The Leopards of Sh'ong. Paul Jaco

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “We’ll come again tomorrow,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “Two,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      They nevertheless heeded the order.

      The Cub

      The cave looming in front of us was so deep that we could barely see the back walls. We went in after struggling through some mud, leaving our rifles standing erect in a bush. To keep our direction once we were inside, we always rolled out a thin rope behind us.

      It was a grave we were looking for, but this cave also had nothing. When we came out, a surprise awaited us.

      Two warriors wearing leopard skin loincloths confronted us. Their faces were painted with red and yellow root juice and in their hands were the two rifles we had left outside, now pointing ominously at us. The markings on their СКАЧАТЬ