"Yah! Snarly Sue!" Sean howled. "I'll blow your stupid head off!"
She broke her charge at the last possible moment, skidding to a halt on stiff front legs, ten feet from where they were bunched, and the dust swirled around her in the light.
"Piss off!" Sean ordered her sternly. Her ears stood erect, and she turned and trotted obediently back into the forest.
"That was a game of chicken," Sean chuckled. "She was just trying it on."
"How did you know that?" Claudia's voice was cracked and shrill in her own ears.
"Her tail. As long as she keeps waving it, she's only kidding.
When she holds it stiff, then look out!"
"Here's the truck," Riccardo said, and they could see the Toyota's headlights through the trees as it bumped up the dry river-bed below them.
"Praise the Lord," Claudia whispered.
"It's not over yet," Sean warned as they moved off down the track once more. "There's still Growly Gertie to deal with."
Claudia had forgotten the younger lioness, and now she glanced around fearfully as she stumbled after her father, hanging on to his belt.
At last they were on the bank of the river-bed, fully lit by the headlights of the parked truck, which was standing only thirty yards away with its engine running. She could make out the heads of the trackers in the front seat beyond the blaze of headlights. So close, so very close, and she could not help herself. Claudia let go of her father's belt and ran for the truck, pelting wildly through the thick loose white sand of the river-bed.
She heard Sean shout behind her, "You bloody idiot!"
Immediately afterward came the fearsome grunting roar of the lioness as she charged. Claudia glanced sideways as she ran, and the great cat was almost on her, coming in at an angle out of the tail reeds that lined the open river-bed. She was huge and pale in the headlights of the Toyota, snake swift, and her roaring cramped Claudia's belly and her feet dragged in the thick white sand. She saw that the charging lioness carried her tail high and stiff as a steel ramrod, and even in her terror she remembered what Sean had said and thought with icy clarity, "This time she's not going to stop.
She's going to kill me!" For a vital instance Sean had not realized that the girl had run.
He was backing carefully down the steep path into the river-bed, the flashlight in his left hand and the double rifle in his right. He held the rifle by the grip with the barrels tilted up over his shoulder and his thumb on the slide of the safety catch, watching the old lioness out there on the edge of the reed bed as she crawled toward them on her belly. But he was sure she was now merely going through the motions of aggression since he had stared down her mock charge. Two of the cubs were well back behind her, sitting up in the grass and watching the performance with huge eyes and candid fascination but too timid to take part. He had lost sight of the younger lioness, though he was sure she was now the main threat, but the river reeds were dense and tall.
He had felt Claudia bump against his hip, but he thought she had stumbled, not realizing she had bumped him as she turned to run. He was still searching for the younger lioness, probing the reed beds with the flashlight beam, when he heard the crunch of Claudia's running feet in the sugary river sand. He whirled and saw her out there alone in the dry river-bed.
"You bloody idiot!" he yelled in fury. The girl had been a constant source of irritation and dissent since she had arrived four days ago. Now she had flagrantly disobeyed his order, and he knew in an instant, even before the lioness launched her charge, that he was going to lose her. Getting a client killed or mauled was the blackest disgrace that could befall a professional hunter. It would mean the end of his career, the end of twenty years of work and striving.
"You bloody idiot!" He vented all his bitterness on the running figure. He barged past Riccardo, who was still standing frozen with shock on the path below him, and at that moment the lioness burst out of the edge of the reed bed where she had been lying.
The river-bed was brilliantly lit by the lights of the truck, so Sean dropped the flashlight and swung up the rifle with both hands, but he could not fire. The angle was wrong; the girl was between him and the lioness. Claudia ran awkwardly in the clinging sand, her head twisted away from him to watch the charge, her arms pumping frantically out of time with her legs.
"Down!" Sean shouted. "Fall flat!" But she kept running, blocking his shot, and the lioness swept in on her, sand spurting under her paws from which the curved yellow claws were already fully extended. She was grunting and roaring with each stride, and her tail was carried stiff and straight.
In the headlights the shadows of girl and cat on the stark white sand were grotesque and black, coming together swiftly. Sean saw the lioness gather herself for the leap, and he watched helplessly over the open iron sights of the rifle; it was impossible to separate them, impossible to fire without hitting the girl.
At the last moment Claudia tripped. Her legs, weak with fear, collapsed under her, and with a despairing wail she sprawled facedown in the sand.
Instantly Sean zeroed his aim on the creamy chest of the lioness.
With this rifle he could hit two penny coins flipped simultaneously into the air at a range of thirty paces, left and right, both before they fell to earth. With this rifle he had killed leopards, lions, rhinos, buffalos, elephants by the hundred-and men, many men, in the days of the Rhodesian bush war. He had never needed a second shot. Now that the target was open he could with supreme confidence send a 750-grain soft-nosed mushrooming bullet through the lioness from her chest to the root of her tail. It would be the end of the cat, and of the safari, and probably of his license.
At the least it would mean months of investigation and trial. A dead lioness would bring all the wrath of both the government and the game department down upon him.
The lioness was almost on top of the fallen girl, only a scant few feet of white sand lay between them, and Sean dropped his aim. It was a terrible risk, but he thrived on risk. He was gambling with the girl's life, but she had infuriated him and deserved to take her chance. He fired into the sand two feet in front of the lioness's open jaws. The huge, heavy buffet plowed in, sending up an eruption of sand, a solid fountain of flying white grains that for a moment completely enveloped the animal. Sand filled her mouth and was sucked into her lungs as she roared, sand drove into her nostrils, clogging them, and sand lashed into her open yellow eyes, tearing, raking, blinding her, disorienting her, instantly breaking her charge.
Sean raced forward with the second barrel ready to fire, but it wasn't necessary. The lioness had recoiled, rearing back violently, clawing at her sand-clotted eyes, toppling over and then bounding up again, careering back into the reed bed, barging blindly into the sheer bank, rolling and falling and struggling up again. The sounds of her wild run and agonized roars dwindled.
Sean reached Claudia, and with an arm around her jerked her to her feet. Her legs were unable to support her, and he had to half carry, half drag her to the Toyota and bundle her into the front seat.