The Great Cake Mystery (2 page)

“Tell me about the time you were nearly eaten by a lion,” she would ask. And Obed, who had told her that story perhaps a hundred times before, would tell her again. And it was every bit as exciting each time he told it.

“I was a young man then,” he began.

“How young?” asked Precious.

“About eighteen, I think,” he said. “I went up north to see my uncle, who lived way out in the country, or the bush as we call it in Africa, very far from everywhere.”

“Did anybody else live there?” asked Precious. She was always asking questions, which was a sign that she might become a good detective. Do you like to ask questions?
Many people who ask lots of questions become detectives, because that is what detectives do. They ask a lot of questions.

“It was a very small village,” Obed said. “It was just a few huts, really, and a fenced place where they kept the cattle. They had this fence, you see, which protected the cattle from the lions at night.”

This fence had to be quite strong. A few strands of wire cannot keep lions out.
That is hopeless when it comes to lions—they would just knock down such a fence with a single blow of their paw. A proper lion fence has to be made of strong poles, from the trunks of trees.

“So there I was,” Obed said. “I had gone to spend a few days with my uncle and his family. They were good to me and I liked my cousins. There were six of them—four boys and two girls. We had many adventures together.

“I slept in one of the huts with three of the boys. We did not have beds in those days—we had sleeping mats made out of reeds, which we laid out on the floor of the hut. They were nice to sleep on. They were much cooler than a bed and blankets in the hot weather, and easier to store too.”

Precious was quiet now. This was the part of the story that she liked the best.

“And then,” her father said, “and then one night I woke up to a strange sound. It was like the sound a large pig will make when it's sniffing about for food, only a little bit quieter.”

“Did you know what it was?” she asked, holding her breath as she waited for her
father to reply. She knew what the answer would be, of course. She had heard the story so many times. But it was always exciting, always enough to keep you sitting on the very edge of your seat.

He shook his head. “No, I didn't. And that was why I thought I should go outside and find out.”

Precious closed her eyes tight. She could hardly bear to hear what was coming.

“It was a lion,” her father said. “And he was right outside the hut, standing there,
looking at me from underneath his great dark mane.”

recious opened her eyes cautiously, one at a time, just in case there was a lion in the room. But there was just her father, telling his story.

“How did that lion get in?” she asked. “How did he get past that big strong fence?”

Obed shook his head. “Somebody had not closed the gate properly,” he said. “It was carelessness.”

What would you do if you found yourself face to face with a great lion? Perhaps you would just close your eyes and hope that you were dreaming—that is what Obed did when he saw the terrifying lion staring
straight at him. But when he opened his eyes again, the lion was still there, and worse still, was beginning to open its great mouth.

Precious caught her breath. “Did you see his teeth?” she asked.

Obed nodded. “The moonlight was very bright,” he said. “His big teeth were white and sharp.”

Precious shuddered and listened intently as her father explained what happened next.

Obed turned his head very slowly. He could not get back to the hut. It would take him too close to the beast. But, just a few steps away, were the family's grain bins. These were like garden pots—but much bigger—that
were used for storing corn. They were made out of pressed mud, baked hard by the hot sun, and they were very strong.

“I ran—not back to the hut, but to the nearest grain bin. I pushed the cover back and jumped in, bringing the lid down on top of my head. I was safe! Or so I thought.”

Precious breathed a sigh of relief.

“There was very little grain left in that bin,” Obed said. “So there was plenty of room for me to crouch down.”

“And spiders too?” asked Precious, with a shudder.

“There are always spiders in grain bins,” said Obed. “But it wasn't spiders I was worried about.”

“It was—”

Obed finished the sentence for her. “Yes, it was the lion. I could hear him outside, scratching and snuffling at the lid.

“I knew that it would only be a matter of time before he pushed the lid off with one
of his big paws, and I knew that I had to do something. But what could I do?

“So I took a handful of those dusty husks and then, pushing up the lid a tiny bit, I tossed them straight into the face of the lion.”

Precious looked at her father wide-eyed. This was the best part of the story.

“And what did he do?” she asked.

Obed smiled. “He breathed them in and then he gave the loudest, most powerful sneeze that has ever been sneezed in Botswana, or possibly in all Africa. Ka … chow!