The Eden Hunter (7 page)

Chabo began to station the best of his warriors in the fields with the farmers, and these men kept guard but without effect—as they could never know the exact place or moment or victim of the next attack. When the black cat appeared they were always unprepared, and the closest they came to killing the man-eater was an errant spear thrown into the chest of a mauled farmer.

Five more men were taken before Chabo asked for help from the Ota. He called upon the Ota even though he knew of their relationship with leopards. Like all people the band lived by certain codes, and among their beliefs were prohibitions against the killing of particular animals. Generations of Ota had shared the forest with leopards, and though on occasion there would be incidents between the two forest-dwellers, for the most part they existed together in peace. That leopards allowed the Ota to live in their midst was a gift from the forest, and so to kill a leopard would be an insult to that blessing. Chabo asked and the Ota refused. In their minds this problem belonged to the Kesa alone.

More villagers died. The Kesa witch doctors conferred and blame was placed on the young Ota man who called himself Leopard—the one who had first returned the blind child to Opoku. The black cat was his sister. He had somehow brought this killer,
and therefore it fell upon him to destroy her. Chabo declared that the Kesa would not suffer this alone. The Ota were not welcome in the village so long as the man-eater lived.

 

AMONG THE OTA were some who had begun to adopt the customs and superstitions of the Kesa. These younger men spoke out in support of Chabo, arguing that the black cat was a mistake of the forest same as the blind child had been a mistake of the village—an unintended creature. The Ota were hunters; the forest was their home. It was their duty to kill this man-eater and restore the balance of things.

In the end there was a compromise between the young men and their elders. Kau alone would help the Kesa. If the leopard must be hunted then it should be done by the one she herself had chosen to visit. Perhaps in this way there might come forgiveness from both the leopard and the forest.

 

THOUGH HE HAD feigned reluctance for the sake of the elders, in truth Kau was eager to test his skills against the animal whose ancestor had appeared at his birth and thus given him his name. In her decision to spare him while he slept he had come to see not a kindness but a challenge, and so he took up his bow and went to Opoku.

 

SPRAWLED IN THE shade of a hut, he passed the time with the extraordinary patience of the Ota. After two days the leopard made another kill. Kau was dozing when she came, and he awoke to the
shouts of farmers running for the village. He hurried into the fields and was brought to the place where the man had been attacked. The turned earth was splashed with blood, and a shallow rut in the dirt led into the forest. A warrior pushed him forward. “Go,” he said. “Hunt.”

Kau ignored the warrior and instead returned to Opoku. There he spent the morning coating the tips of his arrows with poisons while the impatient villagers glared at him. The leopard would feed and then she would rest. Once the forest grew hot he would seek her.

 

SHE CARRIED HER kill far, far away, beyond the boundaries of his own known world. Though the farmer was very heavy Kau saw that the leopard dropped him only once, placing the body beside a creek so that she could drink. When she was finished the man-eater rearranged her grip and continued on, straddling the corpse as she walked so that to Kau, tracking, her pugmarks seemed situated like little villages on either side of a wide, drag-path river.

He began to gain on the leopard, and so he strapped his bow across his back and scanned the forest for any glimpse of the black cat—a flicked ear, a twitching tail. A Kesa warrior had lent him a long spear affixed with a rusty iron point, and Kau held it low out in front of him as he tracked, swiveling his hips from side to side, moving in tiny measured steps.

A leopard has a weak nose—though it still works much better than that of a man. And what a leopard lacks in smell it gains in eyesight, hearing. Such is the way with all animals. An elephant might see only in shadows but it can also listen to the beatings of its own
massive heart, wind a hunter from a mile off. Soaring eagles spot prey from soundless heights. A snake tastes the world with a tongue flick. So what then is a man? An animal with poor eyes and poor ears, a near-useless nose. Hairless. Fangless. Clawless. How is it that this pitiful creature—a creature that should not ever have been able to survive among beasts—has come to lord over so much?

 

IT WAS ALMOST dark when he spied the dead farmer lying high up the slanted trunk of a fallen tree. A blanket of flies covered the half-eaten corpse; moths drank from still-damp eyes. Kau looked around, processing the forest in sections. Nothing. She was still resting, he decided. She was resting, and at some point when she was once again hungry she would return to resume her feeding. By the light of the moon he would kill her.

And so he readied himself. He walked up the sloped trunk of the dead tree and stepped carefully over the mangled farmer. At a place well past the ripening corpse he stopped and bent branches for a blind, and then he set his spear and quiver down close where he could reach them. The bow was in his hand, and he selected the best from among his arrows, then went as still against the tree as a day-lazing moth.

 

DARKNESS FELL OVER the forest as day pulled away. He remained motionless in the tree, waiting for the man-eater to appear. A hyrax shrieked and was soon answered by another. The ebony sky was speckled with bright stars. The moon rose and he closed his eyes, listening for the sound of claws scratching bark.

 

THE LONG NIGHT passed without any sign of the leopard, and as dawn came he spotted the first of them—a colony of driver ants was moving through the forest, a dark brown band of butchers coming million after million. They swept closer and the base of his bent tree divided the river into halves. He saw a sprinkling of foragers ascend the tree trunk, following the stink trail of the cat-killed man. A single ant perched itself on a rib bone of the corpse. It reared back on hind legs, seemed to celebrate before retreating. Some collective intelligence clicked and both columns shifted and then doubled back. They met at the tree and soon ants covered the dead man. The leopard had lost her kill.

And Kau was trapped. He knew the colony would stay for several days now, would not leave until the farmer’s bones were all that remained of him. An ant latched onto Kau’s ankle and he flinched in pain. He broke off the body but the stubborn head remained, the jaws still clamped to his skin. He pulled the head loose, and then he threw his spear and quiver and bow down to the forest floor. More ants were on him. He jumped, touched down on the balls of his feet and crumbled into the leaves. He was on his knees when he spotted her. The black cat was crouched and staring, close enough for him to see the tip of her pink tongue. The snaking mass of ants flowed between them.

The leopard’s black coat shined almost blue in the glow of morning, and watching her Kau was certain that he would die. He waited but she stayed crouched even as her tail danced above her. The Kesa spear was impaled in the ground beside him, and when he slowly reached for it so came the man-eater over the wide scramble
of ants. She leapt once and then twice as he lifted the spear. The iron point went in at her chest, and then the spear twisted free from his hands. He rolled away and watched as the screaming cat raked at the shaft with her claws. Finally blade nicked spine and the leopard went limp. She stared at him with fluttering yellow eyes, until at last her bleeding slowed to a trickle and she died.

He stood and looked down at the dead leopard. Only now could he see the splash of rosettes hidden deep within her black coat—rosettes the same as a typical and ordinary leopard. The first few driver ants had discovered this new kill, and he watched as the insect river divided itself yet again. This would not be so horrible, he thought—to be devoured by the forest. He knelt and with the wet spearhead he sawed off the man-eater’s tail, his proof for Chabo.

A beam of sun pierced through the canopy, and Kau felt his body being cut by light. He tied the soft black tail in a twist around his neck and let himself be warmed. He could sense the forest watching him, and he trembled as he began walking toward the village.

T
HAT AFTERNOON HE overtook the three redsticks, and they halted their horses as he told them of the panther. When he was finished speaking Morning Star rocked back on his mount. His gray horse was coughing now, and a lump had formed on the left side of its neck. The prophet rode on ahead, and Blood Girl galloped after him. When she returned it was to report that Morning Star had shared a vision. She circled Kau on her horse and then looked down at him. “Stay close to us,” she said. “Another redstick is coming.”

 

HIS NAME WAS Hungry Crow and he rode a black horse. They were making a fire for the night when he galloped into their camp, his longrifle held high above his head. This fourth stallion was quickly
challenged by the other three that stood hobbled nearby, but then Morning Star rushed over and the horses all calmed.

Hungry Crow was both taller and thinner than any man Kau had seen in the whole of his life, taller even than Morning Star. Kau was introduced but Hungry Crow ignored him.

“He can speak our language,” said Blood Girl.

Hungry Crow dismounted and walked over to him. His dark hair had been shaved save a narrow roach running from his forehead to the nape of his neck. He lifted a finger to Kau’s mouth but Kau stepped away. Finally the redstick spoke: “Those were your small tracks?”

Kau nodded.

Hungry Crow contorted his bony face into a sneer. “I wondered,” he said. “I thought a child was wandering lost.”

 

HE CAME TO understand that Hungry Crow lived alone in the canebrake as an angry hermit of sorts, and was a stranger to all of the redsticks save Little Horn. Blood Girl explained that both men were from the Tallushatchee village, had fought together when the Creek War started at Burnt Corn, and now Kau sat listening by the fire with the others as Little Horn told Hungry Crow their purpose in his hideaway, asking what if anything he knew of the men they had come to hunt.

“Thieves,” said Hungry Crow. “Nothing more.”

“So you do know of them?” asked Little Horn.

“Of course.”

“And their cave?”

“Not far. Two day’s ride.” Hungry Crow pointed at Kau. “Maybe two moons of walking for the little one.” The redstick started to say more but then went silent. Morning Star was scraping at his cut teeth with the frayed end of a twig, and Kau saw Hungry Crow look from the prophet to him and then back again. He is jealous, Kau realized. Hungry Crow kept on staring and Kau heard a hissing sound. Morning Star was laughing now. The closest he had yet come to speaking beyond his whisperings to Blood Girl.

 

THOUGH HE SEEMED to hate all men Hungry Crow was also a redstick, and so in the end he agreed to guide them and kill with them. The next morning the redsticks mounted their horses and rode off in a single-file string. Kau lingered in camp until they were gone. A breeze came and the river cane swayed all around. He heard water frogs in the distance and could smell the river. It felt good to be alone and so he lingered still. The sun was over the trees when at last he shouldered his saddlebags and took up the longrifle. He followed after the four stallions in the running walk of an Ota huntsman, hurrying to overtake the redsticks before they turned and came to find him.

 

HUNGRY CROW TOOK the redsticks even farther north through the canebrake, and then late in the day Kau saw where the riders had angled to the west. He discovered them waiting for him near the bank of the broad Conecuh. The sun was beginning to set.

“Do not make us stop for you again,” said Hungry Crow.

Kau kept quiet and prepared for the crossing. He wrapped his blanket around his longrifle, then passed the bundle up to Little
Horn with his saddlebags. The horses began to swim the warm river, and Kau splashed after them. He worked his hands around the coarse tail of Little Horn’s stallion and was towed past Blood Girl. She laughed in the failing light, and they were halfway across the river when Kau saw orange muzzle-flash appear on the hillside that rose up beyond the canebrake in front of them. There was a great sucking sound as Blood Girl fell backward from her horse into the river, and Kau reached for her but she sank and was gone.

Little Horn gave a warning and the remaining redsticks lay flat against the strained necks of their hard-swimming stallions. Kau tightened his grip on the horsetail, letting himself be pulled, and once they had reached the shore Hungry Crow led them all into the cover of the cane. Kau saw Morning Star begin slapping at the crown of his shaved head, and the prophet’s horse had ropes of drool hanging from its open mouth.

As the winded horses settled Kau looked out over the river. He saw Blood Girl’s stallion on the opposite bank. Twice the red horse started to swim the Conecuh and join them—but each time the stallion turned back until finally it quit altogether. The riderless horse melted into the forest, and Kau supposed that perhaps one day it would shake its Indian bridle, wander game trails and learn to forage, live a free and mustang life.

 

THEY WALKED THE three horses downstream through the canebrake, away from the shooter on the hill. It was night now, and the redsticks agreed that any further attack would come in the morning
or not at all. They dried their rifles, then each took a turn keeping watch while the others slept.

 

KAU HAD THE last guard, and at dawn he heard the screams of wood ducks leaving cypress roosts for hidden backwaters and sloughs. These were local birds, ducks somehow born without the instinct to migrate north in the spring. They darted across the chalk sky in twisting, drake-hen pairs.