Ballantyne.04.The.Leopard.Hunts.in.Darkness.1984 by Smith Wilbur

Author:Smith, Wilbur [Smith, Wilbur]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Google: uG0DA0pA0NMC
Amazon: 0312940777
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

The Leopard Hunts In Darkness

“You’re so gentle, “she murmured, as he slipped under the ground sheet and took her in his arms, “and so warm.”

“I love you,” he said. “Go to sleep.” She sighed and snuggled, and he thought she was asleep until she said softly, “Craig, I’m so sorry about King’s Lynn.” Then, at last, she did sleep, her breathing swelling deeply and evenly against his chest. He eased out from under the ground sheet and left her undisturbed. He went to sit on the low bank with the AK 47 across his knees, keeping the open pan under surveillance, waiting for them to come.

While he kept the watch, he thought about what Sally Anne had said.

He thought about King’s Lynn. He thought of his herds of great red beasts, and the homestead on the hill. He thought about the men and the women who had lived there and bred their families there. He thought about the dreams he had fashioned from their lives and how he had planned to do with this woman what they had done.

My woman. He went back to where she lay and knelt over her to listen to her breathing, and he thought about her spread naked and open on the long table under the cruel scrutiny of many eyes.

He went back to wait at the edge of the pan and he thought about Tungata Zebiwe, and remembered the laughter and comradeship they had shared. He saw again the hand-signal from the dock as they led Tungata away.

“We are equal the score is levelled,” and he shook his head.

He thought about once being a millionaire, and the millions he now owed. From a man of substance he had been reduced in a single stroke to something worse than a pauper. He did not even own the bundle of paper in the British Airways bag. The manuscript would be forfeit, his creditors would take that also. He had nothing, nothing except this woman and his rage.

Then the image of General Peter Fungabera’s face filled his imagination smooth as hot chocolate, handsome as mortal sin, as powerful and as evil as Lucifer and his rage grew within him, until it threatened to consume him.

He sat through the long night without sleep, hating with all the strength of his being. Every hour he went back to where Sally-Anne slept and squatted beside her. Once he adjusted the ground sheet over her, another time he touched the lump on her forehead lightly with his fingertips and she whimpered in her sleep, then he went back to his vigil.

Once he saw dark shapes out on the pan, and his stomach turned over queasily, but when he put Timon’s binoculars on them, he saw they were pale-coloured gemsbok, huge desert gazelle, large as horses, the diamond-patterned face masks that gave them their name showing c or in the starlight. They passed silently up, wind of where he sat and merged into the night.

Orion hunted down the sky and faded at dawn’s first glimmering.

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