On the verge of charging after them, intent on using my karate skills, Tensy grabbed my arm firmly. “They’ll kill you; they would have spears somewhere. Besides, they’re sure to have their own firearms. You have nothing.” Trying to calm me down did make sense. “Why didn’t they kill us?”
“We’re small fry,” was all I could think of. “Tribal reasons, maybe. Gum never found these two guys.”
Her expression turned into one of deep concern. “It can’t be just that. This is part of my father’s scheme! They’ve probably been watching us, trying to stop us from prowling around. Don’t forget that he’s interested in exploring this part of the mountain. We’re in his way. And he can’t stop us. But he tried yesterday, remember?”
“Oh, come on!” I said.
“You’re a black belt. If you went after them, they could have killed you, saying afterwards that you had assaulted them. I’m telling you, this is my dad’s way of trying to stop us from coming here.”
“I still don’t believe it,” I said. “And what about Ashlea and Shane?”
She straightened up. “Seevie, stop arguing.” She turned and started heading back to the car, leaving everything for me to carry. Our day was over. Her figure was etched against the blue horizon where the mountain ended. She was crying, as if she could see into the future. She knew very well what havoc her father could create.
We took a path, and I glanced sideways. Some lofty trees made up the thicket where those men were now heading. “Well, the leopard is their problem now,” I said when I finally caught up with her.
Her argument continued on our way home. “The only reason why they didn’t kill you, was because I was there.”
“They’d kill me to get you, bright spark,” I said. Afterwards, this possibility did, in fact, strike me again when I remembered how one of those guys had looked at her.
During the previous week we had received the results of two tests at school, with Tensy getting hundred per cent for maths and ninety-eight for science and I only got seventy-nine and eighty-four. We were in the same grade, but our ways would part soon when she was to transfer to a special school for the gifted and I was going to remain where I was, IQ minus 16.
When we got to the car, I said: “I’m coming back here. I’ll first get some more cartridges.”
“No, Seevie, no! Don’t go up there alone!” she pleaded. “Ask your dad to go with you if you have to risk it. And take Cram with you!” She saw my resentment. “You’re so stubborn!”
I had to give in to her and tried phoning the man who was supposed to be my dad, Merby, on his mobile. But he was in a meeting, so I just took off after dropping her at home.
Soon I was back on the mountain with my dog, ready to shoot somebody in the foot if it meant getting that camera back.
It was Merby’s camera.
I found myself at the place where the two robbers disappeared over the rise. Yes, the little footpath they were following led straight to where that leopard mother had fled the day before. It was less than a kilometre away from where I was standing.
I cocked my rifle. “Come on!” I said to Cram, my pit bull terrier, a fighter who had saved my life more than once, like the previous Saturday when a wounded bushbuck charged me and my hunting rifle failed. Well trained, he took the spoor, stalking mode, heading straight towards the thicket. He did not have enough weight to handle a leopard, and his legs were too short. But he did once fight a honey badger to death somewhere in the bush, where our staff later found the remains of the skin. For two weeks he lay like something that was hit by a train, hardly eating; and did he stink! But he was all fight now.
When I reached the bushes I had to push past about fifty thorny acacias and at least twenty coral trees. From a deep shadow, I strained my eyes as I stopped Cram with a “tssst”. There was a small clearance. A dense collection of southern mahoganies and some bushes formed a thicket a little way in. I went on, very cautiously. There was no path to follow here. Still, Cram went ahead when I touched his backside with my foot. Everything was quiet. In front of us was a larger opening. Expecting anything to happen, I went in.
In the centre of the opening lay the leopard, dead. Her belly was ripped open and the contents lay spilled over the ground. An assegai, remaining stuck in her throat, was obviously the weapon of defence. Those men must have been unaware of what this place stood for!
Ten metres from her lay the man who had pointed Tensy’s gun at us; also dead. His face and abdomen were in tatters and he must have died bleeding to death from a severed jugular vein. His abdomen was virtually dissected by the animal’s formidable medial nails.
I touched nothing, holding Cram back from attacking the dead leopard. Dogs often defecated when they smelled a leopard, but Cram merely cocked his ears, looked in the direction of where the path was leading to, and then he headed straight towards the densest part of the thicket. Again I needed to restrain him.
We moved forward slowly, but we weren’t even halfway when the dog suddenly rushed in.
The largest leopard male I had ever seen, charged him! From his side swung an assegai shaft, and he was clearly out on a desperate, grizzly revenge. I had no choice but to shoot as quickly as I could. The dog was at his chest in an instant, but the bullet had entered his skull and had done its work, leaving an ugly sight. The spear had entered just below the spine.
On a great leadwood stem, forking out sideways, hung another human body, half-eaten. A .45 Browning lay in the bush about five metres from him. I didn’t touch the Browning either, whispering a short tribute of thanks to Tensy for sensing that the men could have killed me if I had followed them back there.
On examining the male, I concluded that a bullet might have ripped his ear off.
Not far from him I found the bag with the camera. I searched for the binoculars, but they were nowhere to be seen. I took more photographs.
As we returned, walking past the ghastly sight of the first body and the mutilated leopard mother, Cram sniffed around and stopped at a little enclosure near a hollow old tree trunk. Something smelled funny, and when I looked inside I found a little cub, nothing older than a day!
“Stay!” I commanded. Cram would never as much as snap at a house cat, but this thing smelt like bush and he could kill it in one bite.
What a discovery!
When I tried holding the cub against one of the dead mother’s teats, no milk came out. The mother must have been dead for hours already.
Towards late afternoon, after taking photographs of the scene where the female leopard and her attacker lay, I headed back, the camera slung over my shoulder and the cub tucked inside my shirt.
I was already quite far from that place with its ghastly scenes, when a voice called out to me from behind a boulder. “Seevie!” It was Tensy, of course. She had already seen me holding the stolen bag. When she reached me she kissed me and held me very tight. She had never done that before.
“Looking for trouble, are you?”
I shrugged her off, and quickly told her everything, speaking rather softly, not forgetting this was leopard area.
Luckily she was clever enough to bring a torch and when I showed her what was inside my shirt she exclaimed: “Seevie! He must have been born last night!”
I just said: “Come. It’s a she.” We walked down the same path where we went down previously, a path now having its own memories. Cram faithfully led the way.
“He’s hungry, poor thing,” Tensy said as she looked at the dog when we reached the cars. In a flash he jumped in with her and I had to drive back all by myself.
“My back itches like a mad now. And I’ve got ticks!” I said through an open window.