Treasure of the Golden Cheetah (39 page)

Something startled him a little later. It was as if he heard a noise that hadn’t been made or had been made in his soul. Jelani sat up and blinked, trying to focus. Beyond the fire stood a form, and for a moment, he thought Biscuit had returned to him. Then Jelani saw that this cheetah was larger, more commanding than Biscuit. The new cat had spots in a curious rosette pattern and long dark stripes running along his spine.

“Marahaba,”
whispered Jelani, blessing the animal.
“Karibu,”
he added, inviting the cheetah inside. The newcomer stared at him, unblinking, then strode away. His shoulders rose and fell like pistons atop his great barrel chest.

Jelani jumped up and ran out of the shelter, but the cheetah was nowhere to be seen. He called for Biscuit, hoping that one cheetah would be able to see and follow the other. But the cat didn’t come. Jelani hurried first to the cooking fire, then to Jade’s tent, and finally to Bwana Nyati’s tent. At each spot, he chirped, listening and watching for the response that should have come immediately.

Biscuit was gone.

 

 

JADE WOKE IN the dark to the sound of voices raised in argument. There was no mistaking Harry’s bellow. And the other?

She tried to get up and fell back against the cot. Her head felt as if someone had reenacted the Great War in it, firing howitzers from one ear to the other. Small white spots played in the corners of her eyelids, remaining when she tried opening them, something she couldn’t do for long. After two attempts, she gave up and listened instead.

“If you will not let me see her, then you must waken her,” said Jelani.

“No! And that’s final,” snapped Harry. “It’s not even dawn yet and you want to disturb her? Bad enough you wake me up.”

“I’m awake, Harry.” Jade groaned, her eyes still shut.
What the hell happened?
Vague memories of an outcry followed by painful blackness came back to her.

She tried again to open her eyes and endure even the dim light from the campfire outside.
What the . . .? There’s another cot in my tent.
A moment’s reflection told her it was for Lwiza.
Not Lwiza. Abeba.
Then she looked again.
It’s empty!

Jade forced herself to her feet, stumbled to the doorway, and gripped the tent pole to support herself. “Harry!” she called. “Abeba’s gone.”

Harry and Jelani both ran to her side, calling to her in unison, “Simba Jike.”

“Jade!” Harry helped her to the folding camp chair at the other end and gently pushed her into it. “Are you all right?”

“Yes—I mean no. Oh, hell! Someone hit me.”

“That woman,” said Jelani. “She has gone.”

“And good riddance to her,” said Harry, his voice a low growl. “Let her find her own damn way back.”

“We need to find her,” said Jade. She struggled to rise against Harry’s hands pushing on her shoulders. “Have you checked on the others?”

“No,” said Harry. “Let them sleep. We’ll wake them soon enough and . . . Why?”

“Because Abeba might be in trouble. Somehow I don’t think she went willingly. Before you pushed me back inside, I thought I saw drag marks on the ground outside the tent.”

Harry hurried back to the opening and studied the ground. Sure enough, the loose scree and the night’s frost had been raked in two lines.

While Harry busied himself examining them, Jade turned to Jelani. “Go to the bwanas’ and
bibis
’ tents. Quietly! See who is missing.”

“Simba Jike. You must listen—”

“Go!” ordered Jade.

Jelani ran off and stuck his head in each tent in the circle. Harry went back to Jade.

“There are footprints in the frost. At some point your Abyssinian spy walked next to one other person at least, maybe a man by the size of the marks.”

“Once the sun comes up, those frost tracks are going to disappear,” said Jade.

Jelani ran back into the tent, clutching the blanket around his shoulders, his breath coming in white puffs. “Bwana Julian is gone,” he said. “And there are only two of the memsahibs. The one they call lady is gone.”

“Lady?” asked Harry. “Who calls . . . ? Ah, I understand.”

“Right,” said Jade. “Bebe sounds like
bibi
.”

“Damn! Looks like our director friend went off after Menelik’s grave after all and either took hostages or convinced them to tag along for a share,” said Harry. He spied Jelani shifting from side to side with impatience. “Jelani, get some coffee for Simba Jike.” After the youth left, grumbling audibly, Harry turned back to Jade. “Can you stand now?”

Jade nodded her head a little, careful not to set off another explosion of pain. The spots in front of her eyes had vanished and the headache had settled into a dull throb along the temples.

“Any idea of when Julian hit you?” Harry asked.

“Not sure it was Julian. But no. Maybe an hour, two hours ago? I can’t really say.”

“Oh, it had to be Julian or that Abeba woman,” said Harry. “He’s determined to find that grave and she’s determined to stop him. Although how he expects to find it beats the hell out of me.” He pointed to the back of her tent in the direction of the huge glacier not far from them. “This mountain changed from when Hans Meyer made the peak in ’eighty-nine to when he returned in ’ninety-eight. That glacier moved back a good hundred yards in those nine years. Imagine where it was in biblical times.”

“Harry, don’t discount—” Jade was interrupted by Jelani’s return with a steaming mug of coffee, which Harry took from him and thrust into her gloved hands.

“Drink,” he ordered. Harry kept one arm around her to steady her.

Jade took a tentative sip, winced as it scalded her throat, then took another. “Harry, you need to get the others off this mountain while I go after them.”

“The last time I checked, I was still the big bwana here,” said Harry.

“And that’s why
you
need to stay in charge and get them down. Two of the three people missing are women and they were my responsibility, right?” She took another swallow of coffee and felt the heat revitalize her. “I’ll take Biscuit to help me track them. I know cheetahs aren’t scent trackers, but he did all right finding Jelani—”

“Biscuit is gone!” shouted Jelani.

“What?” asked Jade and Harry.

“That is why I needed to wake you,” Jelani said with an angry sidewise glare at Harry. “Last night after you slept, I sent Biscuit back to keep watch over you, Simba Jike. At first this morning, I thought he was still in your tent, so I chirped for him to come. But he did not come and I cannot find him.”

“Well, that tears it!” Jade said. “Of all the low-down, bush-whacking tricks!” She grabbed her woven Berber pouch and tossed in a flashlight and first-aid kit before handing it to Jelani. “Fill this with all the jerked meat you can.” As he ran out of the tent to get the supplies, Jade checked her rifle and shoved more cartridges in her trouser pockets. Then she set the loaded Winchester on her cot and tied a woolen scarf around her head.

Harry watched her, his brows getting lower and lower as her intent hit him. “Just what the blazes do you think you’re going to do, woman?” She started past him and he grabbed her arm above the elbow. “You’re not running off anywhere,” he said.

“Don’t make me hurt you, Harry. Because I will. Now get out of my way and let me do my job. You go do yours.”

Jelani returned with her pack. Jade slung it over her head and one shoulder, and hefted the rifle. “I will go with you, Simba Jike,” Jelani said.

“No.”

The young man didn’t budge. Jade noticed Jelani’s face, saw the set of his jaw, and recognized the same expression she’d seen when he’d been arrested for fomenting a rebellion last July. Both he and Harry blocked her exit, and getting past them would be like evading two bulls in a pen, with them guarding the stall gate.

Reinforcements came from an unexpected quarter. McAvy stumbled to the tent, hollering for Harry. He held a handkerchief, sodden with blood, to his nose.

“Harry. My nose. It won’t stop bleeding. Murdock and me, we heard someone at our tent and we got up to investigate. Then my nose turned into a gusher. Murdock’s is the same way, only he passed out.”

Harry the leader and Jelani the healer both moved almost instinctively to help the man. In that moment, Jade pulled her knife and slit the back of the tent. By the time they’d turned around, she was already loping out of camp.

 

 

THEIR TRAIL SHOWED itself easily enough by the half-moon overhead, and Jade shut off her flashlight. At times the track consisted of a print against surrounding frost or a drag mark where at least one person had resisted or where Biscuit had to be tugged along. At other times she detected a small circular impression where a hiking stick had pushed into the scree. They’d skirted the glacier on their way up, towards the rim. The old Chagga storyteller had claimed Menelik was buried in the cone, so presumably, Julian intended to search it. Had Bebe promised to help in return for getting her role back?

The frozen ground made for decent footing. After an hour, climbing became harder, but tracking easier as her prey left first one item, then another behind to lessen their burden. She found a chocolate bar wrapper first, then a pair of field glasses that must have weighed too heavily around someone’s neck, and for a moment, Jade wondered if someone was intentionally marking this trail.

She had to admire their stamina as she stopped often to catch her breath. The route threw several obstacles in her way: sharp chunks of lava that bit at her knees when she stumbled, and loose scree that sent her sliding back half a foot for every one forward. It would have helped if she’d had a stout stick for support, but she’d left too quickly to pick one up from the stacked supplies. The rarefied air attacked from the inside, leaving her light-headed. It wreaked havoc with her ability to concentrate. She stopped again, fearful that she’d missed something.

The sun hadn’t risen yet, but on the eastern horizon, the stars were diminishing. The ephemeral dawn of this latitude teased her. Her pupils tried to adjust to the faint moon glow and this new, pale light. When she blinked a few times to moisten her dry eyes, she saw something against a lava slab that didn’t match the rock’s angular contours.

Jade knelt on the ground and turned on her flashlight. There, snagged on the sharp rock, was a frayed strip of leather. When she examined the ground nearby, she spotted two circular depressions and a skid line. She touched a dark spot on the rock. It felt sticky.

Blood
. If she read this correctly, someone had fallen to their knees here and cut their hand or leg on the sharp rock. Whoever it was had probably held Biscuit by a leather lead, and the cat broke free. Possibly Biscuit’s tugging caused the person to trip and fall to begin with. Or the clever animal just took the opportunity given to him. Once the lead snapped against the lava’s razor edge, he’d escaped.

She played her beam across the rocks just as the sun rose. The glacial fields shone a rosy gold with deep blue shadows in the sheer cuts. Far below, the saddle steamed in fog as rising mist met sinking chill air. And above? Above rose the snow-clad peak of the shining mountain, Kilima-Njaro. Normally, the view would have taken Jade’s breath away, but in this case, the altitude had beaten it to the punch. Already the wind had picked up, dashing grit against Jade’s face, and several snow-laden clouds formed overhead. She was grateful for the clouds. If they covered the sun soon enough, it would slow down the frost’s melting, which would preserve the tracks and make walking easier. Once the ice holding the scree melted, she’d slip even more.

Jade turned off her light and shoved it in a coat pocket. Next she adjusted her woolen head scarf to cover her mouth. As her gaze swept the area for signs of recent disturbance, she found two. One set continued upwards towards the rim. The other took off to the right. Until someone stepped into the ice field itself, she couldn’t tell who’d made which track, but she was willing to bet that Biscuit hadn’t continued the climb. Hopefully by now he’d doubled back into camp and followed the others as they went down the mountain.

She looked beyond a lava ridge back to the now distant camp. It was dismantled, the porters and the remaining actors drifting away. She didn’t see Biscuit, but then, she was having trouble seeing at all. Jade closed her eyes again to clear her vision. All she saw were little stabbing white spots flashing like fireflies on her eyelids.

Jade snapped an icicle from an overhanging rock and sucked on it. There really wasn’t any question about it. She needed to go up and retrieve the others.

Suddenly, her legs felt slightly rubbery and unsteady, as though someone had tried unsuccessfully to pull a carpet out from under her.
Another earthquake?
A few of the smaller, gravel-sized rocks tumbled past her.
God must be walking on His mountain.

She finished the icicle and pulled out a small chunk of jerked meat, wishing she had a chocolate bar instead, but she’d been thinking of food for Biscuit more than for herself. As she shouldered her bag, she heard booted feet scraping against loose gravel. Jade slipped her rifle off her shoulder and held it ready.

“Don’t shoot. It’s only me.”

“Harry?” Jade asked.

He stepped into view from behind one of the larger outcrops on the trail. His broad-shouldered, muscular form was swaddled in a woolen coat and muffler, increasing his overall size until he nearly resembled the cape buffalo for which he was nicknamed. “Didn’t think I was going to let you do this alone, did you?” he asked, panting from exertion. He handed a chocolate bar to Jade. “Here. Eat this.”

“I’m awfully glad to see you, but what about McAvy and Murdock?” asked Jade as she unwrapped the bar and bit off a large chunk.