A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur (книги серии онлайн .TXT) 📗

Almost immediately her cubs came tumbling into the clearing.

There were three of them, fluffy as children's toys and dappled with kitten spots. They tripped over paws that were too large for the tiny bodies, and after a few moments of hesitation during which their mother placed no restraint on them, they launched into a boisterous mock combat, wrestling and falling over each other with ferocious baby growls.

The lioness ignored them and rose up on her hind legs to the dangling carcass. She thrust her head into the open belly from which the entrails had been plucked and began to feed. The row of black nipples down her belly stuck out prominently and the fur around them was matted with the saliva of her offspring, for she had not yet weaned them. The cubs took no notice of her feeding and went on with their play.

Then a second lioness stepped into the clearing, followed by two half-grown cubs. This one was much darker in color, almost blue along the spine, and her pelt was crisscrossed with old healed scars, the legacy of a lifetime of hard hunting, the marks of hoof and horn and claw. Half of one ear was torn off, and her ribs showed through the scarred hide. She was old. The two half-grown cubs that followed her into the clearing would probably be her last litter. Next year, when the cubs had deserted her and she was too weak to keep up with the pride, the hyenas would take her, but now she was still living on her store of cunning and experience.

She had let the young lioness go in first to the bait, for she had seen two mates killed in just such a situation, beneath a succulent carcass dangling from a tree, and she mistrusted it. She did not begin to feed but prowled restlessly around the clearing, her tail flicking with agitation; every so often she stopped and stared intently down the open lane to the grass wall of the hide at the far end.

Her two older cubs gazed up at the carcass, sitting on their haunches and growling with hunger and frustration, for the meat was obviously beyond their reach. At last the bolder of the two backed off, then made a running leap at the bait. Hooking on with its front claws, its back legs swinging free, it tried to grab a hasty Mouthful, but the young lioness turned on it viciously, snarling and cuffing it heavily until it fell on its back, scrambled to its feet, and slunk away.

The older of the two lionesses made no effort to protect her cub.

This was the pride law: the full-grown hunters, the most valuable members of the pride, must feed first. The pride survived on their strength. Only after they had gorged could the young ones feed. In lean times, when game was scarce or when open terrain made hunting difficult, the young might starve to death, and the adult females would not come into season again until game was once more plentiful. In this way the survival of the pride was ensured.

The chastened cub crept back to join its sibling beneath the carcass and began to compete eagerly with it for the scraps that the lioness ripped out of the buffalo's belly cavity and unintentionally let fall.

Once the young lioness dropped back on all fours in obvious discomfort, and Claudia was horrified to see that her whole head was swarming with white maggots that had crawled out of the meat as she fed. The lioness shook her head, scattering maggots like rice grains. She pawed frantically at her ears to get rid of the fat worms that were trying to crawl into the furry openings. Then she extended her neck and sneezed violently, blowing live maggots out of her nostrils.

Her young cubs took this as an invitation to play, or to feed.

Two of them launched themselves at her head, trying to hang on to her ears, while the third rushed under her belly and attached himself to a nipple like a tubby brown leech. The lioness ignored them and once more rose on her hind legs to continue eating. The cub at her nipple managed to hang on a few seconds longer and then fell under her back paws, his dignity trampled as she tugged and heaved at the bait. He crawled out between her legs crestfallen, dusty and disheveled.

Claudia giggled; she could not help herself, though she tried to muffle it with both hands. immediately Sean dug her hard in the short ribs.

Only the old lioness reacted to her giggle. The rest of the pride were too preoccupied, but the lioness crouched and flattened her ears against her skull, staring fixedly down the opening at the hide.

With those eyes on her, Claudia lost any urge to giggle again and held her breath.

"She can't see me," she told herself without conviction. "Surely she can't see me?" But for long seconds those eyes bored into hers.

Then the old lioness rose abruptly and slid away into the thick undergrowth beyond the bait tree. She moved like a serpent, with a sinuous flowing and gliding of the brown body. Claudia let out her breath slowly and gulped with relief.

While the rest of the pride romped, tussled, and fed beneath the bait tree, the sun slid below the treetops; the short African twilight was on them.

"If there is a tom with them, he will come in now," Sean breathed softly. Night was the time of the cats; the darkness made them bold and fierce. The light was going even as they watched.

Claudia heard something beyond the grass wall beside her, a furtive brush of some creature in long grass, but the bush was full of such small sounds and she did not even turn her head. Then she heard a distinct, unmistakable sound: the footfall of some heavy creature, soft and stealthy but very close. She felt her skin crawl with the insects of fear and the prickle of it up the back of her neck.

Quickly she turned her head.

Her left shoulder was pressed up against the thatch wall of the hide, and there was a chink in the thatch an inch wide. Her eyes were at the same level as the hole, and through it she saw movement. For a moment she did not recognize what she was seeing, and then she knew that it was a tiny expanse of smooth tawny hide, filling the chink only inches away on the far side. As she stared in horror, the tawny pelt slid past her eyes, and now she heard something else: an animal breathing, snuffling at the far side of the thatch wall.

instinctively she reached behind her with her free hand, never taking her eyes from the chink. Her hand was seized in a hard, cool grip. The touch that had offended her only minutes before now gave her more comfort than she had ever believed possible. She did not even marvel that she had reached for Sean's hand rather than her own papa's.