by Wilbur Smith
‘We are going to use him for hunting,’ Lothar told him, and grinned at Hendrick’s perplexed frown.
Back at the rock shelter, Lothar worked quickly, making up twelve pack-saddles of ammunition, food and equipment. When they were lashed and loaded, he laid them out at the entrance of the shelter.
‘Well,’ Hendrick grinned. ‘We’ve got the saddles. All we need are the horses.’
‘We should leave a guard here.’ Lothar ignored him, ‘But we’ll need every man with us.’
He gave the money to Pig John, the least untrustworthy of the gang.
‘Five pounds is enough to buy a bathtub full of Cape Smoke,’ he pointed out, ‘and a glassful of it will kill a bull buffalo. But remember this, Pig John, if you are too drunk to stay in the saddle when we ride, I’ll not leave you for the police to question. I’ll leave you with a bullet in the head. I give you my oath on it.’
Pig John tucked the banknote into the sweatband of his slouch hat. ‘Not a drop of it will touch my lips,’ he whined ingratiatingly. ‘The baas knows he can trust me with liquor and women and money.’
It was almost twenty miles back to the town of Okahandja and Pig John set out immediately to be there well in advance of Lothar’s arrival. The rest of the party, with Manfred leading the mule, climbed down the hillside.
There had been no wind since the previous day, so the lion’s tracks were still clearly etched and uneroded, even in that loose soil. The hunters, all armed with the new Mausers, and with bandoliers of ammunition belted over their shoulders, spread out in a fan across the lion spoor and went away at a trot.
Manfred had been warned by his father to keep well back, and with the memories of the beast’s wild roarings still in his ears, was pleased to amble along at the mule’s slow plod. The hunters were out of sight ahead, but they had marked their trail for him with broken branches and blazes on the trunks of the camel-thorn trees so he had no difficulty following.
Within an hour they found the spot at which the old red tom had killed one of the count’s heifers. He had stayed on the carcass until he had consumed everything but the head and hooves and larger bones. But even from these he had licked the flesh as proof of his hunger and restricted hunting prowess.
Quickly Lothar and Hendrick cast forward in a circle around the trampled area of the kill and almost immediately cut the outgoing spoor.
‘He left not more than a few hours ago,’ Lothar estimated, and then as one of the grass stalks trodden down by the big cat’s paws, slowly rose and straightened of its own accord, he amended his guess. ‘Less than half an hour – he might have heard us coming up.’
‘No.’ Hendrick touched the spoor with the long peeled twig he carried. ‘He has gone on at a walk. He isn’t worried, he hasn’t heard us. He is full of meat and will go now to the nearest water.’
‘He’s going south.’ Lothar squinted against the sun to check the run of the spoor. ‘Probably heading for the river and that will take him closer to the town, which suits us very well.’
He reslung the Mauser on his shoulder and signalled his men to stay in extended order. They went on up the low rise of a consolidated dune and before they reached the top the lion broke, flushing from the cover of a low clump of scrub directly ahead of them, and went away from them across the open ground at an extended catlike run. But his belly, gorged with meat, swung weightily at each stride as though he were heavily pregnant.
It was long range, but the Mausers whip-cracked all along the line as they opened up on the running beast. Dust spurted wide and beyond him. All Lothar’s men except Hendrick were appalling marksmen. He could never convince them that the speed of the bullet was not directly proportional to the force with which one pulled the trigger, or break them of the habit of tightly closing their eyes as they ejected the bullet from the barrel with all their strength.
Lothar saw his own first shot kick dust from beneath the lion’s belly. He had misjudged the range, always a problem over open desert terrain. He worked the bolt of the Mauser without taking the butt from his shoulder and lifted his aim until the pip of the foresight rode just above the beast’s shaggy flowing red mane.
The lion checked to the next shot, breaking his stride, swinging his great head around to snap at his flank where it had stung him, and the sound of the jacketed bullet slapping into his flesh carried clearly to the line of hunters. Then the lion flattened once more into his gallop, ears back, growling with pain and outrage as he vanished over the rise.
‘He won’t go far!’ Hendrick waved the line of hunters forward.
The lion is a sprinter. He can only maintain that blazing gallop over a very short distance before he is forced back into a trot. If you press him further, he will usually turn and come back at you.
Lothar, Hendrick and Klein Boy, the strongest and fittest of them, pulled ahead of the line.
‘Blood!’ Hendrick shouted as they reached the spot where the lion had taken Lothar’s bullet. ‘Lung blood!’ The splashes of crimson were frothy with the wind of the ruptured lungs. They raced along the bloody spoor.
‘Pasop!’ Lothar called as they reached the rise over which the beast had disappeared. ‘Look out! He’ll be lying in wait for us—’ And at the warning the lion charged back at them.
He had been lying in a patch of sansevieria just beyond the crest, flattened against the earth with his ears laid back upon his skull. But the moment Lothar led them over the crest, he launched himself at him from a distance of only fifty feet.
The lion kept low to the ground, with his ears still back so that his forehead was flat and broad as that of an adder and his eyes were a bright implacable yellow. His gingery red mane was fully erect, increasing his bulk until he appeared monstrous, and such a blast of sound came out of those gaping fang-lined jaws that Lothar flinched and was an instant slow on the shot. As the butt of the Mauser touched his shoulder, the lion rose from the ground in front of him, filling all his vision and the blood from his torn lungs blew in a pink cloud and spattered into Lothar’s face.
His instinct was to fire as swiftly as possible into the enormous shaggy bulk of the lion as it towered over him on its hindlegs, but he forced himself to shift his aim. A shot in the chest or neck would not stop the beast from killing him, the Mauser bullet was light, designed for men not great game, and that first bullet would have desensitized the lion’s nervous system and flooded his system with adrenalin. The brain shot was the only one which would stop him at such close quarters.
Lothar shot him on the point of his muzzle, between the flared pink pits of his nostrils, and the bullet tore up between the cat’s eyes, through the butter-yellow brain in its bony casket and out through the back of his skull – but still the lion was driven on by the momentum of its charge. The huge muscular body slammed into Lothar’s chest, and the rifle cartwheeled from his hands as he was hurled backwards to hit the earth with his shoulder and the side of his head.
Hendrick dragged him into a sitting position and wiped the sand from his mouth and nostrils with his bare hands, and then the alarm faded from his eyes and he grinned as Lothar struck his hands away weakly.
‘You are getting old and slow, Baas,’ Hendrick laughed.
‘Get me up before Manie sees me,’ Lothar ordered him, and Hendrick put a shoulder under him and hoisted him.
He swayed on his feet, leaning heavily on Hendrick, holding the side of his head where it had struck but already he was giving orders.
‘Klein Boy! Legs! Go back and hold the mule before it smells the lion and bolts with Manie!’
He pulled away from Hendrick and crossed unsteadily to the lion’s carcass. It lay on its side and already the flies were gathering on the shattered head. ‘We’ll need every man and a bit of luck to get him loaded.’
Even though the cat was old and lean and out of condition, scarred by years of hunting in thorn veld and his coat dull and shaggy, yet his belly was crammed with beef and he would weigh four hundred pounds or more. Lothar picked his rifle out of the
sand and wiped it down carefully, then he propped it against the carcass and hurried back over the ridge, still limping from the fall and massaging his neck and temple.
The mule with Manfred perched on his back was coming towards him, and Lothar broke into a run.
‘Did you get him, Pa?’ Manfred yelled excitedly. He had heard the firing.
‘Yes.’ Lothar yanked him down from the mule’s back. ‘He’s lying just beyond the rise.’
Lothar checked the mule’s head halter. It was new and strong, but he clipped an extra length of rope on to the iron chin ring and put two men on each rope. Then carefully he blindfolded the mule with a strip of canvas.
‘All right. Let’s see how he takes it.’ The men on the head halter dragged on it with their concerted weight, but the mule dug in his hooves, mutinying against the blindfold, and would not budge.
Lothar went round behind him, taking care to keep out of the way of his back hooves, and twisted the mule’s tail. Still the animal stood like a rock. Lothar leaned over and bit him at the root of the tail, sinking his teeth into the soft tender skin, and the mule let fly with both back hooves in a head-high kick.
Lothar bit him again, and he capitulated and trotted forward towards the ridge, but as he reached it the light breeze shifted and the mule filled both nostrils with the fresh hot smell of lion.
The scent of lion has a remarkable effect on all other animals, domestic or wild, even on exotics from an environment where it is impossible that either they or even their remote ancestors could possibly ever have had contact with a lion.
Lothar’s father had always selected his hunting dogs by offering the litter of puppies a green wet lion skin to sniff. Most of the pups would howl with terror and stumble away with their tails tucked up between their hind legs. A very few pups, not more than one in twenty, nearly always bitches, would stand, albeit with every hair on their bodies erect and small growls shaking them from tail to tip of quivering nostrils. These were the dogs he kept.
Now the mule smelt the lion and went berserk. The men on the head ropes were hauled off their feet as it reared and whinnied, and Lothar ducked out from under its lashing hooves. Then it burst into a ponderous gallop and dragged the four handlers, stumbling and falling and shouting, half a mile over thorn scrub and through deep water-worn dongas, before at last it stopped in a cloud of its own dust, sweating and trembling, its flanks heaving with terror.
They dragged him back again, the blindfold firmly in place, but the moment he smelled the carcass again the entire performance was repeated, though this time he only managed a gallop of a few hundred yards before exhaustion and the weight of four men brought him up short.
Twice more they led him back to the dead lion and twice more he bolted, each time for a shorter distance, but finally he stood, trembling in all four legs, and sweating with terror and fatigue as they lifted the carcass onto his back and tried to lash the lion’s paws under his chest. That was too much. Another copious flood of nervous sweat drenched the mule’s body, and he reared and bucked and kicked until the carcass slid off his back in a heap.
They wore him down, and after an hour of struggling, the mule stood at last, shaking piteously and blowing like a blacksmith’s bellows, but with the dead lion securely lashed upon his back.
When Lothar took the lead rope and tugged upon it, the mule stumbled along meekly behind him, following him down towards the bend in the river.
From the top of one of the low wooded kopjes Lothar looked down across the Swakop river to the roofs and the church spire of the village beyond. The Swakop made a wide bend, and in the elbow directly below there were three small green pools hemmed in with yellow sandbanks. The river flowed only in the brief periods after rain.
They were watering the horses at the pools, bringing them down from the stockades of thorn branches on the bank to drink before closing them in for the night. The count had been right, the army buyers had chosen the best. Lothar watched them avariciously through his binoculars. Desert bred, they were powerful animals, full of vigour as they frolicked and milled at the edge of the pool or rolled in the sand with their legs kicking in the air.
Lothar switched his attention to the drovers, and counted five of them, all coloured troopers in casual khaki uniform, and he looked for white officers in vain.
‘They could be in camp,’ he muttered and focused the glasses on the cluster of brown army tents beyond the horse stockades.
There was a low whistle from behind him, and when he looked over his shoulder, Hendrick was signalling from the foot of the kopje. Lothar slid off the skyline and then scrambled down the slope. The mule, his blood-soaked burden still on his back, was tethered in the shade. He had become almost resigned to it, though every now and again he gave a spontaneous shudder and shifted his weight nervously. The men were lying under the sparse branches of the thorn trees, eating bully out of the cans and Pig John stood up as Lothar reached him.
‘You are late,’ Lothar accused him, and seizing the front of his leather vest he pulled him close and sniffed his breath.
‘Not a drop, Master,’ Pig John whined. ‘I swear on my sister’s virginity.’
‘That is a mythical beast.’ Lothar released him, and glanced down at the sack at Pig John’s feet.
‘Twelve bottles. Just like you said.’
Lothar opened the sack and took out a bottle of the notorious Cape Smoke. The neck was sealed with wax and the brandy was a dark poisonous brown when he held it to the light.
‘What did you find out in the village?’ He returned the bottle to the sack.
‘There are seven horse handlers at the camp—’
‘I counted five.’
‘Seven.’ Pig John was definite and Lothar grunted.
‘What about the white officers?’
‘They rode out towards Otjiwaronga yesterday, to buy more horses.’
‘It will be dark in an hour.’ Lothar glanced at the sun. ‘Take the sack and go to the camp.’
‘What shall I tell them?’
‘Tell them you are selling – cheap, and then give them a free taste. You are a famous liar, tell them anything.’
‘What if they don’t drink?’
Lothar laughed at the improbability but didn’t bother to answer. ‘I will move after moonrise, when it clears the treetops. That will give you and your brandy four hours to soften them up.’
The sack clinked as Pig John slung it over his shoulder.
‘Remember, Pig John, I want you sober or I’ll have you dead – and I mean it.’
‘Does Master think I am some kind of animal, that I can’t take a drink like a gentleman?’ Pig John demanded and drawing himself up marched out of the camp with affronted dignity.
From his look-out Lothar watched Pig John cross the dry sandbanks of the Swakop and trudge up the far side under his sack. At the stockade the guard challenged him and Lothar watched through the glasses as they talked, until at last the coloured trooper set his carbine aside and peered into the neck of the sack that Pig John held open for him.
Even at that distance and in the deepening dusk, Lothar saw the flash of the guard’s white teeth as he grinned with delight and turned to call his companions from the tented encampment. Two of them came out in their underclothes, and a long heated discussion ensued with a great deal of gesticulation and shoulder slapping and head shaking, until Pig John cracked the wax seal on one of the bottles and handed it to them. The bottle passed quickly from one to the other, and each of them pointed the base briefly at the sky like a bugler sounding the charge and then gasped and grinned through watering eyes. Finally, Pig John was led like an honoured guest into the encampment, lugging his sack, and disappeared from Lothar’s view.
The sun set and night fell and Lothar remained on the ridge. Like a yachtsman he was intensely aware of the strength and direction of the night breeze as it switched erratically. An hour after dark it settled down into a steady warm stream on the back of Lothar’s neck.
> ‘Let it hold,’ Lothar murmured, and then whistled softly, the cry of a scops owlet. Hendrick came almost at once and Lothar indicated the wind.
‘Cross the river well upstream and circle out beyond the camp. Not too close. Then turn back and keep the wind in your face.’
At that moment there was a faint shout from across the river and they both looked up. The camp-fire in front of the tents had been built up until the flames roared high enough to lick the under branches of the camel-thorn trees and silhouetted against them were the dark figures of the coloured troopers.
‘What the hell do you think they are doing?’ Lothar wondered. ‘Dancing or fighting?’
‘By now they don’t know themselves,’ Hendrick chuckled. They were reeling around the fire, colliding and clinging together, then separating, collapsing in the dust and crawling on their knees, or with enormous effort heaving themselves to their feet only to stand swaying with legs braced apart and then collapse again. One of them was stripped naked, his thin yellow body gleaming with sweat as he pirouetted wildly and then fell into the fire, to be dragged out by the heels by a pair of his companions, all three of them screeching with laughter.
‘Time for you to go.’ Lothar slapped Hendrick’s shoulder. ‘Take Manie with you and let him be your horse holder.’
Hendrick started back down the slope but paused as Lothar called softly after him, ‘Manie is in your charge. You’ll answer for him with your own life.’
Hendrick did not reply but disappeared into the night. Half an hour later Lothar glimpsed them crossing the pale sandbanks of the river, a dark shapeless movement in the starlight, and then they were gone into the scrub beyond.
The horizon lightened and the stars in the east paled before the rising moon, but in the camp across the river the drunken gyrations of the troopers had now descended into swinish inertia. Through the glasses Lothar could make out bodies, scattered haphazard like casualties on the battlefield, and one of them looked very much like Pig John, although Lothar couldn’t be certain for he lay face down in the shadow on the far side of the fire.