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The lioness had crept up to the front wall again, almost soundlessly, and now she flung herself at it, roaring furiously as she tore at the flimsy structure with her front claws. With horror Claudia realized that it was coming in on top of her.
"Keep your heads down," Sean shouted, lifting the double barreled rifle just as the wall burst open. He fired, a stu
"He's killed the brute." Despite her hatred of blood sport, Claudia felt a guilty relief, but it was short-lived. The shot had merely startled the cat and driven her off for the moment. Claudia heard the lioness gallop away into the undergrowth, snarling viciously.
"You missed," she accused him breathlessly, the stink of burnt gunpowder in her nostrils.
"Wasn't trying to hurt her." Sean opened the rifle and reloaded from the cartridge loops on his breast. "Just a warning shot over her bows."
"There's the truck coming." Riccardo's voice was level and unconcerned. Claudia's ears were still singing from the crash of gunfire, but she could make out the distant beat of the Toyota's diesel engine through it.
"Job heard the shot." Sean stood up. "He's coming early. All right, let's get ready to move out."
Claudia scrambled up eagerly, then looked over the low grass wall of the roofless hide into the dark, forbidding forest around her and remembered the track that led down to the dry river-bed that served as a road. They would have to travel almost a quarter of a mile in darkness to reach safety. Her spirit quailed at the prospect.
In the trees not fifty yards away, the lioness roared again.
"Noisy brighter," Sean chuckled, and took Claudia's elbow to guide her to the door. This time she did not try to pull away, but instead found herself clinging to his arm.
"Take hold of Capo's belt." Gently he disengaged her hand and guided it to her father's belt at the small of his back.
"Hold on," he told her. "And remember, whatever happens, don't run. It will put them onto you instantly. Cat with mouse, they can't resist it."
Sean switched on the flashlight. it was a big black Maglite, but even its powerful beam seemed puny in the immensity of the forest as he played it in a circle around them. Eyes reflected in the beam, glowing like menacing stars, many eyes out there in the dark bush; it was impossible to tell cubs from full-grown lionesses.
"Let's go," Sean said quietly, and Riccardo started down the rough narrow track, dragging Claudia with him.
They went slowly, bunched up tightly, Riccardo covering the van with his lighter rifle and Sean in the rear guard with the heavy rifle and the flashlight.
Each time the flashlight beam picked up the flash of cat's eyes in the night, they seemed closer, until Claudia could make out the body of the animal behind the glowing eyes. They were pale as moths in the torchlight, nimble and restless as they circled, both lionesses closing in now, pacing swiftly through the undergrowth, watching them intently but turning their heads away whenever the powerful light hit their eyes.
The track was steep and rough, and oh so long. Each step was an agony of impatience for Claudia as she stumbled along behind her father, not watching her footing, watching instead those pale feline shapes that paraded around them.
"Here comes Snarly Sue!" Sean warned quietly as the old lioness screwed up her courage and came at them out of the night, grunting like a steam locomotive, deafening gusts of sound surging up her throat and out of her open mouth, her long tail lashing from side to side like a hippo-hide whip. They stopped in a tight group, and Sean swung the flashlight and the rifle onto the charging animal.
"Get out of it!" he yelled at her. "Go on, scat!" But the lioness came on, her ears flattened against her skull, long yellow fangs and pink tongue curling between her gaping jaws.
"Yah! Snarly Sue!" Sean howled. "I'll blow your stupid head off!"
She broke her charge at the last possible moment, skidding to a halt on stiff front legs, ten feet from where they were bunched, and the dust swirled around her in the light.
"Piss off!" Sean ordered her sternly. Her ears stood erect, and she turned and trotted obediently back into the forest.
"That was a game of chicken," Sean chuckled. "She was just trying it on."
"How did you know that?" Claudia's voice was cracked and shrill in her own ears.
"Her tail. As long as she keeps waving it, she's only kidding.
When she holds it stiff, then look out!"
"Here's the truck," Riccardo said, and they could see the Toyota's headlights through the trees as it bumped up the dry river-bed below them.
"Praise the Lord," Claudia whispered.
"It's not over yet," Sean warned as they moved off down the track once more. "There's still Growly Gertie to deal with."
Claudia had forgotten the younger lioness, and now she glanced around fearfully as she stumbled after her father, hanging on to his belt.
At last they were on the bank of the river-bed, fully lit by the headlights of the parked truck, which was standing only thirty yards away with its engine ru