Inches in front of her eyes a single green leaf, hanging down into the opening in the grass wall, spiraled slowly on its stalk like a weathercock, and almost immediately she felt the shift of the light evening breeze.
Sean had sited the blind below the prevailing wind, and now as the breeze came down to them it brought a new odor, the stench of the carcass. The bait was an old buffalo cow. Sean had selected her from a herd of two hundred of the huge black animals.
"That old girl is way past breeding," he had said, pointing her out. "Take her low on the shoulder, through the heart," he had ordered Riccardo.
It was the first animal Claudia had ever seen killed deliberately.
The crash of the heavy rifle had shocked her, but not as deeply as the scarlet gush of blood in the bright African sunlight and the mournful death bellow of the old cow. She had walked back to where they had left the open Toyota hunting car and sat alone in the front seat in a cold sweat of nausea while Sean and his trackers had butchered the carcass.
They had hauled the carcass up into the lower branches of the wild fig tree with the power winch on the front of the Toyota, positioning it with much debate between Sean and his trackers as to the exact height that would enable a full-grown lion standing on his back legs to reach up and partially satisfy his hunger without enabling a large pride of cats to consume all of it at a sitting and then move on to find other fare.
That had been four days previously, but even as they had worked the metallic green blowflies had come swarming to the smell of fresh blood. Now the heat and the flies had done their work, and Claudia wrinkled her nose and grimaced at the stench that came down to her on the breeze. The smell seemed to coat her tongue and the back of her throat like slime; staring at the carcass in the tree, she imagined she could see the black hide undulating softly as the maggots seethed and burrowed into the putrid flesh beneath it.
"Lovely." Sean had sniffed it before they entered the hide. "Just like a ripe Camembert. No cat within ten miles will be able to resist it." While they waited the sun sagged wearily down the sky, and the colors of the bush now glowed with the richer light, in contrast to the washed-out glare of noon.
The faint coolness in the evening breeze seemed to awaken the wild birds from their heat-drugged stupor. In the undergrowth down on the banks of the stream a laurie called "Kok! Kok! Kok!"
as raucously as a parrot, and in the branches directly over their heads a pair of glistening metallic sun birds flitted busily with fluttering wings, hanging upside down from the fluffy blooms to suck UP the nectar. Claudia lifted her head slowly and watched them with intense pleasure. Though she was so close she could see their thin, tubular tongues thrusting deeply into the yellow flowers, the little creatures ignored her as though she were part of the tree.
She was still watching the birds when she became aware of a sudden tension in the hide. Her father had stiffened, his hand on the butt stock of the rifle clenched slightly. His sense of excitement was almost palpable. He was staring through his peephole, but though she stared as hard she could not see what had excited him.
From the corner of her eye she saw Sean Courtney reach forward between them, his hand moving with infinite stealth, to grasp her father's elbow in a cautionary restraining grip.
Then she heard Sean's whisper, softer than the breeze. "Wait!"
he said.
So they waited, deathly still, as the minutes drew out slowly and became ten and then twenty.
"On the left," Sean wispered, and it was so unexpected that she started at the barely audible murmur. Her eyes swiveled left. She saw nothing, just grAs and bush and shadows. She stared unblinkingly until her eyes smarted and swam with tears; she had to blink rapidly and then look again, and this time she saw something move like mist or smoke, a drift of brown in the long sun-seared grass.
Then abruptly, dramatically, an animal stepped out into the open killing ground below the reeking carcass in the fig tree. Despite herself, Claudia gasped, and then her breath choked in her throat. It was the most beautiful beast she had ever seen, a great cat, much larger than she had expected, sleek and glossy and golden. It turned its head and looked directly at her. She saw that its throat was a soft cream, and sunlight gleamed on the long white whiskers. Its ears were round and tipped with black and held erect, listening. The eyes were yellow, as implacable and glowing as moonstones, the pupils reduced to black arrowheads as it stared up to the long clearing at the wall of the hide.
Still Claudia could not breathe. She was frozen with excitement and dread as the cat stared at her. Only when it turned its head away and looked up at the carcass in the tree could she let out her breath in a soft ragged sigh.
"Don't kill it. Please, don't kill it!" she almost cried aloud. With relief she saw that her father had not moved a muscle and that Sean's hand was still on his elbow restraining him.
Only then did she realize that it was a female, a lioness; there was no mane, and she had listened to the camp-fire conversation enough to know that they were hunting only a full-maned lion and that there were heavy penalties, huge fines and even imprisonment, for the killing of a female. She relaxed slightly and gave herself over to the full enjoyment of the moment and to the stunning beauty of this beast. Claudia's pleasure had only just begun, for the lioness looked around her once more and then, satisfied it was safe, she opened her mouth and gave a low mewling call.
Almost immediately her cubs came tumbling into the clearing.
There were three of them, fluffy as children's toys and dappled with kitten spots. They tripped over paws that were too large for the tiny bodies, and after a few moments of hesitation during which their mother placed no restraint on them, they launched into a boisterous mock combat, wrestling and falling over each other with ferocious baby growls.
The lioness ignored them and rose up on her hind legs to the dangling carcass. She thrust her head into the open belly from which the entrails had been plucked and began to feed. The row of black nipples down her belly stuck out prominently and the fur around them was matted with the saliva of her offspring, for she had not yet weaned them. The cubs took no notice of her feeding and went on with their play.
Then a second lioness stepped into the clearing, followed by two half-grown cubs. This one was much darker in color, almost blue along the spine, and her pelt was crisscrossed with old healed scars, the legacy of a lifetime of hard hunting, the marks of hoof and horn and claw. Half of one ear was torn off, and her ribs showed through the scarred hide. She was old. The two half-grown cubs that followed her into the clearing would probably be her last litter. Next year, when the cubs had deserted her and she was too weak to keep up with the pride, the hyenas would take her, but now she was still living on her store of cunning and experience.
She had let the young lioness go in first to the bait, for she had seen two mates killed in just such a situation, beneath a succulent carcass dangling from a tree, and she mistrusted it. She did not begin to feed but prowled restlessly around the clearing, her tail flicking with agitation; every so often she stopped and stared intently down the open lane to the grass wall of the hide at the far end.