Endangered Page 2

  Sable hesitated, casting one last glance toward Moffet. Was there time to put her out of her misery?

  Risking a face-to-face encounter with the lion, Sable edged near to where the elephant lay. Kash had taught her to be a crack shot, and she raised the rifle, holding it steady as she aimed directly to where the bullet would enter the brain.

  “I’m sorry, Moffet. I’ll find Patches somehow. Your calf will be all right.”

  Moffet’s eye, with its long eyelashes, blinked toward the sun. The elephant’s life would return to its Maker. Sable squeezed the trigger. She fired twice, to be absolutely certain.

  At the sound of gunfire the lion quickly bounded away. Sable strode to the jeep and tossed the rifle in the backseat. Her eyes narrowed. This was one time when that truck driver would not get by with stealing a baby elephant for a circus. She was going to get Patches back—one way or another.

  Determined, Sable drove the jeep toward the river camp of the zoo hunters. They weren’t going to get away with killing Moffet for her ivory. And she wasn’t about to let Patches be sold to uncaring hands. She’d get the baby back if it meant confronting the entire operation alone!

  Sable swerved into the dusty camp where tents, trucks, and a trailer were parked ahead beneath a stand of acacia trees. She cut off the motor and got out, slamming the jeep door. Her eyes swept the safari hunters lounging about, and she noticed three Europeans and two Africans near the beat-up trailer. A large tent was set up near the river, where an African cook was preparing food. The aroma of coffee drifted to her on the hot breeze.

  Ignoring the men, she grabbed her revolver from the glove compartment and shoved it in her holster. With head high, she walked briskly toward the far end of camp, where she spotted some cages covered with tarps. She could only imagine what terrified and angry animals hovered behind those coverings. Several Africans who looked to her to be from the Chugga tribe loitered about. Seeing her stride across the camp, they hid their surprise and stood with blank faces, eyes averted.

  One of the three Europeans standing outside the trailer said something to the other two and walked toward her. “Hey! Wait a minute, sweetheart.”

  Sable turned with studied dignity. She had accompanied her father many times on his rounds as a warden, and she would not be easily intimidated. She casually rested her hand on her holster and stared evenly at the rawboned man with sunburned cheeks. Yes, this was the clumsy dude who had nearly run her down at Namanga. Evidently he was too thickheaded to even recognize her.

  His ice-blue eyes wasted no time inching their way up from her ankles to her face. He stopped, raising his battered coffee tin to his lips, where a smile revealed his thoughts. “Name’s Pete Browning. If you’re lost, Nairobi’s that-a-way.” He used his thumb to gesture off into the wide African distance.

  Sable showed no response to his intended humor and spoke in a chill tone. “I’m not lost, Mr. Browning. I was born and raised here. Furthermore, I know poachers when I run into them.”

  His smile melted away. He took out a stick of gum and removed the wrapper, tossing the paper to the ground. “You’re mighty quick with accusations. Proving ‘em is somethin’ else.” He bit the stick of gum between his teeth and chomped. “You come with a search warrant, little girl?”

  She raised her chin and gazed past the man. “I don’t need one. Are you the owner of this ragtag bunch of poachers?”

  He chewed thoughtfully. “Poachers?” he asked dumbly. “Why, we’re legal reps from the Indonesian Circus Ring. We’ve the sweetest, legalist little license to hunt you’ll ever see.” With his thumb, he gestured over his shoulder. “Right in the boss’s trailer—all framed an’ hangin’ on the wall for all game wardens to gaze upon. Comes from the good president of Tanzania himself.”

  “You were hunting in Kenya, in the Amboseli Reserve. And I suspect your license is a forgery.”

  He studied her, growing a little more cautious. “Who are you anyway? What d’ya want?”

  “I want to see your license revoked and your stolen animals returned to the Amboseli Reserve. I’d like to see you penalized for poaching ivory tusks—but what I want right now is a certain baby elephant. Either you or your rank hunters stole her this afternoon about six miles from here in Kenya. The mother was shot by poachers.”

  She had his full attention. He lifted his tin mug and drank, watching her, munching his gum. After a good moment he gestured his head toward the trailer. “You’ll need to talk to the boss. Any deals will be made with him. But he’s not available right now.”

  She stood her ground. So deals were to be made, were they? Then she may at least save Patches. She had thought this man was the boss, but evidently there was someone else. If this was Browning, then the man inside the trailer should be Smith.

  “Suppose you go get the boss, then.”

  “He’s sick. Suffers with headaches. Sees stars and zigzags, I think.”

  She smiled. “My heart bleeds with sympathy. Perhaps you can bring him…this.” She opened her bag and pulled out a small tin of aspirin, dropping it in his brawny hand.

  He looked at it. “An’ who do I tell him is here? ‘Miz’ Game Warden?”

  Sable restrained her temper. “No, the daughter of the game warden.”

  His munching stopped.

  “Tell him I want that calf.”

  He shrugged his heavy shoulders under the torn T-shirt. “Sure, I’ll tell him. He won’t know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout, though.” He chewed his gum. “We don’t have elephants.”

  She was losing patience. “Just call him, Mr. Browning. In the meantime, I’ll have a look around while he wakes from his ‘stars and zigzags.’”

  She turned and walked away, aware that every eye followed her with suspicious concern. Sable kept her hand on her holster, head high as she walked toward the cages, where several Africans had come to stand guard.

  She gestured to the covered cages and spoke in fluent Swahili: “What does the European have in there? What has he stolen from the Maasai? Are you from the Chugga tribe here in Tanzania? Do you approve of this evil of poaching? When the poachers kill off all your land’s treasures given by the living God, what will you do then? Can you make them anew from the dust of the earth?”

  She didn’t think the European men who stood some feet away keeping a watchful eye on her could understand the language, although they may have picked up a few words. The African workers shifted their stance, shook their heads as if they couldn’t understand her either, and gestured back toward the trailer.

  “Someone killed an elephant in the Amboseli Reserve. They were poachers,” she said. “They killed for two medium-sized tusks—think of it! Can you point out the hunters who did this? Or did you obey them for wages?”

  Again they pretended they didn’t understand and said nothing.

  A masculine voice, unintimidated, did answer—coming from behind her and speaking Swahili as fluently as she. The “boss” was managing his headache and ordering the two Chugga tribesmen to leave him and the woman to speak together alone.

  The sound of that voice caused Sable’s back to go rigid. She’d know that voice anywhere. How could she forget it even after two years of trying? Kash Hallet. So he was now the “boss” of this outfit? Then everything Vince Adler had warned her about him was true. That warm and leisurely voice had once told her how enamored he was with her “charms” as they stood beneath the bright African moonlight shining on the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro.

  Uncertain as to the depth of emotional impact that awaited their first meeting in two years, Sable’s concerns for the baby elephant momentarily vanished. It was now her heart that was endangered.

  *The NFD borders Somalia, as well as Ethiopia. Samburu, Isioli, and Marsabit are game reserves within the NFD region.

  Two

  Confronting Kash was the last thing Sable had expected upon her return to East Africa. She had determined never to see him again, or even talk to him. Now unnerved, she was reluctant to
turn and face the man she had demanded to see, afraid of what her heart would still find.

  Well, she didn’t love him anymore, she told herself. Besides, the kind of “love” she once had for Kash had been infatuation; mere physical attraction, even if it had been as deep and warm with longing as any exotic African night! But all that foolish heart-pounding drama was over.

  She’d been younger then, and yes, as much as she disliked to admit it, she’d been emotionally unsteady. But during the last two years, she had done much growing up. Her mother’s long bout with cancer and subsequent death had been used of God to teach her so much more of the deeper meaning of love, of commitment between two caring people, of enduring values that lasted beyond the sparkle of youthful passion. And now she had the love of Dr. Vince Adler, a man who embodied the very spirit of humanitarian sacrifice and concern for the suffering. Her attraction to Vince went beyond the physical to include a cause that she, too, could feel strongly about.

  Her relationship with Kash had been different. His good looks had overshadowed everything else. She’d been blind to his spiritual shallowness, his self-love, and his greed for money at any cost, which had now led him to the lucrative business of poaching.

  Yes, Kash had once possessed her heart, but that was before she really knew what he was like. The past was over. The love-flame was cold and dead, just the way she intended to keep it…buried.

  With her mind thus fixed, Sable turned calmly, indifferently, her armor all in place, her heart emotionally prepared to resist the man who’d chosen to walk away from her without a backward glance.

  Kash Hallet stood there a few feet away. Her eyes flicked over his brooding good looks, which were little diminished by the fact that he was suffering from pain and attempted to hide it with dark sunglasses. His denim shirt, left unbuttoned, must have been quickly thrown on over his well-worn Levi’s. The dark hair, the savage yet restrained strength that he presented in leather boots and the wide Maasai-made leather belt, might have been used in an advertisement for the rugged outdoors. He had not changed in two years—if anything, he seemed more adventurous than ever—but she had changed. Though her heart hammered, she was able to tell herself she didn’t want his love the way she had so desperately wanted it before.

  “So Kash Hallet has returned to Kenya,” came her accusing tone.

  “I never went far. You’re the one who fled—to Canada with Dr. Adler.”

  Her eyes were distant, and she ignored the insinuation that she had run from him. “Dr. Adler is here, too. He’s involved sacrificially with his fellowman and the wildlife that is so much in need of protection from your kind. That you’ve returned probably explains the recent increase in poaching.”

  His jaw flexed, but his voice remained too calm. “It does? That you rush to think so disappoints me. Are your charitable indictments part of your missionary work?”

  Sable flushed, reminded of who she was in Christ and how her accusations of him were far from being under the Spirit’s control. So Kash knew why she had returned.

  “I found Moffet shot and left to suffer, her tusks torn out,” she said, frustrated that her voice quavered. From the corner of her eye she saw the brawny blond man named Pete Browning come closer to hear their conversation. She glanced at him, then back at Kash, whose bronzed expression revealed nothing of his thoughts.

  Sable swallowed back her disappointment, for though she wouldn’t admit it, her subconscious had desperately hoped he would deny it. He stood there, apparently unyielding. She glanced again toward his partner, then turned away. “I don’t think I need to waste any time asking more questions. It’s obvious who did it.”

  She swept past, keeping a wide berth so he couldn’t catch hold of her arm, and hurried toward her jeep. Unable to ignore the flaring pain coming to life in her heart, she blamed it on the trauma of having found Moffet.

  Accusing Kash of this crime, when at one time he had cared as much for wildlife as she, was to the point and cruel, but at the moment she didn’t care. He had trampled on her heart and left her to bleed emotionally while he ran off to make his fortune. The desire for vengeance, which she thought she had surrendered to Christ, was growing again like piercing thorns inside her soul. She wanted Kash to feel some of her suffering.

  He came after her, as Sable had expected, and she ran to her jeep to avoid him.

  “Typical, running away again,” he said calmly.

  His response surprised her. She considered Kash the type to avoid emotional confrontations. She had always wanted to discuss their differences and understand each other, but he had always avoided those discussions, as though she were backing him into a corner. As a man he could handle conflicts of all sorts, yet when it came to dealing with intimacy of mind and heart, he had always withdrawn, unable or unwilling to tell her how he “felt.” Instead, he had insisted she didn’t play by the rules. Rules! What rules? Why did he always want to hide behind “rules” that were fair when she wanted to talk about emotions and feelings?

  Kash would never explain. And now—he dared to accuse her of having been the one to run away from him!

  His taunting continued. “I thought you were wiser than to believe in a man like Adler—or should I call him Saint Vince? Build your brave new world on his integrity, and you’ll hit bottom when he falls.”

  Sable stopped and whirled to face him, her eyes moist with a frustration she couldn’t control. Instead of denying the crime of poaching, he brought up Dr. Adler.

  Kash stopped, too, deliberately keeping distance between them as though he knew that this time she was the one who wanted it there. She suspected that he watched her intensely beneath those sunglasses, and that if she stayed now, she couldn’t win…she’d lose again. I don’t love him. Her eyes smarted, but she placed her hands on her hips and tried to appear aloof.

  The heat and dust fed the flare-up of tension, and for a moment the tug-of-war continued, each seeming to wait for the other to give in first.

  To free the moment from its certain doom, Sable called, “Never mind about Dr. Adler. He’s an innocent bystander. You killed Moffet. How could you? You, who once saved her from poachers. What did it feel like to shoot an animal that trusted you?”

  His expression showed none of the guilt she might have expected to see as she remembered back to better days when he’d been attentive and caring, before ruthlessness had placed a steel casing about his heart. She wouldn’t remember those times, she told herself; they would drag her down to defeat.

  Aware that she was neither reasonable, nor likely to be under the present circumstances, she ran to her jeep and slid behind the wheel, quickly slamming the door and switching on the ignition. She backed out in a half circle, stepped on the accelerator, and sped away, leaving a shower of dust behind.

  A moment later when the dust settled, she cast a last glance through her rearview mirror and saw him standing with one hand on his hip. She visualized the frustration that must be smoldering within, and she winced to herself. No matter. He deserved every bit of it.

  But as she drove on, she sighed and leaned back into the seat, aware of the guilt that was surfacing. The warning that she was behaving wrongly had been there all along, but only now when the emotional clamor began to subside did she pay closer attention. Each beat of her heart ached. Suppose he hadn’t killed Moffet? Was it possible the entire hunting group had been innocent? She didn’t have to like the rawboned Mr. Browning to admit that they might not have been the poachers.

  That was hardly possible. She had followed the tracks into their camp. And except for Kash, they’d all behaved as though they had something to hide. And Kash could be a master at concealing his feelings.

  “He should have been an actor,” she said harshly. “He’d win an Oscar for best performance.”

  Oh, Lord, she prayed, discouraged with her failures. The groan within spoke to Him of what she could not express in words.

  She wouldn’t analyze her feelings now. She couldn’t accept them an
yway.

  As she drove, she blinked hard and tried to release herself to experience nothing more than the wild African terrain. She headed across the plain toward the seasonal Lake Amboseli, a route that would offer a shortcut home. At this time of the year the lake would be dry. Now, more than ever, she wanted to arrive home to Gran’s embrace and be ushered into her old, familiar room. If she went by the lake route she could be at the lodge as the evening shadows were falling and avoid traveling alone at night, which could be dangerous.

  “I won’t think of Kash,” she told herself. “By tomorrow he’ll break camp and move on toward the coast.”

  It would be good to see Vince. His dedication to his scientific endeavors made her feel calm and sane.

  Three

  The seasonal road across Lake Amboseli was deceptive.

  The dry season was the best time to see large herds of game animals congregating at the few watering holes, and the area of the Amboseli Game Reserve called Old Tukai contained one of the most remarkable concentrations of animals to be seen in all Africa: not only rhinos but elephants, buffalo, lions, cheetahs, giraffes, baboons, monkeys, and herds of plains game were common. To the novice tourist, anxious to set off for a photographer’s paradise view of Mount Kilimanjaro and the exquisite game animals roaming the vast yellow grasses of the plain, the lake road would appear safe to travel upon, but appearances were not what they always seemed, especially in Africa.

  “But I’m no tourist,” Sable muttered to herself. “I should know better than to get stuck in the mud like this.”

  At the height of the dry season the lake became a vast, shimmering plain of white dust, but today it was wet, cracked mud, mud so sticky that the wheels of her jeep were hopelessly mired. She’d been careless, thinking of Kash, and she’d paid for her mistake.

  Sable sat behind the wheel, staring across the great expanse of cracked clay, troubled by more than her predicament. Gran should have warned her that he was back in Kenya. She used a handkerchief to pat her pale throat and with a sigh of resignation opened the jeep door and stepped down. She winced as the sluggish mud squished beneath her safari boots. “Yuck—” She ran her sweating palms along her pants and settled her hat while she looked about. Despite her frustration, she knew the mud served a vital purpose for the hippos and elephants that loved to wallow in it. The mud sealed their hides from vicious biting and stinging insects and the blistering sun. The Creator’s design was perfect for what He intended to accomplish. The same mud that left her jeep stuck and her spirits downcast was, for the animals, a healthy deterrent against insects.