The lion is a sprinter. He can only maintain that blazing gallop over a very short distance before he is forced back into a trot. If you press him further, he will usually turn and come back at you.
Lothar, Hendrick and Klein Boy, the strongest and fittest of them, pulled ahead of the line.
Blood! Hendrick shouted as they reached the spot where the lion had taken Lothar's bullet. Lung blood! The splashes of crimson were frothy with the wind of the ruptured lungs.
They raced along the bloody spoor.
Pasop! Lothar called as they reached the rise over which the beast had disappeared. Look out! He'll be lying in wait for us, And at the warning the lion charged back at them.
He had been lying in a patch of sansevieria just beyond the crest, flattened against the earth with his ears laid back upon his skull. But the moment Lothar led them over the crest, he launched himself at him from a distance of only fifty feet.
The lion kept low to the ground, with his ears still back so that his forehead was flat and broad as that of an adder and his eyes were a bright implacable yellow. His gingery red mane was fully erect, increasing his bulk until he appeared monstrous, and such a blast of sound came out of those gaping fang-lined jaws that Lothar flinched and was an instant slow on the shot. As the butt of the Mauser touched his shoulder, the lion rose from the ground in front of him, filling all his vision and the blood from his torn lungs blew in a pink cloud and spattered into Lothar's face.
His instinct was to fire as swiftly as possible into the enormous shaggy bulk of the lion as it towered over him on its hind-legs, but he forced himself to shift his aim. A shot in the chest or neck would not stop the beast from killing him, the Mauser bullet was light, designed for men not great game, and that first bullet would have desensitized the lion's nervous system and flooded his system with adrenaline The brain shot was the only one which would stop him at such close quarters.
Lothar shot him on the point of his muzzle, between the flared pink pits of his nostrils, and the bullet tore up between the cat's eyes, through the butter-yellow brain in its bony casket and out through the back of his skull, but still the lion was driven on by the momentum of its charge. The huge muscular body slammed into Lothar's chest, and the rifle cartwheeled from his hands as he was hurled backwards to hit the earth with his shoulder and the side of his head.
Hendrick dragged him into a sitting position and wiped the sand from his mouth and nostrils with his bare hands, and then the alarm faded from his eyes and he grinned as Lothar struck his hands away weakly.
You are getting old and slow, Baas, Hendrick laughed.
Get me up before Manie sees me, Lothar ordered him, and Hendrick put a shoulder under him and hoisted him.
He swayed on his feet, leaning heavily on Hendrick, holding the side of his head where it had struck but already he was giving orders.
Klein Boy! Legs! Go back and hold the mule before it smells the lion and bolts with Manie! He pulled away from Hendrick and crossed unsteadily to the lion's carcass. It lay on its side and already the flies were gathering on the shattered head. We'll need every man and a bit of luck to get him loaded. Even though the cat was old and lean and out of condition, scarred by years of hunting in thorn veld and his coat dull and shaggy, yet his belly was crammed with beef and he would weigh four hundred pounds or more. Lothar picked his rifle out of the sand and wiped it down carefully, then he propped it against the carcass and hurried back over the ridge, still limping from the fall and massaging his neck and temple.
The mule with Manfred perched on his back was coming towards him, and Lothar broke into a run.
Did you get him, Pa? Manfred yelled excitedly. He had heard the firing.
Yes. Lothar yanked him down from the mule's back. He's lying just beyond the rise. Lothar checked the mule's head halter. It was new and strong, but he clipped an extra length of rope on to the iron chin ring and put two men on each rope. Then carefully he blindfolded the mule with a strip of canvas.
All right. Let's see how he takes it. The men on the head halter dragged on it with their concerted weight, but the mule dug in his hooves, mutinying against the blindfold, and would not budge.
Lothar went round behind him, taking care to keep out of the way of his back hooves, and twisted the mule's tail.
Still the animal stood like a rock. Lothar leaned over and bit him at the root of the tail, sinking his teeth into the soft tender skin, and the mule let fly with both back hooves in a head-high kick.
Lothar bit him again, and he capitulated and trotted forward towards the ridge, but as he reached it the light breeze shifted and the mule filled both nostrils with the fresh hot smell of lion.
The scent of lion has a remarkable effect on all other animals, domestic or wild, even on exotics from an environment where it is impossible that either they or even their remote ancestors could possibly ever have had contact with a lion.
Lothar's father had always selected his hunting dogs by offering the litter of puppies a green wet lion skin to sniff.
Most of the pups would howl with terror and stumble away with their tails tucked up between their hind legs. A very few pups, not more than one in twenty, nearly always bitches would stand, albeit with every hair on their bodies erect and small growls shaking them from tail to tip of quivering nostrils. These were the dogs he kept.
Now the mule smelt the lion and went berserk. The men on the head ropes were hauled off their feet as it reared and whinnied, and Lothar ducked out from under its lashing hooves. Then it burst into a ponderous gallop and dragged the four handlers, stumbling and falling and shouting, half a mile over thorn scrub and through deep waterworn dongas, before at last it stopped in a cloud of its own dust, sweating and trembling, its flanks heaving with terror.
They dragged him back again, the blindfold firmly in place, but the moment he smelled the carcass again the entire performance was repeated, though this time he only managed a gallop of a few hundred yards before exhaustion and the weight of four men brought him up short.
Twice more they led him back to the dead lion and twice more he bolted, each time for a shorter distance, but finally he stood, trembling in all four legs, and sweating with terror and fatigue as they lifted the carcass onto his back and tried to lash the lion's paws under his chest. That was too much.
Another copious flood of nervous sweat drenched the mule's body, and he reared and bucked and kicked until the carcass slid off his back in a heap.
They wore him down, and after an hour of struggling, the mule stood at last, shaking piteously and blowing like a blacksmith's bellows, but with the dead lion securely lashed upon his back.
When Lothar took the lead rope and tugged upon it, the mule stumbled along meekly behind him, following him down towards the bend in the river.
From the top of one of the low wooded koppies Lothar looked down across the Swakop river to the roofs and the church spire of the village beyond. The Swakop made a wide bend, and in the elbow directly below there were three small green pools hemmed in with yellow sandbanks. The river flowed only in the rieperioer rain.
They were watering the horses at the pools, bringing them down from the stockades of thorn branches on the bank to drink before closing them in for the night. The count had been right, the army buyers had chosen the best. Lothar watched them avariciously through his binoculars. Desert bred, they were powerful animals, full of vigour as they frolicked and milled at the edge of the pool or rolled in the sand with their legs kicking in the air.
Lothar switched his attention to the drovers, and counted five of them, all coloured troopers in casual khaki uniform, and he looked for white officers in vain.
They could be in camp, he muttered and focused the glasses on the cluster of brown army tents beyond the horse stockades.