THE MID-YEAR COLLEGE HOLIDAY that year saw Melodie clearing customs at Rhodes Drift and heading to Fort Jameson in the LVHS Land Cruiser. It was situated on high ground a way back from the Limpopo – where the horse operation had moved in the aftermath of the great flood (it had been renamed after the bottle of whiskey that had been downed the day the storm abated). The office remained where it had been, in the shade of two mighty mashatu trees. Two Mashatus it was called.
She was booked on a five-day wilderness trail and would meet the other riders at the main camp.
“Actually there is only one other guest booked on the wilderness trail. An American woman who’s a repeat client,” explained the intern who walked her through the camp orientation. “There’s also a French family who are doing the regular ride-out safari.”
Melodie wiped her face and hands with the ylang-ylang-infused facecloth handed to her on a tray by a smiling member of staff, drank the iced tea proffered, then followed her bags to her tent. Drinks would be served at five in the boma, and dinner would be at six.
“Winter light-saving,” quipped the intern. “See you round the camp fire.”
On a pretext she asked to see the stables and asked the grooms leading questions about the horses. She pried, trying not to be too obvious, but there was no information to be gleaned there about her old beloved.
As the sun tickled the filigreed canopies of the mashatu and ebony trees, seeming to burnish them in newly forged copper, the guests drifted into the boma. The usual “where are you from” and “what do you do” introductions followed.
Harvey arrived to host the evening and introduced himself and everyone else:
“Ursa, our she-bear from the States, Olivier and his daughters Cecile and Nadine is it … yes, from Paris, and our special guest, Melodie from just across the border.”
Explaining how the young South African woman came to be there helped ease the conversation towards dinnertime. Melodie thought that she-bear was a rather odd description for a woman who was as thin as the letaka reeds used for screens around the camp.
Harvey plonked down in an empty chair and promptly picked up a book on the seat next to him. “Simon Barnes, The Horsey Life: A Journey of Discovery with a Rather Remarkable Mare,” he read. “Well, aren’t they all.”
Then, without bothering to ask permission from whoever’s book it might be, he opened it to the place marker and began to read:
“Knees into the saddle roll, bum in the air, hands low, teeth in the mane, every muscle in your body moving in rhythm to that of the horse, so that it’s hard to tell where you begin and she ends, at least as long as the gallop lasts; then you slow and stop, patting a sweaty neck, mouthing nonsensical endearments, fizzing with glorious repletion, letting the reins go out until you clasp the buckle, because you know trust is a two-way street …”
“Is this riding or sex he is describing?” Olivier wondered aloud and everyone laughed out in relief.
“Maybe sex with a horse,” Harvey tossed in a party hand grenade, which was just when roly-poly chef Joyce arrived to break the awkward silence by announcing soup was served.
In the morning the French family set off in the bitter cold of sunrise for their day’s out-ride, while the wilderness safari took substantially longer to get going. Everything had to be double-checked while grooms saddled up the horses and loaded the pack animals that would bring up the rear, escorted by the trainee guide Wes (nicknamed West) who would also act as camp staff. The camp’s assistant chef, Mpho, had to learn to ride a horse in order to follow the safari caravan and work his culinary magic in the wilderness. In time he became a back-up guide.
Ruff and Harvey checked their rifles, slipped them into their scabbards and then began the briefing.
“At least you’re not a bunch of rookies,” said Ruff with typical tactlessness.
“Just a bunch of women, eh?” Ursa raised an eyebrow.
“Ja, well, that can’t be helped.” Ruff smiled. Ursa huffed. The young South African woman was not yet worldly enough to realise or care that she’d been slighted.
“Okay, so I’ll be riding Moyeni, the black thoroughbred. Harvey is on big Frank, or Frankenstein. Ursa you’ll be riding Geronimo, our Indian Appaloosa, and Melodie you’re on Pale Face. West will ride behind with Mpho to look after the supply train.”
Pale Face reminded Melodie of her old palomino Top Deck and she liked him immediately.
“Why Frankenstein?” Ursa asked.
“Because he is one big specimen of equestrian evil,” answered their leader.
“No, he’s not really, he’s a gentle giant,” Harvey chipped in. “You just have to speak nicely to him.”
“Pah, he’s a monster,” insisted Ruff.
It was true Frankie was a big horse and not very athletic, but quite why Stevens was so hard on the horse that had been lost in the storm and found its way back several months later no one understood.
“It must be something between the two of them,” Harvey said in an aside to the two women.
They finally left camp in a line six horses and two mules long with all the kit needed for several days in the bush. There would be a resupply halfway through because you could not carry enough on two pack mounts to satisfy the needs of the modern safari. It was a bit like the mountaineering parody about climbing Mount Rum Doodle in Yogistan. For each climber there was an army of porters, and then another for the porters and so on until the expedition numbered several thousand. The real question was: how much do you need to be comfortable on safari?
The continuum from Bushman to modern safari lodge is about as long as a piece of string. Some people today, having frog-leaped their cave-dwelling ancestry, will not do tents even when said tent includes a king-size bed with white linen, designer décor and en-suite bathroom. Even a horse safari, which has to carry itself, straddles at least a millennium of technological advancement.
On this one, their lodgings would be modest dome tents, one each for the guests with staff sharing, with stretcher beds and foam mattresses added for the two women. There was a canvas screen and fold-up toilet seat over the long-drop for the “ladies” and a shovel named Doug for the men. A bucket shower hung in a tree partially screened from the camp, pre-warmed on the campfire. There was hot food every day, freshly baked bread, wine, beer or whisky and even ice in a cooler box that would last until the resupply.
“Any more than that and it is not a safari,” said Harvey. “It’s a party.”
Camp was set up each night under the canopy of large trees on a riverbank. Each morning the fire would be started before sun-up in the chilled winter air and by eight they would ride off while the camp was dismantled behind them. With a larger group each rider would be expected to do a watch through the night, but with just the two women it was decided the guides and camp staff would share guard duty.
The horses had to be kept secured on a line to prevent them wandering off and becoming lion food. Lions enjoy horse flesh like Billy Bunter loves a cream bun. The fire had to be fed all night with torch and rifle at the ready. Lions and hyenas were heard calling, usually far off, but not by Melodie who slept the sleep of innocence and exhaustion.
By the second day they were a well-drilled team, Ursa and Melodie helping with the bush kitchen, learning how to make pot bread on the fire and where to find Bushmen truffles in the Kalahari sand. !Xabas Mpho called them and taught the women to pronounce the plosive click. It became a competition to see who could find the little black vegetal balls first each evening.
On the third afternoon when they rode into the re-supply camp, staff from Fort Jameson were there to meet them with those colourful drinks that no one really likes but seem to be mandatory, a new load of ice, fresh meat and even cheesecake with ice cream for dessert that night.
Around the breakfast fire in the morning, Ruff told them that they’d got news from Mashatu Safari Lodge of a horse running around somewhere between Disappointment and Zebra Koppies. Ruff explained to the two guests that they lost horses from time to time.
“It’s become very dry over the past few years and the animals are getting desperate,” Harvey added, “hanging out near the village in the hope of finding a bit of water or food. Which is how they got domesticated in the first place.”
“We get stories all the time of horses running wild,” added Ruff. “We have to check them all out. Rasta and Ironsides disappeared into Zimbabwe we think, and we have not seen or heard about Tommy or Zulu since …”
“Zulu?” Melodie piped in.
“Ja, a black horse, one of the horses we lost in the big storm in 2000.”
Melodie did not pursue the interrogation because her Zulu had one white sock and a white splotch on one shoulder, and anyway he was hardly the only black horse in the world. And the flutters got in the way.
“We never know whether it is going to be a pitse, a horse, or a pitse-ya-naga, one of their striped cousins,” said Harvey. “We have to check out each report.”
“So we could be in for a bit of fun today,” Ruff grinned.
They set off from camp along a shaded tributary of the Majale, the riders striking out northeast in the direction of Disappointment Koppie. They passed to the north of Mamba Hills along high ground, through bone-dry bush devoid of grass and only crisped leaves on the wild raisin bushes and small evergreen leaves on the shepherd’s trees, most of which were out of reach of the game.
“Do you see the browse line?” Ruff pointed out the clean line at the bottom of the canopy of each tree that still had any leaves, mainly the drought-resistant shepherd’s trees, looking as if a gardener had clipped them all the same way. “That’s as high as most browsers can reach. Only larger antelope and giraffes can feed on the leaves higher up.”
Mid-morning break was called when they reached the Majale. Red-eyed and Cape turtledoves were coo-cooing in the treetops and a troop of baboons scuffled in the shade not far off. As the riders dismounted and tied up their horses, Harvey walked over to the high riverbank. Ruff was handing out nuts and biltong when Harvey whistled and motioned the rest of the group over to a place where the roots of a giant sycamore fig created a natural hide. He put a finger to his lips. A herd of about a dozen elephants, females and young ones, slid down the opposite bank and made for a pool hard up against the near bank, about 40 metres upstream.
Two calves were still suckling and flung their little untrained trunks into the water like hosepipes out of control while their moms and aunts set about the serious business of drinking. Any good safari guide can tell you an elephant’s trunk has nearly 40 000 muscles, compared to just 639 in the entire human body.
The muscles work in pairs and make the trunk by far the most versatile appendage in the animal kingdom. The end of the trunk has two finger-like nodes that can pick up a peanut from the ground (smaller Asian elephants have just one node), while the trunk itself can hoist a small car. They also have a sense of smell four times more acute than that of a bloodhound and can smell water from several kilometres away. The humans with all their lotions and potions had been detected by the elephants from a long way off.
After remounting, the riders found a steep game path across the river. They spread out and galloped one by one down the three-metre ramp, slugged across the loose sandy bed and then up the embankment on the far side. An hour later they reached the Jwala where they sat down to a frugal lunch, finding comfy spots on the raised roots of a baobab tree. The tree was devoid of greenery, the stubby fingers resembling roots rather than branches, which was where the name “upside down” tree was derived from.
“Well, no pitses,” Harvey offered as he passed the potato salad.
“Not even a bloody pitse-ya-naga so far,” added Ruff as he tucked into the cold meats. “Enjoy.”
“You certainly seem to,” mumbled Ursa into her plate.
The young woman heard and smiled. Melodie noticed that the older woman pushed the food around her plate but ate virtually nothing. While packing up, Ruff also noticed the food left over and muttered under his breath something about the bloody Mrs Schwartzes from the Hamptons who were so high maintenance and looked like X-rays.
Lunch done they clattered across a rocky section of the Jwala where there were a few shallow pools full only of algae and frogs. From there they headed north towards Fika Futi (come again). Places are usually named for good reason and the Fika Futi Koppies were no exception. The reason is the seasonal, nutritious red love grass that grows around a sprinkle of small seasonal pans on the northern side of the koppies: although there was none to be had there now.
Across the invisible line of the Tuli Circle an old farm reservoir set among dense evergreen thorn bushes still held a film of water in the dry season. Most game that dared their luck would soon be in a village pot but the Africans of the region would not touch zebra meat. Dube, they called them in Zimbabwe, and a dube was a wanderer. If you ate the meat you would forever wander and never settle down.
“Zebras,” called Harvey, pointing to the line of trees that marked the Matabole River that ran parallel to and south of the Jwala. “A dazzle” of zebras is as appropriate a collective noun as ever there was. With the sun in their eyes the riders had to scan hard before the shapes of the zebras emerged from the variegated gloom. As the group of riders approached, the stallion came forward to challenge them.
It looked significantly larger and darker than the rest. Ruff was already half out of his saddle, looking like he was seeing ghosts. Instinctively his legs clenched around Moyeni’s belly, egging his horse into a short trot and then a canter.
“Hey, that’s my horse,” he cried as the zebras got spooked and turned to flee the impending danger with Ruff in pursuit. Melodie looked and could hardly believe what she saw. It wasn’t just a black horse. It was an almost-black horse with a white ring around its back right hoof. The one she’d been searching for since she was a child.
“That’s MY horse!” she shouted after him and kicked Pale Face into a gallop. The zebra herd disappeared into the riverine bush and after that it was, as Melodie’s Pa would say, “one big goat party” as things went berserk. Geronimo had never had great stamina and Frankie was heavy and lazy by nature, so they fell behind.
Ruff shouted back to Harvey: “Come on, we can lasso him before they get to the mopane thicket.”
But try as he might, Harvey could not coax Frankie to close the gap. They were now making for the upper reaches of the Matabole where the network of tributaries creates a maze of drainage lines and a tangle of vegetation. The area was densely wooded with mainly thorny acacias and cane-limbed mopanes so the chase became a lacerating affair. Ruff was quick to catch up to the herd and already had his lasso swirling round his hat. But as he let fly Zulu ducked into a clump of terminalia bushes and Ruff caught a nooseful of branches.
Melodie kept apace a short distance behind him and could hear Ruff swearing at the devil. Beyond the terminalia thicket was a block of young mopanes. The black stallion with one white sock led his herd through safely but the riders following, sitting higher, were lashed by the switch-like upper branches, some drawing thin lines of blood on bare skin. As each rider barged through they cursed like troopers.
Once through the mopane there was open ground and again Ruff had his lasso swinging round as dust exploded and stones flew.
“C’mon Harv, call yourself a horse guide! We’ve got to get him from two sides before they reach that dense bush.”
But Harvey was out of earshot and behind him was Ursa who did not want to play any part in the game. But her bigger fear was that the other three would ride off and she’d be lost and alone in Africa.
Ruff managed to ride up almost alongside Zulu and was considering leaping off his own horse and onto the feral stallion, but just as he was moving into position Zulu suddenly swerved to his right and Ruff and Moyeni shot straight ahead. Twice more they caught up with the black stallion and twice more Zulu gave them the swerve. First left then right again. Two years in the drought-ravaged wilds had left him sleek and more wily than any safari horse.
The Cowboy was not the man to give up when he had his quarry in his sights. On they rode, the gap between him and the rest getting ever bigger. Ursa, bringing up the rear, was flapping but she needn’t have, her horse could follow the trail of the zebras and his comrades through the bush as easily as Hansel and Gretel following bread crumbs in a forest. The real problem was that both Geronimo and Frankie were tiring.
Ruff kept up the gallop and Melodie did her best to follow, every so often losing the trail then picking it up again. That was when, alarmed by the commotion, Floppy Ears stepped out of the mopane and charged.
Zulu and his herd took off to the right and disappeared. Ruff steered Moyeni to the left and their speed took them instantaneously out of harm’s way. Next came Melodie, who was able to kick some extra speed into her horse and steer Pale Face away from a collision with ten tonnes of rampaging pachyderm. Floppy Ears smashed into the mopane bush behind Melodie just as Ursa burst out on one side and Harvey on the other. The elephant turned on a tickey, as they say in the circus, and was after them in a flash.
Harvey and Ursa dug in their boot heels and shouted at their horses to move, damn it, using words not normally heard in good company.
“Oh god, oh god,” wept the elderly woman.
“Go, go, GOOO! You freakish excuse for a horse,” Harvey shouted.
The two horses were struggling through heavy gravel and the elephant was gaining on them. Once they got through the mopane screen Harvey was not sure his horse would have any more go left in him and they’d be in serious trouble. Harvey had his reins short and was walloping the back of Geronimo with the knotted end. “Move it you painted load of horse turd!”
They shot past Ruff and Moyeni going the other way. Moments later they heard three shots, countered by an almighty high-pitched trumpeting like a 100-piece brass band hitting a crescendo.
Harvey and Ursa slowed, panting nearly as hard as their horses, and turned around. Ruff was sitting on Moyeni, rifle still raised and Floppy Ears facing him, shaking her massive head and ears.
“Put two at her feet and one just over her head,” he told no one in particular.
Floppy Ears scooped up a trunkful of dust and flung it over herself as if to say: “Hey, you interrupted my ablutions.” Then she trumpeted again, spun around on her four cushioned feet and, with head held up and trunk flailing in the air, rushed off away from the riders.
“Been drinking at the dam and raiding crops in Zimbabwe, no doubt,” said Harvey when he’d got his breath back.
“Probably been shot at,” Ruff added.
Ursa sat, panting, ashen.
“Where’s Melodie?” said Ruff.
They stood up in their stirrups looking around, mopane thicket with tall leadwood trees behind them, an open sandy stretch in front and then the refuge of mopane scrub into which the elephant had vanished. None of them had a clue. Ruff fired a round into the air. He and Harvey called her name. They waited, then called again.
Ruff had a fresh round in the chamber and was aiming up to send another lump of lead arcing over the African bush when the panting Palamino and its sweating rider came bouncing out of the riverine bush ahead. She trotted up: “I went on a wide loop. I wasn’t going to take any chances.”
“Thought we’d lost you there for a minute,” said Ruff.
“Just like you said,” she answered, “a whole barrel-load of fun.” She was red-faced and her cotton shirt and jodhpurs were wet through. All their hearts were racing, their hatbands were dark with sweat, their mouths were coated with blotting paper dust and suddenly they each felt wasted.
“Where the ff…, where are we?” Harvey asked, regaining his decorum and shucking his dry tongue from a gluey palate.
“Hmm, stuffed if I know,” said Ruff. “I don’t recognise anything around here. We could be near the Zeederberg crossing on the Tuli Circle. Or we might have ridden inside the circle.”
The rosy eyelid of the sun was drooping towards the horizon. Harvey looked at the horizon to the west. “Clearly west is over there,” he pointed to where the sky was reddening.
“Latitude is good,” offered Ruff, “but longitude is unclear.”
“What the hell does that mean,” demanded Ursa.
“It means, ladies,” Ruff seemed to delight in it, “we have absolutely no idea where we are. I would estimate we’ve ridden about 10 kilometres from the Jwala. I’m just not exactly sure in what direction.”
If it had been in a straight line north that would place them well inside the Tuli Circle, in Zimbabwe with its paranoid government and political commissars in every village ever vigilant for spies from the reactionary regimes around.
“If we were anywhere near a village we’d hear donkey bells and dogs barking at this time of day,” observed Harvey.
“Or night,” Melodie chipped in.
“Right,” said Ruff. “Well we are going to have to make camp here for tonight so we’d better get going before it gets any darker.”
Ursa was about to remonstrate but Ruff saw it coming. He was an old hand at dealing with nervous guests out of their comfort zones.
“Take a drink from the bottles in your bags now,” he ordered, “but be careful because what you have is all you will have until we get out of here. Save some for your horses and some for later.”
That was when Frankie started to cough and splutter, then collapsed onto his front knees. Harvey managed a quick leap clear before being thrown. His horse was blowing a bloody froth from its nostrils and Harvey measured his heartbeat at more than 80 beats a minute.
“He’s completely knackered,” announced Harvey to the now dismounted crowd of three. “I dunno, I’ve never seen him – or any of our horses – in a state like this before.”
He looked up at Ruff and pulled a grim face.
“Okay, let’s give it 10 minutes and see how he’s doing. We are going to have to give each of our horses a drink, but do it slowly so they don’t go into shock. Girls, I suggest you water the horses in your hats, they’ll have to have a bottle each and then pray we find water in the morning. Harvey and me will go collect firewood.”
After the allocated 10 minutes the guides had a pile of logs that were the windfall of elephant foraging. The horses had each been given its small ration of water. Harvey checked Frankie’s pulse but it had not come down anywhere near the usual resting rate of around 20 beats a minute. He checked the other horses. Although Geronimo was still panting and beating at around 30 a minute, Frankie’s pistons were still pounding at more than 60 revs a minute.
“He’s blown,” Harvey said aside to Ruff.
“How bad?”
“Bad.”
“How bad?
Harvey made a gesture of slicing across his throat.
“Okay,” said Ruff, throwing his HF radio into his hat on the ground. “No signal here. Try to get the girls comfortable. See what supplies we have left, how much water. It’s going to be cold tonight so we’ll have to keep close to the fire. We’ll have to use the horse blankets so hang them out to dry. Get the other horses on a line and then start a fire. I’ll take Frank out of earshot.”
“Your rifle?” asked Harvey.
Ruff patted the .45 on his hip as he walked off.
Harvey made a fuss about making a fire Bushman-style, trying to hold the attention of the women, showing them how to make the fire stick with a hard acacia branch and the block out of softer marula, into which he cut a slot. Then he cut a green branch from a combretum bush and, by peeling back the sinuous bark, made a bow.
“My hands are not as tough as they used be,” Harvey tried to lighten the mood as he began to swirl the fire stick until tiny sparks appeared in the groove he’d cut into the marula block. The sparks dribbled down onto a ball of grass seed “cottonwool” and Harvey blew softly. A wisp of smoke appeared, followed by a flicker of flame and he placed it under the pile of twigs he had prepared.
“Aha, there’s still a bit of the old Bushman in me,” he said with relief. “Now we just have to feed it and hope they can see the blaze from camp.”
But all of this could not hush the echo of a gunshot through the still, cool evening.
The three stood around the roaring fire for a few minutes as if in mourning.
“Will they come for us?” asked Melodie.
“Not likely tonight, especially if we’ve wandered into Zim. They won’t want to be driving around with headlights on and getting themselves arrested or shot at. We’ll probably have to sit it out until morning. They should be able to set a course on the smoke. They’ll be as anxious as all hell to find us.”
When Ruff returned, the others were resting against their saddles with the leftovers from lunch set out in front of them, but no one was touching anything and the sullen silence was amplified by the crackling fire which shot flames and sparks high into the air.
The weathered cowboy did not shed a tear or even show a sign of sorrow, but the two women did. Never one to prevent a bad situation from getting worse, Ruff trotted out the old platitude: “As we say, Africa is not for sissies,” then leaned forward and began helping himself to the spread.
He spooned liquefied butter onto a white bun onto which he layered cold meat and crisps.
Even while chewing his buttie he couldn’t be stopped: “Well, that’s life – and death for you – everything that lives is going to die, Frankie, the ants, me … and you.”
“Don’t you care about anything?” Ursa shot at him.
Ruff considered the question for a while, then replied: “Yes. In fact I do, madam. I care very much every time I have to shoot one of my horses.”
Ursa wiped her nose with her shirt sleeve.
“What’s the matter?” Melodie put her arm around the older woman.
Which only caused the shaking to break into convulsions of sobbing.
The two men looked at one another as if to say, “was it something I said?”
“Cancer,” blurted Ursa. “That’s why I came here, to feel really alive,” she managed to say between sobs. “And now this.”
They all gazed into the fire.
“Lung cancer. And I don’t even smoke! I haven’t had children, or even much of a life if the truth is going come out.”
It seemed like as good a time as any to be speaking the truth.
Ruff got up and added more wood to the blaze and it spewed fireworks into the air.
“But isn’t there something you can do? These days cancer isn’t automatically a death sentence,” said Melodie.
“I decided not to undergo any treatment. I’d rather spend what little money I have left doing things like this ride while I still can. Rather than shovel it all to the medical industry that uses cancer as a great big money-making scam.”
It was to be her last safari, her last just about everything and by the end of that year she would be, as they say in Africa, late. When West and the rest of the search party found them the next morning it was agreed they would finish the safari. Ruff lightened the mood by handing Moyeni to Harvey and riding one of the supply mules.
Back at Fort Jameson Melodie caught up with Harvey putting bags into the Cruiser. She held him firmly by the arm and stared intently into his eyes.
“You call me if you ever see him again, okay?” Harvey knew what she meant. “He is very special to me. Let me know if anything happens.”
“I promise,” he said.
Melodie handed him a note she had written: Melodie Theron. Call about Zulu, and her number.
Then she hugged him, climbed into the vehicle next to Ursa and West drove them to the border post.