Precious and the Mystery of the Missing Lion: A New Case for Precious Ramotswe (3 page)

In spite of the fact that the truck was crowded, everybody seemed to be in a good mood and very happy to be travelling together. Some of the others had brought food with them, and this they
shared with their fellow passengers. Precious knew that this was very important. She had been taught to share, as people are taught in Africa, and if she had had any food with her she would have
shared it too.

At the beginning of the journey, it was cool enough sitting in the back of the truck, but as the day wore on it became hotter and hotter. Now, with the midday sun directly above them in the sky,
it became very uncomfortable for the passengers and Precious would have given anything to be sitting in the comfort of the cab with the Poletsis, but she knew that this was impossible.

They stopped at a small store along the side of the road and they were able to have a long drink of water before continuing. This helped, but after half an hour or so she began to feel thirsty
again.

“I hope we arrive soon,” she said to the woman sitting beside her.

The woman laughed. “Oh, we won’t arrive soon,” she said. “We’ve still got hundreds of miles to go.”

“When will we arrive?” asked Precious.

“Midnight, I think,” said the woman. “Not before.”

The road was straight and narrow, with very little traffic on it. For mile after mile it ran across great empty plains that stretched out on either side as far as the eye could see. And it was
while they were crossing one of these plains that the truck’s engine suddenly coughed and died. One moment it was working and the next moment there was silence as the truck drew slowly to a
halt.

They all got out. Mr Poletsi opened the front of the truck and looked at the engine. He soon enough found the problem – a broken fan-belt. “This is very bad,” he said.
“We’ll have to wait until somebody comes past. Then I can ask them to take me to the nearest town. I’ll find a new fan-belt and come back with it.”

“But that could take hours,” said one of the passengers. “We may be here the whole night.”

“I see no other way,” said Mr Poletsi. And then he added: “Unless anybody else has got any bright ideas?”

Precious looked at the fan-belt. It had been a complete circle, a bit like a massive elastic band – now it was just a single strip of rather sad-looking rubber.

She looked down. She was wearing the belt that her father had bought her a few weeks before. She was very proud of it, but this was clearly an emergency.

“Has anybody got some string?” she asked.

The woman who had been sitting beside her replied that she had some and passed it to her.

Precious took off her belt. Carefully threading the string through one of the holes in the belt, she made it into a strong circle, exactly the size of the broken fan-belt.

Mr Poletsi was watching her. “You clever girl,” he exclaimed. “I can see what you’re doing.”

The makeshift fan-belt fitted perfectly. Mr Poletsi then closed the engine compartment and went back to his place in the cab. There was an anxious moment as everybody waited to see whether the
truck would start. But it did, and it ran perfectly sweetly with the repair that Precious had made.

“I think you should come and sit with us in the cabin,” said Mma Poletsi. ‘As a reward for what you’ve done.”

Everybody agreed that this was well-deserved, and so Precious made the rest of the journey in comfort, snuggling up against Mma Poletsi in the cab while the sun dropped down below the horizon.
She felt proud and happy, and of course excited. Very soon she would be seeing Aunty Bee and finding out what the exciting thing was that her aunt had talked about.

HEY ARRIVED AT
E
AGLE
I
SLAND
Camp by night.
It was very different from home, where the lights of houses and of cars meant that it was never really dark; here in the bush there was complete darkness, with only one or two tiny pin-pricks of
light showing from a camp-fire or a hut. Precious was sleepy, and Aunty Bee said that she should go straight to bed.

“You’ll see where you are when you wake up in the morning,” she said. “There’ll be plenty of time to explore then.”

Her aunt had laid out a mattress on the floor in her own room, and Precious found this very comfortable. She closed her eyes and in less than a minute she was fast asleep, not waking up until
the first rays of the sun came through the window the next day.

She looked about her, half-forgetting where she was. But then she remembered, and got up to dress herself as quickly as she could. There were sounds coming from the kitchen next door, which
meant that Aunty Bee was already preparing breakfast.

She greeted her aunt and sat down at the table. Through the open door of the kitchen she could see that Aunty Bee’s house was in the middle of a circle of small buildings that housed the
people who worked in the safari camp. Not far away, at the end of a path that ran through a clump of very high trees, was the camp itself. This was made up of thatched huts on the edge of a river,
all joined to one another by a raised wooden walkway. It looked like a very exciting place to stay.

Aunty Bee served her a bowl of porridge and a thick slice of bread spread with jam she had made herself. While Precious was eating this, she listened to the story her aunt had to tell.

“There is something very special happening,” Aunty Bee began. “We have some film-makers arriving today. Everybody is very excited.”

Precious felt excited too, and asked what sort of film they were making.

“It’s about a man who gets lost in the jungle,” said Aunty Bee. “I don’t know the full story, but they have lots of people coming with cameras and lights and all
the other things they need to make a film. We’re going to be very busy.”

Aunty Bee would have more cooking to do, she said, once all the film people arrived. “You’ll have to entertain yourself,” she said to Precious. “But please be careful.
Don’t wander away from the camp by yourself – there are plenty of wild animals around here.”

Precious promised that she would be very careful. “I won’t go near any elephants,” she said. “And I’ll keep well away from lions too!”