Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur (книга бесплатный формат .TXT) 📗

Tungata swerved a second time, running his wheels over the verge, and Craig saw the bank rushing at him in the headlights. Tungata was attempting to wipe him off the Land-Rover on the bank, trying to shred him to pieces between shaly rock and sharp metal. Craig screamed involuntarily with the effort as he jack-knifed his knees up and over. There was a rushing din of metal and stone as the Land-Rover brushed the bank. Something struck his leg a blow that jarred him to his hip and he heard -the straps part as his leg was torn. away. If it had been flesh and bone he would have been fatally maimed. Instead, as the Land' Rover swung back onto the road he used the momentum to roll across the back seat and whip his free arm around Tungata's neck from behind.

it was a strangle-hold and as he threw all his strength into it, he felt the give of Tungata's larynx in the crook of his elbow, and the loaded feel of the vertebrae, like the tension of a dry twig on the point of snapping. He wanted to kill him, he wanted to tear his head off his body, but he could not anchor himself to apply those last few ounces of pressure.

Tungata lifted both hands off the wheel, tearing at Craig's wrist and elbow, making a glottal, cawing sound, and the untended steering-wheel spun wildly. The Land, Rover charged off the road, plunged over the unprotected verge onto the steep rocky slope, and with a rending screech of metal crashed end over end.

Craig's grip was torn open and he was flung clear. He hit hard earth, cartwheeled, and lay for a second, his ears humming and his body crushed and helpless until he rallied and pulled himself to his knees.

The Land' Rover lay on its back. The headlights still blazed, and thirty paces down the slope, full in their beam, lay Sally-Anne. She looked likea little girl asleep. Her eyes closed and he mouth relaxed, the lips very red against her pallor, but from her hairline a thin dark serpent of blood crawled down across her pale brow.

He started to crawl towards her, when another figure rose out of the intervening darkness, a great, dark, wideshouldered figure. Tungata was clearly stunned, staggering in a half-circle, clutching his injured throat. At the sight of him Craig went hers&k with grief. and rage.

He hurled himself at Tungata and they came together, chest to chest. Long ago, as friends, they had often wrestled, but Craig had forgotten the sheer bull strength of the man. His muscles were hard and resilient and black as the cured rubber of a transcontinental truck tyre, and, one legged Craig was unbalanced. Dazed as he was, Tungata heaved him off his foot.

As he went down, Craig kept his grip and despite his own strength, Tungata could not break it. They went down together, and Craig used his stump, driving up with the hard rubbery pad at the end of it, using the swing of it and Tungata's own falling weight to slog into Tungata's lower body.

Tungata grunted and the strength went out of him.

Craig rolled out from under him, reared back onto his shoulders, and used all his body to launch himself forward again to hit with the stump. It sounded like an axe swung double-handed against a tree trunk, and it caught Tungata.

in the middle of his chest, right over the heart.

Tungata dropped over backwards and lay still- Crai crawled to him and reached for his unprotected throat with both hands. He felt the ropes of muscle framing the sharp hard Jump of the thyroid cartilage and he drove his thumbs deeply into it, and, at the feet of ebbing life under his hands, his rage fell away he found he could not kill him.

He opened his hands and drew away, shaking and gasping.

He left Tungata lying crumpled on the rocky earth and crawled to where Sally-Anne lay. He picked her up and sat with her in his lap, cradling her head against his shoulder, desolated by the slack and lifeless feel of her body. With one hand he wiped away the trickle of blood before it reached her eyes.

Above them on the road the following truck pulled up with a metallic squeal of brakes and armed men came swarming down the slope, baying likea pack of hounds at the kill. In his arms I ikea child waking from sleep, Sally Anne stiffed and mumbled softly.

She was alive, still alive and he whispered to her, "My darling, oh my darling, I love you so!" our of Sally-Anne's ribs were cracked, her right ankle was badly sprained, and there was serious bruising and swelling on her neck from the blow she had received. However, the cut in her scalp was superficial and the X-rays showed no damage to the skull. Nevertheless, she was held for observation in the private ward that Peter Fungabera had secured for her in the overcrowded public hospital.

It was here that Abel Khori, the public prosecutor assigned to the Tungata Zebiwe case, visited her. Mr. Khori was a distinguished-looking Shana who had been called to the London bar and still affected the dress of Lincoln's Inn Fields, together with a penchant for learned, if irrelevant, Latin phrases.

"I am visiting you to clarify in my own mind certain points in the statement that you have already made to the police. For it would be highly improper of me to influence in any way the evidence that you will give," Khori explained.

He showed Craig and Sally-Arme the reports of spontaneous Matabele demonstrations for Tungata's release, which had been swiftly broken up by the police and units of the Third Brigade, and which the Shana editor of the Herald had relegated to the middle pages.

"We must always bear in mind that this man is ipso jure accused of a criminal act,. and he should not be allowed to become a tribal martyr. -You see the dangers. The sooner we can have the er*ire business settled mutatis mutandis, the better for everybody." Craig and Sally-Anne were at first astonished and then made uneasy at the despatch with which Tungata Zebiwe was to be brought to trial. Despite the fact that the rolls were filled for seven months ahead, his case was given a date in the Supreme Court ten days hence.

"We cannot nudis Verb keep a man of his stature in gaol for seven months," the prosecutor explaine "and to grant him bail and allow him liberty to inflame his followers would be suicidal folly." Apart from the trial, there were other lesser matters to occupy both Craig and Sally Anne Her Cessna was due for its thousand, hour check and 'certificate of airworthiness'. There were no facilities for this in Zimbabwe, and j they had to arrange for a fellow pilot to fly the machine down to Johannesburg for her. "I will feel likea bird with its wings clipped," she complained.