Dirk. The Government would like to hide that fact from you, but four thousand men, women and children -The two big men had closed in on their quarry, and Dirk Courtney drew all eyes with a broad theatrical gesture. A Government that has that contempt for the life, property and freedom of its people. There was a brief scuffle, a yelp of pain and the man was hustled out of the side door into the night.
The newspapers started picking it up almost immediately, the same editorials which had ranted against theRed Cabal and the Bolshevik threat, which had praised Smuts'direct and timely action, were now remembering ia high- handed and brutal solution.
Across the nation, begun by Dirk Courtney and picked up by all the Hertzogites, the balance of public feeling was swinging back, like a pendulum, or the curved blade of the executioner's axe.
Dirk Courtney spoke in the Town Hall of Durban, to three thousand, in the Church Hall of Ladyburg to three hundred. He spoke at every country church in the constituency, at little crossroad general-dealer shops where a dozen voters assembled for an evening's entertainment, but always the Press was represented, Dirk Courtney worked slowly northwards, during the day visiting all his land holdings, each of his new cane mills, and each evening he spoke to the little assemblies of voters. Always he was vibrant and compelling, handsome and articulate, and he painted a picture for them of a land crossed with railways and fine roads, of prosperous towns, and busy markets. They listened avidly. There are two, said Pungushe. One is an old lion. I know him well. He stayed last year in Portuguese territory along the north bank of the Usutu River. He was alone then, but now he has found a mate. Where did they cross? Mark asked. They crossed below Ndumu, and came south between the swamp and the river. The lion was five years old, and very cunning, a lean torn, tall at the shoulder and with a short ruff of reddish mane. There was an ugly bald scar across his forehead, and he favoured his right foreleg where a piece of hammered pot- leg fired from a Tower musket two years previously had lodged against the shoulder joint. He had been hunted by man almost without remission since he was a cub, and he was getting old now, and tired.
He crossed the river in the dark, swimming his lioness ahead of him, going south from the hunters who had assembled to drive the bush along the river the next morning. He could hear the drums still beating, and smell'the smoke of their fires. He could hear also the yapping clamour of the dog packs. They had assembled, two or three hundred tribesmen with their hunting dogs and a dozen Portuguese half-breeds with breech-loading rifles, for the lions had killed two trek oxen on the outskirts of one of the river villages. In the morning the hunt would begin, and the lion took his mate south.
She was also a big animal, and though she was still very young and not as experienced, yet she was quick and strong, and she learned from him each day. Her hide was still clean and unscarred by claw or Thorn. Across the back she was a sleek olive tan shading down to a lovely buttery yellow at the throat and fluffy cream on the belly.
She still had traces of her kitten spots dappling her quarters, but the night they swam the Usutu, she came into season for the first time.
On the south bank, they shook the water from their bodies, with fierce shuddering spasms, and then the lion snuffed at her, drumming softly in his throat and then lifting his snout to the bright white stars, his back arching reflexively at the tantalizing musk of her pate blood-tinged oestrous discharge.
She led him half a mile up one of the thickly wooded tributary valleys, and then she crept into the heart of the thicket of tangled bush, a stronghold guarded by the fierce two-inch, wickedly hooked thorns, tipped in red as though they had already drawn blood.
Here in the dawn, he covered her for the first time. She crouched low against the earth, hissing and crackling with angry snarls, while he came over her, biting at her ears and neck, forcing her to submit. Afterwards, she lay close against him, licking at his ears, nuzzling his throat and belly, turning half away from him and nudging him flirtatiously with her hind quarters, until he rose and she crouched down submissively and snarled at him while he mounted her briefly once again.
They mated twenty-three times that day, and in the night they left the Thorn thicket and wandered southwards again.
A half hour before the set of the moon, they reached the edge of the ploughed land, and the lion stopped and growled softly at the smell of man and cattle.
Tentatively he reached out one paw and tested the freshly turned earth, then he drew his leg back and made a little troubled mewing sound of indecision. The lioness brushed herself lovingly against him, but he turned aside and led her along the edge of the ploughed land. Will they reach the valley, Pungushe? Mark asked, leaning out of the saddle to speak to the Zulu as he trotted at Trojan's shoulder.
Pungushe spoke easily, despite the fact he had run without rest for nearly three hours. They must cross almost half a day's march of land where men are working, where the ploughs of the new sugar-growers are busy. Besides, Jamela, they know nothing of your valley, and the mad Ngaga who would welcome them. Mark straightened in the saddle and rode on grimly. He knew that this pair, this mating pair, would be his last chance to have lions in his valley. Yet there was twenty miles of danger to cross such as these animals, coming out of the wilderness of Portuguese Mozambique, would never have experienced before, ploughlands, declared cattle area, where lions were vermin. An area devoid of wild prey, but heavily populated with domestic animals. An area where the cry of Lion would send fifty men running eagerly for a rifle, fifty white men competing fiercely for the trophy, hating the big predatory cats with a blind unthinking hatred, welcoming what was probably their only chance at one of them, safe in the knowledge that they were fair game, unprotected by law in the cattle areas.
The lions came to the camp downwind, and they lay flat in the short grass in the darkness at the edge of the camp.
They listened to the drowsy voices of the men at the fire, and smelled the myriad strange smells, of tobacco smoke, of cooking maize meal and the sour tang of Zulu beer, and they lay very flat and tense against the earth, only their round black-tipped ears cocked and their nostrils flaring and sucking the air.
The oxen were kraaled with a low circular enclosure of felled Thorn trees, arranged with their trunks inward and the bushy thorny tangle outwards. The smell of the cattle was strong and tempting.
There were seventy-two oxen in the kraal, two full spans. They belonged to Ladyburg Sugar Company and they were ploughing the new lands east of Chaka's Gate, after the labour teams had stumped out the standing timber and burned it in long windows.
The lion waited, patient, but alert and tensed and silent, while the silver moon went down below the trees and the men's voices dwindled into silence. He waited while the fires died down into puddles of dull ruddy ash. Then he rose silently.
The lioness did not move, except that the great muscles in her chest and limbs swelled, rigid with tension, and her ears cocked fractionally forward.
The lion circled cautiously upwind of the camp. There was a soft cool wash of breeze coming steadily out of the
