Mark of the Lion (30 page)

“Did you tell—?” Jade recognized Harry’s baritone voice.

“I tried to—…” replied Roger in his tenor. “Are you cert—about this?”

“Yes, man! Do you … live in the shadows … life?”

“—risky.”

“Riskier than—…? Trust me.” Harry again.

Jade listened for more, but the conversation broke off when the tracker, Memba Sasa, interrupted them in Maasai. Since the earlier conversation seemed more to do with Roger’s personal life, she felt ashamed of listening to it. Roger came around to the front with several
debes
of water, and Jade jumped up to help.

“Where is that blasted gypsy going to now?” asked Avery to no one in particular except perhaps Jade. She ignored him.

“I think I can seal the cap,” she offered once Roger had it off.

“Oh?” asked Roger. He sounded skeptical, almost mockingly so. He emptied one
debe
of water into the radiator and opened a second.

“We can oil up a scrap of canvas and put it over the hole before replacing the cap. There’s certainly enough grease around the engine to do the trick, assuming that there’s no other leak.”

“Might as well try as not,” replied Roger. He dumped a third of the canful in and waited for it to trickle down. “There’s canvas to spare on the side panels. Cut a piece off the bottom.” His tone was brusque. Jade wondered what it would take to be friends with this man. Even Harry seemed to have a dominating, older-brother relationship with him rather than a friendship.

Jade pulled the pocketknife from her trousers and carved out a corner of the canopy. She smeared it with the oily residue coating the motor and worked the grease well into the fibers. When she was through, she held a tolerable facsimile of oilcloth in her hand.

“This should do the trick,” she said and placed the square over the hole. Roger handed her the cap, and she screwed it on over the cloth.

“I didn’t know I’d signed on a mechanic for the safari,” said Roger.

Something in his tone smacked of disapproval. Jade had heard it all before from frontline officers and decided not to let Roger’s personal insecurities bother her. She changed the subject. “Did your mother ever mention your father’s name, your
real
father?”

Roger hesitated and shuffled his feet. Jade squatted down, ostensibly to wipe her hands on the dry grass but mostly to give him time. “I’m not sure,” he said finally. “She never talked about him much. Mother wanted me to think of my stepfather as my real father. I do remember she said he named me, or at least he told Mother what to name me if she had a boy.”

A fresh set of tremors rippled like aftershocks down her spine. Could he actually be Gil’s son? It was too much of a coincidence that his father suggested the name Abel otherwise. She pressed the point. “You mean he suggested naming you Roger? Was that his name?”

“No, Roger is my stepfather’s name. I think my father’s name might have been Abel, or perhaps his father’s.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “Why do you ask?”

Does he suspect he’s a bastard child?
wondered Jade.
Is that why he lost Leticia?
She sidestepped the question. “Female curiosity, I suppose. I promise you I won’t use it in my article.” She stood up and closed the car hood. Doubt still lingered in her mind, a doubt she needed to eradicate before she revealed David’s secret to him. After all, she was told to get absolute proof before handing over the packet. One of the names Gil wrote was Dolie. Perhaps she was his mistress. She decided to ask his mother’s name next, but she didn’t get the chance.

“Are you two quite finished there?” bellowed Harry. He had just refueled both cars from a small store of gasoline cans. “We need to get moving.”

Roger held up the empty water
debes
. “We should refill these.”

“Later, at camp. We’re too far from water now, and we can’t waste time heading off to the river. Besides,” he added, “we have five more cans tied in that net behind my vehicle.”

Roger fastened the empty cans onto the Ford, and everyone clambered into their cars. This time Avery insisted on sitting in front with Roger to ask various hunting-related questions. Jade retrieved her hat and slipped into the back. If she hoped to hold a similar conversation with her two friends, she was sadly disappointed. Madeline, starved for information about fashions, discovered a willing informant in Beverly, and the two women happily discussed the merits of high versus low waistlines and the rise of hemlines.

Jade preferred trousers, hated sewing, and resented altering anything for some French designer’s whim. Consequently, she soon tired of the topic and rested her elbow on the wooden frame, her cheek on her hand. The hot afternoon sun beat down on her, so she plopped her hat on her head and tilted the brim to shade her face. The brim also prevented her from seeing much more than the blurred scrub directly beside them. Jade drowsed. Nearly an hour had passed when their car lurched to a stop and woke her.

“Are we at camp?” she asked with a yawn.

“No,” said Madeline. “The Dodge is steaming now.”

“Cripes,” groaned Jade. A huge cloud of steam issued from under the hood of the Dodge. “That’s really gone. It’ll take a good half an hour in this heat to cool enough to remove that cap. Don’t let them open it yet, Mr. Forster. The steam’ll come up like a blasted geyser.”

“Bloody hell,” muttered Avery. “Do you think I might scout for a bit while we wait?”

Roger shook his head. “With all due respect, I don’t know how good a shot you are, Your Lordship,” he said. “Either Mr. Hascombe or myself would have to accompany you, and I don’t think Harry would appreciate any more delays at present.”

“I assure you, I am an excellent shot.”

“That may well be, sir, but we’re rather close to some patchy wooded areas. They hold lion and rhino, neither of which readily welcome intruders.” Roger nodded to a stand of thorny
Commiphora
shrubs six hundred yards to his left. They, and similar patches, brandished the only bit of green to be seen in the harsh, dry landscape with the exception of a nearby straggly mimosa tree. Golden grasses and dried thornbushes covered most of the remaining area.

“There may be lion in that grass, too,” added Roger. “Hard to see the cats. They blend right in. You have to watch for their ears twitching.” Avery scowled in disappointment. “Don’t worry, Lord Dunbury,” added Roger. “You’ll see plenty of action tomorrow and after.”

“Well, I hate to be rude,” muttered Beverly to her female companions, “but I need to relieve myself. Madeline, you’re most familiar with safaris. Just where does one do that sort of thing privately out here?”

“With this many men around? You don’t,” she said. Beverly moaned.

Jade looked at the canvas canopy overhead and thought aloud. “American pioneer women generally held up a blanket to act as a screen for each other. We could haul that canvas top off and use it the same way.”

“I don’t think Mr. Hascombe would like that idea,” said Beverly.

“Harry’s approval is not your primary concern right now,” said Jade, “but I suppose we should leave the car alone. For all I know, that canvas top holds the framework together.” She jumped out of the car and started rummaging around the equipment tucked behind their wooden seat. “Surely there are blankets in one of these vehicles. We had some at the rail station at any rate.” She lifted up a box marked COOK POT and found a bundle of gray wool. “Here we go.”

Harry spotted her from the front of the Dodge and yelled at her, “What the blazes are you doing, woman? We’re not unpacking here.”

Jade held up the blanket. “We ladies have some private business to attend to. So just hold your horses.”

Avery stepped out of the Ford and retrieved his rifle, a double-barreled .500/.450 Holland. “I’ll stand guard.”

“Avery, my love,” protested his wife, “we are not wandering off anywhere. If we did that, we wouldn’t need the damned blanket.” She kissed him on the nose.

“Don’t swear, my dear,” said her husband. “It’s not becoming. And don’t argue. I don’t care to have a lion take a bite out of you while you are in, shall we say, a compromising position.”

Beverly rolled her eyes, and both Jade and Madeline smiled. “Sometimes,” whispered Madeline to Jade, “we have to indulge their manhood or they become particularly sullen and irascible. But really,” she added, “their desire to protect us helpless females is one of their more endearing qualities.”

Jade expressed her disbelief with an arched brow and opened the blanket. She handed one end to Madeline and held the other. Beverly stepped out of view of the cars. Avery stood guard a discreet distance away and watched the grass for those telltale ears or a tail twitch that might indicate a lion while each of the women took her turn behind the blanket.

Jade was refolding the blanket when she heard a loud hiss like a train’s piston. Someone had opened the radiator cap prematurely. A cloud of steam belched upward, and the men scrambled away from the scalding rain.

Avery shouted, “There’s something in the brush!”

A distant clump of thornbushes shuddered violently as though a fierce wind pummeled them, and a puff of red dust rose along with a loud snort. The brush parted with a snap, and a monstrous black rhino trotted out. His ears twitched to put a lock on the strange hissing noise that had threatened his nap. It didn’t take long. His keen hearing quickly located the Dodge. The beast pivoted lightly and turned his bulk in its direction.

When it charged, its agility amazed Jade. She’d seen the large bulls in the Spanish bullfighting arena run with such grace, but they had longer legs. This animal looked more like it should waddle, not canter.

“Don’t stand there!” yelled Roger. “Climb up the mimosa!” Madeline and Beverly raced up the nearest spiny tree.

“He’s after the bloody motorcar,” swore Harry. He raced around the opposite side and tried to reach his own rifle. “He’ll gore the damned thing and then us if we don’t stop him.”

Avery sighted down his Holland and fired. The bullet penetrated the thick hide and entered both lungs. Most other animals would have done their duty and died on the spot, but the rhino apparently didn’t care to take the time. He continued his charge, puffing like a locomotive. Blood spurted from his nostrils and sprayed the grass. The rhino slammed headfirst into the side of the Dodge. The vehicle shuddered and lurched under the impact but remained upright.

The large nasal horn forced its way through the netting on the side and pierced several of the water
debes
at one time. Avery tried to fire again, but the animal had entangled itself in the netting and literally dragged the car a quarter turn, putting it between himself and the gun.

Jade never doubted Avery’s or Harry’s ability to finish the beast, but it did occur to her that she was missing one hell of a picture. She reached over the Ford’s wooden side wall for her camera bag. As she tried for a foothold on a board, her left boot kicked one of the empty
debes
tied onto the frame. Her foot slipped and her hat fell onto the floorboard as she pitched forward.

The
debe
’s sudden clang alerted the enraged, wounded rhino. It stepped back from the Dodge and tossed the net full of leaking, gored water cans to one side with a shake of its monstrous head. Blood fell like rain and splattered the sides of the car.

“Jade! Look out!” shouted Beverly from her perch.

Jade looked up to see a dusty, dark, living tank thunder towards her. A ton of hatred powered the bayonet charge, all of it ready to gore her. No chance for the tree now. The animal would outrun her. “Get ready, Avery,” she yelled. She still held the partially folded blanket in her left hand. With a snap, she opened it beside her like a cape and shouted, “Hey-ah,
toro.
”

The rhino’s dim eyesight caught the waving blanket’s movement and it neatly pivoted towards it. It accelerated its charge.
“Toro!”
she shouted again and held her ground. The beast was nearly on her. The smell of hot blood, mud, and hide filled Jade’s nostrils. She flipped the makeshift cape again. As the horn pierced the cloth, she leaped aside and left the blanket over the rhino’s head. The animal thundered past. Jade put two hands on the car’s sideboards, and sprang over into the seat and out the other side with her Winchester.

She didn’t need the rifle. The animal was finally tiring from blood loss. It spent most of its remaining energy trampling the hated blanket into the red earth, goring it repeatedly. Avery repositioned himself and let fire the second barrel. This time the metal-jacketed bullet entered between the neck and shoulder and slammed into the heart. The rhino pirouetted once more to face the new threat, but it staggered and pitched forward, plowing the ground with its bulk.

“Stay!” Harry shouted and motioned for Avery to remain where he was. He fired with his own rifle into the rhino’s neck vertebrae. The animal dropped onto its side and lay still in its own blood and dust.

For nearly a minute, no one moved. In truth, after the great animal had displayed so much stamina, no one really believed it was truly dead. Finally, Beverly called out from the mimosa, “Is it dead now? May we come down? There’s a thorn poking me in a rather tender place.”

Harry cautiously approached the bull, rifle at the ready. After kicking its rear to make certain it was really dead, he nodded to Avery, who answered them, “Yes, you may come down.”

Jade leaned back against the Ford and breathed deeply, her head reeling with the giddy excitement only a matador experienced. She laughed aloud, and her green eyes sparkled through the sweat and dirt.

Avery knelt by the rhino and examined the large nasal horn. “Shall I take your picture, Avery?” Jade asked. To her right she saw Harry bearing down on her, a dark scowl on his rugged, rectangular features. She ignored him. “We must document your first trophy.”

“Splendid idea, to be sure,” said Avery. “It’s at least twenty four inches long,” he said, estimating the horn. “Come, Beverly,” he called to his wife. “Look what I’ve done.”