Mark of the Lion (29 page)

Jade looked across to Roger for confirmation. He nodded and she continued. “There’s a town called Cimarron near our ranch. The hotel has more bullet holes in the ceiling than I’d care to patch, and we have some wealthy landowners who are notorious for their wild escapades, too.”

“What about Neville and me?” asked Madeline. “Who are our counterparts?”

Jade rested her left leg from the knee up on the seat and turned around. “The farmers and ranchers who moved west searching for space and opportunities.”

“
I
came to Africa because Neville made me. He’s never told me why he left England.”

“And what about yourself?” asked Roger. “I should think you’re rather unusual.”

Beverly spoke up before Jade could answer. “You won’t find Jade’s counterpart anywhere. She’s an enigma, part adventuress, part wildlife. And,” Bev added, “the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”

“Shut up, Bev,” growled Jade. “Everyone in the outfit was brave.”

“True,” agreed Beverly, “excepting Jane the Pain. She was a ‘seeing Francer.’ That means,” she explained to Madeline, “that she only joined up to see Paris and marry an officer.”

“Unlike you, my love, who had to settle for an ordinary pilot,” said Avery.

Everyone but Roger chuckled, and Avery pressed Madeline for information about growing coffee. The noisy engine made conversation between the front and back difficult. Mr. Forster made no more attempt at communication so Jade turned her attention to Tsavo’s expansive grasslands. To her left was a green belt of trees marking the river’s course. Rounded hills and rocky buttes dotted the landscape of golden grass and prickly thornbushes. Patches of reddish-pink dirt showed where animals had wallowed and exposed the laterite soil.
So this is the country of the famed man-eaters.
Colonel Patterson himself might have walked through here tracking the killers. Roger’s voice roused her from her daydream.

“I said, are there people like myself in America?” asked Roger.

“Well, there’s me, if you mean people actually born on the frontier, Mr. Forster. At least, I was told you were born in Africa.”

“Yes, I was. Even with a brief run in the war, I’ve never been away.”

Jade was surprised that the usually sullen young man was making an effort to be friendly. She took advantage of it. “May I ask where?”

“Where I was born or where I served?”

She shrugged. “Both actually.”

“Not sure where I was born. Father was a prospector who died before I was born, but Mother married a likely chap willing to take on the role of parent to another man’s child. My stepfather had a farm outside Mombasa. I even went to school there. Boarded until I was sixteen.” He paused and circumvented a particularly large ditch.

“Do your parents still live there?” asked Jade.

“No. They died of blackwater. I sold the farm and tried to make a go elsewhere with ostriches. Bought a farm already in the making when some chap wanted to move on.” He shook his head. “Course, hell had just broken out in Europe anyway.”

Roger snorted in disgust. “The man probably saw the handwriting on the wall and saw a green, young fool ripe for picking.” He stabbed his chest with his thumb and created a small cloud of red dust. “Me! I daresay you’ve heard how
that
went. Next I tried raising cattle, but they were all put down due to an unwarranted anthrax scare. Right now I owe so much money to the bank, here I am, making a go at safaris to stay one step ahead of the creditors.”

He slowed as the car’s left side dipped into a shallow wallow that had been hidden by the grasses. “Funny thing, really,” he continued after maneuvering the ditch. “The motorcar was a death knell to feather hats. But here I am using one—the car, that is. You might say it’s been a curse and a boon for me.”

“You’re resilient,” said Jade in summation. “But if you served during the war, you hardly had a chance to make your ranch work.”

Roger shrugged. “I didn’t see the sort of action other blokes did. Since I knew the country so well and spoke several native languages, the war office put me to work running transport and things such as that. Not very exotic or exciting. Spent a lot of time in Nairobi.”

“Not everyone can be a general,” offered Jade.

“No,” he said. He concentrated on maneuvering around a patch of wait-a-bit thorns and bit his lower lip in concentration. Behind her, Jade heard Madeline and Beverly laugh uproariously over something that Avery had said.

Jade waited for Roger to work through his thoughts and was rewarded with further revelations. “I often thought I should have been a pilot, though. Not that I can fly or anything,” he added as he cast a sideways glance at her. “It’s just that my initials fit the job so well.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“R.A.F. Just like Royal Air Force. My full name is Roger Abel Forster.”

Excitement, nervousness, and disbelief rolled down Jade’s back in miniature tremors. For a minute she sat mute and motionless. Finally her hand moved in slow motion with a will of its own to the ring at her chest. She clutched it through the heavy shirt. Her brain retreated back to France, to David’s marriage proposal and her laughing rejection. She could almost smell the engine grease on his coveralls as he leaned towards her. That image faded into his broken body in her arms, and his rasping voice asking her to find his brother and what had happened to his father. Beverly’s soprano shout broke through the trance.

“Look, pink elephants. I must be tipsy.”

Roger explained that the elephants took dust baths and coated themselves with the faded red soil of Tsavo. His words sounded distant, as though Jade heard only an echo. The foreground of her thoughts was entirely occupied with one word: Abel.

JADE DESPERATELY WANTED TO QUESTION ROGER further, but the landscape prevented it. The two vehicles jolted over the rough terrain and heaved their occupants about like rag dolls. If the cars ever possessed springs, they had long since died of exhaustion. Jade landed with a thud on the hard seat. The shock slammed up her spine, and she vowed to personally kick the man who’d let this car’s underbelly fall into such disrepair. Thank heavens the canvas top was at least soft on the head.

Jade could think of two advantages to traveling in these instruments of torture. Comfort was not one of them. They did save time, and the fifteen- to twenty-mile-per-hour speed generated a minuscule but most welcome breeze. To say that Tsavo was hot was like saying hell was a trifle warm. Unfortunately, the cars also stirred up red dust, which stuck to every exposed part of their sweaty hides and congealed into a gummy, pink paste, covering them as it did the elephants.

“Let’s hurry up and shoot something so we can all go home,” whined Beverly. “As wretched as I feel right now, it might just as well be me.”

“As lovely as you are, dearest,” said Avery, “I really don’t care to have your head staring down at me in my study. I would rather have a lion or a rhinoceros brooding over me instead.”

“Your husband sounds exactly like Neville,” said Madeline. “Doesn’t he, Jade?”

Jade was too preoccupied with keeping her tailbone from slamming up into her skull, and with Roger’s last remark, to attend to the banter behind her.

“Jade,” said Beverly, “wake up and answer Madeline.”

“I’m sorry. What did she say?”

“They were speaking of how charming and handsome both Neville Thompson and myself are,” said Avery. “You were asked to agree.”

“Jade,” said Beverly, “fetch that little book of yours and look up the Swahili for ‘bilgewater.’ ”

“Anything for you, Beverly,” said Jade. She reached into the canvas bag and pulled the Swahili language lessons out from under the Graflex. “Bilge, bilge, b, b, b. Sorry, I don’t find ‘bilgewater’ but I did find ‘bloody fool.’ That’s
pumbafu
.”

Avery grumbled a low warning behind her. “If either you or my dear wife calls me Bwana Pumbafu, I shall be forced to do something drastic. Perhaps not in our present circumstances, but later. I promise you on my honor as a member of Parliament.”

Beverly giggled, something Jade didn’t remember her ever doing before her marriage, and suggested that Jade search out something noble to call Avery. Jade turned several pages and was struck by what looked like the word “pili.” She started to look more closely when the Ford thwacked either a rock or a sleeping warthog and jolted the book out of her hands. She gripped the side for stability and decided this wasn’t the most opportune condition for reading.
Later!

“Leave it to the Africans,” yelled Jade. “They’ll give him a name soon enough.”

“How far are we, ouch, driving, Mr. Forster?” Madeline called from the back.

“We should cover about fifty to sixty miles, depending on how far the porters got. They have over a three-day head start, you know. That will serve as a base camp from which to work.” Roger patted the steering wheel. “The motorcar is going to revolutionize safaris.”

“I say, I should think an aeroplane would be handy as well,” commented Avery. “What do you think, Beverly? Should we bring one to the colony and go into the safari business?”

“You couldn’t transport many people, could you?” asked Roger. “I mean, doesn’t it only fit the pilot?”

“A pilot and a gunner in some. But I’m not thinking of transporting people. Imagine someone flying overland to spot out the game. They fly back and drop word, perhaps literally, to the base camp. Tell them how far to go and in which direction.”

“Like a busy worker bee reporting to the hive,” added Madeline. “That sounds positively fascinating. I must tell Neville. He’ll want to be in on this venture.”

“Sounds as if you three are planning a corporation already,” said Jade. A low, angry buzzing from under the hood caught her attention. “Stop!” she ordered.

“Whatever for?” demanded Roger. “Are you sick?”

“No. Don’t you hear it? The radiator is nearly dry. Stop the car.”

Roger stopped, and they all listened. Without their chatter to mask it, the noise like that of swarming bees rasped clearly.

“Oh, that’s definitely an unhappy radiator,” agreed Beverly. “Good ear, Jade.”

“Well, cripes,” swore Roger. “The bloomin’ thing shouldn’t overheat that fast.”

“The seal is probably cracked,” Jade explained. “Too much steam evaporating.”

Harry noticed the Ford had stopped and doubled back to see what was the matter. He found Roger gingerly trying to open the radiator cap without getting scalded in the process. Roger yanked his hand back without succeeding in removing the cap.

“Of all the …” sputtered Harry. “Didn’t you fill the radiators before we left?”

“Of course I did,” Roger snapped back.

Jade wasn’t sure whether her comments would help back Roger or not.
What the hell?
She’d put her two cents in anyway. “Probably a crack in the cap’s seal. The car’s seen some wear, and whoever sold it to you skimped on the maintenance. Just look at the dirt around the engine. I doubt anything’s been cleaned in a year.”

“Of course there’s dirt, Jade,” snapped Roger. “We’re driving in the damned dusty scrub.”

“No. It’s not
new
dirt, Mr. Forster.” She pointed at the engine for him to look. Neither Harry nor Roger came any closer to inspect it, however, so she added, “That’s old, grungy dirt.”

“You’d better listen to her,” said Avery. He sat on the ground in the shade of the car’s chassis with his arms folded around his knees. “The lady was one of the best mechanics in her unit.” He looked up at his wife. “Excepting you, of course, my dear.”

“Oh, I defer to Jade,” said Beverly. She sat beside her husband.

“Well, refill the damned radiator, cover the cap with something, and let’s be on our way,” ordered Harry. Roger paced back and forth by the Dodge like a caged animal.

“It would be better to let it cool first before you open it,” suggested Jade. “Might we eat a bit of lunch while we wait, Mr. Forster? It’s early, but I’m hungry.”

Roger looked up, an angry scowl on his face. “Fine. We have some tins of potted meat. I’ll break them out.”

Jade and Madeline joined Lord and Lady Dunbury on the ground to picnic. They kept their backs to the car and a rifle handy while they devoured the contents of several tins. Madeline asked about airplanes, and Avery obliged her with an entertaining history of his experiences.

Jade, always interested in planes, half listened, but a low, rapid conversation on the other side of the car caught her ear and drew her attention away from her friends. Eavesdropping seemed sneaky, but if the cars were in a bad way, she wanted to know. The words came in snatches, drowned in part by Beverly’s melodious laugh and the hissing radiator.