Well, he had promised he would not kill him, and he would not break his word. He heard the shrieks of terror, the growls, and then the chomping of bones. He wondered idly why chicken bones were dangerous for house cats but human bones didn't seem dangerous for the larger cats. Lhasa Nilsson finished the cigarette. He did not want to disturb the panther before the job was done. That wouldn't do. He checked the rifle again, quietly moving back the bolt. A copper-tipped beauty rested in the chamber.
Quietly, step by silent step, he made his way back toward the tree. With a sudden roar, the black panther, its open mouth still dripping blood, was launched in its leap at Nilsson. In the split second before he fired, Nilsson marvelled at the size and power of the beast. Surely the biggest panther he had ever seen. Then crack, thud, and the copper-tipped beauty went through the roof of the panther's mouth into the brain. Its charging body hurled Lhasa backward into a tangled vine, but he managed to block the claws with the stock of his rifle.
All in all, he was very relaxed, which was the only way to come out of one of these things alive.
He rolled out from beneath the leopard's heavy, twitching body. Its breath smelled like a sewer. He felt a numbing pain at his left shoulder. Why, the bugger had scored. His finger searched out the gash. Nothing too bad and it would look good for Gunner. Gunner would like that, especially since the bearers were dead. All in the love of his favorite little monkeys.
At the tree base, Lhasa saw the remnants of his bearers. Excellent. There would be no trace of a beating after that mauling. The bugger had been hungry indeed. Good thing. Sometimes, panthers wouldn't attack. Not like the beautiful water buffalo.
By the time Lhasa reached the hospital at what maps indicated as a town, the story had preceded him. It was just as he had told it at the village, just as the villagers had discovered the remains.
The village informed him that they would send the panther skin and two live pigs in thanks. Such was the generosity of Lhasa Nilsson that he announced to the natives that he would donate the skin to the widows of the bearers. "Let them sell it," he intoned. "I only wish I could have brought back their husbands."
He kept the pigs for himself. He liked fresh pork.
Dr. Gunner Nilsson was treating a child for colic and lecturing the mother when Lhasa entered the office. Gunner was a half-inch taller and six years older, but he looked at least seventy. The lines were dug deep in his fine, tanned face, the pale blue eyes sad with many years of telling people that there was little he could do for them. His hospital was a hospital in name only. There were no operating rooms and the new antibiotics were for big cities and rich people. Gunner Nilsson could give only advice and some makeshift local remedies that, despite their mythic potency, had more power in the mind than in the bloodstream.
"I'm busy. Come back in a few minutes, please," said Gunner.
"I'm wounded," said Lhasa. "Even if I am your brother, I am wounded."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'll look at it now." Gunner asked the woman with her child to come back in a few minutes. He did not wish to offend them, but he had a wounded man here.
Dr. Nilsson cauterized the wound because there was no antiseptic in the hospital powerful enough to cleanse it. He used a knife heated over coals. Lhasa made no sound, but when he was sure the smell of his burning flesh was in his brother's nostrils, he said:
"I understand now how difficult it must be for you to know that if you had the proper medicines, you could cure people instead of just watching them go off to die."
"What we do here, Lhasa, is better than nothing."
"It seems an injustice though, to offer less than we can. It seems an injustice that because of money people must die."
"What brings about this sudden sense of charity in you, Lhasa?" asked Gunner, wrapping the shoulder in a cheap bandage expertly, so that the rough cloth allowed the wound room to breathe, yet prevented dirt from entering.
"Perhaps it is not charity, brother. Perhaps it is pride, I know what you can do, and to see a Nilsson fail day after day just for lack of money offends me."
"If you are suggesting that we revert to our traditional family work, find another suggestion, at least one that wasn't decided finally twentyfive years ago. How does the wound feel?"
"As well as sixteenth century medicine can make it."
"I am surprised the panther got that close to you. You never had that trouble before."
"I am getting old."
"You should have no trouble like this until you are in your seventies, considering what you know and what I have taught you."
"You saw the wound. You see all the wounds. All the infections, tumors, viruses, broken legs, and all the things you cannot help because you haven't supplies. I wonder what kind of supplies one million American dollars could buy. I wonder what kind of hospital that would build. How many natives could be trained in medicine for that much money."
"For all that much money, Lhasa, oh, the lives we could save. Drugs, doctors, medical technicians. I could make a million dollars into a hundred million dollars worth of healing." Dr. Nilsson returned the knife to the flames to cleanse it, because fire was the best antiseptic available in the primitive circumstances.
"How many lives could you save with that, brother?"
Dr. Gunner Nilsson thought a moment, then shook his head. "I don't even want to entertain the thought. It makes me too sad."
"A hundred? A thousand?"
"Thousands. Tens of thousands," said Gunner. "Because the money could be used to create systems that would perpetuate themselves."
"I was wondering," said Lhasa. "If one person's life is worth thousands of native lives."
"Of course not."
"But she's white,"
"You know how I feel about that. Too long has the color of a man's skin determined how long he will live."
"But she is rich and white."
"All the more reason," Gunner said.
Lhasa rose from his seat and tried to stretch the muscle of the cauterized wound. It throbbed as if it had its own heartbeat.
"There is a rich white woman in the United States whose very breath could give you the tools to help this land. But we are not in that business anymore so I must forget it. We are the last of the Nilssons. You settled that a long time ago."
"What are you talking about?" asked Gunner.
"The one million dollars is real, brother. I was not creating a hypothesis for you. I was giving you a plan of action."
"We will not use the family knowledge."
"Of course," said Lhasa, smiling. "I agree with you. And frankly I must confess I believe one rich white life to be worth much more than all the stinking natives of this stinking jungle."
"What are you doing to me?"
"I am allowing you, dear brother, to watch your patients die so that a rich white American can live. Of course, even that won't save her life because she will be dead shortly anyhow. But enjoy your ideals as you bury your little black friends."
"Get out of here," said Gunner. "Get out of my hospital."
But Lhasa left only the office. He waited in the ante room along with a woman whose gums were purple from chewing betel nut or from infection. Lhasa could not tell the difference, nor did he care very much.
In two minutes, Gunner strode from his private office,
"I'm here, brother," said Lhasa, laughing, and they left the hospital for a very long walk through the village.
Was Lhasa sure of the money?
Yes. He had heard of it four days ago when he was upriver. He had checked it out very carefully by telephone from the British staff officer's house. He still had some contacts on the continent. And he had finally talked to the man hi charge of disbursing the money. It was firm. One and a half million dollars. The man had heard of the Nilsson family. He would be pleased if they would take the assignment.