Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur - Страница 48

"What is it?"

"You've lost two of your rhino." She strode towards him.

"I spotted the carcasses from the air."

"Where?" Craig was suddenly as angry as she was.

"In the thick bush beyond the gorge. It's poachers for certain. The carcasses are lying within fifty paces of each other. I made a few low passes, and the horns have been taken."

"Do you think they are Charlie and Lady Di?" he demanded.

From the air Craig and Sally-Anne had done a rhino count, and had identified twenty, seven individual animals on the estate, including four calves and nine breeding pairs of mature animals to whom they had given names. Charlie and Lady Di were a pair of young rhinoceros who had probably just come together. On foot Craig and Sally Anne had been able to get close to them in the thick jessie bush that the pair had taken as their territory. Both of the animals carried fine horns, the male's much thicker and heavier. The front horn, twenty inches long and weighing twenty pounds, would be worth at least ten thousand dollars to a poacher. The female, Lady Di, was a smaller animal with a thinner, finely curved pair of horns, and she had been heavily pregnant when last they saw her.

"Yes. It's them. I'm sure of it."

"There is some rough going this side of the gorge," Craig muttered. "We won't get there before dark."

"Not with the Land-Rover," SallyArme agreed, "but I think I have found a place where I can get down. It's only a mile or so from the kill." Craig unslung his rifle from the clips behind the driver's seat of the Land' Rover and checked the load.

"Okay. Let's go,"he said.

The poachers" kill was in the remotest corner of the estate, almost on the rim of the rugged valley wall that fell away to the great river in the depths. The landing-ground that Sally-Anne had spotted was a narrow natural clearing at the head of the river gorge, and she had to abort her first approach and go round again. At the second attempt, she sneaked in over the tree-tops, and hit it just right.

They left the Cessna in the clearing, and started down into the mouth of the gorge. Craig led, with the rifle cocked and ready. The poachers might still be at the kill.

The vultures guided them the last mile. They were roosting in every tree around the kill, like grotesque black fruit. The area around the carcasses was beaten flat and open by the scavengers, and strewn with loose vulture feathers. As they walked up, half a dozen hyena went loping away with their peculiar high, shouldered gait. Even their fearsomely toothed jaws had not been able completely to devour the thick rhinoceros hide, though the poachers had hacked open the belly cavities of their victims to give them easy access.

The carcasses were at least a week old, the stench of putrefaction was aggravated by that of the vulture dung which whitewashed the remains. The eyes had been picked from the sockets of the male's head, and the ears and cheeks had been gnawed away. As Sally-Anne had seen from the air, the horns were gone, the hack marks of an axe still clearly visible on the exposed bone of the animal's nose.

Looking down upqnoxhat ruined and rotting head, Craig found that he was shaking with anger and that the saliva had dried out in his mouth.

"If I could find them, I would kill them," he said, and beside him Sally-Anne was pale and grim.

"The bastards she whispered, "the bloody, bloody bastards." They walked across to the female. Here also the horns had been hacked off and her belly cavity opened. The hyena had dragged the calf out of her womb, and devoured most of it.

Sally-Anne squatted down beside the pathetic remains.

"Prince Billy," she whispered. "Poor little devil."

"There's nothing more we can do here." Craig took her arm and lifted her to her feet. "Let's go." She dragged a little in his grip as he led her away.

from. the peak of the hill that Craig had arranged as the rendezvous with Comrade Lookout, they looked out across the brown land to where the river showed as a lush serpentine sprawl of denser forest almost at the extreme range of their vision.

Craig had lit the signal fire of smoking green leaves a little after noon, and had fed it regularly since then. Now the sky was turning purple and blue and the hush and chill of evening fell over them, so that Sally-Anne shivered.

"Cold?" Craig asked.

"And sad." Sally' Anne tensed but did not pull away when he put his arm around her shoulders. Then slowly she relaxed and pressed against him for the warmth of his body. Darkness blotted out their horizon and crept in upon them.

ice was so close as to startle "I see you, Kuphela." The va them both, and Sally-Anne jerked away from Craig almost guiltily. "You summoned me." Comrade Lookout stayed outside the feeble glow of the fire.

"Where were you when somebody killed two of my beiane and stole their horns?" Craig accused him roughly.

"Where were you who promised to stand guard for me?

There was a long silence out in the darkness.

"Where did this thing happen?" Craig told him.

"That is far from here, far also from our camp. We did not know." His tone was apologetic, obviously Comrade rout felt he had failed in a bargain. "But we will find the ones who did this. We will follow them and find them."

"When you do, it is important that we know the name of the person who buys the horns from them," Craig ordered.