Treasure of the Golden Cheetah (2 page)

He whirled an index finger in the air in widening circles, signaling Avery to circle out. As they did, Sam’s gaze sought Jade. He found her at the end of the third pass.

“What in the Sam Hill is she doing!”

 

 

FILMING A HUNT had been Sam’s idea, but the hunt itself had been Jade’s. Biscuit had captured small game before, grouse and a few rodents, but soon Jade would be going to Kilimanjaro, leaving Biscuit with Jelani in his Kikuyu village. For the most part, the boy would keep her pet supplied with the chickens she’d purchased, but it would help if the cat could hunt for himself.

There was another, more serious reason for this hunt. Biscuit had been hers for over a year, and he stayed with her by choice. Jade wanted to be certain it wasn’t from necessity. If Biscuit desired freedom, Jade wanted him to have it. But that meant fending for himself. Hence, the practice hunt. She’d intended to drive game towards him using her motorcycle, but Sam had decided the hunt would make a great piece of film and offered the use of his Jenny.

Of course, with Sam grinding out film footage, someone else must fly. Jade would have jumped at the chance, but she had to stay with Biscuit in case something went amiss. Avery, on the other hand, didn’t need to be asked twice. A former Royal Air Corps pilot, he couldn’t wait to get aloft again. Avery, Sam, Jade, and Biscuit rendezvoused at a grassland near Jelani’s village. Sam and Avery went aloft while Jade, on her motorcycle, led Biscuit to an open location.

The beautiful cat seemed to sense a game in the works. The white tuft at the end of his black-ringed tail twitched as his eyes surveyed the grasslands. Obediently, he stayed put when Jade withdrew. Then, when the herd raced by, he selected a likely prey and charged, running it to the ground while Jade shouted, “Go get ’em, Biscuit!”

She felt her pulse race and her face flush with more than excitement. It was pride, pure and simple. But as soon as Biscuit had his prey, Jade’s sharp vision caught movement in the yellowed grass. A tawny tail, tipped in a black tuft, swished and jittered. Ahead of it, a pair of rounded triangular ears twitched fore and aft. Bits of thin golden mane stuck out at odd angles.

The young male had been unsuccessful in his own bid for dinner, probably because he was a bachelor with no harem to support him. When he caught wind of Biscuit’s kill, he roared his challenge, fully prepared to drive off the cheetah. And Biscuit was willing to retreat. He might not be completely savvy in the ways of the wild, but he knew he was no match for the four hundred pounds of hunger coming at him, and immediately backed off.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Jade grumbled as the lion strutted over to the Tommy’s carcass.

She started her engine and revved out an answering roar before unslinging her Winchester and firing a round into the air.

“Get your own kill!”

The young male looked up from his half crouch, a huge forepaw resting on the Tommy’s shoulder. He regarded her with amber eyes, then dismissed her as a noisy curiosity, certainly nothing worth troubling himself over. At least, not with a free meal at his feet. Still, her presence must have annoyed him, for he bent to pick up the antelope and drag it off elsewhere.

When he dipped his head and opened his mouth, Jade fired another round, the bullet striking the dirt a foot in front of him. His head snapped up, jaws empty. The velvety mouth wrinkled back in a snarl, exposing yellowed fangs. But while he didn’t reach down for the meat again, he also didn’t abandon the field.

That tears it!
She revved her bike and gave it the gas, roaring off towards the wary lion.

“Hyah!” she shouted as she charged directly towards him. Jade had little tolerance for bullies, especially one intending to rob her cat of his hard-earned meal.

The lion jerked his head and shoulders back, clearly startled by this new development. Jade slowed and leaned to the side, scooping up a few rocks. Armed, she revved the engine again, letting it give voice to her own challenge. The lion stepped back two paces and snarled. Jade pulled up to within fifty feet and hurled her first missile. It hit the lion square on his nose. She threw another, striking his foreleg when he backed up another step.

Just as she was about to reload and charge again, a drone grew out of the air behind her. The Jenny buzzed both her and the lion, coming within twenty feet of the ground. This new attack was too much for the lion. He gave a parting snarl before turning tail and running.

Jade picked up the antelope carcass and plopped it across the rear seat and the panniers. “Come on, Biscuit,” she called, and added a whistle. The cheetah joined her and together they headed back to the landing site and Neville’s truck.

While she waited beside the truck, Jade pulled her knife and sliced a chunk of shoulder meat, then tossed it to Biscuit. “It’s all yours. But we’d better wait until we get you home before you eat the rest. Our friend or one of his brothers might come back.”

The Jenny’s engine purred to the east. Jade looked up, shielding her eyes against the glaring African sunlight. As she watched, Avery brought the plane down in a smooth landing. They puttered to a stop, the plane’s propellers still idling. Jade expected Avery to climb out and return to the truck while Sam took over using the front cockpit’s controls to fly back to his hangar at the Thompsons’ farm. But the figure striding towards her was taller by several inches and walked with a slight limp.

Jade’s pulse quickened.
Uh-oh!
Something about his stride told her that he wasn’t planning on sweeping her into a big hug.

“Sam! Did you capture all of that? I even thought of a pis sonet just now. Listen.” She started reciting. “Biscuit had captured some meat, and just settled down to eat, when the cheetah was cheated, but the lion retreated, and—”

“What in the name of heaven were you doing?” Sam demanded. “Are you nuts? Charging a full-grown male lion?”

Jade opened her mouth to defend herself, to inform him that the lion was an inexperienced young male, that lions were often cowards to begin with, but Sam never gave her the chance.

“If we hadn’t buzzed him, who knows what would have happened.”

“He was about to run away,” she said.

“He was probably about to knock you off your bike and add you to his menu.” Sam threw his arms up and out, letting them drop with a smack against his breeches. “I’ve
never
met anyone so set on getting herself mauled to death.”

Jade expected the argument to take its usual turn. He’d grab hold of her, say he loved her, and kiss her.

He didn’t. He only pivoted and marched back to his plane.

 

 

ONE RAY OF sunlight pierced an opening in the mud-daubed walls and struck the toe of Jade’s boot where she sat cross-legged on the dirt floor. She followed the beam’s path upward through drifting dust motes. The light did little to assist her in seeing the hut’s occupants. For that she had to depend on the pitiful, sputtering coals in a sunken fire pit. Much of the time, a hunched figure blocked even that weak light. The beam continued its slow sweep of the room, as though a Kikuyu spirit had an eye to the wall and intended to scan the proceedings. The gloomy interior did nothing to dispel Jade’s black mood, created by Sam’s anger.

After Biscuit had eaten his fill, Jade had ridden her motorcycle to the nearby Kikuyu village, the rest of the Tommy on the pannier and Biscuit loping beside her. Jelani, the youth she’d befriended on her first African trip, had met her with a message that his teacher, the tribe’s healer, wanted to see her. The old
mondo-mogo
puttered around with a handful of bones, alternating between rattling them in his withered hand and tossing them onto the floor. The clacking of bones and the ancient healer’s soft mutterings were the most prominent sounds, both unintelligible to anyone not versed in Kikuyu magic and lore. Jade understood a smattering of Kikuyu, but the old man spoke a language known only to the spirits in his head.

From above, Jade heard the delicate rustling of thatch as the hut’s other resident shifted about in the roof. Whether it was a lizard, a rodent, or even a small snake, Jade took no chances of it falling through on her. She kept her broad-brimmed felt hat on and did her best to maintain a respectful patience. The latter wasn’t easy after half an hour of ritual. She took a deep breath to settle herself and inhaled the hut’s history with it. The dominant odor was human sweat, mingled with the scents of animal fat and earth, the last two smeared on the man’s body to protect him from insects and the cold nights. Beyond that, Jade detected the more delicate scents of various herbs hanging to dry, coupled with goatskin leather. Missing was the stench of poultry and other livestock. Those animals were kept in the women’s quarters.

The
mondo-mogo
ceased his private conversation and straightened. Immediately, a shadow shifted and a slender figure hurried from the darker recesses. Jelani, the healer’s acolyte and student, squatted beside his master and awaited instructions. Jade prayed that it didn’t involve smearing any more protective ointments on her clothes or giving her any more tattoos. As it was, she bore two already: a lion’s tooth on her left wrist and a stylized lion’s paw print on her forehead just below the hairline. The latter was a Berber clan tattoo; the former a gift given her by this same healer along with her Swahili name: Simba Jike, the lioness.

While she waited for Jelani to interpret his master’s instructions, she studied the slender youth. Instead of the small boy she once knew, she saw a young man of thirteen wearing only an old pair of castoff khaki shorts. His shoulders had broadened and his facial features matured in the past few months. Jelani’s perpetually serious expression added to his adult appearance. The laughing boy had disappeared and Jade mourned him in her heart. Jelani had put his ear close to the old man’s lips. The healer’s voice, weak and cracked, sounded more like a breath to Jade. The youth listened attentively before he addressed Jade.

“My master says he called you here because he dreamed of you,” said Jelani. “He saw you near the place where God sits, far to the west.”

Jade nodded. The old man must have learned of her upcoming safari to Kilimanjaro, said to be the throne of God by both the Maasai and the Chagga who lived on its lower slopes.

“My teacher grew worried because there are many graves on the mountain. Most do not concern you, but there are some that do. One is very, very old. It is a king’s grave. Like you, he walked with a
duma
and let it hunt for him. But this one was different. It resembled a
chui
in its fur, a regal animal fit for a great king. My teacher sees two more graves that are not yet dug.”

The old healer continued to touch the bones before him with a soft wand of monkey fur. He interrupted Jelani’s tale with a few excited whispers. Jelani listened carefully and nodded. “My master has seen a third grave, but it is open.” The youth sighed, and for a moment, his intent look softened with sorrow. “He says it is for you. Be careful you do not fall into it.”

As he spoke, Jade felt a numbing cold brush her shoulders, as though death had caressed her while passing by to visit a more immediate appointment.

CHAPTER 2

—The Traveler

“YOU SIMPLY MUST TRY THIS RUM PUNCH, JADE. I MUST SAY, YOUR American friends do know their drinks. Rather funny, don’t you think, what with that Prohibition nonsense going on in our erstwhile colony?” Cissy Estes reeled and nearly toppled backwards into the tray of canapés. Jade reached for her left arm and steadied her.

“No, thank you, Mrs. Estes,” Jade said. “And they’re not my friends. I just met them yesterday. I’m seconding their safari to Kilimanjaro.”

No doubt about it. It was definitely time to “get out of Dodge.” Jade had enjoyed being a godparent along with Sam Featherstone to Beverly and Avery Dunbury’s new baby, Alice Merrywether Dunbury. Jade even tolerated Madeline Thompson’s noisy little celebration when her third book,
The Kahina’s Hand
, was sold and her second,
Ivory Blood
, appeared in the local bookstore. But raucous Nairobi with its silly parties and even sillier concerns made Jade cringe every time she went into town to pick up the mail. When Bev’s sister, Emily, sent a wire announcing that she was coming to help with the baby, Jade knew that retreat was in order. Unfortunately, the doorway to freedom led right through the pink-painted Muthaiga Club and another noisy party replete with frivolous gossip.

“I don’t know what the colony is going to do without Mr. Clutterbuck,” said one speaker. “He’s positively a fixture here. Where’s he going, anyway?”

“Brazil or Argentina or some such place,” came the reply. “Of course, he wouldn’t have left if his daughter were still single.”

The first speaker giggled. “Well, then, he may have to stay yet. I don’t think Beryl’s satisfied with being Mrs. Purves. Poor Jock. From what I hear, she’s already straying.”