The Last Leopard (13 page)

“It’s her ssshhtumach,” he mumbled at last. “Sh-sh-she has shtumach flu. She needs . . .” and he reeled off a plant name Martine recognized. His glazed eyes singled out Martine in the crowd. He lifted a forefinger and waggled it at her, as if to say “I’m warning you.” Then he keeled over and began snoring loudly.

Mercy recovered first. “That drunken idiot!” she shouted. “My baby is dying and he can’t control his thirst for this poison for even one night.”

She aimed several kicks at the sprawling figure before a couple of villagers restrained her. Tears began to stream down her face. Odilo put his arms around her and looked as though he might weep too. In the sheepskin rug, the baby whimpered feebly.

“I might be able to help,” Martine offered in a small voice.

She spoke so softly that nobody heard her above the babble of voices. Martine was too shy to repeat what she’d said, but Ben went over to the sad couple. “Mercy and Odilo, Martine might be able to help,” he told them.

This time Odilo and some of the villagers turned, although most seemed displeased at the interruption.

“You have a power with babies?” Odilo asked doubtfully.

Martine shook her head. “No, I don’t. But in my survival kit I have medicine made from the plant the witch doctor mentioned. My friend Grace, a South African
sangoma
, gave it to me.”

Odilo was unsure, but between sobs Mercy urged her to fetch it quickly. Martine raced to get it from the hut and unzipped it in the firelight. There were gasps as she removed her pink Maglite, Swiss Army knife, silver whistle, compass, magnifying glass, tube of superglue, and three small brown bottles: one for headaches and pain, one to treat Bilharzia, a disease found in Zimbabwean rivers, and one for stomach ailments.

Mercy read the label on the stomach one, removed the cork from the top of it, and sniffed. Evidently it met with her approval.

“Odilo and I will take Emelia to our hut and talk about whether we should take a chance and give it to her,” she told Martine. “It must be our decision.”

Martine sank down beside Ben to wait, warming her hands on the fire. One of the villagers handed her a mug of tea, and its fragrant sweetness temporarily revived her. But not for long. She checked her watch and realized that she and Ben had been up for twenty hours. So many things had happened. It felt like the longest day on earth. It was hard to believe that nineteen hours ago she’d come face-to-face with the largest leopard ever recorded.

By the time Odilo returned, she could no longer see straight she was so tired, and Ben was so sleepy he was nodding like one of those bobblehead dogs in cars.

“Mercy says to thank you very much,” Odilo told Martine. But her heart sank when he added ominously, “Whatever happens . . .”

She opened her mouth to say that she wasn’t a doctor or even a
sangoma
and maybe it had been a bad idea to hand over Grace’s stomach
muti
without a medical practitioner’s diagnosis, but Odilo guessed what was troubling her and said, “Go to sleep, my friend. Have faith in the gift the witch doctor saw in you. There is nothing more we can do. We must wait for the
muti
to do its work.”

As the moon crept higher in a sky that was more white than blue-black it had so many stars in it, the whole village slumbered. The only creature still awake was Magnus. Frustrated that Martine had disappeared into a hut and seemed not to be coming out again, the hornbill was strolling about in search of entertainment. He found nothing to interest him until he reached the cooking area, where the contents of Martine’s survival pouch still winked in the dying embers of the fire.

Unnoticed, the hornbill hopped nearer.

M
artine tossed and turned for the remainder of the night on the hard, unfamiliar bed, agonizing over her grandmother and whether or not she’d done the right thing giving Grace’s
muti
to the sick baby. She fell asleep just before dawn and was woken minutes later by Ben. “Emelia is much better and is drinking her breakfast,” he said. “Ngwenya is back and has heard the whole story. He says that Odilo is smiling from one ear to the other for the first time since he lost his job.”

As glad as Martine was to receive this news, it was torture to be wrenched from her dreams after a mere catnap. She was as keen as anyone to get to the Lazy J and search for answers, but she longed for some proper sleep. The epic drive to Zimbabwe, the strain of keeping her encounter with Khan secret, Gwyn Thomas’s arrest, and the witch doctor’s frightening reaction to her had all been too much.

She could just imagine what the conversations would be like when she and Ben returned to Caracal School. Luke and Lucy would be going on about surfing and sunbathing in the Mediterranean, Jake would be talking nonstop about rugby camp, and Claudius would be full of tall tales about hiking with his dad in the Drakensberg Mountains.

Finally they’d get around to asking what she and Ben had done on their vacation and Martine would pipe up: “Well, let me see. First, Ben was nearly smashed to bits falling down a waterfall, then we saw a lion being shot in cold blood, and next day I was nearly mauled by a leopard. Oh, and my grandmother was taken away to jail by two corrupt policemen, and Ben and I had to hide in a remote village, and while we were there a baby developed a raging fever and I had to help save it.

“Apart from that, we had a very relaxing time.”

Ngwenya interrupted her thoughts by putting a mug of tea and a bowl of
mielie-
meal porridge in front of her.

“Eat quickly,” he said. “We must go to the Lazy J before the sun gets up.”

Ben joined her. He’d endured a “bird bath” using a bucket of ice-cold water, and he was shivering in the crisp morning air. “How are you feeling?” he asked, rubbing the goose bumps on his arms. “You got even less sleep than I did.”

“I’m scared,” Martine admitted. “I’m scared for us but mainly I’m frightened for Khan, my grandmother, and Sadie. What if we can’t help them? We’re up against corrupt policemen, blackmailing hunters, and all this wilderness. There seems to be a different set of rules in Zimbabwe. The law doesn’t seem to mean anything here.”

She swallowed a few spoonfuls of porridge. “How ’bout you? How do you feel about today?”

“I don’t think Rex Ratcliffe should be allowed to get away with making so many people and animals suffer,” Ben said. “Somebody has to try to stop him and it may as well be us. I know it seems impossible, but I think we’re a pretty good team when it comes to doing the impossible. Let’s visualize the outcome we want and try to make it happen. We want your grandmother and Sadie to come home safely. That’s number one. But we also want to save Khan and find him a place where he can live in freedom, away from any hunters. Try it, Martine. Try to picture it.”

Martine closed her eyes and conjured up an image of Sawubona. She visualized herself and the white giraffe standing beside Gwyn Thomas watching the sun come up over the lake. Jemmy was resting his head on her shoulder. Her grandmother was pointing at the hippos and saying something that made Martine laugh.

Next she tried to picture Khan in a place of safety. In Martine’s opinion, Sawubona was the best game sanctuary in the world, so that’s where she saw him. He was lying on a boulder high up on the mountain that overlooked the lake, his forelegs stretched out like a sphinx, watching her, Gwyn Thomas, and the white giraffe. In Martine’s vision, he got up and began to make his way down the slope, dislodging a rock as he did so.

Then the picture went fuzzy. Martine squinted at the image in her head, trying to conjure it up again, but it was gone.

She went back to the hut to collect her survival kit and only remembered when she got there that she’d left it by the fireside the previous night. She was on her way out again when she noticed a baby tortoise heading toward her. Martine gave a cry of delight. “You’re so sweet,” she said. “Where did you come from?”

She picked it up and saw the tortoise had something strapped to its back. It was too dark inside the hut to see it, so she carried it over to the light. Ngwenya had hung a lantern from a hook on the wall. She lifted the tortoise to the flickering glow and had to bite back a scream. Strapped to its back was a perfectly crafted miniature coffin.

Ben came up, carrying her survival kit. He stared at the tortoise in bewilderment. “Is this someone’s idea of a sick joke? Where did you find it?”

“Someone put it in our hut.” Martine was so sickened she wanted to hurl the tortoise into the bushes, but she knew very well it wasn’t the tortoise’s fault. She untied the coffin, crushed it under her boot, and set the tortoise carefully on its way. “It’s a warning. No prizes for guessing who sent it.”

“The witch doctor?” Ben exclaimed. “But why? Surely he wouldn’t do something as petty and, well, creepy as that.”

“Oh, I bet you he would. Since I gave the
muti
to Mercy and Odilo, he probably feels I’ve humiliated him.”

“He humiliated himself,” Ben reminded her. “It’s not your fault he was drunk.”

“All the same, we need to be on our guard.”

She blew out the lamp and fastened her survival kit around her waist. Through the half dark came the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. Sirocco’s leather reins were thrust into her hands.

“Come,” said Ngwenya. “We must hurry.”

They reached the Lazy J at six a.m., tethering the horses and walking the last half mile. It was already light and Ben was concerned that they were too late to do any meaningful searching, but Ngwenya had timed it so they arrived while the hunters were out shooting. He estimated that they had about an hour until the men came back, laden with the bloody carcasses of wildlife they’d killed, for a meaty fry-up of crocodile steak and buffalo sausage.

“We must split up in case we are discovered,” he said. “It is easier for two to rescue one than for one to rescue two.”

Martine was about to object, but Ben got in before her.

“Sorry, Ngwenya,” he said. “I made that mistake at the leopard cave and I’m not going to do it again. Martine and I can’t be separated. What we’re about to attempt is very risky. If we can’t do it together, we can’t do it at all.”

“I agree,” Martine said. “I’m not going anywhere without Ben.”

“As you wish,” said Ngwenya, who seemed amused by their protectiveness toward each other. “I will go to the lodge where the tourists stay and try to get into the office, where there might be some records.”

“Great,” Martine said. “We’ll go and check out the animal enclosure.”

Ngwenya bridled. “You will stay away from the lions and cheetahs? It is bad enough that you have persuaded me to bring you here. Please do not get into any trouble with the animals. Just because Magnus and the horses like you, it does not mean lions and cheetahs will be your friends.”

Martine smiled angelically. “Don’t worry, Ngwenya. We’ll look but we won’t touch.”

Getting into the Lazy J was simplicity itself. The guard at the gatehouse was accustomed to people arriving by vehicle, not on foot. He never even lifted his eyes from his newspaper as they sneaked under the barrier and sprinted across the parking area that lay between the razor-wire-topped perimeter fence and the gates of the hunting lodge.

Ngwenya turned to Martine. “I hope that your grandmother and Gogo are not angry with me for bringing you here.”

“They won’t be,” she told him. “Especially if we can find evidence showing that Mr. Ratcliffe is trying to drive Sadie out of business and sell Khan’s skin for thousands of dollars.”

“Be very careful,” Ngwenya said. “The Rat is a wicked man. You’ve seen what he is capable of. If he catches you, I don’t know what he might do.”

Crouching low, he followed the wall around to the tourist lodge. Ben and Martine wasted no time. They slipped beneath the turnstile into the wildlife enclosure. Their plan was to stay out of sight if possible, but act casually if they were caught and brazen it out.

As soon as they entered the concrete and steel enclosure, they realized they were in a hunting zoo. The majority of the cages were filled with lions and cheetahs, but there were also three black rhinos in a paddock, and a walled-off pond where half a dozen crocodiles could be seen basking in the sun.

The male lions charged at the wire mesh of their cages, snarling with rage. The cheetahs paced up and down their runs relentlessly, as though their prison had driven them out of their minds.

The animals were well kept and their cages clean, but their eyes were frantic with fear. Martine couldn’t stop thinking about the shot lion, his life leaking out onto the hunter’s boot while the big-bellied man posed for photographs. She knew that the other animals knew what was going to happen to them. Day after day, they heard the dying roars of their companions and had to wait, trembling, for the clink of keys that would mean they too were being summoned before the executioner.