A Time to Die

Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die

She had sat for well over two hours without moving, and the need to do so was an almost unbearable affliction. Every muscle in her body seemed to quiver with the craving for movement. Her buttocks were numb, and despite being advised to do so she had not emptied her bladder before they had gone into hiding, for she had been embarrassed by the masculine company and still too nervous in the African bush to go off alone to find a private place. She regretted her modesty and her timidity now.

She was staring out through the eye slit in the rude grass structure of the hide, down a narrow open tunnel the gun bearers had meticulously cleared through the thick bush, for even a tiny twig might deflect a bullet flying at 3,000 feet a second. The tunnel was sixty yards long, paced out so that the telescopic sight of the rifle could be zeroed on target precisely.

Without moving her head, Claudia swiveled her eyes toward where her father waited in the hide beside her. His rifle was propped in the "V" of a branch in front of him and his right hand rested lightly on the stocX. He needed to lift it mere inches to his cheek to be aiming and-ready to fire.

Even in her physical discomfort, the thought of her father firing that sinister glistening weapon made her angry. He had always filled her with violent and conflicting emotions; nothing he ever did or said seemed to leave her untouched. He dominated her life, and she hated him and loved him for it. Always she was trying to break away, and always he drew her effortlessly back. She knew the main reason she was still unmarried at twenty-six years of age, despite the way she looked, despite her own singular achievements, despite having had countless proposals-at least two from men with whom she had believed herself in love at the time. the reason for all this was the man who sat beside her. She had never found another to compare with her papa.

Colonel Riccardo Monterro, soldier, engineer, scholar, Our_ met, multimillionaire businessman, athlete, bon vivant, lady-killer, sPOrtsman... how many descriptions fitted him perfectly and yet did not describe him as she knew him. They did not describe the kindness and strength that made her love him, nor the cruelty and ruthlessness that made her hate him. They did not describe what he had done to her mother that had turned her into a discarded alcoholic shell. Claudia knew he was just as capable of destroying her if she let herself be run down by him. He was the bull and she the matador. He was a dangerous man, and therein lay his appeal.

Someone had Once told her, "Some women always fall for real bastards." She had immediately scoffed at the idea, but then thought about it later and came partially to accept it. The Lord knew, Papa was one. A great rumbustious bastard, with all the charm and flashing golden-brown eyes and shining teeth of his Latin origins, he could sing like Caruso and eat all the pasta she could heap on his plate. But although he had been born in Milan, the greater part of him was American, for Claudia's grandparents had emigrated to Seattle from Mussolini's Italy when Riccardo was a child.

She had inherited his physical characteristics, the eyes and teeth and glowing olive skin, but she had tried to reject every value of his that offended her and to take the opposite path to his. She had chosen to study law as a direct defiance of the lawless streak in him, and because he was a Republican she had decided, long before she could understand what Politics meant, that she was a Democrat.

Because he set so much store by wealth and Possessions, Claudia had deliberately turned down the $200,000 job she was offered after graduating fifth in her law class and instead had taken one at $40,000 in a civil rights agency. Because Papa had commanded a battalion of engineers in Vietnam and still talked of "gooks," her work with the indigenous Inuit People of Alaska gave her satisfaction enhanced by his disapproval. He called the Eskimos "gooks" as well. Yet here she was in Africa at his request, and the true horror of it was that he was here to kill animals and that she was in collusion with him.

At home what spare time she had was devoted to working without remuneration for the Alaskan Nature and Wildlife car_, servation Society. The society devoted most of its resources and efforts to fighting the oil exploration companies and their depredations on the environment. Her father's company, Anchorage Tool and Engineering, was a major supplier of hardware to the drilling rigs and pipeline contractors. The choices she had made had been calculated and deliberate.

Yet here she was in a foreign land waiting submissively for him to assassinate some beautiful wild animal. Her own duplicity sickened her. They called this expedition a safari. She would never even have contemplated becoming an accomplice in such a heinous enterprise-in fact, she had indignantly refused the invitations he had made to her in previous years-except for the secret she had learned a scant few days before her father had invited her. This might be the last time, the very last time, she would be alone with him. That thought appalled her more even than the dirty business in which they were engaged.

"Oh God," she thought, "what will I do without him? What will my world be without him?"

As the thought struck her she turned her head, her first movement in two hours, and looked over her shoulder. Another man sat close behind her in the small thatch-walled hide. He was the professional hunter. Although her father had hunted with this man on a dozen other safaris, Claudia had met him for the first time only four days previously, when they had disembarked from the South African Airways commercial flight at Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. The hunter had flown them out from there in his twin-engine Beechcraft Baron to this vast, remote hunting concession near the Mozambican border that he chartered from the Zimbabwean government.

His name was Sean Courtney. She had known him four days, but already she loathed him as if she had known him a lifetime.

Not strange that thinking of her father had led her instinctively to look back at him. Here was another dangerous man: hard, ruthless and so devilishly good-looking that her every instinct shrieked a warning at her.

He frowned sharply at her with clear bright green eyes in the darkly tanned face, and the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes puckered with annoyance at her movement. He touched her on the hip with one finger, cautioning her to stiffness again. The touch was light, but she felt the disconcerting male strength in his single finger. She had noticed his hands before, trying not to be impressed by their graceful form. "The hands of an artist or a surgeon or a killer," she had thought then, but now that peremptory touch offended her. She felt as though she had been sexually violated. She stared fixedly ahead again, through the eye slit in the grass wall, and fumed with indignation. How dare he touch her? The spot on her hip burned, as though he had branded her with his finger.

That afternoon before they had left camp, Sean had insisted that each of them shower and bathe with a special unscented soap that he provided. He had cautioned Claudia to use no perfume, and one of the camp servants had laid out freshly washed and ironed khaki shirt and slacks on her cot in the tent when she returned from the shower.

Those big cats can smell you from two miles downwind," Sean had told her. Yet now after two hours in the heat of the Zambezi Valley, she could faintly smell him sitting close behind her, almost but not quite touching her, fresh, male sweat, and she felt an almost irresistible urge to move in the canvas camp chair. He made her feel restless, but she forced herself to sit perfectly still. She found herself breathing deeply, trying to pick up the faint intermittent wafts of his odor, then stopped herself angrily as soon as she realized what she was doing.

Inches in front of her eyes a single green leaf, hanging down into the opening in the grass wall, spiraled slowly on its stalk like a weathercock, and almost immediately she felt the shift of the light evening breeze.

Sean had sited the blind below the prevailing wind, and now as the breeze came down to them it brought a new odor, the stench of the carcass. The bait was an old buffalo cow. Sean had selected her from a herd of two hundred of the huge black animals.

"That old girl is way past breeding," he had said, pointing her out. "Take her low on the shoulder, through the heart," he had ordered Riccardo.

It was the first animal Claudia had ever seen killed deliberately.

The crash of the heavy rifle had shocked her, but not as deeply as the scarlet gush of blood in the bright African sunlight and the mournful death bellow of the old cow. She had walked back to where they had left the open Toyota hunting car and sat alone in the front seat in a cold sweat of nausea while Sean and his trackers had butchered the carcass.

They had hauled the carcass up into the lower branches of the wild fig tree with the power winch on the front of the Toyota, positioning it with much debate between Sean and his trackers as to the exact height that would enable a full-grown lion standing on his back legs to reach up and partially satisfy his hunger without enabling a large pride of cats to consume all of it at a sitting and then move on to find other fare.

That had been four days previously, but even as they had worked the metallic green blowflies had come swarming to the smell of fresh blood. Now the heat and the flies had done their work, and Claudia wrinkled her nose and grimaced at the stench that came down to her on the breeze. The smell seemed to coat her tongue and the back of her throat like slime; staring at the carcass in the tree, she imagined she could see the black hide undulating softly as the maggots seethed and burrowed into the putrid flesh beneath it.

"Lovely." Sean had sniffed it before they entered the hide. "Just like a ripe Camembert. No cat within ten miles will be able to resist it." While they waited the sun sagged wearily down the sky, and the colors of the bush now glowed with the richer light, in contrast to the washed-out glare of noon.

The faint coolness in the evening breeze seemed to awaken the wild birds from their heat-drugged stupor. In the undergrowth down on the banks of the stream a laurie called "Kok! Kok! Kok!"

as raucously as a parrot, and in the branches directly over their heads a pair of glistening metallic sun birds flitted busily with fluttering wings, hanging upside down from the fluffy blooms to suck UP the nectar. Claudia lifted her head slowly and watched them with intense pleasure. Though she was so close she could see their thin, tubular tongues thrusting deeply into the yellow flowers, the little creatures ignored her as though she were part of the tree.

She was still watching the birds when she became aware of a sudden tension in the hide. Her father had stiffened, his hand on the butt stock of the rifle clenched slightly. His sense of excitement was almost palpable. He was staring through his peephole, but though she stared as hard she could not see what had excited him.

From the corner of her eye she saw Sean Courtney reach forward between them, his hand moving with infinite stealth, to grasp her father's elbow in a cautionary restraining grip.

Then she heard Sean's whisper, softer than the breeze. "Wait!"

he said.

So they waited, deathly still, as the minutes drew out slowly and became ten and then twenty.

"On the left," Sean wispered, and it was so unexpected that she started at the barely audible murmur. Her eyes swiveled left. She saw nothing, just grAs and bush and shadows. She stared unblinkingly until her eyes smarted and swam with tears; she had to blink rapidly and then look again, and this time she saw something move like mist or smoke, a drift of brown in the long sun-seared grass.

Then abruptly, dramatically, an animal stepped out into the open killing ground below the reeking carcass in the fig tree. Despite herself, Claudia gasped, and then her breath choked in her throat. It was the most beautiful beast she had ever seen, a great cat, much larger than she had expected, sleek and glossy and golden. It turned its head and looked directly at her. She saw that its throat was a soft cream, and sunlight gleamed on the long white whiskers. Its ears were round and tipped with black and held erect, listening. The eyes were yellow, as implacable and glowing as moonstones, the pupils reduced to black arrowheads as it stared up to the long clearing at the wall of the hide.

Still Claudia could not breathe. She was frozen with excitement and dread as the cat stared at her. Only when it turned its head away and looked up at the carcass in the tree could she let out her breath in a soft ragged sigh.

"Don't kill it. Please, don't kill it!" she almost cried aloud. With relief she saw that her father had not moved a muscle and that Sean's hand was still on his elbow restraining him.

Only then did she realize that it was a female, a lioness; there was no mane, and she had listened to the camp-fire conversation enough to know that they were hunting only a full-maned lion and that there were heavy penalties, huge fines and even imprisonment, for the killing of a female. She relaxed slightly and gave herself over to the full enjoyment of the moment and to the stunning beauty of this beast. Claudia's pleasure had only just begun, for the lioness looked around her once more and then, satisfied it was safe, she opened her mouth and gave a low mewling call.

Almost immediately her cubs came tumbling into the clearing.

There were three of them, fluffy as children's toys and dappled with kitten spots. They tripped over paws that were too large for the tiny bodies, and after a few moments of hesitation during which their mother placed no restraint on them, they launched into a boisterous mock combat, wrestling and falling over each other with ferocious baby growls.

The lioness ignored them and rose up on her hind legs to the dangling carcass. She thrust her head into the open belly from which the entrails had been plucked and began to feed. The row of black nipples down her belly stuck out prominently and the fur around them was matted with the saliva of her offspring, for she had not yet weaned them. The cubs took no notice of her feeding and went on with their play.

Then a second lioness stepped into the clearing, followed by two half-grown cubs. This one was much darker in color, almost blue along the spine, and her pelt was crisscrossed with old healed scars, the legacy of a lifetime of hard hunting, the marks of hoof and horn and claw. Half of one ear was torn off, and her ribs showed through the scarred hide. She was old. The two half-grown cubs that followed her into the clearing would probably be her last litter. Next year, when the cubs had deserted her and she was too weak to keep up with the pride, the hyenas would take her, but now she was still living on her store of cunning and experience.

She had let the young lioness go in first to the bait, for she had seen two mates killed in just such a situation, beneath a succulent carcass dangling from a tree, and she mistrusted it. She did not begin to feed but prowled restlessly around the clearing, her tail flicking with agitation; every so often she stopped and stared intently down the open lane to the grass wall of the hide at the far end.

Her two older cubs gazed up at the carcass, sitting on their haunches and growling with hunger and frustration, for the meat was obviously beyond their reach. At last the bolder of the two backed off, then made a running leap at the bait. Hooking on with its front claws, its back legs swinging free, it tried to grab a hasty Mouthful, but the young lioness turned on it viciously, snarling and cuffing it heavily until it fell on its back, scrambled to its feet, and slunk away.

The older of the two lionesses made no effort to protect her cub.

This was the pride law: the full-grown hunters, the most valuable members of the pride, must feed first. The pride survived on their strength. Only after they had gorged could the young ones feed. In lean times, when game was scarce or when open terrain made hunting difficult, the young might starve to death, and the adult females would not come into season again until game was once more plentiful. In this way the survival of the pride was ensured.

The chastened cub crept back to join its sibling beneath the carcass and began to compete eagerly with it for the scraps that the lioness ripped out of the buffalo's belly cavity and unintentionally let fall.

Once the young lioness dropped back on all fours in obvious discomfort, and Claudia was horrified to see that her whole head was swarming with white maggots that had crawled out of the meat as she fed. The lioness shook her head, scattering maggots like rice grains. She pawed frantically at her ears to get rid of the fat worms that were trying to crawl into the furry openings. Then she extended her neck and sneezed violently, blowing live maggots out of her nostrils.

Her young cubs took this as an invitation to play, or to feed.

Two of them launched themselves at her head, trying to hang on to her ears, while the third rushed under her belly and attached himself to a nipple like a tubby brown leech. The lioness ignored them and once more rose on her hind legs to continue eating. The cub at her nipple managed to hang on a few seconds longer and then fell under her back paws, his dignity trampled as she tugged and heaved at the bait. He crawled out between her legs crestfallen, dusty and disheveled.

Claudia giggled; she could not help herself, though she tried to muffle it with both hands. immediately Sean dug her hard in the short ribs.

Only the old lioness reacted to her giggle. The rest of the pride were too preoccupied, but the lioness crouched and flattened her ears against her skull, staring fixedly down the opening at the hide.

With those eyes on her, Claudia lost any urge to giggle again and held her breath.

"She can't see me," she told herself without conviction. "Surely she can't see me?" But for long seconds those eyes bored into hers.

Then the old lioness rose abruptly and slid away into the thick undergrowth beyond the bait tree. She moved like a serpent, with a sinuous flowing and gliding of the brown body. Claudia let out her breath slowly and gulped with relief.

While the rest of the pride romped, tussled, and fed beneath the bait tree, the sun slid below the treetops; the short African twilight was on them.

"If there is a tom with them, he will come in now," Sean breathed softly. Night was the time of the cats; the darkness made them bold and fierce. The light was going even as they watched.

Claudia heard something beyond the grass wall beside her, a furtive brush of some creature in long grass, but the bush was full of such small sounds and she did not even turn her head. Then she heard a distinct, unmistakable sound: the footfall of some heavy creature, soft and stealthy but very close. She felt her skin crawl with the insects of fear and the prickle of it up the back of her neck.

Quickly she turned her head.

Her left shoulder was pressed up against the thatch wall of the hide, and there was a chink in the thatch an inch wide. Her eyes were at the same level as the hole, and through it she saw movement. For a moment she did not recognize what she was seeing, and then she knew that it was a tiny expanse of smooth tawny hide, filling the chink only inches away on the far side. As she stared in horror, the tawny pelt slid past her eyes, and now she heard something else: an animal breathing, snuffling at the far side of the thatch wall.

instinctively she reached behind her with her free hand, never taking her eyes from the chink. Her hand was seized in a hard, cool grip. The touch that had offended her only minutes before now gave her more comfort than she had ever believed possible. She did not even marvel that she had reached for Sean's hand rather than her own papa's.

She stared into the chink, and suddenly there was another eye beyond, a huge round eye glistening like yellow agate, a terrible inhuman eye, unblinking, burning into hers with a dead black pupil in its center, a hand span from her face.

She wanted to scream, but her throat was closed. She wanted to leap to her feet, but her legs were dead. Her swollen bladder was like a stone in her lower belly, and before she could control it she felt a few warm drops escape. That checked her; the humiliation was greater than her terror, and she tightened her thighs and buttocks and clung to Sean's hand, still staring into that terrible yellow eye.

The lioness sniffed again loudly, and Claudia started silently but held on. "I won't scream," she told herself.

Again the lioness snuffled beyond the grass wall, her nostrils filled with the man-odor, and she let out an explosive grunt that seemed to rock the flimsy grass walls. Claudia caught the scream in her throat before it could escape. Then the yellow eye was gone from the chink and she heard the pad of great paws circling back around the hide.

Claudia swiveled her head to follow the sound and looked straight into Sean's face. He was smiling. That was what shocked her after what she had just lived through; there was a devil-may care grin on his lips and mockery in those green eyes. He was laughing at her. Her terror subsided and her anger flared.

"The swine," she thought. "The arrogant bloody swine." She knew that her face was bloodless and that her eyes were dark and wide with terror. She hated herself for it, and she hated him for being witness to it. She wanted to jerk her hand out of his grip, but she could still hear that great cat out there, still very close, circling them, and though she loathed him, she knew that without his grip she would not be able to control herself. So she held on, but turned her face away, following the furtive sounds of the lioness so Sean could not see her face.

The lioness passed in front of the blind. Through the peephole she saw the blur of the golden body, quickly gone, and she saw also that the young lioness and the cubs, alerted by the warning grunt, had disappeared into the undergrowth. The killing ground below the bait tree was deserted.

The light was going swiftly now. Within minutes it would be dark, and the thought of that brute in the darkness was almost too much to bear. Sean reached over her shoulder and pressed something small and hard against her lips. For a moment she resisted, then she opened and let him slide it into her mouth. It was a cube of chewing gum.

"The man has gone mad." She was bewildered. "Chewing gum at a time like this?" But as she crunched down onto the cube she realized that her saliva had dried out and that the inside of her mouth was as seared and puckered as if she had bitten into a green persimmon. At the taste of spearmint her saliva flowed again, but she was so angry with Sean that she felt no gratitude. He had known her mouth was dry with terror, and she resented it fiercely. The lioness growled in the semidarkness behind the hide, and Claudia thought longingly of the Toyota parked a mile back up the track. Almost echoing her thought, her father asked softly, "When did you tell the gun bearers to bring the truck?"

"After the last of the shooting light," Sean answered him quietly.

"Another fifteen or twenty minutes."

The lioness heard their voices and growled again threateningly.

"Cheeky bitch," Sean said cheerfully. "Snarly Sue in person."

"Shut up!" Claudia hissed at him. "She'll find us."

"Oh, she knows we're here now," Sean replied. He raised his voice and called, "Get away with you, you silly old bitch, go on back to your babies."

Claudia jerked her hand out of his grip. "Damn you! You'll get us killed."

But the loud human voice had alarmed the cat, and for minutes there was silence beyond the grass wall. Sean took up the short, ugly, double-barreled rifle propped against the wall beside him and placed it across his lap. He opened the breech of the.577 Nitro Express and slid the fat brass cartridges out of the chambers, changing them for two others from the loops on the left breast of his jacket. It was a little superstitious ritual of his, that changing of cartridges; he always performed it at the beginning of a hunt.

"Now listen to me, Capo," he addressed Riccardo. "If we kill that old whore without good reason, the game department is going to pull my license. "Good reason" is when she has already chewed somebody's arm off, not before. Do you hear me?"

"I hear you." Riccardo nodded.

All right, don't shoot until I tell you, or by God I'll shoot you."

They grinned at each other in the half light, and Claudia realized with disbelief that the two of them were enjoying themselves. These two crazy oafs were actually having fun.

"By the time Job arrives with the truck it will be pitch dark, and Job can't get the truck up to the hide. We'll have to go down to it in the river-bed. You go first, Capo, then Claudia between us. Stay close together, and whatever you do, don't run! For the love of God, don't anybody run!"

Now they heard the lioness again, padding softly around them.

She growled once more, and almost immediately was answered from the far side of the hide. The young lioness was out there now.

"The gang's all here," Sean commented. The sound of voices and the old lioness's growls had summoned the rest of the pride, and the hunters had become the hunted, trapped in the hide. The darkness was almost complete. The sunset was merely a dun red furnace glow on the western horizon.

"Where is the truck?" Claudia whispered.

Sean said, "It's coming." Then his voice changed. "Down!" he said sharply. "Get down!" And though she had heard nothing, she dropped out of the canvas chair and crouched on the ground.

The lioness had crept up to the front wall again, almost soundlessly, and now she flung herself at it, roaring furiously as she tore at the flimsy structure with her front claws. With horror Claudia realized that it was coming in on top of her.

"Keep your heads down," Sean shouted, lifting the double barreled rifle just as the wall burst open. He fired, a stunning burst of sound as the muzzle blast swept through the hide and lit the interior with flame, brilliant as a flashbulb.

"He's killed the brute." Despite her hatred of blood sport, Claudia felt a guilty relief, but it was short-lived. The shot had merely startled the cat and driven her off for the moment. Claudia heard the lioness gallop away into the undergrowth, snarling viciously.

"You missed," she accused him breathlessly, the stink of burnt gunpowder in her nostrils.

"Wasn't trying to hurt her." Sean opened the rifle and reloaded from the cartridge loops on his breast. "Just a warning shot over her bows."

"There's the truck coming." Riccardo's voice was level and unconcerned. Claudia's ears were still singing from the crash of gunfire, but she could make out the distant beat of the Toyota's diesel engine through it.

"Job heard the shot." Sean stood up. "He's coming early. All right, let's get ready to move out."

Claudia scrambled up eagerly, then looked over the low grass wall of the roofless hide into the dark, forbidding forest around her and remembered the track that led down to the dry river-bed that served as a road. They would have to travel almost a quarter of a mile in darkness to reach safety. Her spirit quailed at the prospect.

In the trees not fifty yards away, the lioness roared again.

"Noisy brighter," Sean chuckled, and took Claudia's elbow to guide her to the door. This time she did not try to pull away, but instead found herself clinging to his arm.

"Take hold of Capo's belt." Gently he disengaged her hand and guided it to her father's belt at the small of his back.

"Hold on," he told her. "And remember, whatever happens, don't run. It will put them onto you instantly. Cat with mouse, they can't resist it."

Sean switched on the flashlight. it was a big black Maglite, but even its powerful beam seemed puny in the immensity of the forest as he played it in a circle around them. Eyes reflected in the beam, glowing like menacing stars, many eyes out there in the dark bush; it was impossible to tell cubs from full-grown lionesses.

"Let's go," Sean said quietly, and Riccardo started down the rough narrow track, dragging Claudia with him.

They went slowly, bunched up tightly, Riccardo covering the van with his lighter rifle and Sean in the rear guard with the heavy rifle and the flashlight.

Each time the flashlight beam picked up the flash of cat's eyes in the night, they seemed closer, until Claudia could make out the body of the animal behind the glowing eyes. They were pale as moths in the torchlight, nimble and restless as they circled, both lionesses closing in now, pacing swiftly through the undergrowth, watching them intently but turning their heads away whenever the powerful light hit their eyes.

The track was steep and rough, and oh so long. Each step was an agony of impatience for Claudia as she stumbled along behind her father, not watching her footing, watching instead those pale feline shapes that paraded around them.

"Here comes Snarly Sue!" Sean warned quietly as the old lioness screwed up her courage and came at them out of the night, grunting like a steam locomotive, deafening gusts of sound surging up her throat and out of her open mouth, her long tail lashing from side to side like a hippo-hide whip. They stopped in a tight group, and Sean swung the flashlight and the rifle onto the charging animal.

"Get out of it!" he yelled at her. "Go on, scat!" But the lioness came on, her ears flattened against her skull, long yellow fangs and pink tongue curling between her gaping jaws.

"Yah! Snarly Sue!" Sean howled. "I'll blow your stupid head off!"

She broke her charge at the last possible moment, skidding to a halt on stiff front legs, ten feet from where they were bunched, and the dust swirled around her in the light.

"Piss off!" Sean ordered her sternly. Her ears stood erect, and she turned and trotted obediently back into the forest.

"That was a game of chicken," Sean chuckled. "She was just trying it on."

"How did you know that?" Claudia's voice was cracked and shrill in her own ears.

"Her tail. As long as she keeps waving it, she's only kidding.

When she holds it stiff, then look out!"

"Here's the truck," Riccardo said, and they could see the Toyota's headlights through the trees as it bumped up the dry river-bed below them.

"Praise the Lord," Claudia whispered.

"It's not over yet," Sean warned as they moved off down the track once more. "There's still Growly Gertie to deal with."

Claudia had forgotten the younger lioness, and now she glanced around fearfully as she stumbled after her father, hanging on to his belt.

At last they were on the bank of the river-bed, fully lit by the headlights of the parked truck, which was standing only thirty yards away with its engine running. She could make out the heads of the trackers in the front seat beyond the blaze of headlights. So close, so very close, and she could not help herself. Claudia let go of her father's belt and ran for the truck, pelting wildly through the thick loose white sand of the river-bed.

She heard Sean shout behind her, "You bloody idiot!"

Immediately afterward came the fearsome grunting roar of the lioness as she charged. Claudia glanced sideways as she ran, and the great cat was almost on her, coming in at an angle out of the tail reeds that lined the open river-bed. She was huge and pale in the headlights of the Toyota, snake swift, and her roaring cramped Claudia's belly and her feet dragged in the thick white sand. She saw that the charging lioness carried her tail high and stiff as a steel ramrod, and even in her terror she remembered what Sean had said and thought with icy clarity, "This time she's not going to stop.

She's going to kill me!" For a vital instance Sean had not realized that the girl had run.

He was backing carefully down the steep path into the river-bed, the flashlight in his left hand and the double rifle in his right. He held the rifle by the grip with the barrels tilted up over his shoulder and his thumb on the slide of the safety catch, watching the old lioness out there on the edge of the reed bed as she crawled toward them on her belly. But he was sure she was now merely going through the motions of aggression since he had stared down her mock charge. Two of the cubs were well back behind her, sitting up in the grass and watching the performance with huge eyes and candid fascination but too timid to take part. He had lost sight of the younger lioness, though he was sure she was now the main threat, but the river reeds were dense and tall.

He had felt Claudia bump against his hip, but he thought she had stumbled, not realizing she had bumped him as she turned to run. He was still searching for the younger lioness, probing the reed beds with the flashlight beam, when he heard the crunch of Claudia's running feet in the sugary river sand. He whirled and saw her out there alone in the dry river-bed.

"You bloody idiot!" he yelled in fury. The girl had been a constant source of irritation and dissent since she had arrived four days ago. Now she had flagrantly disobeyed his order, and he knew in an instant, even before the lioness launched her charge, that he was going to lose her. Getting a client killed or mauled was the blackest disgrace that could befall a professional hunter. It would mean the end of his career, the end of twenty years of work and striving.

"You bloody idiot!" He vented all his bitterness on the running figure. He barged past Riccardo, who was still standing frozen with shock on the path below him, and at that moment the lioness burst out of the edge of the reed bed where she had been lying.

The river-bed was brilliantly lit by the lights of the truck, so Sean dropped the flashlight and swung up the rifle with both hands, but he could not fire. The angle was wrong; the girl was between him and the lioness. Claudia ran awkwardly in the clinging sand, her head twisted away from him to watch the charge, her arms pumping frantically out of time with her legs.

"Down!" Sean shouted. "Fall flat!" But she kept running, blocking his shot, and the lioness swept in on her, sand spurting under her paws from which the curved yellow claws were already fully extended. She was grunting and roaring with each stride, and her tail was carried stiff and straight.

In the headlights the shadows of girl and cat on the stark white sand were grotesque and black, coming together swiftly. Sean saw the lioness gather herself for the leap, and he watched helplessly over the open iron sights of the rifle; it was impossible to separate them, impossible to fire without hitting the girl.

At the last moment Claudia tripped. Her legs, weak with fear, collapsed under her, and with a despairing wail she sprawled facedown in the sand.

Instantly Sean zeroed his aim on the creamy chest of the lioness.

With this rifle he could hit two penny coins flipped simultaneously into the air at a range of thirty paces, left and right, both before they fell to earth. With this rifle he had killed leopards, lions, rhinos, buffalos, elephants by the hundred-and men, many men, in the days of the Rhodesian bush war. He had never needed a second shot. Now that the target was open he could with supreme confidence send a 750-grain soft-nosed mushrooming bullet through the lioness from her chest to the root of her tail. It would be the end of the cat, and of the safari, and probably of his license.

At the least it would mean months of investigation and trial. A dead lioness would bring all the wrath of both the government and the game department down upon him.

The lioness was almost on top of the fallen girl, only a scant few feet of white sand lay between them, and Sean dropped his aim. It was a terrible risk, but he thrived on risk. He was gambling with the girl's life, but she had infuriated him and deserved to take her chance. He fired into the sand two feet in front of the lioness's open jaws. The huge, heavy buffet plowed in, sending up an eruption of sand, a solid fountain of flying white grains that for a moment completely enveloped the animal. Sand filled her mouth and was sucked into her lungs as she roared, sand drove into her nostrils, clogging them, and sand lashed into her open yellow eyes, tearing, raking, blinding her, disorienting her, instantly breaking her charge.

Sean raced forward with the second barrel ready to fire, but it wasn't necessary. The lioness had recoiled, rearing back violently, clawing at her sand-clotted eyes, toppling over and then bounding up again, careering back into the reed bed, barging blindly into the sheer bank, rolling and falling and struggling up again. The sounds of her wild run and agonized roars dwindled.

Sean reached Claudia, and with an arm around her jerked her to her feet. Her legs were unable to support her, and he had to half carry, half drag her to the Toyota and bundle her into the front seat.

At the same time Riccardo scrambled into the back seat of the Toyota, and Sean leaped up onto the running board and with his free hand held the rifle like a pistol, pointed out into the darkness, ready to meet another charge.

"Go!" he shouted at Job. The Matabele driver let out the clutch and they flew down the river-bed, lurching and jolting over the heavy going.

Nobody spoke for almost a minute, until they had climbed out of the river-bed onto the smoother track. Then Claudia said in a small, strangled voice, "If I can't pee right now, I'm going to burst."

"We could always point you at Snarly Sue like a fire extinguisher and wash her away," Sean suggested coldly, and in the back seat Riccardo let out a delighted guffaw. Even though Claudia recognized the nervous relief and tension in her father's laugh, she resented it bitterly. It aggravated the total humiliation she had suffered.

It was an hours drive back to camp, and when they arrived, Moses, Claudia's camp servant, had the shower filled with piping hot water. The shower was a twenty-gallon oil drum suspended in the branches of a mo pane tree, a thatched grass screen open to the stars, and a cement floor.

She stood under the rush of steaming water, and as her body turned bright pink she felt the humiliation and nausea of the adrenaline overdose fade away, to be replaced by that buoyant sense of well-being that comes only from having survived extreme danger.

While she soaped herself, working up a rich lather, she listened to Sean. He was fifty yards away at his makeshift gymnasium at the back of his own tent, but his regular hissing breathing carried clearly as he worked out with the iron weights. He had not missed a session in the four days she had been in camp, no matter how long and hard the day's hunting had been.

"Rambo!" She smiled contemptuously at his masculine conceit, and yet more than once during the last few days she had caught herself surreptitiously contemplating his muscled arms, his flat greyhound belly, or even his buttocks, round and hard as a pair of ostrich eggs in his khaki shorts.

Moses carried the lantern ahead of her, escorting her back from the shower in her silk dressing gown, a towel tied like a turban around her hair. He had laid out her mess kit for her-khaki pants, a Gucci T-shirt, and ostrich-skin mosquito boots, exactly what she would have chosen herself. Moses washed her soiled clothes every day, and his ironing was crisp perfection. Her slacks crackled softly as she pulled them on, adding to her sense of well-being.

She took her time drying her hair and brushing it out. She used an artistic trace of makeup and lipstick, and when she looked in the small mirror she felt even better.

"Who's the vain one now?" She smiled at herself and went out to where the men were already at the camp fire, gratified when they stopped talking and watched her make her entrance. Sean rose from his camp chair to greet her with those silly Limey manners that disconcerted her.

"Sit down!" She tried to sound brusque. "You don't have to keep jumping up and down."

Sean smiled easily. "Don't let her see how she's succeeding in getting up your nose," he warned himself, and he held the canvas camp chair for her while she sat down with the soles of her mosquito boots to the camp fire.

"Get the donna a peg," Sean ordered the mess waiter. "You know the way she likes it."

The waiter brought it to her on a silver tray. It was perfect. A dash of Chivas whisky in a crystal glass, barely enough to color the Perrier water, and filled right up with ice. The waiter was dressed in a snowy white kanza robe, the hem well below his knees, a scarlet sash over his shoulder to denote that he was the headwaiter, and a scarlet pillbox fez on his head. His two assistants stood respectfully in the background, also in scarlet fez and flowing white robes. For Claudia it was mildly embarrassing: There were twenty servants to care for three of them, all so sybaritic and colonial and exploitative. This was 1988, for God's sake, and the empire was long gone-but the whisky was delicious.

"I suppose you expect me to thank you for saving my life," she said as she sipped it.

"Not at all, ducky." Sean had learned almost immediately that she hated that form of address. "I wouldn't even expect you to apologize for your crass stupidity. To be quite frank with you, I was worrying more about having to kill the lioness. Now that would have been tragic." They fenced lightly, skillfully, and Claudia found herself enjoying it. Every thrust that went through his guard gave her a satisfied glow, better even than -a good day in court. She was disappointed when the headwaiter announced in sepulchral tones, "Chef say dinner she is ready, Mwnbo," and Sean led them into the dining tent that was fit by candles in a many-branched Meissen porcelain candelabra. The cutlery was solid silver--Claudia had furtively checked the hallmarks--and the Waterford crystal wine glasses sparkled on the tablecloth of Madeira lacework. A robed waiter stood behind each of their folding canvas safari chairs, ready to serve.

"What do you -faficy tonight, Capo?" Sean asked.

"A touch of Wolfgang Amadeus," Riccardo suggested. Sean pressed the "play" button on the tape deck before going to his seat, and the limpid strains of Mozart's piano concerto number seventeen shimmered in the candlelight.

The soup was made with green peas, pearl barley, and buffalo marrow bones, spiced with a fearsome chili sauce Sean called "pell pell ho ho."

Claudia had inherited her father's taste for chili, garlic, and red wine, but even she could not face the second course, buffalo tripes in white sauce. Both men liked their tripes green, which was simply a euphemism for their being improperly cleaned of the original contents.

"It's only chewed grass," her father pointed out, which made her feel squeamish until she turned and caught a whiff of the special dish the chef had prepared for her alone. Beneath a golden pie crust steamed a savory stew of antelope filets and kidneys. Chef had shaken his tall white cap when she had suggested the addition of ten cloves of garlic.

"Cookbook say no garlic, Donna."

"My book say plenty garlic, it say very loud ten cloves garlic, okay, Chefie?" And the chef had grinned in capitulation. Claudia had almost instantly overwhelmed the entire camp staff with her easy manner and relaxed charm.

The wine was a rich, robust South African cabernet, every bit as good as her favorite Chianti, and she gave both wine and pie her full attention. The day's rigors and the sun and fresh air had honed her appetite. Like her papa, she could eat and drink freely without adding an ounce of flesh or fat to her waistline. Only the conversation was a disappointment. As on every other evening the men were talking about rifles, hunting, and the killing of wild animals.

The gun talk was mostly unintelligible gibberish to her.

Her father said things like "The.300 Weatherby can move a hundred-eighty-grain bullet at thirty-two hundred feet per second; that gives you over four thousand foot-pounds of muzzle energy and stupendous hydrostatic shock."

And Sean would respond, "You Yanks are obsessed with velocity. Roy Weatherby has blown up more bullets on African game than you have eaten spaghetti, Capo. Give me high sectional density, Nosier construction, and moderate velocity..."

No normally intelligent person could keep that up hour after hour, she had told herself. Yet every night of the safari so far she had gone to bed and left the two of them at the camp fire, still at it over their cognac and cigars.

When they spoke of the animals, however, she could take more interest and even participate, usually to vent her disapproval. They talked mostly of particular individual animals, legendary old males for which Sean had pet names, which annoyed Claudia, just the way it irritated her when he called Papa "Capo," as though he were a Mafia don. One such animal he referred to as "Frederick the Great," or simply "Fred." This was the lion they were hunting now, the lion for which they had hung the buffalo carcass.

"I've seen him twice so far this season. One client even had a shot at him. Mind you, he was shaking so much with nerves that he missed him by a football field."

"Tell me about him." Riccardo leaned forward eagerly.

"Papa, he told you about him last night," Claudia reminded him sweetly.

"And the night before, and the night before that-"

"Little girls should be seen and not heard." Riccardo chuckled.

"Didn't I ever teach you anything? Tell me about Fred again."

"He's got to be well over eleven foot, and not just length. He's got a head on him like a hippo and a mane like a black haystack.

When he walks, it ripples and tosses like the wind in a msasa tree," Sean rhapsodized. "Cunning? Sly? Fred knows it all. He's been shot at at least three times that I know of. Wounded once by a Spanish hunter over in Ian Piercy's concession three seasons ago, but he recovered. He didn't get that big by being stupid."

"How are we going to get him?" Riccardo demanded.

"I think the two of you are disgusting," Claudia cut in before Sean could reply. "After seeing those glorious creatures today, those beautiful little cubs, how can you bring yourself to kill than?"

"I didn't see any cubs shot today," Riccardo remarked as he nodded to the waiter offering him another helping of tripe. "In fact, we went to a great deal of trouble and risk to ensure their survival."

"You're devoting forty-five days of your life to the sole purpose of killing lions and elephants!" Claudia shot back. "So don't get all righteous with me, Riccardo Monterro."

"I'm always fascinated by the confused thought processes of your average shrieking liberal," Sean intervened. Claudia turned on him gleefully, lusting for battle.

"There's no confusion in my mind. You're here to kill animals."

"The same way a farmer kills animals," Sean agreed. "To ensure a healthy, flourishing herd and a place for that herd to survive."

"You're not a farmer."

"Oh, yes, I am," Sean-contradicted. "The only difference is that I slaughter them on A range, not in an abattoir. But like any farmer, my chief concern is the survival of my breeding-stock."

They're not domestic animals," ClaudIa contested. "Those are beautiful wild animals."

"Beautiful? Wild? What the hell has that got to do with it? Like anything else in this modern world, the wild game of Africa has to pay its way if it's going to survive. Capo here is paying tens of thousands of dollars to hunt a lion and an elephant. He is giving those animals a monetary value far above goats and cattle, so that the newly independent government of Zimbabwe is willing to set aside concessions of millions of acres in which the game can persist. I rent one of those concessions, and I have the strongest incentive in the world for protecting it from grazers and poachers and making certain I have plenty of game to offer my hunters. No, ducky, legal safari hunting is one of the most effective arms of conservation in Africa today."

"So you're going to save the animals by shooting them with high-powered rifles?" Claudia demanded scornfully.

"High-powered rifles?" Sean laughed softly. "Another emotive liberal parrot cry. Would you prefer us to use low-powered rifles?

Wouldn't that be rather like demanding that the butcher use only blunt knives to cut throats? You are an intelligent woman; think with your head, not your heart. The individual animal is unimportant. His life-span is limited to a few short years-in the case of this lion we are hunting, probably twelve years at the very most. What is beyond price is the continued existence of the species as a whole.

Not the individual, but his entire kind. Our lion is an old male at the very end of his useful LIFE-span, during which he has protected his females and young and already added his genes to the pool of his race. He will die naturally within the next year or two. Much better that his death produce ten thousand dollars in cash which will be spent on providing a safe place for his cubs to live than having this wilderness encroached upon by swarming black humanity and its scrawny herds of goats."

"My God, listen to you." Claudia shook her head sadly.

"Swarming black humanity" are the words of a racist and a bigot.

It's their land; why can't they be free to live where they choose?"

"And that is the logic of woolly-headed liberalism." Sean laughed. "Make up your mind whose side you are on, the beautiful wild animals or the beautiful wild blacks. You can't have it both ways; when the two come into competition for living space, the wild animals always come off losers-unless we hunters can pay the bill for them."

He wasn't an easy man to argue with, she conceded, and she was relieved when her father cut in and gave her a moment to gather her wits.

"There can be no doubt on which side my darling daughter stands. After all, Sean, you are talking to a senior member of the commission for the reinstatement of the Inuit people to their traditional lands."

She smiled at him sweetly. "Not Inuit, Papa. People will think you're going soft. Not even Eskimos-your usual description is "gooks," isn't it?"

Riccardo smoothed back the thick waves of silver at his temples.

"Shall I tell you how my daughter and her commission go about determining how much of Alaska belongs to the Inuits?" he asked Sean.

"He's going to tell you anyway." Claudia leaned across to stroke her father's hand. "It's one of his party routines. It's very funny; you'll love it."

Riccardo went on as though she had not spoken. "They go down Fourth Street in Anchorage... that's where the bars are, and grab a couple of Eskimos that are still on their feet. They put them in an airplane and fly them down the peninsula, and they say to them, "Now tell us where your people used to live. Show us your traditional tribal hunting grounds. How about that lake over there; did your people fish there once upon a time?"" Riccardo changed his voice; he was an excellent mimic. ""Sure!" says the Eskimo in the back seat, squinting out the window, full of Jack Daniel's to his eyes. "That's where my granpappy fished.", He changed voices, imitating Claudia. "And what about those mountains over there, the ones we wicked white folk who stole it away from you call Brooks Range, did your granpappy ever hunt there?"" He changed to his Eskimo intonation. ""sure did, man.

He shot a whole mess of bears there. I remember my gramnommy telling me about it.""

"Go on, Papa. You've got a marvelous audience tonight. Mr. Courtney is enjoying your wit hugely," Claudia encouraged him.

"You know something?" Riccardo asked. "Claudia has never yet had an Eskimo turn down a lake or a mountain she has offered him, isn't that something? My little girl has a perfect score, never a single refusal."

"You are just plain lucky, Capo," Sean told him. "At least they might leave you something; here they took the lot."

Claudia woke to the clink of crockery outside the flap of her tent and Moses" polite cough. Nobody had ever brought her tea in bed before. It was a luxury that made her feel marvelously decadent.

It was still pitch dark and icy cold in the tent. She could hear the crackle of frost on the canvas as Moses opened the flap. She had never expected it to be so cold in Africa.

She sat up in the camp bed with a quilt over her shoulders, cupping her hands around the tea mug, and watched Moses fussing about the tent. He poured a bucket of hot water into her washbasin and set a clean white towel beside it. He filled the tooth mug with boiled drinking water and squeezed toothpaste onto her brush for her. Then he brought a brazier of burning charcoal and placed it in the center of the tent.

"Too cold today, Donna."

"And too damned early," Claudia agreed sleepily.

"Did you hear the lions roaring last night, Donna?"

"I didn't hear a thing." She yawned. They could have had a brass band playing "America, the Beautiful" beside her bed without waking her.

Moses finished laying out her clothes on the spare bed. He had polished her boots until they shone. "You want something, Donna, you call me," he told her as he backed out of the tent flap.

She shot out of the warm bed and stood over the brazier shivering while she held her panties over the coals to warm them before pulling them on.

The stars were still shining when she left the tent. She paused to look up, still amazed by the jeweled treasure chest of the southern sky. She picked out the Southern Cross with a sense of achievement, then went to the camp fire where the men were and held her hands out gratefully to the flames.

"You haven't changed since you were little." Her father smiled at her. "Do you remember how I used to battle to get you out of bed to go to school every morning?" And a waiter brought her a second cup of tea.

Sean whistled, and she heard Job start the Toyota and drive it around to the front gate of the stockade. They began pulling on their heavy gear: jerseys and anoraks, caps and woolen scarves.

When they trooped out to the hunting car, they found the rifles in the racks and Job and Shadrach, the two Matabeles, standing in the back with the little Ndorobo tracker between them. The tracker was a childlike figure who came only to Claudia's armpit, but he had an endearing wrinkled grin and bright mischievous eyes. She had been predisposed to like all the black camp staff, but Matatu was already her favorite. He reminded her of one of the dwarfs from Snow White. The three blacks were bundled up against the cold in army surplus greatcoats and knitted balaclava caps, and they answered Claudia's greeting with white grins in the darkness. All of them had fallen under her spell.

Sean took the wheel and Claudia sat on the front seat between him and her father. She crouched down behind the windshield and cuddled against Riccardo for warmth. In the short time she had been on safari, she had come to love this start to the day's adventure.

They drove slowly over the winding, bumpy track and as the night retreated before the advance of dawn Sean switched off the headlights.

Claudia peered into the comb return forest and down the grassy glades that intersected it that Sean called vleis, trying to be the first to spot some elusive and lovely creature. But it was always Sean or her father who murmured first, "Kudu on the left" or "That's a reedbuck." Or Matatu would lean over from the back to tap her shoulder and point out a rarer sight with his tiny pink-palmed hand.

The dusty track was pocked with the spoor of the animals that had crossed in the night. Once they came across the fresh droppings of an elephant, still steaming in the chill of dawn, a knee-high pile everybody climbed out of the Toyota to examine closely. At first Claudia had been disconcerted by this avid interest in dung, but now she was accustomed to it.

"Old beggar," Sean said. "On his last set of teeth."

"How do you know that?" she demanded.

"Can't chew his food," he replied. "Look at the twigs and leaves in the dung, almost whole."

Matatu was crouched by the spoor, examining the great round footprints, the size of trash can lids.

"See how smooth the pads of his feet are?" Sean said. "Worn down like an old set of car tires. Old and big."

"Is it him?" Riccardo asked eagerly, glancing at the.416 Rigby rifle in the gun rack behind his seat.

"Matatu will tell us." Sean shrugged, and the little Ndorobo spat in the dust, and shook his head mournfully as he stood up.

Then he spoke to Sean in piping falsetto Swahili.

"It's not the one we want. Matatu knows this bull," Sean translated. "We saw this one last year down near the river. He has one tusk broken off at the lip, and the other is worn down to a stump.

He might once have had a magnificent pair, but he's far over the other side of the hill now."

"You mean Matatu can recognize a particular elephant by his footprints?" Claudia looked incredulous.

"Matatu can recognize a particular buffalo out of a herd of five hundred, and he'll know that animal again two years later just by a glance at the spoor," Sean exaggerated a little for her. "Matatu isn't a tracker, he's a magician."

They drove on with small wonders occurring all around them: a kudu bull, gray as a ghost, striped with chalky lines, maned and humpbacked, his long corkscrew horns glinting in the gloom, slipped away into the forest; a genet cat caught out from his nocturnal prowling, spotted and golden as a miniature leopard, peered at them with astonishment from the brown grass of the verge; a kangaroo rat hopped ahead of the Toyota. Troops of chattering guinea fowl with waxen yellow helmets on their heads ran through the grass beside the track. Claudia no longer had to ask, "What is that bird?" or "What animal is that?" She was beginning to recognize them, and this added to her pleasure.

Just before sunrise, Sean parked the Toyota at the foot of a rocky hill that rose abruptly out of the forest and they climbed out stiffly and took off their heavy outer clothing. They climbed the side of the kopJe, three hundred feet of steep, uneven pathway, without a pause, and Claudia tried to disguise her ragged breathing as they came out on the summit. Sean had timed the ascent perfectly, and as they reached the top the sun burst out of the distant forest and lit it all with dramatic color and brilliance.

They looked out over a panorama of forest and glade that glowed with golden grass to other high sheer kopJes standing like fairy castles, all turreted and towered in the dawn. Other hills were great dumps of black rock, like the rubble left over from the Creation.

They shed their sweaters, for the climb had warmed them and even the first rays of the sun held the promise of the noonday heat.

They sat on the front edge of the hill and played their binoculars over the forest below. Behind them Job laid out the food box he had carried up, and in minutes he had a fire going. It had been too early to eat breakfast before they left camp, but now, at the odor of frying bacon and eggs, Claudia felt saliva flooding her mouth.

While they waited for their breakfast, Sean pointed out the terrain. "That is the Mozambican border over there, just beyond the second kopje, only seven or eight miles from here."

"Mozambique," Claudia murmured, peering through her binoculars. "The name has such a romantic ring to it."

"Not so romantic. It's just another triumph of African socialism and the carefully thought out economic policy of chaos and ruination," Sean grunted.

"I can't take racism before breakfast," Claudia told him icily.

"all right." Sean grinned. "Suffice it to say that just across the border there you have twelve years of Marxism, corruption, greed, and incompetence, just beginning to bear fruit. You have a civil war raging out of control, famine that will probably starve a million people, and epidemic disease, including AIDS, that will kill another million in the next five years."

"Sounds like a fun place for a vacation," Riccardo said. "How about breakfast, Job?"

Job brought them plates of eggs and bacon and fried French bread followed by mugs of strong, aromatic coffee. They ate off their laps, glassing the forest through their binoculars between mouthfuls.

"You're a pretty good cook, Job," Claudia told him.

"Thank you, ma'am," Job answered quietly. He spoke English with only a slight accent. He was a man in his late thirties, with a tall, powerful physique and wide-spaced intelligent eyes in the handsome moon face typical of the Matabele and their Zulu origins.

"When did you learn" Claudia asked.

The Matabele hesitated and glanced at Sean before he said in his deep soft voice, "in the army, ma'am."

"Job was a captain in the Ballantyne Scouts with me," Sean explained.

"A captain!" Claudia exclaimed. "I didn't realize--" She broke off quickly, looking embarrassed.

"You didn't realize there were black officers in the Rhodesian army," Sean finished for her. "There's a lot more to know about Africa than what they show you on CBS television."

Shadrach, the second gun bearer, was sitting fifty yards farther along the crest, where he had a better view toward the north. Now he whistled softly and pointed up that way. Sean wiped the last of the egg yolk off his plate with the toast and stuffed it into his mouth. He passed the plate to Job. "Thanks, Job, that was great." And he went to join Shadrach. The two of them peered down into the forest.

"What is it?" Riccardo called impatiently.

"Elephant," Sean replied. Both Riccardo and Claudia sprang up and hurried to join them.

"There? Where?" she demanded.

"Big one?" Riccardo asked. "Can you see his tusks? Is it him?"

"Too far to be sure, a couple of miles." Sean pointed out the indistinct gray blur among the trees, and Claudia was amazed that such a huge animal was so difficult to see. It took some minutes before it moved slightly and she was able to pie it out.

"What do you think?" Riccardo asked. "Could it be Tukutela?"

"It could be." Sean nodded. "But it's a thousand to one against it."

Tukutela. Claudia had listened to them discussing this elephant at the camp fire. Tukutela, the angry one, was one of those legendary animals of which there were only a handful left in the whole length and breadth of Africa. A bull elephant with tusks that weighed over a hundred pounds each. Tukutela was the main reason her father had come back to Africa for the last time. For he had once seen Tukutela. Three years before, he had been on safari with Sean Courtney, and the two of them had followed the great elephant for five days. Matatu had led them over a hundred miles on the spoor before they had come up with him. They had stalked to within twenty paces of the enormous, ancient beast as he fed on the fruits of a morula tree. They had studied every wrinkle and crease in his riven gray hide. They were so close could have counted the remaining few hairs in his tail, the rest worn away over the years, and they had gazed in silent awe upon his ivory.

Riccardo Monterro would have willingly paid any price to possess those tusks as his own trophy. He had asked Sean in a whisper, "Isn't there any way I can have him?" And he had seen Sean hesitate before he shook his head.

No, Capo We can't touch him. More than my license and my concession are worth." For around his neck Tukutela wore a collar, a sturdy thing of nylon, tough as a heavy-duty truck tire, and suspended from it was a radio transmitter.

Some years previously, the old bull had been darted from a helicopter by members of the government elephant research project, and while he was unconscious, they had riveted the radio collar around his neck. This made Tukutela a "designated research animal" and placed him beyond the reach of legal safari hunters.

Of course, he was still at risk from ivory poachers, but no licensed hunter could legally hunt him.

While the elephant was under the influence of the drug, Dr. Glynn Jones, the government veterinarian in charge of the project, had measured his tusks. His report was not for general publication, but his secretary was a nubile blonde who thought Sean Courtney was the most awe-inspiring thing she had ever seen in her young life. She had duplicated a copy of the report for Sean.

"From Jonesy's measurements, one tusk will weigh a hundred and thirty pounds and the other a few pounds lighter," Sean had whispered to Riccardo as they studied the old bull, and they had stared at the tusks hungrily.

At the lip they were as thick as Sean's thigh, and there was no taper to them. They were stained almost black with vegetable juice and the tips were rounded off bluntly. According to Dr. Jones, the left tusk was eight feet four and a half inches, the right tusk eight feet six and a quarter, from lip to tip.

In the end they had walked away and left the old bull to his solitary wandering. Then, only six months ago, the blond secretary had been making breakfast for Sean in her tiny bachelor flat in the Avenues in Harare, when she mentioned quite casually, "Did you know that Tukutela has thrown his collar?"

Sean was lying naked on her bed, but he sat up quickly. "What did you say?"

"Jonesy was in an awful pet. They put the radio direction finder on Tukutela. and all they got was his collar. He had managed to tear it off at last and had hurled it into the top of a msasa tree."

"You clever little beauty," Sean said happily. "Come here and get your prize." And the girl had dropped her dressing gown on the floor and rushed across the room.

So Tukutela had thrown his collar and was no longer a "designated research animal. " Once again he was legal game. That same day Sean had sent a cable to Riccardo in Alaska. He had received the reply the following afternoon.

I'M COMinG STOP BOOK ME fuLL SAFARI 1ST JULY TO AUGUST 15TH STOP I WANT THAT JUMBO STOP CApo. "

And now, as Riccardo stood on the crest of the kopJe, studying that far-off smudge of elephant gray in the forest below, he was shaking with excitement.

Claudia studied him with open amazement. This was her father, the coolest cat in the business, the master of savoir faire She had seen him negotiating a ten-million-dollar contract and betting a prince's ransom across the tables at Vegas without any visible emotion, but here he was shivering with excitement like a schoolboy on his first date. She felt a rush of affection for him, "I haven't understood just how much this means to him," she thought. "Perhaps I'm being too hard. This is the last thing in his life that he truly wants." And she wanted to put her arms around him, hug him, and tell him, "I'm sorry, Papa. I'm sorry I've been trying to deprive you of this last pleasure."

Riccardo was not even aware of her existence. "It could be Tukutela," he repeated softly, speaking almost to himself, as though he were trying to will it to be so. But Sean shook his head.

"I've got four good trackers watching the river. Tukutela couldn't cross without them knowing. Besides, it's still too early.

I wouldn't expect him to leave the valley until the last water holes along the escarpment dry up, another week or ten days at the earliest."

"He could have slipped through." Riccardo ignored his explanation. "It's just possible it is him down there."

"We'll go down and take a look, of course." Sean nodded in agreement. Riccardo's passion did not amaze him as it had his daughter. He understood it totally, had seen it in fifty other men like Riccardo-the powerful, aggressive, successful men who made up his clientele, men who did not try to conceal or check their instincts. The hunting imperative was part of every man's soul; some denied or suppressed it, others diverted it into less blatantly violent avenues of expression like wielding clubs on the golf course or racquets on the court, substituting a little white ball for the prey of flesh and blood, but men like Riccardo Monterro gave their passions full rein and would settle for nothing less than the ultimate thrill of the chase and the kill.

"Shadrach, bring the Bwana's.416 banduki," Sean called. "Job, don't forget the water bottles. Matatu, akwendi, let's go!"

They went directly down the steep front slope of the kopje, leaping lightly from boulder to boulder, and at the bottom they dropped naturally into their running formation with Matatu leading to pick up the spoor, followed by Job and Sean with their almost supernatural eyesight to sweep the forest ahead, the clients in the middle, and Shadrach at the end to hand Riccardo the Rigby when he needed it. They went swiftly, but it was almost an hour through the forest before Matatu picked up the huge dished spoor in the soft earth and the litter of stripped twigs and branches that the elephant had strewed behind him as he fed. Matatu stopped on it, turning back to roll his eyes, and give shrill piping cries of disgust.

"It's not Tukutela. It's the old one-tusk bull," Sean told them.

"The same one whose spoor we saw on the road this morning. He has circled back this way."

Claudia watched her father's face and saw the intensity of his disappointment. Her heart squeezed for him.

Nobody spoke on the march back to the Toyota, but when they reached it, Sean said softly, "You knew it wasn't going to be that easy, didn't you, Capo." And they grinned at each other.

"You're right, of course. The chase is everything. Once you kill, it's only dead meat."

"Tukutela will come," Sean promised him. "This is his regular beat. He'll be here before the new moon, that's my promise to you, but in the meantime there's the lion. We'll go check bait to see if Frederick the Great is going to oblige us."

It was only another twenty minutes" driving to the dry river-bed below the hide and the buffalo bait. They left the Toyota parked on the white sand, and Claudia felt a tremor of last night's terror as they climbed the path up the far bank and saw the pad marks of the lioness in the earth behind the hide. Then Sean and his gun bearers were talking excitedly and Matatu was chattering like an agitated guinea fowl.

"What is it?" Claudia demanded. But nobody answered her and she had to trot to keep up with them as they hurried down the open tunnel through the bush to where the remains of the carcass hung in the wild fig.

"Somebody tell me what's happening," Claudia begged them, but she stayed well back from the bait. The stench was just too much for her to bear. The men showed no distaste at all as they prodded and peered at the reeking remains, and even Claudia could see the difference from the previous evening.

Yesterday the carcass had been virtually untouched; now more than half of it had been devoured. Only the head and forequarters remained, and Sean had to stretch up above his head to reach it.

The bones of spine and ribs had been chewed to splinters and the thick black skin ripped by claw and fang, so that it hung in tatters like a funeral flag.

While Sean and the gun bearers examined the carcass, Matatu searched the earth around the base of the fig tree, giving excited little yaps like a hound questing for the scent. Sean picked something off the jagged white ribs of the carcass and showed it to Riccardo. Both of them laughed excitedly, passing whatever it was from hand to hand.

"Won't somebody talk to me, please?" Claudia insisted, so Sean called to her.

"Come on, then, don't stand so far away."

Reluctantly, holding her nose theatrically, she approached. Sean held out his right hand to her, palm up. On it lay a single hair, almost as long and black as one from her own head.

"What is it?"

Riccardo took the hair from Sean's hand, holding it between thumb and forefinger, and Claudia saw that the back of her farther's arms were goose-bumped with excitement. His dark Italia eyes glowed as he replied, "Mane hair." Then he seized her hand and pulled her across to the base of the fig tree. "Take a look at that. Look what Matatu has found for us."

The little tracker was grinning with proprietorial pride as he indicated the churned earth. Five cubs and two lionesses had trampled the soft footing into powder, but one perfect print stood out in the confusion. It was double the size of the other smudged prints, as big as a soup plate, and, looking at it, Claudia felt again the stirring of terror. Whatever animal had left that pad mark must be monstrous.

"Last night, after the lionesses had seen us off, he came. He waited until the moon had set and he came in the darkest hours of the night," Sean explained. "And he left again before dawn. He ate damned nigh half a buffalo, and then he took off again before first light. I told you he's a cunning old devil."

"A lion?" Claudia asked.

"Not just any old lion." Riccardo shook his head. "Frederick the Great has come at last."

Sean turned away and beckoned his men to come to him. The three of them, Job, Shadrach, and Matatu, squatted around him in a circle and Claudia and Riccardo were forgotten as they planned the hunt, working out their tactics, discussing in detail every aspect, every eventuality. Their concentration was absolute, and it was an hour before Sean stood up and came to where Riccardo and Claudia sat in the shade.

"The trick is going to be getting him to come in before nightfall," he told them. "We all agree that the only way to do that is to set up a fresh bait for him and build a new hide. The lionesses have rumbled this one, and old Fred is going to be as suspicious as all hell. He's going to lurk out there until well after dark or until we can entice him in somehow."

Sean sat down between them and was silent for a moment.

"You know, Capo, sometimes for a good friend, someone I can trust, I'm prepared to bend the rules a little." He spoke deliberately, drawing with a twig in the dirt between his feet, not looking at Riccardo.

"I'm listening." Riccardo nodded.

"There may be only one way we will get this lion," Sean said softly. "Jacklight him."

They were silent for a long time, and though Claudia did not know what "jacklight" meant, she realized Sean was suggesting something beyond law or decency, and she knew her father was tempted. She was angry with Sean for putting temptation in her father's way, but she knew better than to intervene. She kept silent and willed her father to refuse to give in to temptation.

Riccardo shook his head. "No, let's do it right."

"We can try." Sean shrugged. "But he has been shot at over a bait and wounded once. It won't be easy."

They were silent again for almost a full minute. Then Sean went on. "The lion is a nocturnal animal. The night is his time. If you truly want this lion, I think you'll have to take him in darkness."

Riccardo sighed, and shook his head. "I want him very badly, but not badly enough to kill him without respect." Sean stood up. "It's your safari, Capo," he agreed quietly. "I just want you to know that there are not many men I'd make that offer to. As a matter of fact, offhand I can't think of anyone else I'd do it for."

"I know," Riccardo said. "Thank you, Sean." Sean walked back to the fig tree to help his men to lower the remains of the carcass so the pride could reach it.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Claudia asked her father, "Jacklight?

What's that?"

"Putting a spotlight on an animal after dark and shooting it in the beam. It's illegal, highly illegal."

"The bastard," she said bitterly.

Riccardo did not react to her denunciation but went on softly, "He was prepared to put his career on the line for me. That's one of the best things anyone has ever done for me."

"I'm proud you refused him, Papa, but he's a bastard."

"You don't understand," he said. "You can't possibly understand."

He stood up and walked away, and immediately she felt a throb of guilt. She did understand. She understood that this was his last lion and that she was spoiling the pleasure of it for him. She was torn between her love for him and her protective instinct for that marvelous animal and her sense of right and justice.

"It should be easy to do the right thing," she thought. "But it so seldom is."

So over the days that followed, they hunted the old lion with ethical tactics, providing fresh bait for him and the lionesses. Riccardo shot the buffalo Sean pointed out to him, another barren cow, and then, two days later, a decrepit bull with horns worn down to stumps and his ribs showing through his bald, mud-caked hide.

Each day Sean moved the bait or repositioned the thatched hide, to find a location the black-maned male would feel sufficiently confident to approach in broad daylight. Evening after evening, they sat in the hide until an hour after darkness had fallen and then drove back to camp dejected and discouraged. When they visited the bait again the following morning, they found that the lion had fed, leaving his mane hairs and his huge pad marks to tantalize them, and had departed again before dawn.

Cursing the beast bitterly, Sean changed tactics. He lowered the remains of the rotten bait on its chain so lionesses and cubs could reach it readily. By this stage, it was mostly dried skin and gnawed bone. Five hundred meters up the river, he hung a fresh carcass at a height only the big lion could reach in a tree that stood alone in a glade of shoulder-high dry winter grass. He hoped that without the harassment of the females and cubs the lion might come earlier to the bait.

To make him feel even more secure, he placed the hide across the dry river-bed in the fork of a teak tree. It was a mac han platform fifteen feet above ground level. From the mac han they had a view across the white sand of the dry river-bed.

Sean did not clear all the grass around the bait tree. He wanted the lion to feel protected by good cover. He merely opened a keyhole in the grass, barely as wide as the body of the lion, through which they could see the carcass.

"If he comes, you'll have to wait until he rears up to feed, Capo," he explained as they went into the mac han an hour after noon to wait out the long drowsy hot afternoon.

Sean allowed Claudia to bring a paperback copy of Karen Blixen's Out of Africa to read. "Just as long as you don't rustle the pages," he warned her.

The lionesses and their cubs came early. They were so conditioned to feeding from a bait by now that they showed not the least trepidation at approaching. First they went to the new bait in the grassy glade and inspected it wistfully. Both lionesses made attempts to feed from it, but it was just out of their reach.

For the last few days, the eyes of the young lioness, Growly Gertie, had been irritated and infected by the river sand Sean had fired into them. Tears ran down her cheeks and her eyelids were swollen and inflamed, but now they were healing and clearing, the swelling was abating, and there were only smears of yellow mucus tears of her eyes.

After a while, they gave up trying to reach the carcass and led their cubs down the riverbank to the old stinking bait.

From the mac han they could hear the pride growling and ripping at the bait five hundred meters downstream, but as the afternoon passed, the sounds of feeding dwindled into silence as the lionesses sated themselves and went to lie up in the shade.

Half an hour before sunset, the small hot breeze that had been blowing all afternoon dropped abruptly and the peculiar hush of African evening descended on the veld. The sparse winter growth of leaves on the trees was still, not a blade of yellow grass stirred in the glade across the river-bed, and the fluffy papyrus reeds below the bank ceased their perpetual nodding and bowing and stood as though listening intently. It was so quiet that Claudia looked up from her book, then closed it softly and sat listening to the absolute silence.

Suddenly a bushbuck barked on the far bank, an alarm call so clear and loud in the hush that Claudia jumped involuntarily.

Immediately she felt Sean's light, firm touch on her hip, a warning, and she heard her father's breathing, quick and deep as though he had just finished a hard rally on the tennis court.

The silence had an ominous weight to it now, as though the world were holding its breath. She heard her father exhale softly, and she glanced sideways at him. His expression was as rapt as that of a communicant kneeling for the Sacrament. God, he was a handsome man, she thought. Except for the silver wings at his temples, he looked so much younger than his years, so tanned and lean and fit. As yet there was no external sign of the treachery of his own body, destroying itself from within.

His excitement was infectious and she felt her own blood course more swiftly, driven by the quickening of her pulse. She turned her head slowly to follow the direction of her father's gaze. He was looking off to the right out across the river, to where the trees of the forest met the tall pale grass at the edge of the glade.

The only living creature out there was a gray parrot like bird perched on the top branch of a bush willow. Sean had told her it was a gray laurie, the notorious "go away bird" that plagued the hunter with its raucous warning cry. The bird squawked now.

"G'way! Gwayf" But as it fluttered on the high branch, it was twisting its neck, craning to peer down into the long grass below the bush willow.

"Here he comes. The bird can see him," Sean whispered only inches behind her ear. Claudia strained her eyes looking for she knew not what.

"Watch the grass," Sean guided her, and she saw the movement.

The tips of the grass trembled and pushed, a stealthy furtive movement that passed slowly down the glade toward the riverbank, and then the grass behind it was still again. It was like the movement of a large trout in a still pool, the creature unseen, just the surface bulging and stirring to mark its passing.

All movement ceased for long minutes at a time. "He's listening and checking the scent," Sean explained. She had never expected him to show excitement, but his whisper was tight and scratchy.

The movement of the grass tips began again, coming on toward the bait tree. Suddenly her father gave a small breathy gasp. At the same moment, Sean warned her again. Perhaps he had meant to touch her hip once more, but his fingers closed on her upper thigh instead.

His touch was a shock, made more intense by her first sight of the beast. The lion passed through a gap in the grass, which the lionesses had trampled, and she glimpsed the top of his head, the dense bush of his mane, dark and curling, swaying and rippling to his slow imperial stride. For an instant she caught the flash of yellow eyes below the mane.

She had never seen any creature so menacing and yet so majestic. It was the briefest glimpse before the grass covered him again, but it left her shaken and breathless, and Sean's hand was still on her thigh.

Suddenly she realized she was sexually aroused. The tension in her lower belly, the hardening thrust of her nipples against the cotton shirt, and the warm flooding of her loins surprised her. She felt an almost irresistible urge to let her thighs relax and fall open under Sean's fingers, even though the folly of it would be monumental. If she had been asked to describe a human being who most offended and angered her, the description would have fitted him perfectly. She knew that if she showed the slightest vulnerability, he would exploit it ruthlessly. "And I don't even like him," she told herself desperately.

Yet her legs were trembling-he must feel it-and she couldn't move.

Then he took his hand off her leg, but the way he did it was offensive. He did not simply lift it away, he turned it into a caress, drawing his fingers lingeringly over her thigh and hip, a disconcerting sensation for which she was unprepared. She felt her cheeks and throat turn hot with resentment, but she stared out across the river-bed to that stealthy movement that stopped at last below the bait tree.

The silence drew out while Claudia tried to bring her emotions under control. "It wasn't him," she told herself. "I wasn't reacting to him. He has nothing for me. It was the tension and excitement of the moment, nothing to do with him. He's not the least bit attractive to me. I like sensitivity and subtlety, and he is obvious and overpowering and brutal."

Across the river there was an abrupt disturbance in the grass and the sound of a heavy body flopping to earth.

Behind her she felt Sean shake with soft and silent laughter. For an incredulous moment, she thought he was laughing at her, then he whispered, "He's lain down. Can you believe it, he's taking a rest right under the bait. The cocky son of a bitch."

Sean was thinking about the girl as much as about the lion. The unconcealed antipathy she bore him he returned in full measure, which made it more amusing to tease and plague her. Of course, the lion hide was always a good place to catch a woman off balance. He had begun many a memorable affair here. While they were in the hide they were psychologically under his control, like children in a classroom. He was the master and they were conditioned to obey his will, and the tension and nervous excitement made them receptive and compliant, the promise of danger and bloodshed heightened their awareness, physical and sexual. It had been fun to find out that this bumptious, spoiled, self-righteous American bitch was no different from any of the others.

She was probably hating herself and him at this moment for that momentary lapse. He smiled thinly as he sat up close behind her.

He had judged it with the fine instinct of the gifted philanderer, for it was, of course, a gift. He had read with attention Casanova's memoirs, and there the old rogue had described it precisely. When she is receptive, every woman gives out subtle little signs--breathing, flush of skin, change of pose, tiny body movements, even odor-that very few men can even recognize, let alone interpret. It was a gift only the great lovers possessed. Knowing when to act and how far to push each stage, that was the trick, he told himself.

From where he sat he could see her right cheek and the long dark lashes of the eye. above, even though she was deliberately keeping her head turned away from him now.

She had bound her jet hair into a thick braid that hung down between her shoulder blades. So her neck was exposed, an elegant column that supported the small neat head. Her neck and cheek still flushed with angry arousal beneath skin that was already were darkened by the African sun to a color where she could have modeled for an expensive sun cream in one of the glossy women's magazines.

As he studied her, the flush abated and she regained her composure, but under her thin cotton T-shirt, the nipple on the one pert, almost girlish, breast that he could see was in silhouette. It was still standing out, the size and color of a ripe mulberry, a dark wine color through the thin material. Then it began to shrink and subside; the phenomenon intrigued him, and he laughed again, soundlessly.

"You've given yourself a blinding hard-on," he chuckled. "And you can't even stand the little witch." He switched his attention from her back to the unseen cat in the grass across the river.

It was almost fully dark before they saw the lion again. There was only a fading memory of the sunset on the western horizon, but Sean had positioned the bait and blind so it backlit the scene for them. They heard the grass rustle and stir as the lion stood up, and they leaned forward eagerly. Riccardo lifted the butt stock of the rifle to his shoulder and peered into the long tube of the telescopic sight.

Abruptly the lion reared out of the grass, a great dark, shapeless mass just visible against the pale sky, and they heard the creak of the chain that held the bait as he swung upon it with all his weight, tearing at the carcass as he began to feed.

"Can you see your sights?" Sean asked Riccardo. The lion was making so much noise that he raised his voice to an almost conversational pitch, but Riccardo did not reply. He was moving the long barrel of the rifle in slow circles, trying desperately to pick up the cross hairs of the sight against the last fading glimmer of the sunset.

"No!" he admitted defeat at last. "It's too dark."

Claudia felt a lift of relief that she wouldn't have to witness the slaughter, but Sean said quietly, "All right, we'll just have to sit it out and try and get a crack at him in the dawn."

"All night!" Despite his injunctions to be silent, Claudia was so startled by the prospect of spending the night in the hide that she protested plaintively.

"You signed on to be tough, didn't you?" Sean smiled at her alarm.

"But, but-won't Job bring the truck?" She sounded desperate.

"Not unless he hears a shot." And she subsided miserably into her chair.

The night was interminable and cold, and the mosquitoes came from the stagnant green pool in the river-bed and whined around their heads, ignoring the repellent Claudia had smeared on her exposed skin. Across the river the lion fed at intervals and then rested. A little after midnight he began to roar, crashing bursts of sound that brought Claudia out of an uncomfortable doze and made her heart jump against her ribs. The terrible sound ended in a diminishing series of throaty grunts.

"Why does he do that?" Claudia asked breathlessly.

"To let the world know who's boss around here."

Then the hyenas came, shrieking and hooting like a pack of ghouls, gibbering with excitement at the smell of the kill. The lion drove them off, rushing heavily in the grass, snarling and roaring, but they came edging back as soon as he returned to feed. They tittered and whooped at him, forming a restless circle around the bait tree.

An hour before dawn, Claudia at last fell into a fitful sleep, hunched down in the chair with her neck twisted at an awkward angle, and she awoke with a start to find it was light enough to make out the links of the chain that held the buffalo carcass.

In the forest close by, a pair of ground horn bills grotesque black birds as big as a wild turkey with the same bald red heads, were booming their dawn chorus in a ritual duet. Beside her, Riccardo was stretching and yawning and Sean stood up, rocking the mac han

"What happened?" Claudia mumbled. "Where's the lion?"

"He took off an hour ago," her father told her. "Long before shooting light."

"Only one way you're going to get this cat, Capo, and that's with a jacklight or a hell of a lot of luck."

"I'm a lucky guy." Riccardo grinned and they heard the distant beat of the Toyota's engine growing louder as Job came in to pick them up.

They stayed in camp all that day, catching up on sleep lost the previous night, but when they went into the hide again that evening to wait for the lion, he had disappeared. He did not come to the bait the following night either, and the safari came on a slow period. Sean and his team worked diligently but fruitlessly to find the lion. There was no report from the scouts Sean had placed to watch the elephant crossings on the Chiwewe River, the northern boundary of Sean's concession. Riccardo Monterro was not interested in hunting lesser plains game such as sable antelope, kudu, or eland. These activities would have filled the days of another safari.

Only the two lionesses and their cubs stayed on the banks of the river-bed, taking up permanent domicile.

"Courtney's five-star hotel," Sean complained. "Gourmet meals delivered daily."

The pride became so accustomed to their visits that the lionesses retreated only a hundred yards or so into the forest with a few perfunctory low-key growls while they watched with interest as a fresh carcass was hauled into the tree. They barely contained their impatience until the Toyota pulled away, and it was still in full view when they came loping back to inspect the latest offering.

However, Frederick the Great did not return. They saw no sign of his huge, distinctive paw marks around the bait or on the dirt tracks Sean patrolled each day, searching the area for forty miles around the camp.

"But why would he just vanish like that?" Riccardo protested.

"Because he's a cat-and who knows how a cat thinks?"

Since that brief but torrid episode in the lion hide, the relationship between Sean and Claudia had altered subtly. Their bickering had become more vindictive and bitter, their overt resentment more intense, and their efforts to discomfort each other more spirited.

When she called him a racist, he only smiled. "In America that word is dreaded as the ultimate insult that can end a man's political career, ruin his business, or ostracize him from society. You are all so terrified of it, and the blacks know it and exploit it to the full.

Even the toughest hard-headed businessman or politician rolls over like a puppy dog and whines if you call him that," Sean told her gleefully. "This isn't America, ducky, and here we aren't terrified of that word. Here racism is the same as tribalism, and we are all blatant tribalists, especially the blacks. If you want to experience true dedicated tribalism and racism, then come and live in one of the newly independent African states. If you call your average black politician a racist, he would take it as a compliment. It would be the same as calling him a patriot."

Her wounded protestations were ample reward for his efforts as he looked for new ways to provoke her.

"Did you know I am a South African?" he asked.

She looked appalled. "I thought you were a Brit." He shook his head and smiled in that infuriating way of his.

"I imagine you support your government's sanctions against my country.

"Of course. Every decent person does."

"Even if it means a million blacks starve as a direct consequence?" He did not wait for her to reply. "What about disinvestment of American business from my country, you are all for that too?"

"I campaigned for it on campus," she told him proudly. "I never missed a rally or a march."

"So your plan is to convert a country by withdrawing all your missionaries and burning down the cathedral. That's brilliant!"

"You're twisting it."

"We should be grateful to you for the success of your efforts.

You forced your own citizens to sell our assets back to us at five cents on the dollar. Overnight you created two hundred multimillionaires in South Africa, and every one of them had a white face.

Congratulations and our sincere thanks, ducky."

But while they argued, they were avidly aware of each other, and the physical contact they had shared lay between them like a poisonous serpent, dangerous but intriguing.

Claudia had been celibate for almost two years now, ever since she had split from the physician she had lived with for a short while, until his demands for marriage became intolerable. Celibacy did not suit her affectionate Latin nature, but she was fastidious.

She found herself lying awake in her tent at night listening to Sean's voice from the camp fire as he talked to her father, the soft masculine rumble, just low enough for her to be unable to catch the words. Once she thought she heard her name, and she sat up and strained her ears, disappointed she could not hear what he was saying about her.

When at last he called goodnight to Riccardo and went to his own tent, he had to pass close to hers. She lay rigid in bed, listening to his footsteps and watching the beam of his flashlight through the canvas, preparing an icy dismissal in the most insulting terms and then experiencing the tiniest prick of disappointment as his footsteps passed on without a check.

On the ninth morning of the safari, when they drove out to check the bait on the riverbank, the younger lioness, her eyes now completely healed, was once again violently aggressive, snarling at Sean and mock-charging him from a hundred yards with her tail lashing as soon as he dismounted from the Toyota to inspect the bait. When she backed off and turned to retreat, they saw a pink stain of blood on the soft, pale beige fur beneath her tail.

"Growly Gertie has come into season," Sean exulted. "Now we have the one bait Frederick the Great won't be able to resist. You said you were a lucky guy, Capo. Now let's find out just how lucky.

Sean wanted to -get this lion before this extraordinary opportunity passed. There was no time to track down one of the huge buffalo herds along the Chiwewe River for a fresh bait, so Riccardo shot a young kudu bull from a herd of bachelors near the camp. They hung the carcass on the bait tree in the glade where they had last seen the big male lion-this time low enough for the lionesses to reach it easily-and they climbed into the mac han in the early afternoon. Within an hour the lionesses had picked up the scent of fresh blood and came trotting down the dry river-bed, followed by the straggling, squabbling bunch of cubs. While the older lioness fed heartily from the fresh kudu carcass, the younger female ate only lightly and sporadically. In between she prowled restlessly around the area of trampled grass beneath the tree, snarling at her cubs, rolling on her back, or sitting up to lick at the blood smear beneath her tail. At intervals she stood staring into the forest, then held her head low to the ground and let out a long, melancholy moan. It was a sound so full of agonized longing that Claudia felt herself empathizing with the sleek, beautiful creature.

"That's right, Gertie," Sean whispered behind Claudia's shoulder. "Call to Big Daddy, tell him what sweets you've got for him here."

"It's not fair," Claudia thought fiercely. "It's not fair to use her like this."

Suddenly both lionesses leaped up to face into the forest, and the older female snarled softly. Alarmed, the cubs ceased their endless play and huddled behind their dams. Then the young lioness went forward through the grass, slinking and undulating her whole body in a blatantly sexual display, emitting a series of low welcoming moans.

"Steady, Capo." Sean's hand was on Riccardo's arm, preventing him from raising the rifle. "Take your time."

Then out of the forest came the lion. At first they saw only the tip of his mane above the grass as he came forward at an eager trot to meet the lioness. She rushed forward shamelessly, and in a trampled clearing they came together.

"Wait, Capo," Sean whispered. He wanted the girl to watch it.

The lioness brushed her body against the male, back and forth she stroked him with the full length of her silken flanks, and the lion fluffed out his mane so that he seemed to double in size, responding to her advances, licking her face as she cuddled into the dense dark bush of his mane.

Then deliberately she turned and presented him with her hindquarters, cocking her tail high and sending a spurt of pink-stained urine out under his nose. The lion groaned and curled his upper lip, exposing his great yellow fangs in a rictus of passion. His back arched reflexively and Claudia wriggled in her seat as the lion stretched out his neck and licked the female under the tail with a long, curling pink tongue.

The lioness submitted to his caress for a minute, then whirled flirtatiously and, from across the river, they heard her low purrs of invitation. Sean placed his hand lightly on Claudia's thigh. The gesture was concealed from her father by the side of the chair. She made no attempt to pull away.

The lioness turned from the male, ran a few light mincing paces, and then flattened her body against the earth, looking back over her shoulder. The lion came to where she lay, moving with a stiff-legged gait, and he covered her body with his own, standing astride her. As he lowered his haunches over hers, his penis unsheathed from its pouch, glistening pinkly, and the lioness laid her tail forward along her back.

Sean ran the tips of his fingers up to the juncture of Claudia's thighs, and he could feel the springing mattress of her pubic hair through the cloth of her breeches. Her thighs opened slightly under his hand.

The lion humped his back over the female in a series of convulsive, regular spasms. Then he threw back his huge, maned head and roared. The lioness roared with him and he reached down and bit her lightly in the back of the neck, a fond, possessive gesture.

For long moments they were frozen together like that. Then the lion leaped off. At the same moment, Claudia reached down and placed her hand over Sean's. She took his little finger and twisted it back against the joint so viciously she almost dislocated it.

Agony shot up his arm to the shoulder.

He almost cried out in protest, but Riccardo was sitting close and though his view of his daughter's lower body was obscured by the canvas side of the chair, he would certainly guess at Sean's advances. With an effort Sean kept silent and drew his hand back, surreptitiously massaging the damaged finger. He could see the corner of Claudia's mouth was curled into a vindictive little smile.

Across the river the lioness stood up and shook herself. Then she walked out with a slow, satisfied air onto the open riverbank.

There she paused and looked back to where the lion was sitting on his haunches, still half hidden in the long grass.

"Get ready, Capo." Sean was still massaging his finger.

It was five in the afternoon, and the sun was at a perfect angle, lighting the far bank as though it were a stage. The range was a measured ninety-six yards from the mac han to the bait tree. Riccardo Monterro was the finest rifleman Sean had ever guided on safari. At that range he could place three bullets through the same hole.

The lioness mewled seductively, and the lion stood up and followed her out onto the open riverbank. He stood behind her, broadside to the mac han across the river, lit by the golden sunlight.

"He's a gift from heaven, Capo," Sean whispered. He tapped Riccardo's shoulder. "Take him!"

Slowly Riccardo lifted the rifle to his shoulder. It was a.300 Weatherby Magnum. The massive cartridge under the firing pin was loaded with eighty grains of powder and a 180-grain Nosier partitioned bullet. It would cross the open river-bed at over three thousand feet per second. When it entered living flesh, it would drive a shock wave ahead of it that would turn the internal organs, lungs, and heart to jelly and suck that jelly out of a massive exit hole, blowing them in a red spray over the grass beyond where the animal stood.

"Take him!" Sean said. Riccardo Monterro looked through the telescopic sight. The lion's body filled most of the magnified field of the lens.

He could see the individual hairs in the dense curling bush of mane and the detail of each sculptured muscle beneath the skin.

One inch behind the lion's shoulder, on the lateral center line of its body, was a tiny scar on the sleek hide. It was shaped like a horseshoe, a lucky horseshoe, and it made a perfect aiming point.

He aligned the cross hairs of the sight on the scar. They bounced slightly to the elevated beat of his own heart. He took up the slack in the trigger, feeling the final resistance under his finger before the sear released and the rifle fired.

Beside her father, Claudia sat rigid with horror. The lion turned his head and looked across the river-bed at her. The mating had touched and moved her deeply.

"He's too glorious to die," she thought. Almost without conscious effort, she opened her mouth and screamed with all the strength of her lungs.

"Run, damn you! Run!"

The result stunned even her. She had not believed a living creature could react so swiftly. From lazy immobility, all three animals exploded into flight. They dissolved into golden blurs of movement.

The oldest lioness disappeared almost instantaneously into the long grass, the cubs rushing after her. The younger lioness raced along the edge of the bank. So swift was her run that she did not seem to touch the earth; like a swallow drinking in flight, she skimmed the surface, and the lion followed her. For all his bulk and the dark mass of his mane, he moved as lightly as she did, reaching out those massively muscled legs in full stride.

Riccardo Monterro swiveled in his chair, the rifle to his shoulder, staring into the brilliant glass lens, swinging with the cat's run.

The lioness swerved into the grass and was gone. The lion followed her, but the instant before he disappeared, the report of the Weatherby rifle drove in on their eardrums, painful and deafening, and even in full sunlight a long tongue of flame flashed out across the river-bed.

The lion stumbled in his run and with a single, loud cough vanished into the grass. In the silence, their ears sang with the memory of gunfire, and they stared out at the empty clearing, subdued and appalled.

"Nice work, ducky!" Sean said softly.

"I'm not sorry," she said defiantly. Her father reloaded the rifle with a savage movement that sent the empty brass case spinning and sparkling away in the sunlight. He stood up, rocking the flimsy mac han and without a glance at his daughter he climbed down the makeshift ladder.

Sean picked up his.577 double rifle and followed him down.

They stood at the bottom of the tree. Riccardo unbuttoned the flap of his breast pocket and offered Sean a Havana from his pigskin cigar case. Neither of them usually smoked during the day, but now Sean accepted one and bit off the tip.

They lit their cigars and smoked for a while in silence. Then Sean said quietly, "Call your shot, Capo."

Riccardo was a marksman of such expertise that he could tell precisely where his bullet had gone the moment after he fired it.

Now he hesitated, then said grudgingly, "That cat was motoring.

I was too quick. I didn't lead him enough."

"Gutshot?" Sean asked.

"Yeah." Riccardo nodded. "Gutshot."

"Shit," said Sean. "Shit, and shit again."

They looked across at the dense stand of long grass and tangled thorny patches of undergrowth on the far bank.

It was ten minutes before the Toyota arrived, summoned by that single gunshot. Job, Shadrach, and Matatu were grinning with expectation. They had hunted six safaris with Riccardo Monterro, and they had never known him to miss. They jumped out of the Toyota and peered across the river. Their grins faded slowly and were replaced by expressions of deepest gloom as Sean said, "Intumbu! In the guts!"

The three of them went back to the Toyota and began to prepare for the follow-up In silence.

Sean squinted up at the sun. "Dark in an hour," he said. "We haven't got time to let the wound stiffen."

"We could leave him until the morning," Riccardo suggested.

"He'll be sick by then."

Sean shook his head. "If he dies in there, the hyena will get him.

No trophy. Besides which, we can't leave the poor beggar to suffer all night."

They fell silent as Claudia climbed down the ladder from the mac han When she reached ground level, she would not look at them but tossed the plait of dark hair over her shoulder defiantly and marched across to the Toyota. She climbed into the front seat and folded her arms across her small breasts, staring ahead grimly.

"I'm sorry," Riccardo said. "I've known her for twenty-six years.

I should have guessed she'd pull one like that."

"You don't have to come, Capo." Sean did not answer him directly.

"Stay with Claudia. I'll go across and get the job done.

That's what you pay me for."

It was Riccardo's turn to ignore the remark. "I'll carry the Rigby," he said. i "Make sure you're loaded with soft-nosed bullets," Sean advised.

"Of course." They walked side by side to the Toyota, and Riccardo changed the lighter Weatherby for the big Rigby. He opened the breech to check that there were soft-nosed mushrooming bullets in the magazine, then filled the loops on his cartridge belt from a fresh packet.

Sean leaned against the side of the Toyota and changed the cartridges in his big double rifle for others from the loops on the breast of his bush jacket.

"Poor bloody animal," he said. Although he was looking at Riccardo, he was speaking to Claudia. "It would have been a good clean kill, but now he's in the grass there, still alive with half his guts shot away. It's the most painful wound there is." He saw the girl wince and her cheek pale. She would not look at him.

"We'll be lucky if someone doesn't get killed," Sean went on with ghoulish relish. "It will probably be Matatu. He has to go ahead on the spoor, and the little beggar always refuses to run. If it's anybody, it will be Matatu that gets it today."

Despite herself, Claudia glanced piteously at the little Ndorobo.

"Cut it out, Sean," Riccardo ordered. "She knows how stupid she's been."

"I wonder." He snapped the rifle "Does she?" Sean asked.

closed. "Okay, Capo, wear your leather jacket. If the lion gets you down, it may protect you a little. Not much, but a little."

The three blacks were waiting on the edge of the bank. Job carried the eight-bore shotgun loaded with buckshot, but the other two were unarmed. It took a peculiar kind of courage to follow a wounded lion into thick cover without carrying a weapon.

Even in her agitation, Claudia noticed the trust with which they looked at Sean Courtney. She sensed that they had shared mortal danger so many times before that a peculiar bond united their small, exclusive group. The four of them were closer than brothers, She had never been that close or lovers, and she felt a sting of envy.

to another human being in her life.

In turn Sean touched each of them on the shoulder, a light, unsentimental gesture of affirmation. Then he spoke softly to Job.

A shadow passed over the Matabele's handsome features, and for a moment it seemed he might protest. But then he nodded acceptance and crossed to the Toyota, standing guard with the shotgun beside Claudia.

Sean held the double-barreled rifle across the crook of his arm as he combed his thick glossy hair back from his forehead with his fingers and bound it up out of his eyes with a strip of plaited leather around his forehead.

Even though she loathed him, she found herself admiring the heroic figure he cut as he prepared to face the terrible danger and gruesome death she had, in a large measure, prepared for him. The sleeves had been cut out of his bush jacket and he wore short khaki pants, so that his limbs were bare and tanned. He was even taller than her father, but his waist was slimmer and his shoulders wider, and he carried the squat, heavy rifle easily in one hand.

He glanced across at her, and his gaze was level, green, and contemptuous. She was suddenly possessed by a premonition of impending disaster, and she wanted to plead with him not to cross the river. But before she could speak, he had turned away.

"Ready, Capo?" he asked. Riccardo nodded, holding the Rigby at high port across his chest. His expression was solemn. "All right, let's move out." Sean nodded at Matatu and the little man led them down the bank.

In the river-bed, they fell into hunting formation with the tracker leading. Sean followed close behind him, watching the reed bed ahead. Riccardo came next, leaving a gap of ten paces between them to reduce the confusion in a close-quarters melee, and Shadrach followed at the end.

As they crossed, they filled their pockets with smooth water worn pebbles from the river-bed. Below the far bank they paused to listen. Then Sean passed Matatu and went ahead. He stood alone in the trampled clearing below the bait tree for almost five minutes, listening, staring intently into the tall grass beyond.

and Then he begin to lob pebbles into the grass, systematically working the area where the lion had disappeared. The pebbles clattered against other stones or bounced off the stems of shrubs, but there was no challenging growl. He whistled softly. The others scrambled up the bank and fell into their positions, and he nodded at Matatu.

They went forward slowly. There are many gravestones in Africa marking the resting places of men who hurried after a Wounded lion. Matatu concentrated all his attention on the ground at his feet. Placing his trust in Sean, he never looked up at the wall of grass ahead. At the edge of the grass he hissed softly and with his hand behind his back made a secretive gesture.

"Blood," Sean told Riccardo softly without looking back at him. "And belly hair. You were right, Capo. It's a gutshot."

He could see the wet gleam of blood on the stems of the grass.

"Akwendi!" he told Matatu. He drew a breath like a diver poised on a cliff above a deep and icy pool. He held that breath as he stepped forward and the tall grass closed around him, limiting his vision like the sinister and murky waters of the pool.

The impact of the bullet had been a mighty blow to the lion's flank that slewed him round and numbed his entire body behind his rib cage. But the grass closed about him as he raced forward, and immediately he felt secure and confident. Within twenty strides he stopped and stood looking back over his shoulder, listening and drawing the scent into his flared nostrils, lashing his tail from side to side, There was no sensation of pain, just a numbness and weight in his entrails as though he had swallowed an ironstone boulder. He smelled his own blood and turned to sniff at his side. The exit wound the bullet had left was the size of an egg cup, and from it oozed blood that was almost tarry black. Mingled with the blood were the liquid contents of his bowels. They made a tiny pattering sound as they dribbled onto the dry earth beneath him. He licked at the wound, and blood glutted his jaws.

Then he lifted his head and listened again. He heard human voices in the distance, beyond the river, and he growled softly, feeling his anger begin to, mount, associating the blood and heaviness in his belly with the presence of man.

Then the lioness called him, a low gasping moan, and he turned and followed her. He did not run now, for the weight in his belly hampered him and his back legs felt numb and heavy. The lioness was waiting for him a little farther on. Eagerly she rubbed herself against him and then tried to lead him away, trotting off ahead of him. He moved heavily after her, stopping to listen and lick the running wound, and she turned back impatiently and moaned at him and nuzzled his face, sniffing and licking at his wound, puzzled and distressed by his behavior.

His legs were heavy as tree trunks now. Ahead of him was a thicket of wild ebony. He turned and pushed his way into the dense, tangled undergrowth. He sighed as he lowered his body, curling the black tuft of his tail under him as he lay down.

The lioness fretted and worried at the edge of the thicket, calling to him with small mewling entreaties. When he did not respond, she followed him into the thicket and lay down beside him. She licked at his wound, and the lion closed his eyes and began to pant softly as the pain began.

It swelled in his body, becoming a vast, suffocating weight that grew and grew within him, seeming to distend his belly until it was at the point of bursting. The lion groaned softly and bit at his flank, trying to kill this thing within him, this living agony that was feeding on his entrails.

The lioness attempted to distract him. She was confused and worried, and she wriggled around and pressed her hindquarters into his face, offering him her swollen, weeping genitalia, but the lion closed his eyes and turned his head away, each breath rasping like a wood saw in his throat.

Then he heard voices again, the whispering voices of men, and he raised his head and his eyes burned yellow and fierce as he found a focus for his suffering. Hatred grew out of the agony of his belly, and his rage was dark and all-engulfing.

Something crashed into the branches of the wild ebony thicket above his head and he growled, a rattling exhalation of air through his tortured throat.

Slowly they went forward into the grass. It reached above their heads, enclosing them so closely they could see no more than two or three paces ahead.

The lion's blood was painted on the grass and the stems were pushed over by the passage of his body, so the trail was easy to follow. The blood on the grass gave Sean and Matatu the exact height of the wound, and the feces mixed with the blood told them the bowels had been penetrated. It was a mortal wound, but death would be slow and agonizing.

Within twenty yards of entering the grass Matatu paused and indicated the puddle of dark, tarry blood. "He stopped here," he whispered.

Sean nodded. "He won't have gone far," he guessed. He's waiting for us, Matatu, and when he comes, you run back behind me. Do you hear me?"

Matatu grinned at him. They both knew he would not obey.

Matatu had never run; he would stand the charge as he always did.

"All right, you silly little bugger." Sean was tense. "Get on with it."

&

"You Silly little bugger," Matatu repeated happily. He knew Sean only called him that when particularly proud of him or pleased with him.

They moved along the blood spoor, pausing every three or four paces while Sean lobbed pebbles into the grass ahead of them.

When there was no response, they moved cautiously forward again.

Behind him Sean could hear the click, click of the safety catch on the Rigby. Riccardo was snapping it on and off as they advanced, a nervous gesture that betrayed his agitation. Although the sound irritated him, Sean felt a stir of admiration for the man.

This was probably one of the most dangerous activities in which a man could engage. They don't come much worse than a gutshot lion in close cover. This was Sean's job, but for Riccardo it was a once-in-a-lifetime test, and he had not failed it yet.

Sean tossed another pebble into the grass ahead and listened to it rattle on the branch of a low tree.

As they went on, Sean thought about fear. For some men fear was a crippling and destroying emotion, but for those like Sean it was an addiction. He loved the sensation of fear. It was like a drug flowing through his veins, heightening all his senses, so he could feel the checkering on the polished walnut stock of the rifle under his fingers and the brush of each blade of grass against his bare legs. His vision was so enhanced that he saw it all through a crystal lens that magnified and dramatized each image. He could taste the very air he breathed and smell the crushed grass under his feet and the blood of the lion they were following. He was vividly, vibrantly alive, and he gave himself up to fear, as an addict would to a syringeful of heroin.

He tossed another pebble into the ebony thicket that stood like an island in the sea of grass just ahead of them. It fell through the branches, rattling and crackling, and the lion growled from the depths of the thicket.

The fear of death was so pleasurable as to be almost unbearable, an emotional orgasm, stronger than any woman had ever given him, and he slid the safety catch off the rifle and said, exultation in his voice, "He's coming, Matatu. Run!" Time slowed down, another phenomenon produced by fear.

From the corner of his eye he saw Riccardo Monterro step up beside him, taking his place in the firing line, and he knew what it was costing him.

"Good man!" he said loudly, and at the sound of his voice, the branches of the ebony thicket shook as a heavy body rushed through them. Suddenly there was a terrifying, growling, grunting uproar coming straight at them.

Matatu stood perfectly still, like a guardsman on parade.

Matatu had never run. Sean stepped up on one side of him and Riccardo on the other, and they lifted their rifles and aimed into the wall of grass as that thing rushed in on them, flattening the tall stems with its charge, roaring now, blasts of sound that were like a physical assault on their senses.

The grass opened in their faces and a huge, tawny body hurled itself on them.

They fired together, and the crash of gunfire drowned the enraged roaring. Sean fired the second barrel, the two shots sounding as one, and the huge 750-grain bullet tore into the charging animal, stopping it as though it had run into a cliff. Riccardo was working the bolt of the Rigby, and a rolling echo of gunfire filled the air around them.

The dead animal fell at their feet, and they stood with rifles raised, staring down at the bleeding carcass, dazed by the swiftness and the savagery and the beat of gunfire in their heads.

In the silence Shadrach stepped forward. Like Matatu, he had stood his ground. Now he stooped to the carcass, then jerked back and shouted aloud what they had not yet fully realized.

"It's not the lion!"

As he said it, the lion charged. He came straight at them out of the thicket as his mate had done but even more swiftly, driven by the agony in his belly and the black rage that filled him. He came grunting like a locomotive at full throttle, and they were unprepared, their rifles unloaded, bunched up too closely around the carcass of the lioness, and Shadrach was between them and the lion.

The lion came bursting out of the tall grass in full charge and seized Shadrach in his jaws, biting into his hip. The momentum of its charge carried it into the knot of men standing close behind Shadrach.

It knocked them all off their feet. Sean went over backward, crashing into the earth on his shoulder blades and the back of his neck with stunning force. He was holding the rifle in front of his chest, instinctively trying to protect it from damage as he went down, and the engraved barrels slammed into his sternum as he hit the earth. Pain shot through his chest, but he held on to the weapon and rolled onto his side.

Ten feet away the lion was savaging Shadrach. It had him pinned under its massive paws as it mauled his hip and upper leg.

"Thank God it's not a leopard," Sean thought as he broke open the rifle to reload. A leopard will not fix on one man if it attacks a group of hunters. It will bound from one to the other in rapid succession, maiming and killing all of them with dazzling speed.

Furthermore, a leopard's main prey is the baboon, so it knows precisely how to dispatch a primate. It goes instinctively for the head, taking off the scalp and top of the skull, while its back legs kick down the belly, stripping out the intestines with hooked yellow claws very quickly, very efficiently.

"Thank God it's not a leopard." The great beast was fixed on Shadrach, pinning him with its claws, worrying the leg, and with each growl a scarlet spray of blood puffed out of its jaws. The Matabele gun bearer was screaming and beating ineffectually at the huge maned head with both clenched fists.

Sean saw Riccardo in the grass beyond them, scrambling to his knees and crawling toward where the Rigby rifle had been thrown.

"Don't shoot, Capo!" Sean yelled at him. In a melee like this one, an inexperienced man with a loaded rifle was many times more dangerous than the attacking animal. The bullets of the Rigby would crack through the lion's body and smash into anybody beyond.

Sean had two spare cartridges held between the fingers of his left hand. It was the old hunter's trick for the fast reload, and he slid the two cartridges into the empty breeches and snapped the action shut.

The lion was chewing on Shadrach's lower body. Sean could hear the bone crunch and crackle like dry toast under those dreadful fangs. His nostrils were full of the fetid, gamy smell of the lion, of dust and the reek of blood of man and beast.

Beyond them he saw that Riccardo had the rifle. He was on his knees, his face ashen with shock, cramming cartridges into the breech of the Rigby.

"Don't shoot!" Sean yelled again. The lion was directly between them.

A bullet that hit the animal would come straight on to him.

It takes a special technique to shoot an attacking animal off a prostrate man without killing them both. It was deadly dangerous to run up to them and shoot down into the animal's body with the man lying under it.

Sean made no effort to rise to his feet. He rolled like a log, cushioning the rifle, flipping over three times, the maneuver that was second nature from his Scout training. Now he was lying alongside the lion, almost touching him. He thrust the rifle into his lower ribs, aiming upward, and fired. It needed only one of those 750-grain bullets.

The shot lifted the lion clear of Shadrach's body, tossing it lightly aside. The bullet tore out of his back between the shoulders and went straight on up into the sky.

Sean dropped the rifle and knelt over Shadrach, taking him in his arms, and looked down on the leg. The fangs had inflicted penetrating stiletto wounds. From hip to knee the black flesh was riddled.

"Matatu!" Sean snapped. "In the Toyota. The medicine box.

Get it." And the tracker vanished into the grass.

Riccardo crawled to Sean's side and looked at the leg. "Sweet Mother Mary," he said softly. "It's the femoral." Bright arterial blood was pumping out of the deepest wound in a jet, and Sean reached into it, thrusting his fingers into the hot flesh.

He got a grip on the slippery, rubbery, pulsing worm with thumb and forefinger and pinched with all his strength.

"Hurry, Matatu! Run, you little bugger, run!" he bellowed.

It was less than three hundred yards to the Toyota, and Matatu ran like a frightened fawn. He was back within minutes. Job was with him carrying the white chest with the red cross on its lid, and he opened it.

"In the instrument roll," Sean told Job brusquely. "Hemostats."

Job passed him the stainless steel clamps, and Sean fastened them onto the ruptured artery and taped them against the thigh.

His hands were wet and bright with blood, but he and Job had done this work fifty times during the bush war, and his movements were swift and confident.

"Rig up a drip set," he ordered Job. "We'll give him a bag of Ringer's lactate to start with. Rig it."

As he spoke he was screwing the nozzle onto a tube of Betadyne.

He slid the nozzle as deeply as it would go into one of the puncture wounds in Shadrach's thigh and squeezed the thick iodine paste into it until it forced itself out of the mouth of the wound like tobacco-yellow toothpaste. Shadrach lay without protest or any sign of pain, watching them as they worked, replying to Job in monosyllables when he spoke to him in Sindebele.

"Drip set is ready," Job said.

Without a word Sean took the cannula out of his hands. Shadrach was his man, his responsibility. He would allow no one else to do this, not even Job. He twisted Shadrach's arm, exposing the inside of the elbow, and worked up a vein with a skilled milking motion. He hit it with the needle at the first attempt and nodded to Job to let the plasma flow.

"Hey, Shadrach!" Sean's grin was remarkably convincing as he laid a blood-smeared palm briefly against the Matabele's cheek. "I think you poisoned that old lion good. He eats your leg and he's dead-poof! Like that!" Shadrach chuckled. It amazed Riccardo to hear it, even though he had fought and worked with tough men before. "Give Shadrach one of your cigars, Capo," Sean suggested, and he began to strap the leg with clean white tape from the medicine chest to stop the residual bleeding.

Once he had strapped the leg, he went over the rest of Shadrach's body quickly. He smeared Betadyne into all the rents and tears left by the lion's claws.

"We can't afford to overlook the merest scratch," he grunted.

"That old lion has been feeding on putrid carcasses. His teeth and mouth are a reeking pit of infection, and there is rotten meat packed in the grooves of his claws. Gangrene kills most of the victims of a mauling."

Still not satisfied, Sean injected a full ampulet of penicillin into the transfusion bag. That would swamp the body with antibiotic.

Sean nodded and stood up. It had taken him less than thirty minutes. Studying the bandages and the drip set Job was holding over Shadrach's supine form, Riccardo doubted a trained doctor Could have worked more swiftly or efficiently.

"I'm going to fetch the Toyota," Sean told them. "But I'll have to bring it around by way of the ford. That will take a little time, and it will be dark by the time I get back." He could have sent Job to fetch the truck, but he wanted to get the girl to himself. "There are spare blankets in the chest. Keep him wrapped and warm." He looked down at Shadrach. "Little scratch like that. I want you back at work pretty damn quick, otherwise I'll dock it off your wages."

He picked up the.577 and strode back through the grass to the riverbank. As he trudged through the sandy watercourse, his anger at last came upon him, more powerful for being so long delayed.

Claudia was sitting alone in the front seat of the Toyota as he came up the bank. She Invoked forlorn and abandoned, but he felt no twinge of pity. She stared aghast at his blood-caked hands.

Sean placed the,.57 in the gun rack without looking at her, then spilled water from the jerry can over his hands and scrubbed them together, washing off most of the blood. He climbed into the driver's seat and started the Toyota, swung it in a tight circle, and sent it back along the track that followed the river downstream.

"Aren't you going to tell me what happened?" Claudia asked at last. She had meant to sound unrepentant and full of bravado, but it came out in a small subdued voice.

"All right," Sean agreed. "I'll tell you. Instead of a quick, merciful kill there was total chaos and confusion. The lioness charged us first. We shot her by mistake in the long grass. Not that we would have had much option anyway. She was coming all the way." Sean switched on the headlights, for the sun was gone and the forest darkening. "Okay, so now the lioness is dead. Her cubs are still unweaned, so they're goners, all three of them. They'll starve to death inside a week."

"Oh no!" Claudia whispered.

"Then the lion charged after his mate. He caught us all ends up.

We weren't ready for him, and he got Shadrach down. He almost chewed his leg off. The bone is shattered from hip to knee. He may lose the whole leg, I don't know. Perhaps he'll get lucky and just end up with a permanent limp. Any way you look at it, he's not going to be a tracker anymore. I'll find him a job as a skinner or camp servant, but he's a Matabele warrior and menial work is going to break his heart."

"I'm so sorry."

"You're sorry?" Sean asked. His voice low and furious. "Shadrach is my friend and my companion. He has saved my life more times than I can count, and I've done the same for him. We have fought a war together, we have slept under the same blanket, eaten from the same Plate, trekked ten thousand miles together in the heat and the dust and the rain. He is more than a friend. I have two brothers, same mother and father, but Shadrach means more to me than either of them. Now you tell me you're sorry. Well, thanks a lot, ducky. That's a great comfort."

"You have every right to be angry. I understand. "You understand?" he asked. "You understand nothing. You are an arrogant ignoramus from a different hemisphere.

You are a citizen of the land of the quick fix, and you come and try your simplistic naive solutions here in Africa. You try to save a single animal from his destiny, and you end up by killing a female, sending her three cubs to lingering death, and condemning one Of the finest men you'll ever meet to the LIFE of a cripple."

"What more can I sayT" she asked. "I was wrong."

"At this late hour your newfound humility is most touching."

His low voice lashed her. "Sure, you were wrong. Just as you and your people are wrong to try and starve an African nation of thirty million souls into acceptance of another one of your naive solutions. When the damage you have inflicted is beyond repair, Will you again say, "I'm sorry, I was wrong" and walk away and leave my land and my people to bleed and suffer?"

"What can I do?"

"We have thirty days of safari remaining," he said bitterly. "I want you to keep out of my hair for that time. The only reason I don't cancel the show right now and send you packing back to your Eskimos and your human rights is that I just happen to think your father is a pretty fine man. From now on you are under sufferance. One more peep out of you and you are on the next plane back to Anchorage. Do I make myself clear?"

"Abundantly." There was a trace of spirit in her tone once more.

Neither of them spoke again during the rough ride down to the ford and back up the far bank to the glade in which the bait tree stood.

By that time Job and Matatu had a fire going. The glow of the flames guided Sean to where Shadrach lay, and he climbed out of the Toyota and went to him immediately.

"How is the pain?" He squatted beside him.

"It is a little thing," Shadrach replied, but Sean saw the lie in the gray tone of his skin and the sunken eyeballs, and he filled a disposable syringe from a glass ampule of morphine. He waited for the drug to take effect before they lifted Shadrach between them and laid him in the back of the truck.

Job and Matatu had skinned both lions while they waited, and they loaded the bundle of green salted skins onto the hood, where it would cool in the night wind.

"It's a hell of a lion," Sean told Riccardo. "You've got yourself a magnificent trophy!"

Riccardo shook his head and said, "Let's get Shadrach back to camp.

Sean drove with care, rolling the truck gently over the rougher spots, trying to protect Shadrach from the worst jolting. Claudia insisted on sitting in the back with Shadrach, cushioning his head on her lap. Riccardo sat up in front with Sean. He asked quietly, "What happens now?"

"I'll radio Harare as soon as we get into camp. They'll have a private ambulance at the airport to meet him. I'll be gone a couple of days. I'll see Shadrach well taken care of and, of course, I'll have to put in a report to the government game department and try and square it."

"I hadn't gotten around to thinking about that," Riccardo said.

"We killed a lioness with cubs and had a man mauled. What will the government do?"

Sean shrugged. "There is a better than even chance they'll pull my license and take the concession away from me."

"Hell, Sean, I didn't realize. is there anything I can do?"

"Not a thing, Capo, but thanks for the offer. You are out of it.It's between me and the department."

"I could take full blame for the lioness, say I shot her."

"No good." Sean shook his head. "No blame on the clients.

That's departmental doctrine. Whatever you do, I am fully responsible."

"If they pull your license-" Riccardo hesitated, and Sean shook his head again.

"No, Capo, they won't cancel the safari. That's also departmental doctrine. Finish the safari. Don't offend the paying client.

Government needs the hard currency you bring. Only after you have left, they'll bring out the ax for me. You are out of it. I'll be back in two days, and we'll hunt that big elephant together. You don't have to worry."

"You make me sound like a selfish bastard. I'm worrying about you and your license, not about enjoying myself."

"We'll both enjoy ourselves, Capo. After all, if I do lose my license, it will be the last time you and I ever hunt together."

Claudia could overhear the conversation from where she sat in the back of the truck, and she knew why her father did not reply.

He knew it was his last hunt, license or no license. Claudia had taken an emotional battering during the last few hours, and thinking about Riccardo now, she felt the tears well up and scald her eyelids. She fought them back. Then it was no longer worth the effort and she wept for all of them, for her father and the lioness and the cubs, for that beautiful male lion, and for Shadrach and his shattered leg.

One of her tears fell onto Shadrach's upturned face, and he stared up at her in perturbation. She wiped the droplet from his cheek with her thumb, and her voice was thick and muffled with grief as she whispered to him, "It's going to be all right, Shadrach." Even she realized what a crass and famous lie that was.

Sean had a scheduled radio contact with his office in Harare at ten every evening. The journey home was so slow that they reached camp with only minutes to rig the aerial and connect the radio to the Toyota's twelve-volt battery before the scheduled hour.

The contact was good; one of the reasons for the late schedule was the better radio reception in the cool of the evening. Reema's voice, with its Gujurati intonation, came through dearly. She was a pretty Hindu girl who ran Sean's Harare office with ruthless efficiency.

"We have a casevac." Sean used the terminology of the bush war for casualty evacuation. "I want an ambulance standing by to meet me."

"Okay fine, Sean."

"Set up a person-to-person telephone call with my brother Garrick in Johannesburg for ten A.M. tomorrow."

"Will do, Sean."

"Make an appointment for me to see the director of the game department tomorrow afternoon."

"Director is in New York for the wildlife conference, Sean. The deputy director is in charge."

Sean switched off the hand microphone while he swore bitterly.

He had forgotten about the wildlife conference. Then he pressed the "transmit" button again.

"Okay, Reema my love, get me an appointment with Geoffrey Manguza then."

"Sounds serious, Sean."

"We just invented the word."

"What is your ETA? I'll have to file an emergency flight plan for you." The security authority was always so jittery about South African hot pursuit of terrorists into Zimbabwe or pre-emptive South African raids on terrorist facilities in Harare itself that it usually required flight plans to be filed forty-eight hours in advance.

"Take off here in fifty minutes. ETA Harare twenty-three hundred hours. Pilot and two par," Sean told her.

It was half an hour's drive from the camp to the airstrip. Riccardo and Claudia were in the Toyota when they drove out.

Sean took the back seats out of the Beechcraft and placed a mattress on the floor for Shadrach. By this time Shadrach was feverish and restive. His temperature was 101, and the glands in his groin were as hard and lumpy as walnuts. Afraid of what he might find, Sean didn't want to look under the dressings on the leg, but one of the minor claw wounds on Shadrach's belly was definitely infected already, weeping watery pus and emitting the first faint odor of putrescence.

Sean administered another dose of penicillin through the cannula of the drip set. Then he, Job, and two of the camp skinners gently lifted Shadrach into the aircraft and settled him on the mattress.

Shadrach's wife was a sturdy Matabele woman with an infant strapped to her back with a length of trade cloth. They loaded her considerable baggage, and she clambered up and sat beside Shadrach on the mattress, placed the infant on her lap, opened her blouse, and gave the child her milk-engorged breast to suckle. Job filled the aircraft's empty luggage compartments with sacks of dried game meat, a valuable commodity in Africa. Then Job drove the Toyota to the far end of the runway to give Sean the headlights for takeoff.

"Job will look after you while I'm away, Capo. Why don't you take the shotgun and go for dove and sand grouse down at the pools? Best wing shooting you'll ever have, better than white winged dove in Mexico," Sean suggested.

"Don't worry about us. We'll be just fine."

"I'll be back as soon as I possibly can. Tukutela won't be crossing before the new moon. I'll be back before then. It's a promise, Capo."

Sean held out his hand, and as Riccardo took it he said, "You did good work with the lions, Capo, but then you were never short of bottom."

"What kind of Limey word is that?" Riccardo asked. ""BottOM

"How about a good Yankee word then? Cojones?"

"That'll do." Riccardo grinned at him.

Claudia was standing beside her father. Now she smiled hesitantly, almost shyly, and took a step forward as if to offer her hand. She had released her hair from its plait and brushed it out into a dense, dark mane around her head. Her expression was soft and her eyes big and dark and lustrous. In the Toyota headlights her classical Latin features went beyond the merely handsome, and Sean realized for the first time that she was truly beautiful. Despite her beauty and her penitent attitude, he kept his expression cold and forbidding, nodded at her curtly, ignored the tentative offer to shake his hand, climbed up onto the wing of the Beechcraft, and ducked into the cockpit.

Sean had cut the airstrip out of the brush himself and leveled it by dragging a bundle of old truck tires up and down it behind the Toyota. It was narrow, rough, and short, with a gradient falling toward the river. He lined up with the Beechcraft's tail backed into the bushes and, facing down the slope, stood on the brakes. He aimed at the lights of the Toyota at the far end of the strip while he ran up to full power on both engines and then let the brakes off.

Just short of the trees at the end of the strip he pulled on the flaps and bounced the Beechcraft into the air. As always he crossed himself blasphemously with mock relief as he cleared the treetops and turned on course for Harare.

During the flight he tried to plan his strategy. The director of the game department was an old friend, and Sean had successfully dealt with him in equally serious circumstances. The deputy, Geoffrey Manguza, however, was a horse of literally another color. The director was one of the few white civil servants still in charge of a department of government. Manguza would succeed him soon, the first black head of the game department.

He and Sean had fought on opposite sides during the bush war, and Manguza had been an astute guerrilla leader and political commissar. The rumor was that he did not like the safari Concension owners, most of whom were white. The concept of private exploitation of state assets offended his Marxist principles, and he had shot too many white men during the war to have any great deal of liking or respect for them. It was going to be a difficult meeting. Sean sighed.

Reema was waiting for him as he taxied in. A modern Indian woman, she had abandoned the said in favor of a neat pant-suit. She was not so modern, however, that she wished to choose her own husband. Her father and her uncles were working on that at the moment and had already come up with a likely candidate in Canada, a professor of Oriental religions at the University of Toronto.

Sean hated them for it. Reema was a great asset to Courtney Safaris, and he knew he would never be able to replace her.

She had the ambulance waiting on the tarmac beside the light aircraft hangars. Reema regularly bribed the guards at the main gate with dried game meat from the concession. In Africa, meat or the Promise of meat opens all gates.

They followed the ambulance to the hospital in the Kombi.

While Sean sat in the passenger seat glancing through the most urgent mail she had brought for his attention, Reema recited a list of the important developments during his absence.

"Carter, the surgeon from Atlanta, canceled.. That was a twenty-one-day safari, and Sean glanced up sharply, but Reema soothed him. "I phoned the German soap manufacturer in Munich-Herr Buchner, the one we turned down in December? He jumped at it. So we are full, back to back, for the rest of the season.

"How about my brother?" Sean interrupted. He didn't want to tell her it was touch and go that there was going to be an abrupt end to the season. "Your broth eris expecting your call, and as of six o'clock this morning the telephone was still working." In Zimbabwe that was something that couldn't be taken for granted.

At the hospital there were at least fifty seriously ill patients awaiting admission ahead of them. The long benches were full of huddled, miserable humanity and the stretchers were blocking the aisles and doorways. The admissions clerks were in no great hurry and waved Shadrach's stretcher to a far corner.

"Leave it to me," said Reema, and she took the senior admissions clerk by the elbow and led him aside with an angelic smile, talking to him sweetly.

Five minutes later Shadrach's admission papers had been processed and he was being examined by an East German doctor.

"How much did that cost?" Sean asked.

"Cheap," Reema answered. "A bag of dried meat."

Sean had picked up sufficient German from his safari clients to be able to discuss Shadrach's case with the doctor. The man was reassuring. Sean said good-bye to Shadrach.

"Reema has your money. She will come to see you each day. If you need anything, tell her."

"I will be with you in spirit when you hunt Tukutela," Shadrach said softly.

Sean had to clear his throat before he could answer. "We will hunt many more elephant together, old friend." And he walked away quickly.

The next morning, when at last he got through to Johannesburg, the telephone line was crackling with static.

"Mr. Garrick Courtney is in a board meeting," the girl on the switchboard at Centaine House, the Courtney Group headquarters, told him. "But he gave orders to put your call through directly." In his mind's eye, Sean saw once again the boardroom paneled in figured walnut, the huge Pierneef canvases framed by the elaborate panels, and his brother Garry sitting at the head of the table in the chairman's high-backed throne, beneath the crystal chandelier his grandmother had imported from Murano in Italy.

"Sean!" Garry's voice cut through the static, bold and assured.

How he had changed from the puny little runt who used to Pee in his bed!

The job could have been Sean's if he had wanted it and had been prepared to work for it. Sean was the eldest son, but he had not wanted the job. Still, he always experienced a twinge of resentment when he thought of Garry's Rolls and Lear jet and holiday home in the south of France.

"Hello, Garry. How's it going", All well here," Garry told him. "What's the problem?" It was typical of their relationship that any contact meant there was a problem to solve.

"I might need to put a bit of honey with the cheese," Sean told him diplomatically. It was their private code for money to Switzerland, and Garry would understand that Sean would be bribing somebody for something. It happened often enough.

"Okay, Sean. Just give me the amount and the account number." Garry was Sean's partner in the safari company and held 40 percent of the shares.

Garry, I'll call you sometime tomorrow. How's the rest of the family?" They chatted for a few minutes longer, and when he hung up Reema came through from the outer office.

"I managed to get through to the game department at last."

Reema had been trying all morning. "Comrade Manguza will see u at four-thirty this afternoon."

GeOffreY Manguza was a tall Shana with a very black complexion and close-cropped hair. He wore silver-framed eyeglasses and a dark blue suit. However, his necktie was Hermes... Sean recognized the horse carriage logo-and his wristwatch was a Patek Philippe with, a black crocodile-skin strap. They were not your run-of-the-mill Marxist accessories, and Sean found that encouraging. However, the deputy director did not rise from behind his desk to welcome him.

"Colonel Courtney," he greeted him unsmilingly, using Sean's Previous rank to let him know that he knew that Sean had commanded the Ballantyne Scouts, one of the elite Rhodesian groups, after Ballantyne, the founder of the regiment, had been killed in action. It was also a reminder that they had been enemies and might still be so.

"I Prefer Plain "Mister, "" Sean smiled engagingly. "That other business is behind us now, Comrade Manguza. The deputy director inclined his head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. "What can I do for you?"

"Unfortunately, I have to report an unintentional transgression of the game regulations... " Geoffrey Manguza's expression hardened and remained like that while Sean described the accidental shooting of the lioness and Shadrach's subsequent mauling. When Sean finished by submitting the written report Reema had typed for him, Geoffrey Manguza let the document lie untouched on his desk top while he asked a few Pertinent and unsympathetic questions.

"You do realize, Colonel Courtney," he used the rank again, deliberately, "that I'm obliged to take a most serious view of this entire business. It seems to me that there has been negligence and serious disregard for the safety of your clients and your own staff.

Zimbabwe is no longer a colony, and you cannot treat our people the way you did before."

"Before you make your recommendation to the director, I would like to clarify a few points for you," Sean told him.

"You are free to speak, Colonel."

"It's almost five o'clock now." Sean checked his watch. "Won't you allow me to buy you a drink at the golf club, and we can discuss it in more relaxed surroundings?"

Manguza's expression was inscrutable, but after a few moments" thought he nodded. "As you wish. I have a few small matters to attend to before I leave here, but I will meet you at the club in half an hour."

He kept Sean sitting on the veranda of the golf club for forty minutes before he put in an appearance. it had once been the Royal Salisbury Golf Club. However, the first two words had been dropped from the title lest they perpetuate the colonial past. Nevertheless, the first remark Geoffrey Manguza made after he had taken the chair opposite Sean and ordered a gin and tonic was. "Strange, isn't it? A few years ago, the only way a black man could have got in here was as a waiter, and now I am on the committee and my handicap is five." Sean let it pass and changed the subject to that of rhino poaching across the border with Zambia. Manguza made no effort to pursue that topic. He watched Sean through his silver-rimmed spectacles and, as soon as he stopped speaking, cut in immediately.

"You wished to clarify a few points for me," he said. "We are both busy men, Colonel."

This directness was disconcerting. Sean was preparing for a typically roundabout African approach, but he adapted his pitch.

"First of all, Mr. Manguza, I wanted to tell you what a high price I and my associates place on the Chiwewe concession." Sean used the word "price" deliberately. "I telephoned them this morning and explained this unfortunate incident, and they are anxious to have it resolved at any price." Again he used the word, and paused significantly.

There was a certain etiquette to be observed in negotiations such as these. To the Western mind it was bribery, but in Africa it was simply the "dash system," a universal and acceptable means of getting things done. Government might put up posters in all public buildings depicting a booted foot crushing a venomous serpent under the slogan sTAmp ouT coRRuptioN, but nobody took that very seriously. In fact, in a bizarre fashion, the posters themselves constituted official recognition of the practice.

At this stage, Geoffrey Manguza should have agreed that recoin, was due or given some other indication of his willingness to listen to reason. He said nothing, merely stared at Sean from behind those glinting lenses until Sean was forced to speak again.

"If you've finished your drink, why don't we take a stroll down to the eighteenth fairway?" The club veranda was crowded and the happy hour in full swing with too many listening ears. Manguza swallowed the last of his gin and tonic and without a word led the way down the steps to the lawn.

The last foursome was coming down the eighteenth, but Sean kept to the edge of the rough, and as the players and their caddies straggled past, Sean said softly, "I told my associates that you are the most powerful man in the department and that the white director is merely your rubber stamp. I told them you had it in Your Power to sidetrack an official inquiry and dismiss any charges arising from this most unfortunate incident. I was so certain that I laid a bet of ten thousand U.S. dollars with them. If I win my bet, those winnings are yours, Mr. Manguza, paid into any account you nominate anywhere in the world."

Manguza stopped and turned to face him, and Sean was taken aback when he saw his expression. Manguza's voice quivered with fury as he said, "Your assumption that I am open to a bribe is an insult to me personally. That I could tolerate, but it is also an insult to the revolution and the revolutionary heroes who died in the struggle to free this country of the imperial and colonial yoke. it is an insult to the party and our leaders, to the Marxist spirit, and ultimately to the African people as a whole."

"I only suggested a lousy ten grand, not the return of the monarchY, for the love of Allah."

"You may smile your supercilious white smile, Colonel Courtney, but we know you well. We know about your South African connections and about the bunch of Matabele hooligans you have gathered about you. We know that some of them fought with you against the forces of revolutionary democracy. They are counterrevolution ari and capitalist roaders, and you are their leader."

"I shot a lioness by mistake, and one of my capitalist roaders got bitten. That's the full extent of my counterrevolutionary activities.

"We are watching You, Colonel," Manguza told him ominouslY "You can be certain that I will make the correct recommendation in your case, and that The insult to me and my people will not be forgotten." Manguza turned and strode back toward the clubhouse. Sean shook his head. "So we say farewell to the beautiful Chiwewe s concession, he murmured. "I really blew that one! Despite his levity, he felt a sliding sensation of disaster in the pit of his stomach. The office of Courtney Safaris was in the Avenues, between Government House and the golf club. Reema was waiting for him in the outer office, its walls decorated with color posters of wildlife and photographic enlargements of satisfied clients with their trophies.

She jumped up from her desk the moment Sean came in. "The hospital called an hour ago, Sean. They have amputated Shadrach's leg."

For long moments Sean could neither speak nor move. Then he crossed slowly to the filing cabinet and took a glass and a half-empty bottle of Chivas from the top drawer. He sagged onto the sofa and poured a three-finger jolt of whisky.

"The ending to a perfect day," he said, and tossed back the whisky.

Reema left him sitting on the sofa. There were only two more drinks left in the bottle, and when they were gone, Sean went down to the Monomatapa, Hotel. The hotel was full of tourists, and among them was a blond Teutonic Valkyrie in full Out of Africa costume. She caught his eye across the lounge the moment Sean walked in and smiled at him.

"What the hell!" Sean said to himself. "It's cheaper than whisky, and no hangover either."

The German Friulein laughed delightedly at Sean's rudimentary German, and not long afterward it transpired that she had the presidential suite on the fourteenth floor all to herself. She ordered a bottle of Mumm's from room service, and they drank it in bed.

In the morning, while Reema filed a flight plan for him, taking a bag of dried meat down to air traffic control, Sean returned to the hospital.

They had taken Shadrach's leg off only inches below the hip.

The East German doctor showed Sean the X-ray plates. "Hopeless!" He pointed out the bone fragments. "Like confetti!"

There was no place to sit in the crowded surgical ward, so Sean stood beside Shadrach's bed for a while and they talked about the battles and the hunts they had shared. They did not mention the leg, and when they had run out of reminiscences, Sean gave the ward sister a hundred dollars to look after him and went out to the airport.

Reema had the flight plan for him and the Beechcraft was refueled and loaded with everything from fresh fruit and vegetables to toilet paper for the camp.

"You are a heroine, Reema," he said. Then, standing beside the aircraft, he described the meeting with Geoffrey Manguza.

"It doesn't look very cheerful," he ended. "You had better begin looking for another job."

"I'm sorry for you, Sean," she said. "But don't worry about me.

I was wondering how to break the news to you. I'm leaving for

Canada on September sixteenth. It's all arranged-I'm going to be the wife of a professor."

"You be happy," Sean ordered. For the first time he kissed her, and she blushed under her nut-brown skin, looking prettier than ever.

Sean made three low-level passes over the camp. On the third he saw the Toyota puff out toward the airstrip with Job driving and Matatu standing in the back. He landed and taxied the Beechcraft into its cage of galvanized diamond-mesh wire, designed to discourage elephants from pulling the wings off and lions from chewing the tires.

When Job and Matatu arrived in the Toyota, they transferred the cargo to it. Then Sean told them about Shadrach's leg.

They had fought all through the bush war together and were hardened to casualties, but Sean saw the pain and grief in Job's eyes as he murmured, "We will need a new number two gun bearer.

Pumula, the skinner, is a good man."

"Yes, we will use him," Sean agreed.

For a while they stood silently, paying tribute to their maimed companion. Then, still without speaking, they climbed into the Toyota and drove back to camp.

Rather than pants, Claudia Monterro wore a dress for dinner that evening, a floating silk chiffon in pure white with silver and turquoise Navajo jewelry. Against her tanned skin and jet black hair, the effect was stunning. However, Sean made certain not to show his admiration and directed all his conversation at her father.

After he had told Riccardo about Shadrach and his meeting with Manguza, the evening was gloomy and cheerless. Claudia left the men at the camp fire, but they had not sat there long before Riccardo said goodnight and went off to his tent. Sean took a bottle of whisky from the dining tent and went down toward the servants" village.

Job's tent and those of his two wives were set apart from the others, on the bank of the river overlooking a deep pool where hippos lay like dark rock islands in midstream.

When Sean seated himself on the carved native stool across the fire from Job, one of the wives, a pretty young Matabele girl with Job's infant strapped on her back, brought two glasses and knelt beside him while he poured a large peg for each of them. She took the glass to her husband, and Job saluted Sean across the flickering flames.

They drank in silence and Sean watched Job's face in the firelight as he stared out across the river. The silence was companionable and comforting, and Sean let his thoughts wander back down the years as he rolled the smoky taste of whisky over his tongue.

He remembered the day he had first met Job Bhekani. It had been on a hill with only a number, Hill 3 1, a rocky hill, thick with stands of dense wild ebony and jesse bush where the enemy waited.

Job had been on the hill for two days, and his eyes were wild and bloodshot. Sean had parachuted in that morning with five sticks of his own scouts. They had fought side by side the rest of that day, and at dusk, when the hill was cleared and those of the enemy still alive had fled down the rocky slopes and disappeared into the forest, Sean and Job had helped each other to where the helicopter waited to take them out. They had gone down the hill slowly, wearily, dragging their weapons, their arms around each other's shoulders and their blood mingling when it oozed out from under the field dressings.

"Blood brothers whether you like it or not," Sean had croaked, grinning at Job from under the camouflage cream and soot and dust. A week later, when Job was released from base hospital, Sean had been waiting for him personally with his transfer papers.

"You've been seconded to Ballantyne Scouts, Captain."

And Job had smiled that rare wide smile and said, "Let's go, Colonel."

From his file, Sean knew that Job had been born on the Gwai River and attended the local mission school. He had obtained a bursary to the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, from where he had graduated with a first in politics, history, and social anthropology. From there he had gone on with another bursary to Brown College in Chicago and gotten his master's the same year Ian Smith declared unilateral independence.

Only much later, when they had tried and tested their friendship, did Sean learn how Job had herded his father's cattle along the Gwai River and come, even as a child, to know and love the wilds.

Job's father was one of the grandsons of King Lobengula, son of the great Mzilikazi, so Job was a direct descendant of the royal Zulu line, and this was apparent in his carriage and his features. the powerful jaw and deep forehead, the dark, intelligent eyes and domed skull beneath the thick close-cropped curls.

During his studies and his sojourn in America, Job had come to abhor the communist doctrine and all its works, so it was natural that on his return to Africa, he had enlisted in the Rhodesian African Rifles and within a year had earned his commission.

After the war, when the Lancaster House Agreement had given the country over to Robert Mugabe and his people's democracy, Job had sat-and passed with honors--the civil service entrance exam, for government and politics were the high road to power and wealth.

However, he was branded a "sellout" who had fought the war on the wrong side, the losing side, and he was a Matabele when the power was in the hands of the Shana tribe. Every door to advancement was barred against him. Angry and disillusioned, he had come back to Sean.

"Damn it, Job, you are miles too good for any job I could offer you in a safari company."

Tracker, skinner, gun bearer, whatever you have, I'll take it," Job had insisted.

So they had hunted together as they had fought, side by side, and within a year Sean had made him one of the directors of Courtney Safaris. They always referred to these quiet evenings, drinking whisky around the camp fire, as directors" meetings.

It amused Job to adopt various roles for different circumstances.

In front of safari clients he shifted to what he called "plantation nigger mode," when he called Sean Bwana and Nkosi and acted out the charade of the bygone colonial era.

"Don't be a prick, Job. You demean yourself," Sean protested at first.

"It's what the clients expect," Job had reasoned. "We are selling them an illusion, man. They are playing Eagle Scouts and Ernest Hemingway. If they guessed I had a master's in history and politics, it would frighten the hell out of them." Reluctantly, Sean had gone along with the act.

When they were alone, as they were now, Job changed into what he called his "Homo sapiens mode" and became the thoughtful, intelligent, educated man he truly was. As they talked, they switched easily from Sindebele to English, each of them as perfectly at ease and comfortable in the other's language as they were in each other's company.

"Look, Sean, don't worry too much about losing this concession. It hasn't happened yet, and even if it does, we'll find a way around it."

"Give me some comfort. I could do with it."

"We could apply for another concession, somewhere in Matabeleland where my family still has pull. Down Matetsi way or even on the Gwai River. That's my home turf."

"No good." Sean shook his head. "After this fiasco I'll have the mark of the beast on me."

"We "could apply in my name," Job suggested. He grinned wickedly.

"I'd make you one of my directors and you can call me Bwana!"

They laughed together, their mood lightening, and when Sean left Job at his fire and walked back to the main camp in the darkness, he felt cheerful and optimistic for the first time in days.

Job had the power to effect that transformation in him.

As he approached his own tent, something pale moved in the moon shadow beneath the trees and he stopped abruptly. Then he heard the tinkle of silver jewelry and realized she must have been waiting for him.

"May I speak with you?" Claudia said softly.

"Go ahead," he invited. Why did that Americanism "speak with," rather than "speak to," irritate him so, he wondered.

"I'm not very good at this," she admitted. He gave her no encouragement. "I wanted to apologize."

"You're apologizing to the wrong person. I've still got both my legs."

She flinched, and her voice trembled. "You're without mercy, aren't you?" Then she lifted her chin. "All right, I guess I deserved that. I've been an idiot. I thought I knew it all, but it turns out I knew very little, and in my ignorance I've done immense damage.

I know it doesn't help much, but I'm desperately sorry."

"You and I are from different worlds. We have not a single thought or feeling in common. We could never hope to understand each other, let alone be friends, but I do know what it took for you to say that."

"A truce, then?" she asked.

"All right, a truce." He held out his hand and she took it. Her skin was smooth as a rose petal, her hand slim and cool, but her grip was firm as a man's.

"Goodnight," she said, and she released his hand and turned away.

He watched her walk back toward her own tent. The moon was two days from full, and her white dress was ethereal and misty.

Beneath it her body was slim and her limbs long and elegant.

In that moment he admired her spirit and liked her more than he had done in all the time he had known her.

Sean slept as lightly as a hunter or a soldier. The natural sounds of the bush did not disturb him, not even the shrieks of the hyena pack around the fortified trophy shed, where the lion skins were curing. But at the light scratch on the canvas of his tent, he was instantly awake and reaching for his flashlight and the.577 propped at the head of his bed. "Who is it?" he asked quietly.

"It's me, Job."" Sean glanced at his Rolex wristwatch, the luminous hands pointed to three o'clock. "Come in. What is it?"

"One of the trackers we left on the river has come into camp. He has run twenty miles."

Sean felt the back of his neck prickle, and he swung both legs out of bed. "Yes?" he said eagerly.

"At sunset this evening Tukutela crossed the river out of the national park."

"Is it certain?"

"It is certain. They saw him close by. It is Tukutela, the Angry One, and he has no collar around his neck."

"Where is Matatu?" As Sean stood up and reached for his pants, the little Ndorobo piped at the entrance, "I am ready, Bwana. "

"Good.

We leave in twenty minutes. Marching packs and water bottles. We'll take Pumula in Shadrach's place. I want to be on Tukutela's spoor before it's light enough to see it."

Bare-chested, Sean strode across to Riccardo's tent, hearing his even snores as he paused at the flap.

"Capo!" The snores cut off abruptly. "Are you awake? I've got an elephant for you. Get your arse out of the sack. Tukutela has crossed. We leave in twenty minutes."

"Hot damni" He could hear Riccardo was still half asleep. He stumbled about in the dark tent. "Where the hell are my pants?

Hey, Sean, wake Claudia, will you?"

There was a lantern burning in Claudia's tent. She must have heard the excitement.

"Are you awake?" Sean asked at the flap. She opened it and stood with the lantern light behind her. Her nightdress reached almost to her ankles, there was lace at her throat and cuffs, but the cloth was so fine that the light struck through it, and her naked body was in silhouette.

"I heard you telling Papa," she said. "I'll be ready. Will we be walking? Should I wear my hiking boots or moccasins?"

He was certain that she was putting on this show deliberately, and he felt a prudish outrage that was totally alien to his nature.

"Today you'll walk further and faster than you ever have in your life before," he told her harshly. Then he thought, "She's showing herself off like a tramp," ignoring the fact that his taste usually ran strongly toward tramps. "Just when I was starting to respect her."

A reprimand rose to his lips, but he bit it off and tried not to look at the flowing shape of her hips, graceful as the lines of a celadon porcelain vase thrown by a master craftsman of the Tang dynasty.

He wanted to turn away to show his indifference and his contradictory disapproval, but he was still standing there when she let the tent flap drop.

"Truce be damned," he muttered furiously as he strode back to his tent. "She's still in the ring throwing punches." But his anger puzzled him. With any other woman, even one half as lovely, he would have been delighted by the exhibition.

She's got more class than that," he explained to himself. Then he remembered how much he despised and disliked her. "This bimbo is getting you all up a gum tree," he warned himself. Suddenly he burst out laughing. The dreadful gloom of Shadrach's amputation and the imminent loss of his license were dispelled. He was going to hunt one of Africa's legendary beasts, and in some unaccountable manner the presence of this woman added spice to his mood of high anticipation.

There was frost on the grass in the low vleis they crossed. It sparkled in the headlights, and the game they saw was lethargic with the cold, barely moving out of the road to let the Toyota pass in the night. They reached the ford on the Chiwewe River an hour before dawn.

The waters were as black and shining as anthracite in the last beams of the moon, and the tall trees along either bank were a silvered host, like two opposing armies of mythical giants.

Sean parked the Toyota well off the track and left one of the skinners to guard it. They fell naturally into established hunting formation, clients in the center. Purnula took up Shadrach's old position at the end. A muscular taciturn man with a thick woolly bush of a black beard, he carried Riccardo's Rigby on its sling.

All the men, including Riccardo, were carrying field packs and even Claudia carried her own water bottles. Job had Riccardo's second rifle, the Weatherby, over his shoulder, and as always Sean lugged the577 Nitro Express. Once the hunt had begun he never let it out of his hands. They moved out, heading upstream, and within a mile they had warmed up and were pushing harder. Sean noticed that Claudia moved well on those long legs of hers and was keeping up without difficulty. She gave him a saucy grin as she noticed his appraisal.

The dawn light was hardening when the tracker who had come in with the news of Tukutela's crossing exclaimed and pointed ahead. It was light enough to make out a fresh blaze on the trunk of a pod mahogany tree guarding a low place on the riverbank.

"There!" said the tracker. "I marked the spoor."

At a glance, Sean saW that this was a natural crossing for large animals. Troops of hippo had pioneered a pathway through the reed beds and dowp the ten-foot riverbank. Herds of buffalo and elephant passing over it had consolidated it and improved the gradient.

The African veld is crisscrossed with a network of game trails, and a dozen or so of these came in through the forest, like the spokes of a wheel, to concentrate on this river crossing. Everyone in the party quickened pace at the tracker's exclamation, but Matatu reached the main pathway ahead of them and darted down it, turning his head to use the light of dawn most effectively, dabbing lightly at the earth with the tip of the peeled wild willow wand he carried.

He had not gone five paces before he straightened and looked back at Sean, his features wreathed in wrinkles of happiness and excitement.

"It is him!" he chirped. "These are the feet of the father of all elephants. It is Tukutela! It is the Angry One!"

Sean looked down at the great dished spoor in the fine dust of the game path and felt as though a spring tide had begun to flow in his life. His excitement was replaced by a sense of destiny, an almost religious gravity. "Matatu," he said, "take the spoor!"

Formally he announced the start of the hunt.

The spoor was as clear as a highway, following the game trail directly into the forest away from the river.

The old bull was striding out briskly as though he knew the crossing was the danger point. Perhaps that was why he had chosen to cross at sunset, so that darkness would cover him until he was clear.

For five miles he had gone without a check and then suddenly had turned aside from the game trail into a thicket of rambling thorn that had come into blossom and new shoot. He had moved back and forth, feeding on the blooms and succulent shoots, and his spoor was confused, the thicket trampled and torn.

Matatu and Job went into the Thorn thicket to unravel it while the rest of the party hung back to let them work unhindered.

"I'm thirsty!" Claudia exclaimed as she unhooked one of the water bottles from her belt.

"No!" Sean stopped her. "If you drink on your first thirst, you'll want to drink all day, and we've only just begun."

She hesitated a moment, considering defying him, but then she hooked the bottle back on her belt. "You are a hard taskmaster," she said.

On the far side of the thicket, Matatu whistled softly.

"He has worked the spoor out," Sean told them, leading them through the thorn. "How much have gained?" he asked Matatu. They had started almost ten hours behind the bull, but -every time he had paused to feed, they had cut that lead.

"He did not feed long." Matatu shrugged. "And now he is going hard again."

The bull had turned off the game trail and was following a stony ridge, almost as if he were deliberately obscuring his own spoor.

He left no indications obvious enough for the average human eye to follow, but Matatu went after him with complete authority.

"Are you sure he's still on it?" Riccardo asked anxiously.

"Capo, you've hunted with Matatu too often to ask that question," Sean told him.

"But what can he see?" Claudia wanted to know. "It's just rocks and gravel."

"The elephant's pads leave a scuff on the rock. They bruise the lichen, leave smears of dust. There's fine grass growing between the stones. He has disturbed it, bending the stems in the direction of his passing. The disturbed grass catches the light differently."

"Could you follow it?" Claudia wanted to know. Sean shook his head. "No, I'm not a magician." They had been speaking in barely audible whispers, but Sean said, "That's enough chatter, let's keep it down to a bellow from now on."

So they went on in silence, and the forest about them was a perpetually changing show.

There were forty different varieties of the comb return family of trees, but this was not exclusively comb return forest, as many other varieties were mingled with them, each having a distinctive shape of trunk differing in the color and texture of its bark, some with branches denuded by winter, others with dense foliage of a myriad shades of green and gold and orange and cinnabar. At times the forest enclosed them like a palisade, then only moments later opened onto vistas of far hills and weirdly shaped kopjes, open glades, and vleis from some of which the tall grass had been burned, the tender shoots laying a carpet of green over the black ash. The new growth of grass had attracted herds of antelope into the vleis. They stood out in the open, sable antelopes with long horns curved like scimitars, the proud necks of blood Arabs, upper bodies sooty black as the ash of the vlei, their bellies snowy white.

There were reedbucks with horns pricked forward inquisitively and tails like white powder puffs, zebras at a distance looking not striped but a uniform gray color, wildebeests with Roman noses and scraggly beards chasing each other in mindless circles like clowns, stirring the black ash in a cloud around themselves.

When the lion is not hunting, the animals that are his natural prey are amazingly trusting and will stand and stare at him as he slouches past within fifty yards of them. In the same way they seemed to sense that this file of humans was not a threat, and they let them approach closely before moving off at a leisurely trot.

Claudia's delight buoyed her so much she felt no fatigue even after four hours of hard walking.

In a gorge between two hills, water had been trapped in a narrow rock pool. It was stagnant and green and bubbled with the gas of rotting vegetation, but the old bull had drunk from it and left a pile of his spongy yellow dung beside it.

"We'll take ten minutes" rest here," Sean told them. "You can have a drink now." He looked at Claudia. "But try to limit it to two mouthfuls, unless you'd like to try some of that." He indicated the foul pool, and she grimaced.

He left her sitting beside her father and went to where Matatu stood alone at the head of the pool. "What is it?" he asked. After twenty years, he could read the little man's moods.

Matatu shook his head and his wrinkles sagged lugubriously.

"Something is not right here," Matatu told him. "The bull is unhappy. He goes one way and then the other. He travels swiftly, but without purpose. He does not feed, and he walks as though the ground burns his feet."

"Why is that, Matatu?" " do not know," he admitted. "But I do not like it, Bwana."

Sean left him and went back to where Claudia sat. "Let's take a look at your feet." He had spotted the slight lImp she had developed in the last hour.

"Are you serious?" She began to smile, but he took one of her feet in his lap, untied the laces, and pulled off her boot and sock.

Her feet were long and narrow like her hands, but the skin was delicate and there was a bright pink spot on her heel and another on the hall of her big toe. Sean cleaned the tender spots with cotton wool and surgical spirit. It gave him an intimate, sensuous pleasure to handle those finely formed feet, but he told her severely, "These must have been hurting you. Don't try and be brave-another few miles and you would have had blisters like a bunch of grapes, and we would have had a cripple on our hands."

He taped the tender spots. "Change socks," he ordered. "And the next time tell me as soon as it hurts." She obeyed him meekly, and they went on.

A little before noon, the spoor changed direction again and ran due east. "We have gained an hour or two on him," Sean whispered to Riccardo. "But Matatu doesn't like it and neither do I. He's spooky and tense and he's heading straight for the Mozambique border."

"Do you think he has sensed us?" Riccardo was worried, but Sean shook his head.

"Impossible. We're still hours behind. At noon they stopped again briefly to eat and rest. When they went on again, they had not gone more than a mile before they entered a grove of morula trees. The ripe yellow fruit lay thickly on the ground beneath them and the old bull had not been able to resist them. He had fed heartily, spending at least three hours in the grove, shaking the trees to bring down more fruit, then at last setting off again eastward as though suddenly remembering a rendezvous.

"At least we've gained three hours on him," Sean told them, but he was frowning. "We are only ten miles from the Mozambique border. If he crosses, we've lost him. Sean considered running the spoor. In the old days of the bush war, he and Job and Shadrach had never walked in pursuit of the enemy. Running, they had been able to cover sixty or seventy miles in a single day. He glanced back at Claudia; she might surprise him, for she moved like an athlete and despite the incipient blisters there was still a spring and snap in her step. Then he looked back at Riccardo and abandoned the idea. Riccardo was wilting in the ninety-five-degree heat of the valley. Sean tended to forget sometimes that Riccardo was only a year or two short of sixty. He had always been so fit, but now he was showing sips of distress, his eyes sunken in plum-colored hollows and a grayish cast to his skin.

"Old beggar is looking sick," Sean thought. "I can't push him harder."

He had let his attention wander, and now he almost ran into Matatu as the tracker stopped suddenly, still hunched over the spoor. "What is it?" he demanded. The little man's agitation was obvious. He was shaking his head and muttering in that obscure Ndorobo dialect that even Sean could not understand.

"What?"... " Sean broke off as he saw it. "Oh shit!" he blurted. Two separate pairs of human tracks had come in from the side and now overlaid the elephant bull's pad marks. Here the earth was sandy and friable, the tracks clear.

Two men, wearing rubber-soled shoes. Sean recognized the distinctive pattern of the soles... those ubiquitous Bata tennis shoes, locally manufactured and sold for a few dollars in every street market and general dealer's store.

Even Riccardo picked out the alien human prints. "Who the hell is that?" he demanded. But Sean ignored him and drew aside with Job to watch Matatu.

Matatu scurried back and forth, picking over the spoor like an old hen, and then came back to them. They squatted down, Job on one side of Sean, Matatu on the other-a council of war, from which only Shadrach was missing.

"Two men. One young and tall and thin, he walks on his toes.

The other older, shorter, fatter. Both are carrying packs and banduki. " Sean knew he had deduced all this from the length of stride, the different way the two men heeled and toed under packs, and the unbalancing of a heavy weapon carried in one hand. "They are foreigners. The men of the valley do not wear shoes, and these men came in from the north."

Zambian poachers," Job grunted. "They are after rhino horn, but they stumbled on the elephant and he is too big to let pass.

"Bastards!" said Sean bitterly. In 1970 there had been an estimated twelve thousand black rhinoceros left in Zambia across the Zambezi River. Now there were none, not a single animal left.

A Yemem nobleman would pay fifty thousand dollars for a dagger with a rhinoceros-horn handle, and the poachers organized themselves like military expeditions. There were still a few hundred rhinoceros left on the southern side of the Zambezi Valley, and from the Zambian side the poachers crossed the river in the night, slipping past the game department patrols. Many of the poachers had been bush fighters in the guerrilla war. They were hard men, killers of men as well as of the great animals on which they preyed.

"They will be carrying AKs." Job looked at him. "And there are probably more than two men. They will have out flankers We are outnumbered and outgunned, Sean. What do you want to do?"

"This is my concession," Sean said. "And Tukutela is my elephant."

"Then you might have to fight them for both." Job's noble Matabele features were solemn, but his eyes sparkled; he could not conceal the battle lust in them.

Sean stood up. "Damned right, Job. If we catch them, we are going to fight them. "Then we must hurry." Matatu stood up beside him. "They are two hours ahead of us, and Tukutela must stop soon to feed. They will have him before we get there."

Sean strode across to where Riccardo and Claudia were resting in the shade.

"Poachers!" he told them. "Probably armed with automatic weapons. Two at least, possibly more, all of them ruthless killers."

"We will have They stared at him wordlessly, and Sean went on.

to move fast to prevent them getting to Tukutela before we do. I'll leave you and Claudia to follow with Pumula at your own speed.

Job and Matatu and I are going to run the spoor and try to drive them off before they get to the elephant. You keep the Rigby, Capo, and Job will take the Weatherby."

As he began to turn away, Riccardo caught his arm. "Sean, I want this elephant. More than anything left in my life, I want this elephant."

"I will try and save him for you." Sean nodded. He understood entirely. He felt the same way.

"Thank you." Riccardo let his hand fall to his side, and Sean went to where Job and Matatu were waiting. They had handed over their field packs to Pumula. and carried only their water bottles. Sean glanced at his stainless steel Rolex. Four minutes Since they had picked up the poachers" spoor, four minutes wasted.

"Hot pursuit!" Sean ordered. "And expect ambush!"

Job smiled at him. "Old times," he said. "It makes me feel young again."

Matatu pulled his loincloth up between his legs and tucked the skirt under his belt, then whirled and went away on the spoor at a loping trot. Sean had seen him keep up that pace from sunup to sundown. He went out onto the right flank, and Job, who was left-handed, took his natural side. Sean changed the cartridges in the577 and began to run. Within seconds Riccardo's group was out of sight in the forest behind them, and Sean concentrated all his attention ahead.

It required special skills and vast experience to keep the formation intact in this type of broken country. The flankers had to keep Slightly ahead of the tracker, anticipating the line of the spoor, sweeping the terrain for ambush, covering and protecting Matatu yet keeping fifty paces out on each side, breaking their own trail and still maintaining contact with the opposite flanker, all this while on the run and mostly out of sight of each other, with Matatu setting a furious pace in the center.

When the spoor turned, the man on the outer flank had to wheel on the center, covering twice the distance of his opposite number, and when the spoor crossed open ground, they had to increase the angle on the flank, forming an inverted spearhead formation, always protecting the center, keeping contact with subtle birdcalls the flute of a wood dove, the whistle of a bulbul, the warble of a shrike, the pipe of a black kite--each had meaning, each was a command or a warning.

All this and two other essentials: silence and speed. Job and Sean ran lightly and soundlessly like a pair of kudu bulls, ducking and weaving under branches and through thickets and thorns, quick and vigilant.

After the first hour, Matatu flashed a hand signal down a break in the forest. Sean $mderstood it readily. "Two more," the signal said.

Another pair of poachers had joined the first two, and they also were closing swiftly with the elephant.

They ran for another hour, never slackening for a moment, and Matatu signaled again from the center.

"Very close." An eloquent flash of his pink palm. "Beware.

Danger." Sean whistled like a sand grouse, checking the pace. It was the signal for imminent contact, and they came down to a wary trot.

The trail had led them up the side of a low tableland, along an ancient elephant trail that was well trodden into the iron-hard earth. When they came out on top of the flat plateau, they felt the stir of the evening breeze, cool and blessed out of the east, and Sean held his sweaty face up to it.

The plateau was less than a mile wide. They crossed it quickly and reached the far rim, dropping to their bellies and sliding over the skyline without showing a silhouette against the blue. Then, crouching below the crest and sweeping the ground below them, they saw a shallow valley with another forested tableland beyond.

A river-bed meandered down the center of the valley, its course marked with a narrow ribbon of dark green riverine bush. The rest A of the valley was fairly open: pale winter grass shining in the sunlight, dotted anthills, each the size of a cottage, widely separated umbrella acacia with flat tops and lemon yellow trunks. Sean surveyed it all swiftly.

Out on the left, Job gave the penny-whistle snort of a reedbuck, one of the most urgent alarm calls in their repertoire. He was pointing down into the valley, half left from their front. Sean followed the gesture. For a moment he saw nothing, and then suddenly Tukutela, the Angry One, stepped into view.

He had been hidden from Sean by one of the huge anthills, but now he strode out into the open meadow and Sean gasped aloud.

Even from almost a mile away, Sean realized that he had only poorly remembered the magnificence of this animal.