Eagle in the Sky Read online

  David felt his very soul quail at the thought of the flames on flesh, his cheeks itched at the memory.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he said gruftly.

  ‘No, you were too busy making money or whatever is your particular form of pleasure.’ Berg was angry. ‘So at last Sam came to me and I gave him a job. Then I strung this fence.’

  ‘There is nothing left on Jabulani – a few kudu, and a duiker or two – but otherwise it’s all gone.’

  ‘You are so right. It didn’t take them long to clean it out.’

  ‘I want it back.’

  ‘Why?’ Berg scoffed. ‘So you can be a sportsman like your daddy? So you can fly your pals down from Jo’burg for the weekend to shoot the shit out of my lions?’ Berg glanced at Debra, and immediately his red face flushed a deep port-wine colour. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Morgan, I did not mean to say that.’

  ‘That’s perfectly all right, Mr Berg. I think it was very expressive.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Then he turned furiously back to David. ‘Morgan’s Private Safari Service, is that what you are after?

  ‘I would not allow a shot fired on Jabulani;’ said David.

  ‘I bet – except for the pot. That’s the usual story. Except for the pot, and you’ve got the Battle of Waterloo being fought all over again.’

  ‘No,’ said David. ‘Not even for the pot.’

  ‘You’d eat butcher’s beef?’ Berg asked incredulously.

  ‘Look here, Mr Berg. If you pull your fence out, I’ll have Jabulani declared a private nature reserve—’

  Berg had been about to say something, but David’s declaration dried the words, and his mouth remained hanging open. He closed it slowly.

  ‘You know what that means?’ he asked at last. ‘You place yourself under our jurisdiction, completely. We’d tie you up properly with a lawyer’s paper and all that stuff: no owner’s licence, no shooting lions because they are in a cattle area.’

  ‘Yes. I know. I’ve studied the act. But there is something more. I’d undertake to fence the other three boundaries to your satisfaction, and maintain a force of private game rangers that you considered adequate – all at my own expense.’

  Conrad Berg lifted his hat and scratched pensively at the long sparse grey hairs that covered his pate.

  ‘Man,’ he said mournfully, ‘how can I say no to that?’ Then he began to smile, the first smile of the meeting. ‘It looks like you are really serious about this then.’

  ‘My wife and I are going to be living here permanently. We don’t want to live in a desert.’

  ‘Ja,’ he nodded, understanding completely that a man should feel that way. The strong revulsion that he had originally felt for the fantastic face before him was fading.

  ‘I think the first thing we should work on is these poachers you tell me about. Let’s snatch a couple of those and make a few examples,’ David went on.

  Berg’s big red face split into a happy grin.

  ‘I think I’m going to enjoy having you as a neighbour,’ he said, and again he thrust his hand through the fence. David winced as he felt his knuckles cracking in the huge fist.

  ‘Won’t you come to dinner with us tomorrow night? You and your wife?’ Debra asked with relief.

  ‘It will be a mighty great pleasure, ma’am.’

  ‘I’ll get out the whisky bottle,’ said David.

  ‘That’s kind of you—’ said Conrad Berg seriously, ‘but the missus and I only drink Old Buck dry gin, with a little water.’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ said David just as seriously.

  Jane Berg was slim woman of about Conrad’s age. She had a dried-out face, lined and browned by the sun. Her hair was sunbleached and streaked with grey, and, as Debra remarked, she was probably the only thing in the world that Conrad was afraid of.

  ‘I’m talking, Connie,’ was enough to halt any flow of eloquence from her huge spouse, or a significant glance at her empty glass sent him with elephantine haste for a refill. Conrad had a great deal of trouble finishing any story or statement, for Jane had to correct the details during the telling, while he waited patiently for an opportunity to resume.

  Debra chose the main course with care so as not to give offence, beefsteaks from the deep freeze, and Conrad ate four of them with unreserved pleasure although he spurned the wine that David served.

  ‘That stuff is poison. Killed one of my uncles,’ and stayed with Old Buck gin, even through the dessert.

  Afterwards they sat about the cavernous fireplace with its logs blazing cheerfully and Conrad explained. with Jane’s assistance, the problems that David would face on Jabulani.

  ‘You get a few of the blacks from the tribal areas coming in from the north—’

  ‘Or across the river,’ Jane added.

  ‘Or across the river, but they are no big sweat. They set wire snares mostly, and they don’t kill that much—’

  ‘But it’s a terribly cruel way, the poor animals linger on for days with the wire cutting down to the bone,’ Jane elaborated.

  ‘As I was saying, once we have a few rangers busy that will stop almost immediately. It’s the white poachers with modern rifles and hunting lamps—’

  ‘Killing lamps,’ Jane corrected.

  ‘– killing lamps, that do the real damage. They finished off all your game on Jabulani in a couple of seasons.’

  ‘Where do they come from?’ David asked. His anger was rising again, the same protective anger of the shepherd that he had felt as he flew the skies of Israel.

  ‘There is a big copper mine fifty miles north of here at Phalabora, hundreds of bored miners with a taste for venison. They would come down here and blaze away at every living thing – but now it’s not worth the trip for them. Anyway they were just the amateurs, the weekend poachers.’

  ‘Who are the professionals?’

  ‘Where the dirt road from Jabulani meets the big national highway, about thirty miles from here—’

  ‘At a place called Bandolier Hill,’ Jane supplied the name.

  ‘– there is a general dealer’s store. It’s just one of those trading posts that gets a little of the passing trade from the main road, but relies on the natives from the tribal areas.

  The person who owns and runs it has been there eight years now, and I have been after him all that time, but he’s the craftiest bastard – I’m sorry, Mrs Morgan – I have ever run into.’

  ‘He’s the one?’ David asked.

  ‘He’s the one,’ Conrad nodded. ‘Catch him, and half your worries are over.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Akkers. Johan Akkers,’ Jane gave her assistance; the Old Buck was making her slightly owl-eyed, and she was having a little difficulty with her enunciation.

  ‘How are we going to get him?’ David mused. ‘There isn’t anything left on Jabulani to tempt him – the few kudu we have got are so wild, it wouldn’t be worth the effort.’

  ‘No, you haven’t got anything to tempt him right now, but about the middle of September—’

  ‘More like the first week in September,’ Jane said firmly with strings of hair starting to hang down her temples.

  ‘– the first week in September the marula trees down by your pools will come into fruit, and my elephants are going to visit you. The one thing they just can’t resist is marula berries, and they are going to flatten my fence to get at them. Before I can repair it a lot of other game are going to follow the jumbo over to your side. You can lay any type of odds you like that our friend Akkers is oiling his guns and drooling at the mouth right this minute. He will know within an hour when the fence goes.’

  ‘This time he may get a surprise.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  ‘I think—’ David said softly‘that we might run down to Bandolier Hill tomorrow to have a look at this gentleman.’

  ‘One thing is for sure—’ said Jane Berg indistinctly, ‘– a gentleman, he is not.’

  The road down to Bandolier Hill was hea
vily corrugated and thick with white dust that rose in a banner behind the Land-Rover and hung in the air long after they had passed. The hill was rounded and thickly timbered and stood over the main metalled highway.

  The trading post was four or five hundred yards from the road junction, set back amidst a grove of mango trees with their deep green and glistening foliage. It was a type found all over Africa – an unlovely building of mud brick with a naked corrugated-iron roof, the walls plastered thickly with posters advertising goods from tea to flashlight batteries.

  David parked the Land-Rover in the dusty yard beneath the raised stoep. There was a faded sign above the front steps:

  ‘Bandolier Hill General Dealers’.

  At the side of the building was parked an old green Ford one-ton truck with local licence plates. In the shade of the stoop squatted a dozen or so potential customers, African women from the tribal area, dressed in long cotton print dresses, timeless in their patience and their expressions showing no curiosity about the occupants of the Land-Rover. One of the women was suckling her infant with an enormously elongated breast that allowed the child to stand beside her and watch the newcomers without removing the puckered black nipple from his mouth.

  Set in the centre of the yard was a thick straight pole, fifteen feet tall, and on top of the pole was a wooden structure like a dog kennel. David exclaimed as from the kennel emerged a big brown furry animal. It descended the pole in one swift falling action, seemingly as lightly as a bird, and the chain that was fastened to the pole at one end was, at the other, buckled about the animal’s waist by a thick leather strap.

  ‘It’s one of the biggest old bull baboons I’ve ever seen.’ Quickly he described it to Debra, as the baboon moved out to the chain’s limit, and knuckled the ground as he made a leisurely circle about his pole, the chain clinking as it swung behind him. It was an arrogant display, and he ruffled out the thick mane of hair upon his shoulders. When he had completed the circle, he sat down facing the Land-Rover, in a repellently humanoid attitude, and thrust out his lower jaw as he regarded them through the small brown, close-set eyes.

  ‘A nasty beast,’ David told Debra. He would weigh ninety pounds, with a long dog-like muzzle and a jaw full of yellow fangs. After the hyena, he was the most hated animal of the veld – cunning, cruel and avaricious, all the vices of man and none of his graces. His stare was unblinking and, every few seconds, he ducked his head in a quick aggressive gesture.

  While all David’s attention was on the baboon, a man had come out of the store and now leaned on one of the pillars of the veranda.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Morgan?’ he asked in a thick accent. He was tall and spare, dressed in slightly rumpled and not entirely clean khaki slacks and open-neck shirt, with heavy boots on his feet and braces hooked into his pants, crossing his shoulders.

  ‘How did you know my name?’ David looked up at him, and saw he was of middle age with close-cropped greying hair over a domed skull. His teeth were badly fitting with bright pink plastic gums and his skin was drawn over the bones of the cheeks, and his deep-set eyes gave him a skull-like look. He grinned at David’s question.

  ‘Could only be you, scarred face and blind wife – you the new owner of Jabulani. Heard you built a new house and all set to live there now.’

  The man’s hands were huge, out of proportion to the rest of his rangy body, they were clearly very powerful and the lean muscles of his forearms were as tough as rope.

  He slouched easily against the pillar and took from his pocket a clasp knife and a stick of black wind-dried meat – the jerky of North America, boucan of the Caribbean, or the biltong of Africa – and he cut a slice as though it were a plug of tobacco, popping it into his mouth.

  ‘Like I asked – what can we do for you?’ He chewed noisily, his teeth squelching at each bite.

  ‘I need nails and paint.’ David climbed out of the Land-Rover.

  ‘Heard you did all your buying in Nelspruit.’ Akkers looked him over with a calculated insolence, studying David’s ruined face with attention. David saw that his deep-set eyes were a muddy green in colour.

  ‘I thought there was a law against caging or chaining wild animals.’ Akkers had roused David’s resentment almost immediately, and the needle showed in his tone. Akkers began to grin again easily, still chewing.

  ‘You a lawyer – are you?’

  ‘Just asking.’

  ‘I got a permit – you want to see it?’

  David shook his head, and turned to speak to Debra in Hebrew. Quickly he described the man.

  ‘I think he can guess why we are here, and he’s looking for trouble.’

  ‘I’ll stay by the car,’ said Debra.

  ‘Good.’ David climbed the steps to the veranda.

  ‘What about the nails and paint?’ he asked Akkers.

  ‘Go on in,’ he was still grinning. ‘I got a nigger helper behind the counter. He will look after you.’

  David hesitated and then walked on into the building. It smelled of carbolic soap and kerosene and maize meal. The shelves were loaded with cheap groceries, patent medicines, blankets and bolts of printed cotton cloth. From the roof hung bunches of army surplus boots and greatcoats, axe-heads and storm lanterns. The floor was stacked with tin trunks, pick handles, bins of flour and maize meal and the hundreds of other items that traditionally make up the stock of the country dealer. David found the African assistant and began his purchase.

  Outside in the sunlight Debra climbed from the Land-Rover and leaned lightly against the door. The Labrador scrambled down after her and began sniffing the concrete pillars of the veranda with interest where other dogs before him had spurted jets of yellow urine against the white-washed plaster.

  ‘Nice dog,’ said Akkers.

  ‘Thank you.’ Debra nodded politely.

  Akkers glanced quickly across at his pet baboon, and his expression was suddenly cunning. A flash of understanding passed between man and animal. The baboon ducked its head again in that nervous gesture, then it rose from its haunches and drifted back to the pole. With a leap and bound it shot up the pole and disappeared into the opening of its kennel.

  Akkers grinned and carefully cut another slice of the black biltong.

  ‘You like it out at Jabulani?’ he asked Debra, and at the same time he offered the scrap of dried meat to the dog.

  ‘We are very happy there,’ Debra replied stiffly, not wanting to be drawn. Zulu sniffed the proffered titbit, and his tail beat like a metronome. No dog can resist the concentrated meat smell and taste of biltong. He gulped it eagerly. Twice more Akkers fed him the scraps, and Zulu’s eyes glistened and his soft silky muzzle was damp with saliva.

  The waiting women in the shade of the veranda were watching with lively interest now. They had seen this happen before with a dog, and they waited expectantly. David was in the building, out of sight. Debra stood blind and unsuspecting.

  Akkers cut a larger piece of the dried meat and offered it to Zulu, but when he reached for it he pulled his hand away, teasing the dog. With his taste for biltong now firmly established, Zulu tried again for the meat as it was offered. Again it was pulled away at the last moment. Zulu’s black wet nose quivered with anxiety, and the soft ears were cocked.

  Akkers walked down the steps with Zulu following him eagerly, and at the bottom he showed the dog the biltong once more, letting him sniff it. Then he spoke softly but urgently, ‘Get it, boy,’ and threw the scrap of biltong at the base of the baboon’s pole. Zulu bounded forward, still slightly clumsy on his big puppy paws, into the circle of the chain where the baboon’s paws had beaten the earth hard. He ran on under the pole and grubbed hungrily for the biltong in the dust.

  The bull baboon came out of his kennel like a tawny grey blur and dropped the fifteen feet through the air; his limbs were spread and his jaws were open in a snarl like a great red trap, and the fangs were vicious, long and yellow and spiked. He hit the ground silently, and his muscles bunched as they ab
sorbed the shock and hurled the long lithe body feet first at the unsuspecting pup. The baboon crashed into him, taking him on the shoulder with all the weight of his ninety pounds.

  Zulu went down and over, rolling on his back with a startled yelp, but before he could find his feet or his wits, the baboon was after him.

  Debra heard the pup cry, and started forward, surprised but not yet alarmed.

  As he lay on his back, Zulu’s belly was unprotected, sparsely covered with the silken black hair, the immature penis protruding pathetically, and the baboon went onto him in a crouching leap, pinning him with powerful furry legs as he bowed his head and buried the long yellow fangs deep into the pup’s belly.

  Zulu screamed in dreadful agony, and Debra screamed in sympathy and ran forward.

  Akkers shot out a foot as she passed him and tripped her, sending her sprawling on her hands and knees.

  ‘Leave it, lady,’ he warned her, still grinning. ‘You’ll get hurt if you interfere.’

  The baboon locked its long curved eye teeth into the tender belly, and then hurled the pup away from it with all the fierce strength of its four limbs. The thin wall of the stomach was ripped through, and the purple ropes of the entrails came out, hanging festooned in the baboon’s jaws.

  Again the disembowelled pup screamed, and Debra rolled blindly to her feet.

  ‘David!’ she cried wildly. ‘David – help me!’

  David came out of the building running; pausing in the doorway he took in the scene at a glance and snatched up a pick handle from the pile by the door. He jumped off the veranda, and in three quick strides he had reached the pup.

  The baboon saw him coming and released Zulu. With uncanny speed, he whirled and leapt for the pole, racing upwards to perch on the roof of the kennel, his jowls red with blood, as he shrieked and jabbered, bouncing up and down with excitement and triumph.

  David dropped the pick and gently lifted the crawling crippled black body. He carried Zulu to the Land-Rover and ripped his bush jacket into strips as he tried to bind up the torn belly, pushing the hanging entrails back into the hole with his fist.