The Last Leopard (9 page)

Gwyn Thomas said, “What is canned hunting?”

“It’s when animals that are dangerous, rare, or hard to track, such as lion, leopard, or rhino, are put into small enclosures in order for hunters to safely and easily shoot them,” Sadie explained. “These hunters are usually rich tourists or powerful men like government ministers who want a guaranteed kill with minimum risk. They want to go home with a skin or a horn or a couple of tusks, and tell stories about how they stalked and shot a deadly wild animal.

“Rex Ratcliffe, who owns the Lazy J, has always claimed that he is running a respectable safari and hunting operation, but Ngwenya and I have suspected for many years that he is up to all sorts of tricks, including canned hunting. What you’ve seen today proves it. I’m sorry you had to witness that. I hope you can put it behind you and enjoy the rest of your stay at Black Eagle.”

She reached for a serving plate. “Anyone for butternut fritters?”

Martine couldn’t believe her ears. Sadie had as good as told them that her next-door neighbor was murdering wildlife in cold blood. She couldn’t seriously expect them to continue their vacation without a care.

As for the fritters, well, Martine liked butternut squash as much as anyone, but after almost a week of eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, she was heartily tired of it. She found it peculiar that the groceries they’d brought had gone into the locked pantry and never come out again, but suspected that if times were as hard at Black Eagle as they appeared to be, Sadie was probably saving the interesting food for any visitors who might show up. Not that it mattered this evening. Every time her stomach rumbled Martine remembered the lion and felt sick again.

“You must eat something,” urged her grandmother. “Have some potatoes or even just a slice of bread and peanut butter.”

Martine took a few potatoes to keep Gwyn Thomas happy but did little more than move them around her plate. Across the table, Ben was doing the same.

Sadie seemed determined to ensure there was no more talk of hunting or dead lions. She launched into a dreary rant about the high price of spare parts for cars. Martine started to simmer. She was fed up with Sadie pretending that everything at Black Eagle was completely fine when it obviously wasn’t. The fire was making her very hot, and that didn’t help her mood either.

Ben seemed to guess what she was about to do and gave a warning shake of his head. When she ignored him, he kicked her under the table. Martine took no notice. She waited until Sadie paused for breath and said, “Why are you being blackmailed?”

Sadie’s fork paused on the way to her mouth. Her fingers lost coordination and she dropped it with a clatter.

“Martine!” her grandmother said angrily. “Have you taken complete leave of your senses? What on earth are you talking about? Apologize to Sadie at once.”

Sadie was staring at Martine. “What did you say?”

“It
is
blackmail, isn’t it?” Martine demanded, risking her grandmother’s wrath. “Whose blood money don’t you want? Who are you trying to hold on to? Is it Ngwenya?”

Gwyn Thomas jumped to her feet. “This is outrageous. I’ve heard more than enough. Martine, go to bed at once and we’ll talk about this in the morning. I’m so sorry, Sadie. I’ve no idea what’s got into her.”

Sadie stopped her. “Sit down, Gwyn,” she ordered. “You too, Martine. You’ve done nothing wrong. Quite the reverse. Ever since I telephoned you at Sawubona and asked you to come here, I’ve been wracked with guilt. I felt I was deceiving you all by not telling you what you might be letting yourself in for. But I was desperate. When I broke my leg, I had no one else to turn to. No one else I trusted enough to ask, at any rate. Ngwenya has been wonderful, but he has a family to go home to at night. I guess I was afraid.”

Gwyn Thomas seemed unsure whether to be curious or furious. “But who are you afraid of? Are there bandits around here? Poachers?”

“No,” responded Sadie. “At least, yes, of course there are, but it’s not them that I’m afraid of. I’m not really afraid of anyone. I’m afraid
for
someone . . . Well, not someone as such . . .”

Gwyn Thomas sat back in her chair. “Now I’m really confused.”

Sadie sighed. “Let’s make some strong coffee,” she said. “I think I need to explain from the beginning.”

It all started when Sadie’s father, Colonel Scott, agreed to rehabilitate a young leopard into the wild on Black Eagle land on behalf of a famous Bulawayo wildlife orphanage, Chipangali. The project was an instant success. The leopard, a male named Khan after the Indian doctor who’d found him as a week-old cub, orphaned by a bushfire, took to the Matobo Hills as if he’d been in the wilderness all his life.

“You told us that you’d only seen him once,” Martine reminded Sadie. “It must have been more often than that if your father was rehabilitating him.”

Sadie gave a small smile. “No, I was telling you the truth about that. I saw Khan the day he came to Black Eagle, but the following day I had to leave for South Africa for a hotel management course I was taking. When I returned, Khan had already made his home in the bush and was as elusive as any other leopard.

“At the time of my father’s death a little over a year ago, our main feeling regarding the leopard was pride, I suppose. Animals belong in the wild, not behind bars like prisoners, and we were proud that we’d been able to give Khan his freedom. Our problems started when I began to get reports of his immense size from the few people who glimpsed him. Male leopards have a territory of up to twenty-three square miles. I’d hear tales of his magnificence from far and wide. Once he was grown, he no longer stayed exclusively on Black Eagle property.

“Four months ago, I was approached by Rex Ratcliffe. He offered me several thousand dollars in foreign currency if I would sell him Khan for use in one of his ‘safaris.’ I was sure that he really wanted him for canned hunting, but in any case I said that Khan was not mine to sell. He was free and that was the way he was going to stay. I told Ratcliffe that if I ever caught him or any of his hunters near my land, I’d shoot him myself.”

Martine was on the edge of her seat. “Go on,” she encouraged as Sadie stoked the fire with the tip of one of her crutches.

“Khan was only ever seen in two areas—Black Eagle and the Matobo National Park. Since the wildlife in the national park is protected, Ratcliffe focused his efforts on Black Eagle. He began to threaten me. He did it in ways so subtle that I could never prove he was behind it, but it was obvious. Tour operators started calling me to say they’d heard rats had been found in Black Eagle kitchens. Rumors circulated of thieving staff and dirty rooms. Within weeks, my business had all but dried up at the retreat. To add to our problems, five of our cattle died mysteriously, probably from poisoning, and one of our main water holes was contaminated. Plus the guards on the national park gate gave me trouble when I traveled to and from Bulawayo. I held out for as long as I could, but last month I was forced to lay off most of my staff. Then, of course, I broke my leg slipping on a greasy substance that had been left on my doorstep, and had to call you.”

“Did you contact the police?” asked Gwyn Thomas.

“What could I say? There’s absolutely no evidence to connect Ratcliffe or the Lazy J to what’s going on.”

“What about the phone call?” Ben suggested. “There’ll be phone records. You could tell the police that he’s been threatening you.”

Sadie gave a dry laugh. “Rex Ratcliffe’s much too smart for that. He uses an unlisted number, which means that no number appears on the telephone bill. And he’s very careful to be polite and not use threats. He always calls a couple of days after something bad has happened, such as the poisoning of the cattle, and offers me more and more money for Khan. He talks to me as if I’m senile and too simple to know what I’m turning down. He says things like, ‘Think about it. It’s not as if Black Eagle’s doing very well these days, is it now, Sadie?’

“ ‘The Rat,’ as I call him, partly because he bears a remarkable resemblance to a rodent, believes everyone has a price. He doesn’t understand what it is to love a person or animal so much that you would lay down your life for them.”

She looked around sheepishly. “You don’t think I’m senile as well, do you?”

“I don’t,” Martine told her. “I can totally understand what it’s like to love an animal so much you’d do anything for them. That’s how I feel about Jemmy, my white giraffe. He’s—”

“Let’s have no more talk of laying down lives,” interrupted her grandmother. “Let’s talk about solutions. However, I’m upset with you, Sadie, for not telling me this before we came. I’m responsible for Martine and Ben, and it was unfair of you not to inform me about what was going on so that I could use my judgment about whether or not it was safe to bring them.”

“I’m sorry,” Sadie mumbled. “I know I did the wrong thing. But I was sure that if you knew the truth you wouldn’t come.”

“Having said that,” Gwyn Thomas went on, “I can appreciate what an ordeal this must have been for you, and since we are here, I think I speak for Martine and Ben when I say that we’ll do everything we can to help you keep Black Eagle Lodge and protect Khan. We just have to figure out how.”

Martine and Ben voiced their enthusiastic agreement, and Martine was very proud of her grandmother for caring so much about helping her friend and saving the leopard that she was willing to overlook Sadie’s deception. Still, she couldn’t help thinking back to Ngwenya’s words about the treasure seekers’ quest: “Before the treasure can be found, the leopard first has to be dead.”

That meant they were up against two groups of potential leopard assassins: Ngwenya’s cousin and his gold-digging
shamwaris
, whom she and Ben had promised Ngwenya they wouldn’t speak about, and Rex Ratcliffe and goodness knows how many hunters from the Lazy J.

“Thank you all for your kindness,” Sadie said, her eyes shiny in the firelight. “You’ve no idea how much it means to me. But I have to be honest with you. We have a fight on our hands and I want you to be under no illusions about how difficult that fight will be. The Rat and his hunters want the leopard. They want Khan. And they won’t stop until they get him.”

M
artine was being buried alive. Moist, cool earth—earth that smelled of worms and rotting leaves—was filling her mouth and eyes and ears, and as fast as she tried to spit it out or push it away from her, more came in. She tried to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth. She tried to run, but her legs wouldn’t work.

“Martine. Martine, wake up.”

Martine sat up in bed, gulping for oxygen, relieved when no sand or worms came with it. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Ben was standing in front of the window, his small, strong frame backlit by a sky of glittering stars. He was fully dressed.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he whispered. “Were you having a nightmare or something? Are you all right?”

Martine rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “What time is it?”

“It’s a little after four a.m. I know it’s awfully early, but I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about Khan. I feel like we need to find him. How can we protect him when we don’t even know where he is?”

Instantly Martine was alert. “You’re right. We have to find him so we can figure out a way to save him. But what are we going to tell Sadie and my grandmother? Somehow I don’t think they’ll agree to us going in search of one of the world’s biggest leopards in pitch darkness, even if we are trying to help him.”

“We’ll leave a note telling them we’ve gone on an early-morning ride,” said Ben. “Which is true. We
are
going on an early-morning ride. It’s just that it’ll be a few hours earlier than usual, and we’ll be keeping an eye out for a leopard at the same time.”

Put like that the plan sounded perfectly reasonable, so Martine hopped out of bed and put on her jeans, boots, and a sweatshirt while Ben went to write a note for Sadie and Gwyn Thomas. On the way out of the cottage, they filled their pockets with hard buttermilk cookies, called rusks, the only treat that hadn’t disappeared into Sadie’s locked pantry. As they hadn’t touched their dinner the previous night, they were ravenously hungry.

The hornbill was the only one to see them go. He followed them to the stables and watched with his head cocked as they saddled the horses by torchlight.

“Don’t you ever get any sleep, Magnus?” Martine asked the bird, jumping to intercept him as he hopped slyly toward her shimmering pink Maglite on the stable floor. “And I’ve told you before, keep your claws off my stuff.”

They took the path around Elephant Rock, keeping to the grassy edges so that the horses’ hooves were muffled. “Shhh, Sirocco,” said Martine as the Arab gave a series of loud sneezes and jingled her bit in the process. Ben was riding Cassidy and Martine was leading Jack.

They were at the gates of Ngwenya’s village in under ten minutes. The silhouettes of the hut roofs looked like pyramids under the night sky. They tied up the horses and entered through the main gate. The smell of
sadza
—the maize meal porridge that is the staple food of Zimbabweans—hung in the air, mingled with the smoky smell of old fires. A sleeping dog roused itself and gave a few feeble barks, but Ben stroked it and it quieted.