateau the air was cool and streams murmured with trout. They had been stocked for the pleasure of Mr Michaels and his honoured guests. He had also filled the montane grasslands with indigenous game and had a riding stable for both pleasure and profit. Sean Trautmann was gamekeeper, guide and manager of Ratty’s secret little pleasure dome.

  “Turns out they’re looking for a stallion for breeding up at Rhodes Heights,” Ruff announced across the table.

  “That’s Ratty Michaels for you, always looking for new ways to make a few extra bucks,” Harvey chipped in.

  “The truck should be here in a few hours to take away that skelm horse,” Ruff looked at Karl and Juliette and dared them to challenge him.

  Before anyone could interject he put the matter to rest. “He’s damn lucky I didn’t put a bullet in his head last night.”

  Ruff swigged back the dregs of coffee in his mug and left the table.

  April marks the onset of autumn in southern Africa and a drop in the tourism business when everyone puts away their summer toys. Mashatu went into slow gear and many of the staff took leave. Ruff went off to Zimbabwe for a few weeks of R&R with his old mates and to keep the fires burning up there. You never knew when you would need to double-cross the bridge you were on.

  Harvey declared that he too was off, for some I&I, as he threw a duffel bag into the back of his bakkie and said goodbye to the couple who would be holding the fort for the next two weeks.

  “What’s I&I?” asked Karl innocently.

  “Intoxication and intercourse.”

  Juliette glared and Karl dared not laugh.

  “Where’s Stevens?” Ratty Michaels bellowed down the phone to Juliette. She explained that both he and Harvey were away, “on business” she added diplomatically.

  “Who’s in charge there?”

  “I am. We are.”

  “Huh!” barked Ratty. He always yelled on the phone. And he could not condone the idea of a woman being left in charge of things, his things.

  “Well, when that Cowboy returns …” she did not have to ask who, “tell him to pack his bags and include some good clothes. It’s marketing time in old Blighty.”

  Ratty put down the phone and turned to his porcelain wife: “A good man would know not to leave a woman in charge of a rare vintage car, especially someone else’s, mine,” he said and added a mental note to the Stevens case file.

  “And a good woman knows to let her man drive the car,” she replied with a sense of supreme conviction.

  April was the time of the Badminton Horse Trails held on the 1 500-acre parkland of Badminton House, seat of the Duke of Beaufort in south Gloucestershire. That year, 2005, Pippa Funnell riding Primmore’s Pride won the main event. No one died that time around, as was the case two years earlier when Wideawake was felled by a heart attack on Lucinda Green’s victory lap. Or even more gruesomely a year later when an artery of Jean-Lou Bigot’s zesty mount Icare d-Auzay was pierced by the pole of a course-marker flag.

  At that time, Ruff was 40-something, athletically slim, dashingly sun-weathered and sporting a face full of hair that rendered him a near-perfect Frederick Courteney Selous lookalike. Dressed in his trademark pressed jeans and khaki shirt (you can take a man out the military but not alway
s the military out the man), leather jerkin and genuine cowboy hat, unknowingly he turned eyes.

  There were more than a few “where have I seen you before?” at the African Horseback Safaris stand. The atmosphere was clammy and rain threatened. Ruff was tired and thinking about ducking out early when he noticed an eye-catching blonde woman clearly angling towards him.

  “Hello,” she offered in an unmistakably South African but good-school accent. Ruff’s heart fluttered and for the second time in his life he could find nothing to say. Nothing witty, nothing rugged or manly, just nothing. So he grinned, which seemed to suffice.

  She picked up a brochure: “I would love to go riding in the bush,” she turned it over. “I’ve heard such amazing things about riding close to elephants, running with zebras … but unfortunately I was talked into a riding holiday in the States with some chums. Bullied, really,” she chuckled. She waved the brochure she had in her hand: “Is this something like what you do?”

  “It’s exactly what I do.”

  “And where do you do it?”

  “I run Limpopo Valley Horseback Safaris. In Mashatu Game Reserve. In Botswana.” He was careful to get the details right.

  “You should send me …” she reached forward and turned down one side of Ruff’s collar.

  “I know I should. I will.”

  “My name’s Lucy, by the way,” the woman offered.

  “Hello Lucy, I’m Ruff, Stevens. How will I find you?”

  “Ummm, fate?”

  Ruff feigned nonchalance, but his heart was beating out a gumba-gumba dance on his ribcage.

  “So, what …” then began again in an exaggerated Western accent, “what are you doing after the show, honey?” and then laughed casually.

  Ruff was scheduled to leave for Ireland the following morning. He was living rough in a student bed-sit on the outskirts of Bristol. Lucy invited him for dinner at the 17th-century Bodkin Inn where she was lodging. That night they stared into each other’s eyes, drinking in the balmy English spring and later that night new love was kindled in the Cotswolds.