forget it.
It was close, very close, coming from the patch of thick green riverine bush between him and the river, a tangled thicket of wild loquat and hanging lianas, typical cover for the animal that had called.
It was a weird unearthly sound, a fluid sound, almost like liquor poured from the neck of a stone jug, and only one who had heard it before would recognize the distress and warning call of a fully grown leopard.
Mark swung the mule away, and set him lumbering up the rising ground until he reached the spreading shade of a leadwood, where he tethered him and loosened his girth.
Then he slipped the Marmlicher out of its scabbard, and quickly checked the loaded magazine, the fat brass cartridges with their copper-jacketed noses were still bright and slick with wax, and he snapped the bolt closed.
He carried the rifle casually in his left hand, for he had no intention at all of using it. Instead he was aware of a pleasurable glow of excitement and anticipation. In the two months of hard riding and walking since his return to Chaka's Gate, this was the first chance he had been given of sighting a leopard.
There were many leopard along the Bubezi, he had seen their sign almost daily, and heard them sawing and coughing in the night. Always the leopard and the kudu are the last to give way before man and his civilization. Their superior cunning and natural stealth protect them long after the other species have succumbed, Now he had a chance at a sighting. The patch of riverine bush though dense, was small, and he longed for a sighting, even if just a flash of yellow in deep shade, something concrete, a firm entry in his logbook, another species to add to the growing list of his head count, He circled out cautiously, his eyes flickering from the thick green wall of bush to soft ground at his feet, checking for spoor as well as for actual sight of the yellow cat.
just above the steep river bank he stopped abruptly, and stared down before going on to one knee to touch the earth.
They weren't leopard tracks, but others he had grown to know and recognize. There was no special distinguishing characteristic, no missing toes, no scarring or deformity, but Mark's trained eye recognized the shape and size, the slight spraying toe-in way the man walked, the length of his stride and a toe-heavy impression, that of a quick alert tread. The distress call of the animal in the thicket made sense now. Pungushe, said Mark quietly. The jackal at work again. The tracks were doubled, entering the thicket and returning. The inward tracks seemed deeper, less extended, as though the man carried a burden, but the outward tracks were lighter, the man walked freely.
Slowly, Mark edged in towards the thicket, following the man's prints. Pausing for long minutes to examine the undergrowth carefully every few paces, or squatting down to give himself better vision along the ground under the hanging hanas and branches.
Now that he knew what he was going to find, the pleasurable glow of excitement had given way to the chill of anger
and the cold knowledge of mortal danger.
Something white caught his eye in the gloomy depths of the thicket. He stared at it moments before he saw the white, bleeding pith of a tree trunk, where it had been ripped by the claws of an anguished beast, long raking marks deep through the dark woody bark. His anger slid in his belly like an uncoiling serpent.
He moved sideways and slowly forward, the rifle held ready now, low across his hips, three paces before he stopped again.
On the edge of the thicket there was an area of flattened grass and scrub; the soft black leaf-mould earth had been churned and disturbed, something heavy had been dragged back and forth, and there was a fleck of wet red lit by a single beam of falling sunlight that might have been the petal of a wild flower, or a drop of blood.
He heard another sound then, the clink of metal on metal, link on link, steel chain moved stealthily in the dark depths of the thicket and it sighted him. He knew where the animal was lying now, and he moved out sideways, crabbing step after step, slipping the safety-catch of the rifle, and holding it at high port across his chest.
White again, unnatural white, a round blob of it against dark foliage and he froze staring at it. Long seconds passed before he realized that it was the raw wood of a cut log, a short fork-shaped log as thick as a young girl's waist, so freshly cut that the gum was still bleeding from it in sticky wine-coloured drops. He saw also the twist of stolen fencing wire that held the chain to the log. The log was the anchor, a sliding drag weight which would hold the trapped animal without giving it a solid pull against which to pit itself and tear itself free.
The chain clinked again.
The leopard was within twenty paces of him. He knew exactly where it was but he could not see it, and as he stared, his mind was racing, remembering everything he had heard about the animal, the old man's stories. You won't see him until he comes, and even then he will only be a yellow flash of light, like a sunbeam. He won't warn you with a grunt, not like a lion. He comes absolutely silently, and he won't chew your arm or grab you in the shoulder. He'll go for your head. He knows all about two-legged animals, he feeds mostly on baboon, so he knows where your head is. He'll take the top off your skull quicker than you open your breakfast egg, and for good measure his back legs will be busy on your belly.
You've seen a cat lie on his back and hook with his back legs when you scratch his belly. He'll cat you the same way, but he'll strip your guts out of you just like a chicken, and he'll do it so quickly that if there are four of you in the hunting-party he'll kill three of them before the fourth man gets his gun to his shoulder. Mark stood absolutely still and waited. He could not see the animal, but he could feel it, could feel its eyes, they stung his skin like the feet of poisonous crawling insects, and he remembered the shiny marble white scar tissue that Sean Courtney had shown him once in one of those mellow moments after the fourth whisky, pulling up his shirt and flexing muscle, so the cicatrice bulged with the gloss of satin. Leopard' he had said. Devil cat, the worst bastard in all the bush. He felt his feet pulling back slowly, and the dead leaves rustled. He could walk away and leave it, come back when the vultures told im the anima was dead or too weak to be a danger. Then he imagined the terror and anguish of the animal, and suddenly it was not the animal, but his animal, his charge, his sacred charge, and he stepped forward.
The chain clinked again and the leopard came. It came with a terrible silent rush, and in the blurring streaming charge, only the eyes blazed, they blazed yellow with hatred and fear and agony. The chain flailed out behind it, spinning and snapping, and as Mark brought the rifle up the last six inches to his shoulder he saw the trap hanging on its fore-leg like a sinister grey metallic crab. The heavy steel trap slowed the charge just that fraction.
Time seemed to pass with a dreamlike slowness, each microsecond falling heavily as drops of thick oil, so that he saw that the leopard's foreleg above the grip of the steel jaws was eaten through. He felt his stomach turn over as he realized that the frenzied animal had gnawed through its own bone and flesh and sinew in its desperate try for freedom. The leg was held by only a thread of bloody ragged skin, and that last thread snapped at the heavy jerk
