Stalking Ivory

by Suzanne Arruda

  Jade shook her head slowly since anything more vigorous set off explosions of pain between her ears. “I didn’t run into the slavers. Jelani escaped on his own. Hurt himself pretty badly doing it, too.” She looked up at Sam. “Where’s that canteen?”

  Sam handed it to her and she took another hit of water. Behind her, Beverly was carefully sponging Jelani’s face and hands and applying a tincture of iodine to the cuts on his hands. She heard the boy moan softly through the ministrations and Bev’s reassuring voice calming him.

  “See if you can find one of those bottles of aspirin, will you please, Sam?” asked Jade. She pivoted as much as possible to see Beverly without hurting her head. “How is he, Bev?”

  “He’ll live,” she answered, and started unwrapping the blood-soaked rags on his feet. She glanced up at Jade. “His temperature seems fine. I expected much worse with heat stress. He said the most curious thing just now.” She shook her head, jiggling the short blond curls, and repeated the words slowly to make sure she remembered them correctly. “He said the elephant told him to become a mundu-mugo.” She looked at Jade. “Isn’t that what his people call their healer? The one who gave you your name and tattoo?”

  Jade nodded. “It is.” She touched the indigo blue lion’s tooth drawn on her wrist. “But I don’t understand what he means by the elephant. I suppose he was hallucinating.” Her emerald eyes searched Beverly’s watercolor blue ones. “Are you sure he’s all right?”

  “Mostly. Thanks to you.” She uncovered his foot and gasped at the bloody, raw heel. “If we can keep this from going septic, that is. But I can’t believe either of you survived this desert.”

  Jade saw the pitiful little foot and ground her teeth again. “We found water,” she explained. “Boguli told me that we were sitting by an old river channel and the water was only a foot or so underground. I started digging with a sliver of basalt. Then Biscuit got the scent and joined in.”

  “Amazing,” said Avery. “But why didn’t this Boguli chap give you any of his water?”

  Jade shrugged. “As near as I could see, the man didn’t have any. He was like a camel.” She took the headache pill bottle from Sam, murmured her thanks, poured two pills into her hand, and downed them.

  “Then where is he now?” asked Beverly. “Boguli, I mean.”

  Jade took a deep breath before answering. She knew Beverly especially was not going to like this answer and tried to think of an easy way to break it to her. There was none. “He said the person who kidnapped Jelani returned to the mountain. He said he would track him, then help me find him when I got back.”

  The response elicited just the effect Jade had feared. Beverly and Avery rounded on her at once. “You’re going back?” they shouted in unison. Only Sam, Jade noted, said nothing. He stood by the car, arms folded across his chest.

  “You’re not going there,” said Beverly. “We’re taking Jelani to safety. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t lose his foot as it is.”

  “And there’s Chiumbo, too,” added Avery. “Bev’s right. We’re through here. It’s time to leave this mess to the authorities.” He turned his back as though the argument were finished.

  “So far the authorities haven’t managed to do anything,” Jade said, “not even solve the murder of one of their own soldiers. Whoever Smythe left at Isiolo should’ve sent help when our runner reached them. But you’re partly right. You are taking Jelani and Chiumbo and yourselves out of here. There’s evil behind all this, and I am going to find who’s responsible, if it’s the last thing I do.” She slid over into the passenger seat and motioned for Sam to take the wheel. “We’ll drive you to the Overlanders. Then Sam can drop me off at the mountain before he follows you.”

  Sam draped one arm over the steering wheel and gazed at Jade, an amused expression on his face. “What if I don’t want to leave with them?” he asked. “I don’t think you’re going to stop me.”

  “Hmmm,” she mused. “Probably not, but don’t try and stop me or you might just lose your other leg.”

  The return trip dragged on. Sam drove, Jade rode shotgun, Beverly cradled Jelani against the worst bumps, and Avery sat behind Sam. If he wanted to attend to his wife and the injured boy, he was prevented by Biscuit, who insisted on staying as close to Jelani as possible to lick his face. Every three hours, they needed to stop and cool the engine. Jelani spoke once, in Kikuyu. Jade thought she heard the phrase mundu-mugo. She assumed Jelani was asking for his tribe’s version of a doctor.

  No one else spoke otherwise, and Jade brooded, her mind turning over every bit of data. Abyssinians were poaching ivory. She’d seen them, seen the stacks of tusks, and when that young askari had found them, he’d paid for his discovery with his life.

  But there was more at stake here than ivory. Someone was either purchasing arms from these same raiders or supplying them. Since she couldn’t fathom the poachers having such a supply of weapons to sell, she felt certain they were buying them. Why? They weren’t the right type of rifle for hunting elephants. Did they plan on selling them to someone else, or were they amassing weapons for some private war in Abyssinia? Or perhaps they planned to carry their slave raids farther south and wanted weapons to fight the British.

  Possibly a more important question for her purposes was not why but who. Who was selling the rifles? And who was financing the purchase? The stash of German East African gold coins and German rifles pointed to Germans’ involvement, and there were certainly enough of them running around up there on the mountain. Add to that, Claudia von Gretchmar had been in the cache at least once and lost a button there. Had she been in a struggle or a romantic tryst?

  Jade thought about the photo negative of the woman in the arms of a man other than her husband. She wished she knew who that was. Harry? She shook her head. Claudia didn’t seem like Harry’s type. And what makes you think you know Harry’s type? Jade asked herself. Just because he had chased after her once didn’t mean he always went after young women. Maybe he just liked accessible ones. More than likely, Claudia had been cavorting with the Prussian industrialist Vogelsanger, although he seemed much more interested in young Mercedes or perhaps Liesel. There was just not enough of the man showing in the negative to identify him easily. Even the large ears could be a trick of his head angle.

  Wait a minute! Jade remembered the day Chiumbo was hurt. Claudia saw Jade, Sam, and Chiumbo and immediately wanted to go back to camp, ostensibly to keep an eye on her daughter. Did she leave in order to signal to someone to shoot Chiumbo? But it was Vogelsanger who followed after her. What did he say? Something about going along to protect Claudia. Maybe they were having an involvement. But blast it! His military haircut didn’t match the thicker hair in that photograph. That left Mueller and Harry again.

  Jade sighed. Blasted romantic triangles or quadrangles or whatever this one is. Stick to the important facts. Someone wanted her and her friends off the mountain and had tried to accomplish it using fear before escalating to violence. First someone shot an arrow into her tent; then someone shot Chiumbo without killing him. Only after they left did the criminals actually kidnap Jelani.

  Perhaps someone did see his capture and sale as an opportunity for extra profit, but maybe not. More likely Jelani saw or heard something that could identify the mastermind. Jade wished she knew just what German words he’d overheard.

  They all knew that she cared for the boy. He was an obvious way to get to her. But why get to her if they thought she’d left? Did they know she’d sneaked back up the mountain? Maybe she and Sam weren’t as clever as they thought. Maybe someone knew they’d sneaked back and was determined to get them off the mountain.

  Then another thought crept into her brain. Did someone out there hate her so much as to use the boy for revenge? The very idea made Jade fume inside, her anger smoldering, ready to burst into flames as soon as she had a target.

  How much does Harry know? She didn’t really believe he had orchestrated the incidents, but he might not be above receivin
g payment for turning a blind eye. After all, how could anyone in his group haul in several boxes of rifles and not have him notice, especially when they’d gone missing? Then she recalled his rather slipshod running of her own safari and thought he might not even notice what personal effects his group carried around, especially not the women.

  Jade sat up straighter. That could have been it. Harry wouldn’t question what the women brought personally. They could smile and tell him it was private, feminine needs and he’d run off before looking further. It was a near-perfect way to sneak just about anything into an area. Maybe Claudia wasn’t such an innocent dupe after all. Well, that was fine with Jade. She had no qualms about shooting a woman. If only she had her Winchester. The beloved rifle had been taken from her along with her knife when she and Sam had been left chained to die in the desert.

  By the time they reached Chiumbo, Abasi, and the Dunburys’ two Overlanders, Jade’s anger had regrown to an all-consuming beast inside her, clawing at her insides to get out. While Avery helped his wife, Jelani, and the ever-attentive Biscuit into the other vehicles, Jade rummaged through the equipment and retrieved the stolen bow and arrows and her hat. Only Sam saw her thin smile and the firm set of her jaw. He put one hand gently on her right hand and met her eyes.

  “Remember, Jade, you are not a killer,” he whispered. “And vengeance is the Lord’s.”

  She smiled, a seemingly innocent little smile, and nodded once, slowly. “Yes,” she purred, “but satisfaction is mine.”

  CHAPTER 23

  There is a duality to many an animal’s behavior. A lion will stalk with absolute silence, then roar to create a fatal panic in his prey. Similarly a prey might do its best to stay camouflaged, but once it is discovered, it often advertises its presence with a flashing white rump or bounding leap, as if to say, “Here I am. I’ve seen you. You won’t catch me.”

  —The Traveler

  SAM TURNED OFF the truck’s engine once they were close to the location they’d doubled back to the first time around. “We can’t drive any farther, Jade. It’s getting dark, I’m exhausted, and you need some sleep, too.”

  She curled up on the seat and leaned her head against the door. “I’ll sleep here.”

  Sam climbed out of the truck, went around to the other side, and opened her door, catching her as she spilled out. “No, you won’t. We’re not safe down here. I’m going to cover the truck with brush to hide it, and you’re going back up that tree.”

  Jade shook her head and pinched her arms to rouse herself. “I’ll help you camouflage the truck. Give me the panga. I’ll cut, you cover.”

  Exhausted, they worked like mindless drones, slashing brush, hauling it to the truck, and stacking the brush in front of the vehicle to prevent detection. It wasn’t animals they needed to hide from, but humans. This time, no one must know they’d returned. When they finished, they hauled their meager supplies and themselves up the rope ladder and onto the boards. Jade secured her bow and arrows next to Beverly’s rifle, which Sam had borrowed.

  “What is there to eat?” asked Sam.

  Jade opened the pack that Beverly had replenished, and inspected the contents. “Dates, figs, a tin of crackers, and some canned meat.”

  “No steaks?”

  Jade’s shoulders twitched as she chuckled silently. “There is something very ironic about having only dried and salted foods when one has just escaped dying of thirst.” She handed a box of figs and a tin of meat to Sam. “I don’t think I could swallow a cracker if I tried.”

  Sam ignored the can of salty meat and popped a fig into his mouth. “Steak, two inches thick, medium rare.”

  “Grilled over an open campfire,” added Jade, playing the game. “With potatoes baked in the coals.”

  “Ears of corn, roasted in their own husks.”

  “Do you pull back the husks first and butter the corn, then tie them back over so it’s all buttery inside?”

  Sam nodded. “Only way to do it. And coffee. Pots of coffee.”

  Jade sighed. “Nectar of the gods. But I prefer my steak a little less rare. There’s nothing like an elk steak, well-done over a mesquite fire.”

  “Slathered in ketchup.”

  Jade bolted up, eyes wide in horror. “Ketchup? What are you, a heathen? You don’t put ketchup on any steak.” She scooted farther away from him. “I’m not talking to you anymore.” Suddenly her teeth chattered, and she hugged herself. “Makes me shiver just to think of it.”

  “Are you all right?” asked Sam, his face etched with worry lines.

  “Cold,” she answered. “And we left the blankets in the truck.”

  He scooted over and put his arms around her, pulling her close. When she stopped shaking, she started to push herself away. “Thanks. I’m all right now.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “You’ve been through hell physically and emotionally. I’m going to make a nest for you in the hammock. All this moss in the trees ought to make decent bedding.” He stood up on the planks and gathered as much of the silvery moss as he could reach and arranged it to cover the hammock. “Try that out,” he said when he’d finished.

  Jade hesitated before crawling into the hammock. “Where are you going to sleep?”

  “Next to you.”

  She pulled back, but Sam reached out and took her gently by the shoulders. “Simple matter of body heat, Jade,” he said as he slid onto the hammock and pulled her in after him.

  She plopped onto the moss and nestled up with her back against him, grateful for his warmth.

  He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in closer. “Do you know what my favorite part of Madeline’s book was?” he asked. “It was when you were changing that tire and met up with the lion. How did she put it?” He started reciting from memory.

  Jade faced the immense male lion without a trace of fear, staring into his golden eyes with her own hypnotic green ones. “Jambo, Bwana Simba,” she announced in greeting as she raised her rifle. “You can go back and tell your witch master that I’m not afraid of you or him.”

  “What did you do, memorize the book?” She tried to prop herself up on one elbow to see his face, but managed only to get a bunch of dry moss in her mouth.

  “Parts of it,” he admitted. “But that’s the point where I knew you were the woman for me.” He toyed with a stray curl on her forehead. “Jade, you have to know this. I’m in love with you.”

  She spat out the moss and twisted around. “Don’t,” she said softly as she put a finger to his lips. “I’m not ready for someone being in love with me again. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready. It’s too hard when you lose them, and I’m too independent anyway, and—”

  This time Sam shushed her with a finger to her lips, his dark eyes reflecting the thin sliver of moonlight. “Well, you know my feeling, so you think about it. And to prove to you how sincere I am, I’ll even give up ketchup on my steaks.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek, letting his lips brush against her ear.

  Jade laughed. Then exhaustion took over and she drifted into sleep.

  “WHERE DID YOUR BOGULI say to meet him?” whispered Sam the next morning as they peered out from the shelter of trees near Harry Hascombe’s camp and up the mountainside.

  “He didn’t, but I suspect he’ll find me. The man is uncanny.” She’d woken alone in the hammock with Sam sitting on the plank nearby, popping dates in his mouth. An impeccable gentleman, he had yet to refer to their night cuddled together against the cold, and Jade felt an upwelling of gratitude. She hadn’t felt this emotionally overwrought since David died in a plane crash a few days after he’d proposed.

  “From the way you speak of him, he’s a rather unusual guardian angel,” Sam said.

  “He’s no angel,” Jade said, “but there is something very”—she paused and searched for a way to explain—“familiar about him.” She scanned the surrounding trees. “He may be watching us now.” She pulled a piece of paper torn from her field notebook and a pencil stub out of her
pocket, placed the sheet on her thigh for a writing desk, and began a brief note. When she finished, she started to rise, and Sam reached forward and tugged on her sleeve as a signal to stop. She glanced at his leg, then at him, as though to ask if it was giving him problems.

  He shook his head. “I’m fine,” he whispered, “but I’m a little concerned about your plan. You really intend to walk into Harry’s camp without consequences?”

  “No,” she whispered back. “But I need to communicate with him. Enlist his help.” She waved the note in front of him. “If he can get all of them out of camp at once, we could get in there and do a thorough search. Somewhere in that camp there must be something tying one of them to the poachers. I’d like to find a stash of those coins in someone’s bunk. I just wish we’d find Boguli first, but I can’t sit tight and wait for him.”

  “You are assuming, of course, that Hascombe isn’t part of the plot himself. What makes you think you can trust him?” He leaned forward to see her face better. “Are you perhaps harboring any residual feelings for the scoundrel? Don’t assume that just because he wanted you once, he won’t sell you up the river now.”

  Jade sighed and tightened her lips. Once a man started acting even remotely possessive, her independent nature took hold. Now she knew how that cow pony felt when the bull elk kept pursuing it. “Harry may be a scoundrel, and an opportunistic son of a biscuit who would sell his own mother, but I don’t think even he’d ever resort to shooting his own cheetah. He really likes that cat.” She turned and met Sam’s gaze. “That is why I think he’s not involved. Not,” she added firmly, “that my feelings about Harry should concern you.” She turned her gaze back to the woods so she didn’t have to see any hurt in his face. “You’re a very nice man, Sam, and we’ve been through a lot together, but…”

  Sam leaned back against the tree and sighed. “I take it that means our date to tour old Purdue is off.”