Читать книгу The Leopards of Sh'ong - Paul Jaco - Страница 4

A pair of fiery eyes was fixed on us. To the leopard, we were two dots approaching over a saddle of granite. Carefully selected, her den was virtually impregnable, but as her yellow-spotted tail whipped up the sand behind her, her wild leopard fury grew.

Everything became vulnerable when man showed up.

We were walking along a southern path where the cliff dropped straight down into a noon haze of bushes far below. This was the Mountain of Sh’ong: a huge plateau, its secrets tempting us to go in search of the grim truths hidden under its crust of unseen landslides. Rugged traces exposed age-old surface volcanic activity.

A jut of rock rising from the earth, a cone of solid stone seen from afar, lured us with its cave, like an open, toothless mouth. We pressed on, never suspecting death to lie waiting inside.

Tensy was breathing hard.

“Will you make it?” I asked as she came up from behind me.

She looked down at my dirty boots. “Easier than you, tough guy!”

Subconsciously, we were steering our thoughts away from an early morning at the hospital where we visited our friends, Ashlea and her brother Shane. While hiking on a nearby mountain, they were assaulted by two gangmen wearing leopard skin loincloths.

“I’m sure they wore those loincloths in tribal fashion,” Tensy had said to Ashlea, and, knowing the switchovers that occurred so easily in strife-torn Kwa-Violentia, I could agree. After the attack the men fled into the wildlife reserve bordering the area.

Now, on a risky mountain search, we were doing more than just hiking. We were examining caves, thinking attacks like those on Ashlea and Shane would not happen to us. Life was still uncomplicated and we had a lot to look forward to. Both of us were hoping to finish school and study Medicine.

A few months before, we had joined the Speleobeetles club, where most members were looking for adventure, saying that “cave hunting” could be a pastime till you’re “a hundred”.

To us there was, however, more to it.

Driven by an obsession, we were explorers, two amateur detectives on a relentless quest. With a huge green grassland on the one side and those juts on the other, we were making our way over the rifts and ruts.

Somewhere up there, on that mountain, was my sister’s grave. No one knew exactly where. To me it meant more than just solving a family mystery. I needed to find that grave for personal reasons. I’ve always suspected that I was an adopted child and learning about DNA in our Biology class made my suspicions grow.

The Sh’ong Mountain plateau widened out like a table in front of us. Another cone, also with its cave, loomed higher up, above a ridge. On the north side, there were more giant stalagmite-type juts like this one, protruding from the ground.

Closing in on the jut we were aiming for, Tensy exclaimed: “This one looks like a crook!”

Holding a branch for her to pass under, I turned sideways to see what she was pointing at. The top of that protruding rock appeared to be slightly tilted, like an anthill tower crippled by too much rain. “And it’s wearing a Phrygian night cap!” I said. We were always discovering new things, making us feel like we were in a wildlife paradise.

But neither of us had time to wonder what the crook’s tonsils were going to be like. I didn’t even finish speaking when we heard a vicious snarl as a yellow-coloured, spotted streak leaped out, making me snatch my rifle from my shoulder.

“Wait!” In a quick movement, Tensy tilted the barrel upwards. I was too late to fire anyway. Within seconds, the leopard was already a hundred metres away in the grass, Madame Agility, bolting headlong towards a patch of thorn trees and bushes on the northwestern side of the mountain.

Expecting more trouble, my rifle cocked, I peeped inside the cave. In the sand were her tracks, deeper than those of a normal female, and I could see where her tail had beaten the sand. “This was a place to have cubs,” I gathered. I knew leopards.

A few hairs on a large rock forming a ledge and some sand marks immediately behind it, told me exactly where she must have been lying, waiting to attack, being diverted probably at the last moment by the sound of human voices. What else?

“She was watching us,” said Tensy, hardly believing our luck. “She must have realised that she was outnumbered and decided to back off.”

“Still, she could’ve attacked us.” The fluff on my arm remained standing on end as I studied the signs in the sand covering the floor of the cave. Had we come here a week or even a day later, we would have been unlucky enough to experience her hospitality – in maternal wrath. “Guess this was to be the nursery.”

“Did we upset the family planning?” Tensy wondered as she also entered to investigate.

“Leopard cave,” I said, trying to sound brave. Our other caves also had names. This one was no deeper than the distance between two goalposts. At the far end, it narrowed down to form a hollow area, which undoubtedly was the main source of attraction to the expectant mother. In this now remote area, it would be ideal for raising a family.

After that shock, we stuck around for a while, trying to see if we could find anything in line of what we were looking for. “Nothing.” Then we left, glancing back at the jut quite a few times in case there was a male hiding somewhere or stalking us. This was unlikely now, but one never knew.

To avoid passing near the bushes where the leopard had entered, we needed to descend southward, follow a loop eastward, and ascend over some rough terrain to reach the next cave.

Suddenly a mighty voice rose up from where we had just stood. “Brilliant, you two!”

We swung round. A giant figure was standing opposite the Leopard Cave.

“Gum!” I was a little perplexed as we walked up to the man who had taught me everything about the bush since I was nine.

“You were lucky!” He must have seen everything from a distance. His direction of approach was from the village below, where he and Grace were staying over in their new house while the opera season in Milan was in recess. Undoubtedly, his approach would also have scared the leopard. Was that why she took off so hurriedly?

“We didn’t want to shoot her,” I said.

“Of course not! But you may have had to shoot her if she came for you; and you would have been rather late.”

“Okay-y,” I said, knowing very well that his father, the great Sh’ong, was fanatic about conserving wildlife in the area. This whole plateau was part of his territory.

“When will you be off again?” Tensy asked. Gum and Grace were set for Italy, leaving their new house unoccupied again despite Sh’ong’s protests. Gum had become an opera singer, while his father wanted him to stay here, tending to community and family matters as would be expected of a duty-bound prince. Sh’ong even built them that grand new house as a present next to his own, a showpiece of the New South Africa.

We called them the G’s. Tensy and her sister Grace were not on speaking terms for the time being, due to a ballet issue.

“Next month,” Gum answered, walking past us. He turned round. “You should be careful, the Spuds are active. They operate from your father’s mine,” he said, looking straight at Tensy. “I caught some of them up here last week. I don’t know how they got past the sentries. My men expected that two others would turn up, but nothing yet.”

“He probably beat the hell out of those he did find,” I said softly to Tensy. Gum was more than just a singer, with a physique like that of Odysseus. His eye had a kindly glint as he saw me watching his rifle, which looked very small as it hung over his huge shoulder. Not many people could handle a gun like he did.

The Spuds were a gang from a local tribe who resented Gum’s father, Sh’ong, for being first in line for the nation’s kingship. They were carrying on with a feud for years now, with Gum at the centre of their hatred.

I stared after him as his giant figure moved towards the eastern side, now on his way home.

The mine was situated on the other side of Sh’ong’s mountain, reaching up to the slopes. Having to limit his expansion was a source of irritation to the owner, Neville Nobesy, Grace and Tensy’s father. He and his miners were not allowed to extend exploration to the top. He had employed several members of the Spuds gang as miners without first establishing who they were. This had wrecked his in-law relationship with Gum, who, when he heard about this, called him “my father in claw”. Except for that, Gum and Nobesy had a history of confused loyalty from the days when Nobesy poached rhino for the horns. When they caught him, he put the blame on Gum, who had to be bailed out. Gum resigned as manager of Nob’s Motors. It’s actually a long story. We were about sixteen then.

We began walking towards the cave closest to us, passing some warthogs grazing on their knees, and an antbear hurriedly disappearing into its hole. At a turn, a lynx went scurrying over a rise, giving us a dirty look before it vanished. Four caves produced nothing, and we called it a day.

“We’ll come again tomorrow,” I said.

Tensy just nodded and, with a last look at the bushes where the leopard had disappeared, we started for where the southern road would take us down the mountain.

Even while we were heading home from our second cave, eyes were watching us from a remote vantage point only skilled mountaineers could have reached. Two men had just climbed to the top, using an old military pair of binoculars to spy out the vast area. How could we have known about them?

I dropped Tensy at her place, where her folks awaited us with more news from the hospital. “Doctors are having a battle with Shane; his soccer career’s in danger,” Mr Nobesy said as we entered the lounge, being rather talkative for such a grouse pot.

“It’s as if the warning is not enough,” said Mrs Nobesy, while we told them about our visit earlier. She was French-speaking, and insisted we call her Mignoné, not Madame.

She began lecturing us: “You’re too headstrong, you with your cave pursuits! See what has happened to your friends!”

“But Shane and Ashlea are white,” said Justin, the youngest member of the family, who did not know that friends were not colour-bound, except maybe when one was still at primary school.

Mr Nobesy frowned: “I forbid you to go up there again!” He hated me, except when I allowed him to beat me at table tennis. All I liked about him was that he taught us how to use his blowguns from Madagascar, where he and his family had lived till four years ago.

“That attack was ten kilometres from where we always explore, Dad. It was on the other side of your mine,” Tensy reminded him, while Ashlea and Shane’s ordeal kept turning up in our minds.

Mignoné quickly tried to change the subject to avoid any arguments. “How many kittens did Stella have?”

“Two,” I said.

“Just two!” She had indicated that she wanted one when she last visited us.

“I forbid it!” Mr Nobesy insisted, ignoring our small talk about the kittens, his paunch protruding almost like a bullfrog’s.

Tensy was ready for him. “We’ll find a slug of that gold, Dad!”

She had him just where she wanted him. He was quick at pretending disgust, but we both saw a subtlety slithering into his eyes as he turned away, saying: “I have to go to the garage; something’s wrong with the pumps.”

We looked at each other happily. We could continue planning our next day’s activity!

“Look,” I said, grabbing a pen and some paper and drawing a little map, “let’s forget about the leopard …” and we both bent our heads in some serious planning, since I couldn’t stay too long.

If only we knew what was taking place on the plateau right then.

The two sneaky mountaineers had proceeded cautiously to the point where we had seen the lynx. They didn’t make a fire or even smoked. Hardy soldiers during the war, their eyes were fixed on the bright lights from the village down below. Moving through the place in the dark and silently killing half the people before dawn would be quite easy.

Their instructions were sinister but clear. It was about more than just a village or some gold ore. A whole mountain was involved.

A thunderstorm erupted, but subsided after some torrential rain. An SMS came over the mobile. It was from Mpudu, leader of the Spuds. “Moale, come down. You’ll leave too many tracks. You can go up again later.”

“Our gear will get wet and dirty, Mpudu,” protested Moale when he hurriedly phoned back, using their leader’s tribal name, and asking, “and how can we descend now? It’s dark.”

“Then hide till dawn,” said Mpudu. “No tracks! But come down as soon as possible.”

Moale clicked out. It meant sleeping in a cave somewhere near the cliffs where they had left their gear. “Tomorrow will also be out, as the ground will still be wet. We’re not scared,” he said aloud.

They nevertheless heeded the order.