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.
Her two older cubs gazed up at the carcass, sitting on their haunches and growling with hunger and frustration, for the meat was obviously beyond their reach. At last the bolder of the two backed off, then made a running leap at the bait. Hooking on with its front claws, its back legs swinging free, it tried to grab a hasty Mouthful, but the young lioness turned on it viciously, snarling and cuffing it heavily until it fell on its back, scrambled to its feet, and slunk away.
The older of the two lionesses made no effort to protect her cub.
This was the pride law: the full-grown hunters, the most valuable members of the pride, must feed first. The pride survived on their strength. Only after they had gorged could the young ones feed. In lean times, when game was scarce or when open terrain made hunting difficult, the young might starve to death, and the adult females would not come into season again until game was once more plentiful. In this way the survival of the pride was ensured.
The chastened cub crept back to join its sibling beneath the carcass and began to compete eagerly with it for the scraps that the lioness ripped out of the buffalo's belly cavity and unintentionally let fall.
Once the young lioness dropped back on all fours in obvious discomfort, and Claudia was horrified to see that her whole head was swarming with white maggots that had crawled out of the meat as she fed. The lioness shook her head, scattering maggots like rice grains. She pawed frantically at her ears to get rid of the fat worms that were trying to crawl into the furry openings. Then she extended her neck and sneezed violently, blowing live maggots out of her nostrils.
Her young cubs took this as an invitation to play, or to feed.
Two of them launched themselves at her head, trying to hang on to her ears, while the third rushed under her belly and attached himself to a nipple like a tubby brown leech. The lioness ignored them and once more rose on her hind legs to continue eating. The cub at her nipple managed to hang on a few seconds longer and then fell under her back paws, his dignity trampled as she tugged and heaved at the bait. He crawled out between her legs crestfallen, dusty and disheveled.
Claudia giggled; she could not help herself, though she tried to muffle it with both hands. immediately Sean dug her hard in the short ribs.
Only the old lioness reacted to her giggle. The rest of the pride were too preoccupied, but the lioness crouched and flattened her ears against her skull, staring fixedly down the opening at the hide.
With those eyes on her, Claudia lost any urge to giggle again and held her breath.
"She can't see me," she told herself without conviction. "Surely she can't see me?" But for long seconds those eyes bored into hers.
Then the old lioness rose abruptly and slid away into the thick undergrowth beyond the bait tree. She moved like a serpent, with a sinuous flowing and gliding of the brown body. Claudia let out her breath slowly and gulped with relief.
While the rest of the pride romped, tussled, and fed beneath the bait tree, the sun slid below the treetops; the short African twilight was on them.
"If there is a tom with them, he will come in now," Sean breathed softly. Night was the time of the cats; the darkness made them bold and fierce. The light was going even as they watched.
Claudia heard something beyond the grass wall beside her, a furtive brush of some creature in long grass, but the bush was full of such small sounds and she did not even turn her head. Then she heard a distinct, unmistakable sound: the footfall of some heavy creature, soft and stealthy but very close. She felt her skin crawl with the insects of fear and the prickle of it up the back of her neck.
Quickly she turned her head.
Her left shoulder was pressed up against the thatch wall of the hide, and there was a chink in the thatch an inch wide. Her eyes were at the same level as the hole, and through it she saw movement. For a moment she did not recognize what she was seeing, and then she knew that it was a tiny expanse of smooth tawny hide, filling the chink only inches away on the far side. As she stared in horror, the tawny pelt slid past her eyes, and now she heard something else: an animal breathing, snuffling at the far side of the thatch wall.
instinctively she reached behind her with her free hand, never taking her eyes from the chink. Her hand was seized in a hard, cool grip. The touch that had offended her only minutes before now gave her more comfort than she had ever believed possible. She did not even marvel that she had reached for Sean's hand rather than her own papa's.
She stared into the chink, and suddenly there was another eye beyond, a huge round eye glistening like yellow agate, a terrible inhuman eye, unblinking, burning into hers with a dead black pupil in its center, a hand span from her face.
She wanted to scream, but her throat was closed. She wanted to leap to her feet, but her legs were dead. Her swollen bladder was like a stone in her lower belly, and before she could control it she felt a few warm drops escape. That checked her; the humiliation was greater than her terror, and she tightened her thighs and buttocks and clung to Sean's hand, still staring into that terrible yellow eye.
The lioness sniffed again loudly, and Claudia started silently but held on. "I won't scream," she told herself.
Again the lioness snuffled beyond the grass wall, her nostrils filled with the man-odor, and she let out an explosive grunt that seemed to rock the flimsy grass walls. Claudia caught the scream in her throat before it could escape. Then the yellow eye was gone from the chink and she heard the pad of great paws circling back around the hide.
Claudia swiveled her head to follow the sound and looked straight into Sean's face. He was smiling. That was what shocked her after what she had just lived through; there was a devil-may care grin on his lips and mockery in those green eyes. He was laughing at her. Her terror subsided and her anger flared.
"The swine," she thought. "The arrogant bloody swine." She knew that her face was bloodless and that her eyes were dark and wide with terror. She hated herself for it, and she hated him for being witness to it. She wanted to jerk her hand out of his grip, but she could still hear that great cat out there, still very close, circling them, and though she loathed him, she knew that without his grip she would not be able to control herself. So she held on, but turned her face away, following the furtive sounds of the lioness so Sean could not see her face.
The lioness passed in front of the blind. Through the peephole she saw the blur of the golden body, quickly gone, and she saw also that the young lioness and the cubs, alerted by the warning grunt, had disappeared into the undergrowth. The killing ground below the bait tree was deserted.
The light was going swiftly now. Within minutes it would be dark, and the thought of that brute in the darkness was almost too much to bear. Sean reached over her shoulder and pressed something small and hard against her lips. For a moment she resisted, then she opened and let him slide it into her mouth. It was a cube of chewing gum.
"The man has gone mad." She was bewildered. "Chewing gum at a time like this?" But as she crunched down onto the cube she realized that her saliva had dried out and that the inside of her mouth was as seared and puckered as if she had bitten into a green persimmon. At the taste of spearmint her saliva flowed again, but she was so angry with Sean that she felt no gratitude. He had known her mouth was dry with terror, and she resented it fiercely. The lioness growled in the semidarkness behind the hide, and Claudia thought longingly of the Toyota parked a mile back up the track. Almost echoing her thought, her father asked softly, "When did you tell the gun bearers to bring the truck?"
"After the last of the shooting light," Sean answered him quietly.
"Another fifteen or twenty minutes."
The lioness heard their voices and growled again threateningly.
"Cheeky bitch," Sean said cheerfully. "Snarly Sue in person."
"Shut up!" Claudia hissed at him. "She'll find us."
"Oh, she knows we're here now," Sean replied. He raised his voice and called, "Get away with you, you silly old bitch, go on back to your babies."
Claudia jerked her hand out of his grip. "Damn you! You'll get us killed."
But the loud human voice had alarmed the cat, and for minutes there was silence beyond the grass wall. Sean took up the short, ugly, double-barreled rifle propped against the wall beside him and placed it across his lap. He opened the breech of the.577 Nitro Express and slid the fat brass cartridges out of the chambers, changing them for two others from the loops on the left breast of his jacket. It was a little superstitious ritual of his, that changing of cartridges; he always performed it at the beginning of a hunt.
"Now listen to me, Capo," he addressed Riccardo. "If we kill that old whore without good reason, the game department is going to pull my license. "Good reason" is when she has already chewed somebody's arm off, not before. Do you hear me?"
"I hear you." Riccardo nodded.
All right, don't shoot until I tell you, or by God I'll shoot you."
They grinned at each other in the half light, and Claudia realized with disbelief that the two of them were enjoying themselves. These two crazy oafs were actually having fun.
"By the time Job arrives with the truck it will be pitch dark, and Job can't get the truck up to the hide. We'll have to go down to it in the river-bed. You go first, Capo, then Claudia between us. Stay close together, and whatever you do, don't run! For the love of God, don't anybody run!"
Now they heard the lioness again, padding softly around them.
She growled once more, and almost immediately was answered from the far side of the hide. The young lioness was out there now.
"The gang's all here," Sean commented. The sound of voices and the old lioness's growls had summoned the rest of the pride, and the hunters had become the hunted, trapped in the hide. The darkness was almost complete. The sunset was merely a dun red furnace glow on the western horizon.
"Where is the truck?" Claudia whispered.
Sean said, "It's coming." Then his voice changed. "Down!" he said sharply. "Get down!" And though she had heard nothing, she dropped out of the canvas chair and crouched on the ground.