Stalking Ivory

by Suzanne Arruda

  Jade sighed. First Madeline and Beverly—now Chiumbo seemed to think he needed to play matchmaker. “He is a good man, Chiumbo.”

  Chiumbo smiled. “When I go into the mahoka huts to pray to my ancestors, I will pray for you, Simba Jike. May your journeys have happy endings and always lead you home.”

  “Where is my home, Chiumbo?” asked Jade. “I can’t seem to find it anymore.”

  His black eyes peered for a moment into her questioning green ones before he gently laid one finger on her forehead. “You have been looking for it here,” he said softly, then lightly tapped her chest above her heart. “But you should look for it here.”

  “I only wish Chiumbo was with us that day we first met Smythe,” Beverly now said, her gentle voice breaking into Jade’s reverie. “It would have saved us a lot of trouble.”

  “We’d be dead,” said Jade. “Smythe wouldn’t have let anyone escape knowing his past.”

  “Is Jelani still insisting on going back to his village?” asked Sam. “I thought you were all schooling him.”

  “We were,” said Jade. “He’s a very bright lad and reads and writes English very well. But he’s got this idea that an elephant told him to learn the ways of the mundu-mugo. We’ve actually spoken with the tribe’s old healer. He’s a great-uncle or something of that nature to Jelani and has been anxious to train him as his replacement. Hopefully, with the education we’ve given him, he can be a better leader for his people, one that’s not so easily taken advantage of by us outsiders.”

  Beverly jumped up from her chair. “Oh, speaking of outsiders, I forgot to give you your mail. Sam, you have a letter from Indiana, and Jade, you have a letter from your mother.” She handed the envelopes around, then waited on the edge of her seat to inquire as to the contents.

  Jade studied the rumpled envelope. “It’s been opened already. Bev? Did you open this?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Well, someone did,” said Jade. “You can see where the glue tore away part of the paper.” She held out the envelope for them to inspect. Sam took it.

  “Jade’s right,” he said after a brief study. “Now, who would want to read her personal mail?” He handed the envelope back and opened his own letter.

  “Maybe Mrs. del Cameron opened it herself to add to the letter and didn’t reseal it very carefully,” suggested Avery.

  Jade didn’t bother to reply. She knew her fastidious mother too well to imagine her doing such a thing. Oh, she might decide to add to a letter, but she’d have made out a completely fresh envelope. No, someone was prying into her personal business.

  Jade felt a prickling of her neck hairs and wondered if David’s mother had hired someone to spy on her. She seemed to have people in her pay all over British East Africa, so it wasn’t any stretch of the imagination to think she had an accomplice in Nairobi to keep track of Jade’s actions. Maybe she wanted to find out where they’d tucked away the heir to half her husband’s fortune, and hoped a letter might reveal it. The prickling increased. She shoved the thought aside and turned to her letter.

  “Well,” Beverly said impatiently after a few minutes, “what does she write?”

  Jade folded the letter and smiled at her friend. “Honestly, Bev, you’d think she was your mother. She says she is going to travel to Spain soon to once again try to bring home an Andalusian stud for the ranch. She wants me to join her in Morocco.”

  “How nice,” exclaimed Beverly.

  “Is your father going, too?” asked Neville.

  “No. Dad apparently has his hands full between lambing season and installing a new irrigation system or something.” She sighed. “I suppose I should go, although I have no idea what use I’ll be. The Spaniards are very possessive of their precious Andalusian horses, and if Mother can’t talk someone out of one of those stallions, no one can. Saying no to Doña Inez Maria Isabella de Vincente del Cameron is impossible.”

  “By the way,” said Bev, “speaking of your mother, you never finished your story about that lovesick bull elk.” She settled back into her seat with her arms folded. “I demand to hear the end of it. You left off when you got some huge mixed-breed dog you named something absurd,” Beverly reminded her.

  “Right, Kaloff the dog,” said Jade. “Not very bright. He preferred picking up sheep to herding them.”

  “Yes, yes, you told me he did something to a skunk once,” said Bev.

  “And he picked up a dead raccoon carcass,” added Sam. Both Bev and Jade glared at him, Beverly because he knew something she didn’t, and Jade because Sam had blabbed.

  “Indeed,” said Jade. “So Kaloff came trotting back with this skunk and I got caught in the middle of it, so we were both forced to spend a better portion of that summer out on the upper pasture with the sheep.”

  “No wonder you didn’t mind that stinking anti-laibon paste you wore last year,” remarked Avery.

  “Mother would agree. Anyway, that fall, after the perfume wore off and Kaloff and I were admitted back home, my parents entertained some earl who was pretending to be having an adventure in the Wild West. The man was a bona fide dandy, complete with hair pomade and scented mustache wax.” She paused and pointed down the hallway. “Beverly, I believe I heard Jelani just now. Perhaps you should check on him.”

  Beverly scowled, her blue eyes flashing. “Oooh. Don’t you dare try to interrupt this story again, Jade. You finish it or I’ll be forced to take extreme measures.”

  Jade flashed a wicked smile. “Sorry, Bev. I couldn’t resist. I’ll finish the story. It seems I remarked to our foreman that this duded-up sissy smelled like something the dog toted in. The earl and Mother both overheard me.”

  Beverly covered her open mouth with a hand. “Oh, Jade. How awful!”

  “It was,” Jade agreed. “I don’t recall anything else ever smelling that bad.” Beverly gasped and Sam yelped in laughter. Jade flashed a toothy grin at them. “Of course, Mother decided then and there that I had spent far too much time with the ranch hands and needed some refinement. The earl suggested sending me to school in London and recommended Winsor College for Women.” She spread her hands. “The rest is history.”

  Beverly jumped up and hugged Jade. “And I’m eternally grateful to that elk, the dog, the skunk, the earl, and your mother.”

  “Hear, hear,” seconded Avery. “I have a wonderful idea. I plan on taking the little woman back to London so Beverly can have the best of doctors and so our heir can meet the family. Why don’t you both come along?”

  Sam, who had remained noticeably silent during the last exclamations, stood. “I’m going back up to Marsabit in another few days,” he said. “I want to film the elephants at that big crater lake before the long rains start.”

  “Sam, are you sure?” asked Beverly. Her gaze darted back and forth between Sam and Jade.

  “Very sure, Beverly,” he said gently. “I need to salvage my filmmaking career.” He waved his letter in front of him. “My friend finished fixing that plane for me, but paying for it is another story. I’m going to need the profits from this motion picture to make a down payment. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll run into that Boguli fellow. Sure wish I’d met him.”

  Jade watched Sam with a slight frown as she wrestled with her own reaction to his news. For some reason, she’d taken it for granted that he would be staying in the area for a while, and she didn’t know if she was disappointed or relieved that he was leaving. Right now, disappointment was winning out, and she mentally kicked herself for being fool enough to think he still cared about her.

  “If you need money, Sam,” offered Avery, but Sam silenced him with a shake of his head.

  “I might be able to help you in another way,” Jade said. “I think I have a picture of Boguli on one of my cameras.”

  “You photographed him?” asked Avery.

  “Only by accident. He was just behind Smythe when Smythe tripped the camera wire. I forgot about it until now.” She rose from her seat. “Wait here and I’ll
develop it.”

  Jade hurried out of the Dunburys’ house and headed for the outbuilding they’d given over to her for a developing studio. She felt grateful for the excuse to be alone where she could collect her thoughts and bring her conflicting emotions under control. What the blazes was wrong with her? She ought to be grateful that Sam seemed to be letting her off so easily.

  She extracted the film from the camera and carefully took it through the various baths to develop the negative. Next she made a positive using the equipment that Avery and Beverly had generously supplied to complete the lab. When the photograph’s image emerged from the developing solution, she removed it and clipped it to a line to dry. That was when she first noticed the anomaly in the picture.

  “About time,” scolded Beverly when Jade returned. “I’d begun to think you ran away.”

  Jade shook her head, a dazed, faraway look in her eyes.

  “What’s the matter, Jade?” asked Sam. “Did the picture blur? That film had been out there in the forest for a while.”

  “No. It’s remarkably sharp,” she replied.

  “Then what’s the matter, lovey?” persisted Beverly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Jade handed the picture to Bev. “See for yourself.”

  Everyone clustered around the picture while Jade wandered over to the railing and looked out on the well-manicured lawn and typically British rose garden.

  “There’s Smythe falling down,” said Sam. “A perfect action shot. But where’s Boguli?”

  “Look more carefully in the background.” Jade stood with her back to them, listening while they scrutinized the picture. When Beverly and Madeline gasped and the men exclaimed aloud, she knew they’d seen what she’d seen.

  “Good heavens!” Sam shouted. “There’s only a shadow behind Smythe, but the shape is as clear as a bell.”

  Jade nodded and turned around. “So you see it, too?”

  “Of course we see it, but I don’t understand it,” said Sam. “It’s a perfect shadow of a large bull elephant, but you didn’t see any elephants around, did you?”

  “No, but I heard one, an angry bull. Look more closely. The shadow is all wrong. If there’d been an elephant on the other side of the trail, the shadow would have crossed Smythe. It doesn’t. It’s directly behind him. Right where Boguli stood. And,” she added, “look at the tusk. The shadow clearly shows a broken tusk.”

  “Bloody hell,” swore Avery. “That’s exactly the same as that old bull that the Abyssinians killed. The one you’d spent so much time tracking. But it can’t be.”

  Jade shrugged. “Boguli did say he was like a brother to the elephants.” She turned back to the window. “I’ve always wondered if animals had souls. It seems at least this one did.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Mount Marsabit was the site of Martin and Osa Johnson’s four-year stay, chronicled in Osa’s book Four Years in Paradise, as well as Martin’s book Camera Trails in Africa. For more information on the Johnsons and all their African explorations, visit the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute, Kansas, either in person or online at www.safarimuseum.com.

  Arthur Radclyffe Dugmore also made an early photographic safari on Mount Marsabit. His amazing photographs and descriptions of elephant behavior can be found in the 1925 book The Wonderland of Big Game: Being an Account of Two Trips Through Tanganyika and Kenya. Major Dugmore also describes elephant behavior in chapter 10, “Tembo the Elephant,” in his 1928 book African Jungle Life. While his books are out of print, they are well worth locating through book dealers or interlibrary loan.

  Some insight into the feudal system of the Abyssinian government of the time can be found in Major Henry Darley’s 1935 book Slaves and Ivory in Abyssinia: A Record of Adventure and Exploration Among the Ethiopian Slave Raiders. Sir Wilfred Thesiger discusses both his experiences in Abyssinia and trips to Mount Marsabit in My Kenya Days.

  And finally, if you have never discovered the fun and adventure of the Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, you are never too old to start.

  Photo by Joe Arruda

  Suzanne Arruda, a zookeeper turned science teacher and freelance writer, is the author of several biographies for young adults as well as science and nature articles for adults and children. An avid hiker, outdoorswoman, and a member of Women in the Outdoors, she lives in Kansas with her husband. You can reach her at www.suzannearruda.com.