mourning, but Mark strode forward impatiently and lifted one end of the kaross.
He stared for a moment, not understanding, not recognizing, then suddenly all colour fled from his face and he turned and ran into the darkness. There he fell to his knees and leaned forward to retch up the bitter bile of horror.
Mark took Marion into Ladyburg, wrapped in a canvas buck-sheet, and strapped into the side-car of the Ariel.
He stayed for the funeral and for the grief and recriminations of her family. if only you hadn't taken her out there into the bush, if only you had stayed with her, If only, On the third day he went back to Chaka's Gate. Pungushe was waiting for him at the fold of the river.
They sat together in the sunlight under the cliffs, and when Mark gave Pungushe a cigarette, he broke off the cork tip carefully and they smoked in silence until Mark asked, Have you read the sign, Pungushe? I have, Jarnela. Tell me what happened. The lioness was moving her little ones, taking them one at a time across the river from the jessie bush. Slowly, accurately, Pungushe reconstructed the tragedy from the marks left in the earth which he had studied in Mark's absence, and when he was finished speaking, they were silent again.
Where is she now? Mark asked quietly. She has taken the little ones north, but slowly, and three days ago, the day after, Pungushe hesitated, the day after the thing was done, she killed an impala ram, and the cubs ate a little with her. She begins now to wean them. Mark stood up and they forded the river, climbing together slowly up through the forest to the cottage.
While Pungushe waited on the front stoep, Mark went into the small deserted home. The wild flowers had died and wilted in their vases, giving the room a sad and dejected feeling. Mark began to gather up all Marion's personal possessions, her clothing, and cheap but treasured jewellery, her combs and brushes, and the few hoarded pots of cosmetics. He packed them carefully into her largest suitcase to take to her sister, and when he was finished he carried the case out and locked it in the tool shed. It was too painful a reminder to keep in the house with him.
Then he went back and changed out of his town clothes.
He took the Marinlicher down from the rack and loaded it with brass cartridges from a fresh package. The casings of the cartridges were glistening yellow under their film of wax, the bullets soft-nosed for maximum shock at impact.
When he went out on to the stoep carrying the rifle, Pungushe was still waiting. Pungushe, he said. We have work to do now. The Zulu stood up slowly, and for a moment they stared at each other. Then Pungushe dropped his eyes and nodded.
Take the spoor, Mark commanded softly.
They found where the lioness had killed the impala, but the scavengers of the bush had cleaned the area effectively.
There were a few splinters of bone that had fallen out of the crushing jaws of the hyena , a little hair, pulled out in tufts, a shred of dried skin, and part of the skull with the twisted black horns still intact. But the spoor was cold.
Wind and the trampling feet of the scavengers, the jackals, and hyena, the vultures and marabou storks, had wiped sign. She will keep going north, said Pungushe, and Mark did not ask how he knew that, for the Zulu could not have answered. He simply knew.
They went slowly on up the valley, Pungushe scouting ahead of the mule, making wide tracks back and forth, casting carefully for the sign, and on the second day he cut the spoor. She has turned now. Pungushe squatted over the pug marks, the big saucer-sized pads and the smaller myriad prints of the cubs. I think she was going back towards the Usutu. He nodded over the spoor, touching it with the thin reed wand he carried as a tracking stick. She was taking the little ones back, but now she has changed her mind. She has turned southwards, she must have passed close to where we camped last night. She is staying in the valley. it is her valley now, and she will not leave it. No, Mark nodded grimly. She will not leave the valley again. Follow, Pungushe. The lioness was moving slowly and the spoor ran hotter every hour. They found where she had hunted without success. Pungushe pointed out where she had stalked, an d then the deep driving back claws had raked the earth as she leapt to the back of a full-grown zebra. Twenty paces further, she had fallen heavily, dislodged by the stallion's wild plunging. She had struck shoulder first, Pungushe said, and the zebra had run free but bleeding from the long slash of her claws. The lioness had limped away, and lain under a Thorn tree for a long time before rising and going back slowly to where she had left her cubs. Probably she had torn muscle and sinew in that fall. When will we come up with her? Mark asked, his face a stony mask of vengeance. Perhaps before sunset. But they lost two hours on a rocky ridge, and Pungushe had to cast widely and work with all his skill to cut the spoor again at the point where it doubled sharply and turned west towards the escarpment.
Pungushe and Mark camped on her spoor with only a tiny fire for comfort and they lay directly on the earth.
Mark did not sleep. He lay and watched the waning moon come up over the tree tops, but it was only when Pungushe spoke quietly that he realized that the Zulu also was sleepless. The cubs are not weaned, he said. But they will take a long time to die. No, Mark replied. I will shoot them also. Pungusbe roused himself and took a little snuff, leaning on one elbow and staring into the coals of the fire. She has tasted human blood, Mark said at last. Even in his grief and anger, he sensed Pungushe's quiet disapproval and wanted to justify what he was about to do. She did not feed, Pungushe stated. Mark felt his gorge rise and the bitter taste of it again as he remembered the terrible mutilation, but Pungushe was right, the lioness had not eaten any of that Poor torn flesh. Pungushe, she was my wife. Yes, Pungushe nodded. That is so. Also it was her cub. Mark considered the words, and felt for the first time a confusion of his own objects. The lioness had acted out of one of the oldest instincts of life, the urge to protect her young, but what were his motives? I have to kill her, Pungushe, he said flatly, and there was some slimy obscene thing in his belly; it moved there for the first time, and he tried to deny its existence.
Marion was dead. Sweet, loyal, dutiful Marion, who had been all that a man could ask for in a wife. She had died an unspeakable death, and now Mark was alone, or did the word free come too readily to his tongue?
Suddenly he had an image of a slim, dark lovely girl and a lusty naked little boy walking in the sunset at the edge of the sea.
Guilt, that slimy thing, uncoiled in his belly and began to ripple and undulate like a serpent, and he could not crush it down. She has to die, Mark repeated, and perhaps his own guilt could die in that same purging. Very well, Pungushe agreed. We will find her before noon tomorrow. He lay back and pulled his kaross over his head and his voice was muffled, the words almost lost. Let us hurry now towards the great emptiness They found the lioness early the next morning. She had moved in close under the hills of the escarpment, and when the first heat of the day made the cubs flag and begin to trail disconsolately along behind her, she had selected an umbrella thorn with a flat-topped mass of foliage spreading from the straight trunk and she had lain in the shade on her side, exposing the soft creamy fur of her belly and the double row of flat black nipples.
