Читать книгу King of Claw and Fang - Bob Byrd - Страница 7

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JOHN RAND never knew that the hyena and jackal were prowling outside his rude shelter; never knew when the stealthy approach of Zar sent them slinking into the brush.

If he had known, he would not have cared.

Morbidly he toyed with the idea of ending it all, there by the side of his wife. He was tired, weary. Life held no meaning for him, had no purpose now that Constance was gone.

Then the cry of his son calling out in his sleep for a mother who would never answer again, brought him back to sanity. If not for himself, he had to live for David. It was enough that he had the death of his wife on his hands. The boy must live. For Constance's sake. It was her dying wish. The boy's name had been the last to pass her lips before a merciful God had taken her from her sufferings to the eternal peace of heaven.

That thought--that conviction--fortified Rand, eased the poignant pain of his grief. He would live for his son, dedicate his life to the boy. For in him the flesh and blood of Constance were resurrected.

For the first time in many years John Rand prayed--prayed to the God, who in his infinite wisdom had created man as well as the savage beasts that roamed the jungle. His words were humble, penitent. He asked nothing for himself; only for the strength, the courage and the cunning to survive for his son and to eventually win back with him to civilization.

Rand did not sleep that night and it was not until the first pale light of dawn lit up the east that he stirred from the side of his wife. He had much to do.

First was the heart breaking task of fashioning a coffin from the fabric wings of the plane. It was crude at the very best, no more than a canvas covering for the lovely body. But he could not bring himself to commit his wife to the raw earth, uncovered.

David watched him from wide, scared eyes as he worked. "Mummy sick?" he asked in a small, hushed voice.

Rand turned to him, placed a gentle hand on his touseled head. "No, son," he answered softly. "Mummy is sick no longer. All her troubles are over. She has gone to heaven. God has taken her from us."

Little David smiled happily at the mention of the Diety. "God is good," he said, expressing the fundamental philosophy behind all true religion. "He won't let mummy cry any more."

Rand swept up the youngster in his arms and crushed him to his breast. Emotion gripped him and it was a moment before he could speak. "Amen to that, son," he cried reverently. "Yes, God is good. Mummy will cry no more."

David was satisfied with that and scampered cheerily about the clearing while his father labored over the grave. For a shovel he had nothing better than the jagged end of a shattered spar from the plane, but the ground was soft from the rains and his labor was one of love.

By noon his work was done. Calling David to him, he made his way slowly to the lean-to. There, with tender arms he picked up the shrouded body and with his son following after him, started back for the shallow grave.

Never had the heart of darkest Africa witnessed such a strange funeral procession. The jungle seemed to have stopped breathing while it watched.

Before the raw hole in the ground, Rand crushed his wife to him, while his lips moved in prayer. Then, reverently, he lowered his burden to its final, earthly resting place. He had fashioned a pillow of wild flowers for Constance's head; and now with David at his side they dropped orchids into the open grave.

Rand dropped down to his knees. "Pray, son," he said in a choked voice.

David knelt down beside him and pressed the palms of his hands together as his mother had taught him. From wide eyes he looked trustingly into the blue of heaven: "I know you'll take care of mummy, God. And thank you."

There was such a simple, all-embracing faith behind the words that Rand felt sure that God had heard. He felt better.

"Amen," he said.

Slowly he filled in the grave and together with his son piled rocks over the little mound. From parts of the shattered propeller a cross was fashioned and placed at the head of the grave. And thus ended the saddest task it had ever been John Rand's misfortune to perform.

It was not until the following morning that Rand felt the full shock of his loss. He could not believe that Constance had gone from him forever, that never again would her eyes smile into his.

For the next week he brooded for long hours over her grave, heaping it high with jungle flowers, while all unheeded his son chased gaudy-winged butterflies around the clearing.

It was only the urgent demands of David's body that brought him out of his reveries. And then only long enough to satisfy the youngster's need for food.

Night brought him no surcease. Cradling the boy in his arms he would throw himself on the rude couch in the lean-to and in vain woo sleep.

One night prowling jackals about the grave sent him leaping from the shelter. Snatching a glowing brand from the low burning fire he charged into the night. He was consumed by an insensate, Unreasonable fury. Not that! Anything but that! The thought of Constance's body despoiled by noisome beasts horrified him--became an obsession that haunted him.

The next day he heaped more stones upon the grave.

The rainy season was in full sway by now. Intermittently throughout the day and night the clearing was drenched by heavy deluges. They came sudden, without warning, as if some celestial gardener had opened a valve in heaven.

And then, two weeks after Constance had died, David fell sick. He had caught some strange jungle fever that sent up his temperature to perilous heights.

The boy's illness was the one thing that could have moved Rand from his lethargy, brought him back to reality and to his responsibilities to his son. For the first time he realized how he had neglected those responsibilities; how, in his selfish sorrow he had violated the last promise he had made to Constance.

His heart turned sick as he listened to the boy's childish prattle in delirium. If David died... but he did not dare think of that.

For three days and nights, with no more than a moment's snatched sleep, he nursed the youngster. No mother could have shown more care, more tenderness or patience. And then, on the morning of the fourth day, the fever was gone as suddenly as it had come. Sane-eyed, David smiled up into his father's face and asked for food.

The supply of powdered milk had long since been used. Now, with a prayer of thanks on his lips, Rand stirred up the fire, picked up the rifle, patted the boy reassuringly on the head and crept cautiously from the lean-to.

Deep in a cane-brake he took up his post by the side of a game trail that led down to the edge of the lake. A leopard passed before the sights of his gun, drank its fill from the lake and departed, unmolested. The hyena, jackal and wild pig also drank their fill and went their way.

Then Rand tensed and his finger tightened on the rifle. An antelope with a fawn at her flank minced gingerly down the trail. The female's head was back and her velvet nostrils quivered as she sniffed the air.

Some sense of smell or sound, or perhaps a combination of both, flashed a warning of danger to her brain. She whinnied the alarm to her young--her haunches tensed for a spring...

Reluctantly, even though it was for his son, John Rand squeezed the trigger of his rifle. The mother antelope bounded forward for a sheer twenty feet, but the bay fawn did not follow after her. As if its slender, dainty legs had suddenly turned to water, it crumpled in the center of the trail.

And from deep in the jungle, challenging the crack of the rifle, came Zar's rumbling roar. Many times he had watched the two-legged creature of the clearing with the strange, shiny stick in his hand. Many times he had seen him point that stick at some wild thing of the jungle. The stick would bark. And as night followed day, the animal it was pointed at would drop.

Zar could not understand the magic of this, but he feared. And because he feared he hated. The two-legged creature that looked like N'Guru, could deal death at a distance!

Zar roared again and from a side trail stalked Rand as he carried the fawn back to the lean-to.

That day and the day after, David gained strength on strong meat broth. By the end of the week he was himself.

Though the episode had turned out happily enough, it brought Rand to a fuller realization of the dangers that confronted himself and his son. Not only must they be eternally on guard for prowling beasts, but they had a more insidious enemy to face. One that was unseen--that struck silently, without warning--fever!

He was increasingly anxious to win back to civilization. But the fact that the rainy season was then at its height made the attempt impracticable if not impossible. If he had been alone he might have ventured it with the chances fifty-fifty that he won through. But with David, the long trek would be out of the question.

Much as he hated the enforced delay, caution dictated that course. And there were other deciding factors. By the time the rainy season came to an end, David would be months older. In the comparative safety of their camp he would become hardened, jungle wise, immune to tropical fevers, against their long trek through the trackless wilderness.

And then there was the added consolation that while they waited, he would be near Constance's grave.

In short, Rand resigned himself to three months of waiting. He determined, however, that at the first sign of a let-up in the rains, they would set forth.

In preparation for that day he studied for long hours the large map of the Dark Continent that had been tacked to the dashboard of his plane. As close as he could calculate, he had cracked up some two degrees south of the equator, between the 25th and 28th meridians, east.

Approximately two hundred miles to the east lay Lake Kivu. From there it would be comparatively easy to travel down the Ruizi River to Lake Tanganyika, the furtherest outpost of the white man. If, on the other hand, he went west, he should reach the Congo River within a hundred miles; and from thence, another trek of a hundred miles paralleling the stream due north should bring him to a tiny Belgian settlement.

There was little to choose between either course. Each offered the same danger of savage man and savage beast to every heart-breaking mile. Rand decided to wait the moment of his departure before making his decision.

The days dragged slowly by into weeks; the weeks into months. He took the enforced delay with a stoic calm and marveled at the sturdy muscles developed in the legs of his son--at the affinity the youngster had developed with the forbidding jungle.

David knew where the sweetest smelling flowers bloomed for Constance's grave; where the most luscious fruit ripened to satisfy their appetites. He made friends with the smaller animals, imitated the raucous cries of birds and strode the jungle trails as unafraid as Zar, before the coming of man.

As the rainy season dragged towards a close at last, Rand made his simple preparations for the long trek. He was increasingly sparing of the bullets for the rifle, hunting only for the necessity of food. And of each kill, a portion was dried to be taken along on the journey.