east and he used it skilfully.
The oxen caught the whiff of lion as he moved into the wind, and he heard them coming up, rising in that awkward plunging leap from where they had settled.
Horns clashed together as they swung into a tight group facing upwind, and one of them let out a soft mournful lowing. Immediately it was taken up, and their low bellows woke the -men at the fires. Somebody shouted, and threw a log on the fire. A torrent of sparks rose into the dark branches of the mimosa and the log caught, lighting the camp with a yellow leaping dancing light. The ploughmen and the lead boys were gathered fearfully around the fire, still with skin karosses draped around their shoulders, owl-eyed with sleep and alarm.
The lion slipped like a shadow, dark and flat against the earth towards the kraal, and the cattle bunched and bellowed wildly at the sharp rank cat smell.
Against the thorny windward side of the kraal, the lion crouched, arched his back and ejected a stream of urine.
The pungent, biting ammoniac stink was too much for the mass of cattle. In a single solid bunch, they swung away downwind and charged the thorny wall of the temporary kraal, crashing through it without check, and they thundered free, quickly spreading, losing the solid formation and scattering away into the night.
The lioness was ready for them, and she streaked in across the flank of the panicking plunging formation, selecting a single victim, a heavy young beast. She drove him onwards, chivvying him like a sheep dog, crossing and recrossing his frantic driving quarters, running him far from the fires and the ploughmen before coming snaking up alongside and hooking expertly at one of his powerfully driving forelegs, and the curved yellow claws biting in just above the hock until they grated against the bone. Then she went back on her own bunched quarters and dragged the leg to cross the other.
The ox dropped as though he had been shot through the brain, and he somersaulted haunch over head, and slid against the earth on his back, all four legs kicking to the starry sky.
In a rubbery flash of supple speed, the cat closed, judging finely the massive hooves that could have crushed her skull and the wide straight horns which could have impaled her rib to rib.
She bit in hard at the base of the skull, driving the long ivory yellow eye teeth into the first and second vertebrae, they crunched sharply like a walnut in the jaws of the cracker.
When the lion came padding hurriedly out of the night, she had already opened the belly cavity of the ox and her whole head was red and toffee sticky with blood as she went for liver and spleen and kidneys.
She flattened her ears against her bloody skull and snarled murderously at him, but he put his shoulder to her flank and pushed her aside, she snarled again and he cuffed her with a lordly paw and began to feed in the hole she had made.
She glared at him for a second, then her ears came erect and she began to lick his shoulder with long pink voluptuous strokes, purring with a deep soft rattle in her throat, pressing her long sleek body against him. The lion tried to ignore her and fed with snuffling grunts and wet tearing ripping sounds.
But she became bolder, the eternal female taking advantage of her new highly attractive condition, liberties which before would have brought swift and stern disciplinary action.
Desperately the lion tried to restrain her by placing a huge paw on her head, claws carefully retracted, and gulped furiously, trying to eat the entire ox before she could join in, but she wriggled out from under the paw and licked his ear. He growled halfheartedly, flickered the ear. She inched forward and licked his eyes, so he had to close them tightly, furrowing his brow and trying to feed blind, but finally he surrendered to the inevitable and allowed her to force her head into the bloody crater.
Side by side, purring and growling softly, they fed.
There were eighteen of them, gathered on the wide mosquito-screened veranda of the foreman's cottage under the hissing Petromax lamps. The brandy bottle had been out since sundown, and most of the men were red-faced and bright-eyed as they listened to Dirk Courtney. There will be schools and hospitals within a twenty mile ride of everybody, he promised, and the women looked up from their knitting. They knew what it was like to raise a young family out here. This is the beginning only, he promised the men. And those of you who were first in will be the first to profit. Once I am in Parliament, you'll have a strong voice speaking up for you. You'll see improvement here you couldn't imagine possible, and quickly. You're a rich man, Mr. Courtney, one of them said. He was a small trader, not directly employed by Ladyburg Sugar, but sufficiently reliant on it to phrase his question with respect. One of the bosses. How come you speak out for the working man? I'm rich because I worked hard, but I know that without you men, I won't be rich much longer. We are linked together like a team.
They nodded and murmured and Dirk went on quickly. One thing I promise you, When I can hire a white man at a-decent wage, I won't push in coolie or nigger labour! They cheered him then, and filled their glasses to toast him. Your present Government, the Smuts men, tried that on the gold mines. Two and tuppence a day for black men, and white men out on the street. When the workers protested, they sent the bloody Butcher of Fordsburg, a man who I am ashamed to call my father, There was an urgent hammering on the kitchen door, and the foreman excused himself quietly and hurried out.
He was back within a minute and whispered to Dirk Courtney. Dirk grinned and nodded, and turned back to his audience. Well, gentlemen, a fine bit of sport in the offing, a lion has killed one of my oxen, down on the new Buli block.
The plough boy has just come in to report it. It happened only an hour ago so we will have an excellent sporting chance at him. May I move closure of this meeting, and we'll meet here again at, he glanced at his watch, at five o'clock tomorrow morning, every man with a horse and rifle!
Mark and Pungushe slept, each under a single blanket, on the sunbaked earth, with Trojan cropping the scraggy dry yellow grass nearby. There was a cold little breeze out of the east, and they woke in the total dark of not-yet dawn and sat over the fire drinking coffee and smoking silently until Pungushe could take the spoor again.
From the back of Trojan it was still too dark to see the ground, but Pungushe ran confidently ahead, forcing the mule into a reluctant lumbering trot to keep pace.
At the edge of the ploughed land, he had to cast, but he cut the lion spoor on its new track almost immediately.
They went off again, with the sunrise outlining the upper branches of the trees, turning them black and spiky against the ruddy gold.
The soft amber rays were without warmth, and threw long distorted shadows of mule and men on the hard red
