Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur (книга бесплатный формат .TXT) 📗
"Joseph!" Craig cried, and embraced him impetuously.
The old man had been Bawu's cook for thirty years. He could lay a formal banquet for fifty guests, or whip up a hunters" pot on a bush fire. Already there was bread baking in the tin trunk he had improvised as an oven and he had gleaned a bowl of salad from the neglected garden.
Joseph extricated himself from Craig's embrace, a little ruffled by this breach of etiquette. "Nkosana," Joseph still used the diminutive address, "your clothes were filthy and your bed was unmade," he lectured Craig sternly. "We have worked all day to tidy the mess you have made." Only then did Craig notice the other man in the kitchen.
Xapa-lola," he laughed delightedly, and the houseboy grinned and bobbed with pleasure. He was at work with the heavy black smoothing-iron filled with glowing coals.
All Craig's clothes and bed4 men had been washed and were being ironed to crisp perfection. The walls of the cottage had been washed down and the floor polished to a gloss. Even the brass taps on the sink shone like the buttons on a marine's dress uniform.
"I have made a list of the things we need," Joseph told Craig. "They will do for the time being, but it is unfitting that you should live like this in a hovel. Nkosi Bawu, your grandfather, would have disapproved. "Joseph the cook had a definite sense of style. "Thus, I have sent a message to my senior wife's uncle who is a master thatcher, and told him to bring his eldest son who is a bricklayer, and his nephew, who is a fine carpenter. They will be here tomorrow to begin repairing the damage that these dogs have done to the big house. As for the gardens, I know a man-" and he ticked off on his fingers what he considered necessary to restore King's Lynn to some sort of order. "Thus we will be ready to invite thirty important guests to Christmas dinner, like we used to in the old days. Now Nkosana, go and wash. Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes." With the home paddocks securely fenced and the work on the restoration of the outbuildings and main homestead well in hand, Craig could at last begin the vital step of restocking. He summoned Shadrach and Joseph, and gave King's Lynn into their joint care during his absence. They accepted the responsibility gravely. Then Craig drove to the airport, left the Land-Rover in the car park and boarded the commercial flight southwards.
For the next three weeks he toured the great cattle stud ranches of Northern Transvaal, the province of South Africa whose climate and conditions most closely resembled those of Matabeleland. The purchases of blood cattle were not transactions that could be hurried. Each was preceded by days of discussion with the seller, and study of the beasts themselves, while Craig enjoyed the traditional hospitality of the Afrikaner country folk. His hosts were men whose ancestors had trekked northwards from the Cape of Good Hope, drawn by their oxen, and had lived all their lives close to their animals. So while Craig purchased their stock, he *rew upon their accumulated wisdom and experience and came from each transaction with his own knowledge and understanding of cattle immensely enriched. All he learned reinforced his desire h to follow Bawu's successful experiments wit cross-breeding the indigenous Afrikaner strain, known for its hardiness and disease- and drou lit-resistance, with the quicker yielding Santa Gertrudis strain. He bought young cows that had been artificially inseminate and were we in ca e pedigree from famous blood-lines, and laboured through the documentation and inspection and inoculation and quarantine and insurance that were necessary before they could be permitted to cross an international border. In the meantime he arranged for road transportation northwards to King's Lynn by contractors who specialized in carrying precious livestock.
He spent almost two million of his borrowed dollars before flying back to King's Lynn to make the final preparations for the arrival of his cattle. The deliveries of the blood-stock were to be staggered over a period of months, so that each consignment could be properly received and allowed to settle down before the arrival of the next batch.
The first to arrive were four young bulls, just ready to take up their stud duties. Craig had paid fifteen thousand dollars for each of them. Peter Fungabera was determined to make an important occasion out of their arrival. He persuaded two of his brother ministers to attend the welcoming ceremony, though neither the prime minister nor the minister of tourism, Comrade Tungata Zebiwe, was available on that day.
Craig hired a marquee tent, while Joseph happily and importantly prepared one of his legendary al fresco banquets. Craig was still smarting from having paid out two million dollars, so he went cheap on the champagne, ordering the imitation from the Cape of Good Hope rather than the genuine article.
The ministerial party arrived in a fleet of black Mercedes, accompanied by their heavily armed bodyguards, all sporting aviator, type sunglasses. Their ladies were dressed in full-length safari prints, of the wildest and most improbable colours. The cheap sweet champagne went down as though a plug had been pulled out of a bath, and they were all soon twittering and giggling likea flock of glossy starlings. The minister of education's senior wife unbuttoned her blouse, produced a succulent black bosom, and gave the infant on her hip an early lunch while herself taking on copious quantities of champagne. "Refuelling in flight," one of Craig's white neighbours, who had been an R.A.F bomber-pilot, remarked with a grin.
Peter Fungabera was the last to arrive, wearing full dress, and driven by a young aide, a captain in the Third Brigade whom Craig had noticed on several other occasions. This time Peter introduced him.
"Captain Timon Nbebi." He was so thin as to appear almost frail. His eyes behind the steel, rimmed spectacles were too vulnerable for a soldier, and his grip was quick and nervous. Craig would have liked to have spoken to him, but, by this time the transporter carrying the bulls was already grinding up the hills.
It arrived in a cloud of fine red dust before the enclosure of split poles that Craig had built to receive the bulls. The gangplank was lowered, but before the tailgate was raised Peter Fungabera climbed up onto the dais and addressed the assembly.
"Mr. Craig Mellow is a man who could have chosen any country in the world to live in and, as an internationally best selling writer, would have been welcomed there. He chose to return to Zimbabwe, and in doing so has declared to all the world that here is a land where men of any colour, of any tribe black Or white, Mashona or Matabele are free to live and wotk, unafraid and unmolested, safe in the rule of just laws After the political commercial, Peter Fungabera allowed himself a little joke. "We will now welcome to our midst these other new immigrants, in the sure knowledge that they will be the fathers of many fine sons and daughters, and contribute to the prosperity of our own Zimbabwe Peter Fungabera led the applause as Craig raised the gate and the first new immigrant emerged to stand blinking in the sunlight. He was an enormous beast, over a ton Of bulging muscles under the glistening red-brown hide. He had just endured sixteen hours penned up in a noisy, lurching machine. The tranquillizers he had been given had worn off, leaving him with a drug hangover and a bitter grudge against the entire world. Now he looked down on the clapping throng, on the swirling colours of the women's national costumes, and he found at last a focus for his irritation and frustration. He let out a long ferocious bellow, and, dragging his handlers behind him, he launched himself like an avalanche down the gangplank.
