Across the river the lioness stood up and shook herself. Then she walked out with a slow, satisfied air onto the open riverbank.
There she paused and looked back to where the lion was sitting on his haunches, still half hidden in the long grass.
"Get ready, Capo." Sean was still massaging his finger.
It was five in the afternoon, and the sun was at a perfect angle, lighting the far bank as though it were a stage. The range was a measured ninety-six yards from the mac han to the bait tree. Riccardo Monterro was the finest rifleman Sean had ever guided on safari. At that range he could place three bullets through the same hole.
The lioness mewled seductively, and the lion stood up and followed her out onto the open riverbank. He stood behind her, broadside to the mac han across the river, lit by the golden sunlight.
"He's a gift from heaven, Capo," Sean whispered. He tapped Riccardo's shoulder. "Take him!"
Slowly Riccardo lifted the rifle to his shoulder. It was a.300 Weatherby Magnum. The massive cartridge under the firing pin was loaded with eighty grains of powder and a 180-grain Nosier partitioned bullet. It would cross the open river-bed at over three thousand feet per second. When it entered living flesh, it would drive a shock wave ahead of it that would turn the internal organs, lungs, and heart to jelly and suck that jelly out of a massive exit hole, blowing them in a red spray over the grass beyond where the animal stood.
"Take him!" Sean said. Riccardo Monterro looked through the telescopic sight. The lion's body filled most of the magnified field of the lens.
He could see the individual hairs in the dense curling bush of mane and the detail of each sculptured muscle beneath the skin.
One inch behind the lion's shoulder, on the lateral center line of its body, was a tiny scar on the sleek hide. It was shaped like a horseshoe, a lucky horseshoe, and it made a perfect aiming point.
He aligned the cross hairs of the sight on the scar. They bounced slightly to the elevated beat of his own heart. He took up the slack in the trigger, feeling the final resistance under his finger before the sear released and the rifle fired.
Beside her father, Claudia sat rigid with horror. The lion turned his head and looked across the river-bed at her. The mating had touched and moved her deeply.
"He's too glorious to die," she thought. Almost without conscious effort, she opened her mouth and screamed with all the strength of her lungs.
"Run, damn you! Run!"
The result stunned even her. She had not believed a living creature could react so swiftly. From lazy immobility, all three animals exploded into flight. They dissolved into golden blurs of movement.
The oldest lioness disappeared almost instantaneously into the long grass, the cubs rushing after her. The younger lioness raced along the edge of the bank. So swift was her run that she did not seem to touch the earth; like a swallow drinking in flight, she skimmed the surface, and the lion followed her. For all his bulk and the dark mass of his mane, he moved as lightly as she did, reaching out those massively muscled legs in full stride.
Riccardo Monterro swiveled in his chair, the rifle to his shoulder, staring into the brilliant glass lens, swinging with the cat's run.
The lioness swerved into the grass and was gone. The lion followed her, but the instant before he disappeared, the report of the Weatherby rifle drove in on their eardrums, painful and deafening, and even in full sunlight a long tongue of flame flashed out across the river-bed.
The lion stumbled in his run and with a single, loud cough vanished into the grass. In the silence, their ears sang with the memory of gunfire, and they stared out at the empty clearing, subdued and appalled.
"Nice work, ducky!" Sean said softly.
"I'm not sorry," she said defiantly. Her father reloaded the rifle with a savage movement that sent the empty brass case spinning and sparkling away in the sunlight. He stood up, rocking the flimsy mac han and without a glance at his daughter he climbed down the makeshift ladder.
Sean picked up his.577 double rifle and followed him down.
They stood at the bottom of the tree. Riccardo unbuttoned the flap of his breast pocket and offered Sean a Havana from his pigskin cigar case. Neither of them usually smoked during the day, but now Sean accepted one and bit off the tip.
They lit their cigars and smoked for a while in silence. Then Sean said quietly, "Call your shot, Capo."
Riccardo was a marksman of such expertise that he could tell precisely where his bullet had gone the moment after he fired it.
Now he hesitated, then said grudgingly, "That cat was motoring.
I was too quick. I didn't lead him enough."
"Gutshot?" Sean asked.
"Yeah." Riccardo nodded. "Gutshot."
"Shit," said Sean. "Shit, and shit again."
They looked across at the dense stand of long grass and tangled thorny patches of undergrowth on the far bank.
It was ten minutes before the Toyota arrived, summoned by that single gunshot. Job, Shadrach, and Matatu were grinning with expectation. They had hunted six safaris with Riccardo Monterro, and they had never known him to miss. They jumped out of the Toyota and peered across the river. Their grins faded slowly and were replaced by expressions of deepest gloom as Sean said, "Intumbu! In the guts!"
The three of them went back to the Toyota and began to prepare for the follow-up In silence.