On Leopard Rock: A Life of Adventures by Wilbur Smith

Author:Wilbur Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs
Publisher: Zaffre
Published: 2018-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

11

THIS HERO’S LIFE

I killed my first lions when I was thirteen years old. I did it to protect the family farm I had been charged to look after, and I was alone.

Every year my parents took time away from the cattle ranch to go on vacation together, down in South Africa or even further afield. Usually my father would leave his foreman, Peter, in charge, but this was the first year the responsibility had been given to me. Every day I saddled my pony and rode circuits around my father’s fields, along the banks of the Kafue River and up into the forested hills at the height of the ranch. Down by the river, where the puku and lechwe grazed, the world could seem vast and unknowable while, in the dense trees of the north, I would see occasional impala, always spooking at my appearance and vanishing into the shadows. Sometimes lions passed through the ranch, on the hunt for wild game, and it was for signs of these predators that I vigilantly made my circuits. Only rarely did I see them; more often I came across the spoor they left behind, or the signs of a kill.

I entered the fields where my father’s prized Brown Swiss cattle grazed. These were the animals on which the ranch’s livelihood depended, hardy yet docile animals first bred in the Swiss Alps and capable of surviving in harsh environments as different as the snowbound mountains and the withering heat of inland Africa. As I came among them, I already knew that something was wrong. Most of the herd had scattered, disappearing off to other grazing grounds.

Lying in the grass in front of me was a cow, her chest cavity open and glistening with gore, her neck ruptured where some monster’s teeth had torn it apart. I looked around. In the grasses I could see two or three other carcasses, all of them similarly maimed.

Whispering to my pony to settle her, as the scent of blood was making her jittery, I dismounted and approached the first dead body. I touched it with my boot. It was a fresh kill; the blood had not yet congealed.

I heard a low growl.

I turned my head slowly. In the long grass to my right, a pair of large, golden eyes stared at me over the mangled flesh of an ox.

I had been close to lions before, and flashes of that night, five years ago, came back to me. This time there were no tent flaps to hide behind. My father would not stride defiantly from the dark and face them down. Instinctively I reached for the rifle slung over my shoulder. It was my father’s rifle, and the same one that had felled the man-eaters that night.

I was lifting it carefully, positioning my aim, when the lion charged. He was a demon, his mane matted with the blood from his kills. In the corner of my eye, I could see two others in the field, both lionesses, their attention drawn by the snarling alpha male.

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