'You will gain great prestige amongst my people, Jake.
Wherever you go, people will point you out to each other.'
'Fine
Greg. That's just fine. Now will you kindly haul arse.
'I will have a war bonnet made for you out of the mane, Greg insisted,
as he strapped the bundle of wet skin to the sponson of Jake's car.
'With the hair combed out, it will look very grand.'
'It could only be an improvement on his present hair style,' Gareth
observed drily. 'I agree it's been a beautiful honeymoon, and Jake is
a splendid lad but like he said, let's move on, before I am violently
ill.' As they moved towards their respective cars, Gregorius fell in
beside Jake and quietly showed him the mushroomed copper-jacketed
bullet he had removed from its niche in the pelvic bone of the
carcass.
Jake paused to examine it closely, turning it in the palm of his
hand.
'Nine millimeter, or nine point three,' he said. 'It's a sporting
calibre not military.'
'I doubt if there is a single rifle in
Ethiopia that would fire this bullet,' said Greg seriously. 'It's a
foreigner's rifle.'
'No need to blow the bugle yet,' said Jake, and flicked the bullet back
to him. 'But we'll bear it in mind.' Gregorius almost turned away,
then said shyly, 'Jake, even if the lion was already wounded it's still
the bravest thing I ever heard of. I have often hunted for them, but
never killed one yet.' Jake was touched by the boy's admiration. He
laughed roughly and slapped his shoulder.
'I'll leave the next one for you,' he promised.
They followed the windings of the River Awash through the savannah
grassland, moving in towards the mountains so that with each hour
travelled the peaks stood higher and clearer into the sky. The ridges
of rock and the deep-forested gorges came into hazy focus, like a wall
across the sky.
Suddenly they intersected the old caravan road, hitting it at a point
where the steep banks of the Awash flattened a little. The ford of the
river had been deeply worn over the ages by the passage of laden beasts
of burden and the men who drove them, so that the many footpaths down
each bank were deep trenches in the red earth, that jinked to avoid any
large boulder or ridge of rock.
The three men worked in the brilliant sunlight and swung shovel and
mattock in a fine mist of red dust that powdered their hair and bodies.
They filled in the uneven ground and deeply worn trenches,
levering the boulders free and letting them roll and bounce down into
the river bed, and slept that night the deathlike sleep of utter
exhaustion that ignored the ache of abused muscle and burst blisters.
Jake had them at work before it was fully light the next morning,
clearing and levelling, shovelling and packing the dry hard-baked
earth, until at last each bank had been shaped into a rough but
passable ramp.
Gareth was to take the first car through and he stood in the turret,
