The man at Kambala (4 page)

She reached the narrow cleft which was her aim, and made the usual check for snakes before sitting down with her back to the rock. She often came up here in the mornings. It was such a superb spot from which to view the land she loved. Beyond the river with its forest-edged banks, the plains stretched limitlessly, broken only by termite mounds and the flat-topped acacia trees on which giraffe loved to feed. With the

dawn mist dispersed and the heat haze not yet formed it seemed possible to see to the ends of the earth, every detail in between picked out with a sharpness which in itself made the scene almost unreal. The thousand feet of the Escarpment looked painted against the pale backdrop of the western sky, thirty miles away yet close enough to reach out and touch.

From here Sara could see the whole of the station compound. Ted came out of the house after a while and began giving Steve York's Land-Rover a check before breakfast. Several minutes later he was joined by Steve himself, and the two men stood talking together before going back indoors. Sara remembered the night before when -he had followed her out into the compound, and felt her nerves quiver. He hadn't been here-twenty-four hours yet, and already he was spoiling everything. If only Bruce Madden had come, or better still, if her father hadn't been forced to make this trip. She didn't like change, especially when it came in the shape of an autocrat like Steve York.

She turned away to scan the plains again for the last time before going down. There were zebra out there, and wildebeeste, and way over by the largest clump of trees within her immediate range, a group of giraffe browsing delicately among the upper branches. Suddenly they were on the move, cantering off with a haughty elegance which suggested reservation rather than fear.

Sara moved the glasses to find out what had spoofed them, saw a movement among the long grass to the right of the trees and sharpened the focus. Three Africans dressed in the brown togas and capes of the

Masai herdsman emerged slowly and cautiously into the open patch of burned, cropped grassland which stretched up to the next ridge, the sunlight glinting off the barrels of the guns all three held in their hands. They stopped and conferred for a moment, one lifting a hand towards the ridge as though indicating the way they must go. There seemed to be some argument, and then all three melted back into the thicket from which they had come.

They were going to work their way round the perimeter of the clearing, Sara surmised, instead of taking the risk of being caught out in the open by anyone who might conceivably come along. She got swiftly to her feet and pushed the field-glasses back into their case. They weren't Masai, of that she was certain. They were too small, and their skins not dark enough. She wondered if they knew how close they were to the station, and why they were on the move at such an hour. Not that the whys and wherefores mattered at the moment. There were more important things to think about.

The downward journey took her about a third of the time. Reaching the bottom, she set off through the low brush towards the compound at a trot. Steve was smoking a cigarette on the veranda. He watched her vault the fence and cross to the house expressionlessly, straightening away from the rail as she reached him to pinch out the remains of the cigarette between finger and thumb and toss it into the bin below.

`Where did you just come from?' he asked.

`Up there.' Sara waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the bluff. 'Can we leave the explanations till
later? I think I've seen the poachers — or some poachers, at any rate.'

He came instantly alert. 'Where?'

`I'll show you.' She was already moving towards the corner of the house. 'We'll have to hurry or we'll lose them.'

`You're staying here.' He shouted instructions in Swahili to the two Africans out in the compound, then threw a leg over the rail and jumped down in front of her. 'Which direction? Quickly!'

Sara's chin jutted. 'You don't know the area like I do. It would take too long. And I might point out that the longer you argue about it the more chance they have of getting away.'

The expression in his eyes boded ill for the not too distant future, but the truth in her statement was too apparent to be ignored. 'All right,' he clipped. 'Get in the car.'

Sara walked across and got into the front passenger seat, greeting the two rangers already seated in the back with a cheerful Jambo. Steve slid in beside her after pausing a moment to tell Ted where they were going. He put the car into gear and turned in a wide circle to take the track leading down to the river.

It took them a good ten minutes to reach the point where Sara calculated she had seen the three Africans, and another six or seven to round the ridge for which she was certain they had been making. Beyond lay savanna country, divided into rough fields by the straight lines of the thicket hedges called dongas. Steve stopped the car and stood up through the open roof to survey the terrain through field-glasses, sweeping

round in a wide arc to cover every direction. Already the heat was rising fast, the distances shimmering and dancing. There were a thousand places where the Africans could be concealed if they'd heard the car. Sara doubted that they could have got very far beyond this. There hadn't been the time.

There was a movement in the near thickets, and a grey tank of a shape came lumbering slowly into the open, huge horned head lifted to sniff the wind. The rhinoceros knew there was something there, but was too short-sighted to make out just what. He moved closer, stood still and considered, then curiosity overcame caution and he came on at a slow trot. Without haste Steve dropped down again into the driving seat and veered off to the right. Looking back, Sara saw the rhino make a half-hearted effort to charge, then sink back to walking pace, its head going down to browse. They were so unpredictable. You never could tell just-which way they were going to react. Stupid, her father always said. Incredibly stupid. Nevertheless a serious attack could reduce a vehicle like this one to a wreck in a very short time. She had seen an example of that herself.

They were in among the thorn scrub now, the murderous two-inch spikes scraping along the sides of the car and inflicting the same long, rusty-looking scratches as borne by the rhinoceros themselves on their armour-plated hides. There was no wind, nothing moving, just the noise of the engine and the odd whistling sound made by the thorns as they sprang back into position. If the poachers were hiding in here they certainly couldn't be very 'comfortable. They came out
into an open patch again, jolting through tall, coarse grass which could have concealed a hundred men. Seventy yards away a couple of heads lifted sharply, scattering their attendant flocks of oxpeckers as the rhinoceros began to trot forward. This time it was the animal element which did the veering, turning off suddenly into a dense clump of thorn and disappearing from view.

Steve said abruptly, 'We might as well get back. There's nothing here.'

Sara looked at him quickly. 'I'm sure this is where they were heading. I saw one of them point towards the ridge.' She studied the lean, hard profile and knew a moment's pure rage. 'You don't believe me, do you? You think I made the whole thing up !'

`I'm not sure what I think,' was the grim reply. 'Try convincing me some more.'

Her eyes flashed. 'Go to blazes,' she said furiously. `You can think what you like ! It's the last time I ever ...'

`Save it.' His voice was harsh.

The rangers were listening avidly to every word, although probably understanding only a few, and they were both smiling broadly. Sara bit her lip and subsided into her seat. She had forgotten the company.

They made the return journey in complete silence. Before the car came to a proper stop in front of the bungalow, Sara jumped out and made for the steps. She was half-way up them when Steve's hand closed about her upper arm like a vice, spinning her round to face him.

`You speak to me like that again in front of the men,'

he said roughly, 'and I'll give you something to think about. And that's a promise !'

Sara opened her mouth, caught his eye and closed it again abruptly. She gave him a look of sheer malevolence and went up the steps and along the veranda to the spot just around the corner where the breakfast table was laid. Ted and Kimani were already seated, and it was apparent from both their faces that they had heard what Steve had said to her. With a nonchalance she was a long way from feeling, she poured herself some coffee and seized a piece of toast, then moved away to the nearest chair and sat down in it, slinging both feet up on the rail. By the time Steve appeared she was munching away on the toast as if that were her only interest in life.

`No luck?' asked Ted as the other man took a seat.

`No.' The single negative discouraged further inquiry. 'Are you planning that aerial survey for today, did you say?' he asked Kimani, and receiving an affirmative, 'Then perhaps you'd take Sara along and drop her at the Lodge for the day. There was a party of English flying down when I left Nairobi yesterday morning.'

`I'd rather stay here, thanks,' Sara said expressionlessly.

There was a brief pause, then he said, 'Fair enough. See that you do.'

If he hadn't added that last she might just have decided to change her mind about her proposed plans, but the deliberation in his tone was a red rag to her spirit. She finished the toast and coffee without haste, sat for a few minutes longer listening idly to the conversation, then got to her feet and sauntered past the three men. Kiki swung down from an overhanging branch of the huge Candelabra Euphorbia which shaded the whole of this side of the house, landing on her shoulder to shrill protests into her ear. He hadn't had his breakfast yet. Sara took him round and into the living room and gave him a banana from the dish on the table, leaving him there to eat it while she went out again to see to the fawn.

She was in the pen when she heard the Land-Rover start up again. She didn't look up as it swept past and down the track to vanish among the trees.

Kimani left soon after wards for the airstrip belonging to the Lodge, where a light plane was kept by the Department. He was an accomplished pilot with over a hundred flying hours to his credit. Sara had been up with him several times and enjoyed the experience. From the air he could pick out the animals he had marked among the various herds, and thus check upon movement in a way which was virtually impossible from the ground. She could, she supposed, have quite well gone with him again today. Kim never minded company providing they knew enough about his work to be a help and not a hindrance. For a brief moment she regretted that she hadn't thought of it sooner, but it was too late now.

Ted had one of the cars stripped down when she came out from the house with the Winchester in her hand. He wiped his hands on an oily rag as he watched her climb into the driving seat of the spare, a resigned look on his face.

`I'm going to the village,' Sara informed him. She
gave him a wide, bright smile. 'If I'm not back before sundown tell the Boss man I decided to go native.'

`It's your neck,' he returned, and grinned suddenly. `Although I'd say it's probably the other end that's going to suffer most if he gets back before you do!'

`Hooey,' she said firmly, and started the engine before he could make any further comment.

She took the same route she had taken the previous day, cutting up from the river where she had watched the crocodile and over the ridge. Near where the steep rough rise began and the tall grass ended she saw a lioness and two cubs, the mother standing guard on a slightly higher piece of ground while her offspring tumbled in the grass below her feet. Sara slowed to get a better view, feeling safe enough at a distance of some fifty feet. The lioness ignored her, looking the other way with the same disdainful air adopted by any household tabby when not in the mood for confrontation, but Sara knew that should she put one foot to the ground that indifference would be a thing of the past inside of a second. Respecting the big cat's right to privacy, she drove on after only a moment or two, happy to have seen a family scene like that so close.

The herdsmen had long left the village with their herds by the time she got there, but the usual guards stood outside the entrance to the boma, tall, holding taller spears, motionless, like figures cast in copper bronze. The central kraal was crowded with people; two new huts were under construction and everyone available had been roped in to help. So far they only had the uprights erected on one, but the other was already plastered with dried dung on the inside walls
and was in the process of being roofed. They would both be ready for occupation before nightfall.

Sara was greeted from all sides, eagerly, as a friend. She had brought sweets for the children who gathered about her like bees round a
honey pot
, and she shared them out meticulously, placing one in each small palm held out to her and holding up her hands when they were gone to prove it. There was no pushing and pulling as one might expect to find in a similar crowd of European children, just a ring of beaming faces and moving jaws.

Mgari was seated outside his but as always, his proud, aquiline head lifted to her approach. His Jambo befitted a headman, dignified and calm. She squatted at his side to talk to him for a moment or two in a mixture of Swahili and Masai, until he saw fit to summon his wives to meet her. She was privileged to have him take this much note of her, she knew. Magari's own womenfolk were more often than not ignored in public. Kept in their place, she supposed you could call it. It was strange to think that but for circumstances Kimani Ngogi might have lived in such a village as this, a warrior perhaps like those on guard at the entrance. He had stepped across time, learned the white man's language, received a university education and made a place for himself in the world outside. Whether he was luckier than these of his people who still lived the way they had lived for thousands of years was open to question. These people were totally unacquisitive, tuned to their surroundings, untroubled by modern-day complexities. In many ways they were to be envied.