A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 2

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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.

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