Stalking Ivory

by Suzanne Arruda

  Jade peered over her mug at Avery. “And you, Avery?”

  He patted his wife’s hand in an attempt to calm her. “Vogelsanger was an officer of some rank. That much seems obvious by his bearing and the crispness of his bush clothes. They also don’t seem to be having much luck finding game, especially elephants.” He paused to think as his fingers traced patterns on the back of Beverly’s hand. “They certainly came equipped to hunt big game. Von Gretchmar has a decent enough arsenal with him. He was quite proud of his rifles, some of them of British manufacture but nothing very new.”

  “Anything else?” asked Jade.

  The Dunburys shook their heads in unison. “Now, are you going to grace us with your observations?” asked Beverly in mock deference.

  Jade bestowed her wry Mona Lisa smile and set down her empty coffee mug. “That’s about it.” She watched and waited until Beverly had just taken a final gulp of coffee before she added, “And the fact that they’re lying about the elephants.”

  Beverly sprayed out the mouthful of coffee. “I’m going to get you for that one, lovey,” she said as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “You did that on purpose.”

  Jade chuckled. “You always were easy to get. Remember that time near Verdun?”

  “Don’t bring that embarrassing incident up ever again, if you please, Jade.”

  Jade laughed and clapped her hands together. “Em-bare-assing is right, Bev. Your face wasn’t the only thing that turned red.”

  Beverly threw her coffee mug at Jade’s head. Jade ducked and the mug clattered into the surrounding darkness. A brief rustle followed as some night creature, startled by the missile, ran off deeper into the brush. A leopard coughed its dry, asthmatic chuff from the other side of a nearby donga. Jade took comfort in the natural wildness of the sounds, sounds of animals without agendas other than survival.

  “I’m sorry, Bev. Really I am.” The barely suppressed grin on Jade’s face nearly made a lie of that statement.

  “Ahem.” Avery cleared his throat for attention and put his arms around his wife’s waist before she could get up and pummel Jade. “As much as I’m dying to know about my wife’s, er, incident, you were about to tell us something about lying. What are they lying about and how do you know?”

  “They’re lying about the elephants, and I know because Jelani told me just before we left Harry’s camp. We used the language of the ‘Great Apes’ as a code. That was your idea, Bev, remember?”

  “What did he say?” asked Avery.

  “He said ‘Tarmangani bundolo Tantor,’ or ‘White man kill elephants.’ But when I asked him about balu Tantor, or ‘baby elephants,’ he said no.”

  “Jelani?” echoed Bev. “How does he know? He’s just a young boy and he wasn’t even around the Germans.”

  “Their porters told him. Seems he had a very pleasant chat with the men and boasted about all the wonderful animals we’ve bagged so far. Of course, they couldn’t be outdone.”

  “What wonderful animals have we bagged? Outside of some bustards and antelope for food, we haven’t attempted to hunt a blooming thing. Did you tell that lad to lie?” asked Avery.

  “Of course not. He just included your rhino and our lions and hyena from the last safari. Not his fault they didn’t question his time frame.” She poked the fire with a long stick, then tossed the stick atop the flames and watched the fire flare momentarily. In the distance she heard the low trumpeting of an elephant, followed by the explosive crack of snapping tree limbs. Probably not close, she thought. Those sounds carried a long distance in the cool night air. For some reason she thought of them as her elephants and wondered if she had any business taking that view.

  “How many have they killed?” asked Beverly.

  “They’ve taken one of the younger bulls already,” said Jade. “Jelani saw the ivory.”

  “But Harry said—” began Avery.

  “Harry stayed away from the topic of hunting this evening,” interjected Jade. “And since Mueller muttered to the others in German not to say anything, I suspect Harry told them not to admit to any bagged elephants. He probably knew it would rile me again.”

  “So did they kill that cow and her calf?” asked Beverly.

  Jade shook her head. “No, they didn’t, which means they probably didn’t kill the askari from the King’s African Rifles, either. So I guess that means Harry isn’t a complete scoundrel.”

  Beverly stood and stretched. “I’m relieved to hear it. But I don’t understand their reluctance to boast of their trophy. After all,” she reasoned, “they have a perfect right to hunt elephant. They have licenses.”

  Jade arched her black brows. “Do they?” she asked. “We’re assuming that they each have a permit for elephants. Maybe they don’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if that weasel Hascombe bypassed the game warden. I can’t imagine that Blaney Percival issued any permits for elephant hunting up here.”

  Avery stood next to his wife. “I suppose that may be true. Or Mr. Percival might have given them permits, but restricted their elephant hunting to the Chobe hills. I was rather under the impression that he didn’t want the elephants in this area hunted. Still, that will be easy enough to check on when we return.”

  “I must admit I was taken aback by their attitude when you told them about the dead askari and the poachers,” said Beverly. “I expected that at least Claudia would appeal to her husband or Harry for protection. She just sat there like a mouse all evening after Mercedes went into her tent.”

  “Yes, and Liesel wanted to go out and find them,” added Avery. “What did she say? Something about wild shifters?”

  “Shiftas,” corrected Beverly. “It means raiders.”

  “Ack, how romantic,” said Jade, aping Liesel Mueller’s voice and accent. “Imagine to meet a wild shifta from Abyssinia.” She rolled her eyes and pretended to gag. “Tomorrow at first light Chiumbo will send a man off to Marsabit Post to alert the authorities. If no one is there, he’s to go to Kampia Tembo.”

  Beverly’s mouth gaped wide open as she yawned.

  “Fair imitation of a hippo, Bev,” joked Jade.

  “I’ve heard all I care to concerning your ill opinion of poor Harry and his boring safari. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.” She turned to her husband and laid a slender hand on his arm. “Are you coming, darling?” Avery nodded and took his wife’s arm. Beverly paused in midstep and looked at Jade. “What about you, Jade?”

  She tried to stifle a smile, but her twitching lips betrayed her. “I’m not sure Avery’s ready for a ménage à trois. I know I’m not.”

  Beverly looked in vain for something else to throw at Jade and settled for scowling at her. “Don’t make me slap you, missy,” she said.

  Jade hugged herself and rocked with silent laughter. “Poor Avery,” she said as she pointed to him. “He’s positively beet red with embarrassment.” She wiped a tear from an eye. “Couldn’t resist. But seriously, I want to develop those pictures I gathered up today. I really need to see if this trip wire process is worth the time and film, especially for the night shots. And I want to jot down some thoughts on the night sounds in my notebook. They’re almost worth an entire article by themselves, don’t you think?”

  The Dunburys retired to their tent, and Jade sent Biscuit off to watch over Jelani. Then she began the careful process of developing her negatives. She planned to develop most of the film back in Nairobi. Consequently, she had brought only a small amount of chemicals with her, enough to develop some test pictures and hone her technique.

  The nocturnal shot revealed a leopard rather than the hoped-for elephant, but Jade still smiled at the glimpse of hidden life at night in the forest. Leopards were shy animals, and even a profile of one amounted to a good catch. The first day shot showed the rump of an elephant, enough for her to know that the system worked only if the animal would step on the wire with a front foot rather than a hind one. Jade made a mental note to raise the wire height another inch or two.

  The
last daytime film sheet went into the developer. Jade took it through the series of baths needed to fix the image and held it up to her red-tinted lantern for a better view. At first she couldn’t make out what sort of animal had gained immortality in her lens. Then a slow smile spread across her face.

  “Well, well. What have we here? Looks like some of our German friends were having their own wilderness experience today. Gracious me.”

  Jade clipped the negative to the drying line at eye level. One face, at least, was identifiable amid the tangle of intertwined, half-clothed bodies and disheveled bush gear. Jade wondered first if Herr von Gretchmar knew that his doting Frau was cheating on him. But who was her lover? The pair stood clenched in a tight embrace, the man’s back to the camera. All Jade had in her negative was the back of his head as it nuzzled deep in Claudia’s bosom. No discernible bald spot gleamed from this man’s thick head of hair, but his one visible ear certainly stuck out far enough. Did Harry’s ears protrude like that? These are big enough to belong to an elephant. She couldn’t recall and wondered if it might have been the younger German of the party, Mueller. She’d have to pay more attention to his and Harry’s ears when they next met. Not that it was any of her business. Harry was a grown man; he could do as he pleased.

  CHAPTER 7

  During the day, the forest gives the impression of being entirely devoid of mammalian life. The rhino and buffalo hide in some donga, grazing; the leopard naps unseen in a tree; and the elephants, well, the elephants drift silently like slippered wraiths. Night, on the other hand, introduces a cacophony of coughs, grunts, growls, rumblings, snorts, and screams, all overlain with the reverberating crack of snapping limbs. Sleep is difficult at night.

  —The Traveler

  CHIUMBO POINTED to three piles of elephant droppings and held up two fingers, which meant the spoor was two days old. Blast, thought Jade. The elephants could be anywhere by now.

  “Time for a rest.” She shrugged off her pack and leaned it against a tree. If she’d had her way, they would all have been bivouacking farther into the forest, around the crater lake itself rather than a mile below it. Unfortunately, she hadn’t gotten her way. Beverly had felt ill again, and Avery had insisted on staying behind at the base camp with her. Under no circumstances would he let his wife traipse off into the forest with Jade for a few days, and when Jade had suggested that she set up a secondary camp on her own, Beverly grew so distressed and agitated that Jade relented. She had her own theory about Beverly’s situation, but decided to keep it to herself until they were ready to talk about it. She wondered if she’d be named a godparent.

  Jade ripped off a generous piece of jerked meat, handed it to Chiumbo, and pulled off another chunk for herself. As she chewed, she studied the upper branches of what looked like a mahogany tree for signs of recent feeding. Several other trees bore fresh breaks, some nearly ten feet aboveground. Part of the underlying litter had been crushed deeper into the soil where one of the pachyderms had reared up onto its hind legs for an extended reach.

  Jade hadn’t believed such behavior possible when Blaney Percival had first described it to her in Nairobi. Then she’d witnessed it for herself from a distance. Better than a circus. Now, that would be something to photograph. A shudder of urgency ran through her as though she needed to document everything about these magnificent animals. Suddenly, even tomorrow felt too late. At least all her cameras were set up for night flashes now, one on the way to the old bull’s favorite dust-bathing site. She had a good chance of getting another shot of him there.

  “Let’s head on towards the big lake, shall we, Chiumbo?” Jade suggested. “Maybe our big gray friends are back from wherever they wandered and stayed put for us.” She pointed to a different trail from the one they’d taken previously. “We can go that way.”

  The two hiked along the wide trail for another hour, following the crater’s northern base. Jade assumed it would eventually climb up towards the crater’s ridge, perhaps switching back and forth. So far, the slight breeze had stayed in their favor, but as they rounded a bend, the air turned and brought with it a gut-wrenching aroma of rotting flesh. Jade held the back of her hand to her nose and winced.

  “Very bad smell, Simba Jike,” Chiumbo said. “I think maybe we not go on. Not good for a lady to see.”

  “We left the ‘lady’ back at camp with indigestion, Chiumbo. I intend to investigate.”

  Chiumbo shrugged. “Lady lions are very bold,” he muttered to himself. “It is not safe to stand in their way.”

  The source of the stench lay another three hundred yards away, hidden under a blanket of scavenging vultures. Jade took her Winchester from Chiumbo and fired one shot in the air. When the birds showed no intention of giving up their meal that easily, she fired another into the thick of them. Most of them half flapped, half ran a short distance away. Jade kicked the rest aside. Five tuskless carcasses lay sprawled before her, all males, a small bachelor herd.

  “This is very bad, Simba Jike. It is not safe here.” Chiumbo scanned the forest for signs of movement.

  “Whoever did this is long gone. These bodies have been here at least a full day.” She worked her way amid the carnage, looking for clues to the hunters’ identity. She found one in the arrows sticking out of legs and guts. She pulled out one and examined the tip. “What’s on the arrows? Does it kill the elephant?”

  Chiumbo shook his head. “Not enough poison to kill an elephant but enough so it is still dangerous. Then men come in close and shoot it with a rifle.”

  Jade began yanking arrows out of the elephants. Two broke off near their tips, but a half dozen slid out of the decomposing flesh. She slipped them into her day pack. As an afterthought, she stuck three back in an elephant, pulled out her camera, and took a photograph. Blaney Percival might want a picture as evidence if they ever caught the poachers.

  “We might as well go back and leave the scavengers to their dinner. We’re not going to find any living elephants walking this trail.”

  Chiumbo nodded slowly. “The elephants will shun this path for a long time.”

  A mile and a half from camp, Jade halted abruptly and listened. She placed her hand to her ear and then pointed to the forest. Chiumbo replied to the unspoken question by holding up one hand, fingers spread. Jade nodded. At least five people, maybe more, approached from the south. If the poachers still stalked about in the woods, she and Chiumbo could be in danger. Jade slipped behind a stout tree and waited. Her headman did the same.

  The noisy footfalls came closer. Whoever it was needed a lesson in woodcraft, Jade decided. They made entirely too much noise for anyone on the hunt.

  “Verdammt!”

  A stern shush followed this exclamation and exacted some silence, but the spell was broken. Jade had already identified the new arrivals. Blast! Hascombe’s crew. She waited until they were within twenty yards before she stepped out in front of them.

  “Your people must not be very interested in spotting game,” she said. “You make enough noise to scare everything away.”

  Harry Hascombe touched the brim of his hat in a salute. “Why, Jade. What a pleasant surprise. Nice to see you, too.” He pointed to the rear of the group. “But we’ve already been successful. Herr Vogelsanger bagged a nice young bull earlier this afternoon. The boys are bringing up the ivory.”

  The Prussian stood at attention, eyes focused above Jade’s head, a sneer across his face that the white scar only emphasized. Mueller stood behind him with an annoyed pouting expression, eyes rolling, mouth turned down. Dung coated the sole of his left boot, and he scraped it off on a bunch of nearby greenery. Von Gretchmar merely patted his damp forehead with a pocket kerchief. All the men wore broad-brimmed hats snugly clamped on their heads, hiding their ears from Jade’s attempted inspection.

  “Indeed,” she replied in as noncommittal a voice as she could muster. She wondered how von Gretchmar had fared. He certainly looked done in by the exercise. Apparently having such wonderful rifles didn�
��t guarantee success. None of the women had come along, but their absence didn’t strike Jade as odd.

  “Ja, but I am surprised in the jungle alone to see you, Fräulein,” said Vogelsanger.

  Jade nodded to her headman. “I’m not alone. Chiumbo is with me, and I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, thank you.” When she saw Chiumbo’s face, her eyes opened wider. The tense lines of his mouth, the furrowed brow, the crossed arms: all spoke volumes about his anger and loathing. Well, she thought, he had reason enough to hate Germans, and she decided it would be best if the two of them left now. She turned to go when Harry put out an arm to stop her.

  “An askari runner brought a message from Captain Smythe earlier today,” he said. “Seems there’s been trouble in this region.” He searched her face for signs that this was news and found none. “But then, you already knew that.”

  Jade’s lips opened a fraction, and her green eyes stared straight at Harry as if to indicate that he was trouble enough. “We told you we saw Smythe the other day, not to mention the murdered askari and the Abyssinians that Chiumbo and I spotted.” She pointed back down her trail. “Besides that, there are several carcasses a few miles down there, where someone’s been very busy.” She paused and studied Harry’s face for an admission of guilt.

  He frowned. “It wasn’t us,” he said.

  “Didn’t say it was. Guilty conscience? What did this runner say, specifically?”

  “I got the message secondhand myself,” Harry admitted. “I was bagging a bird or two for dinner, so von Gretchmar told me about it.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you for the information.” She smiled at the three men, flashed a bigger smile at their gun bearers, and once again turned to go. Harry stopped her with his next words.