"Smith, Wilbur - Courtney 05 - A Time To Die" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

Sean switched on the flashlight. it was a big black Maglite, but even its powerful beam seemed puny in the immensity of the forest as he played it in a circle around them. Eyes reflected in the beam, glowing like menacing stars, many eyes out there in the dark bush; it was impossible to tell cubs from full-grown lionesses.

"Let's go," Sean said quietly, and Riccardo started down the rough narrow track, dragging Claudia with him.

They went slowly, bunched up tightly, Riccardo covering the van with his lighter rifle and Sean in the rear guard with the heavy rifle and the flashlight.

Each time the flashlight beam picked up the flash of cat's eyes in the night, they seemed closer, until Claudia could make out the body of the animal behind the glowing eyes. They were pale as moths in the torchlight, nimble and restless as they circled, both lionesses closing in now, pacing swiftly through the undergrowth, watching them intently but turning their heads away whenever the powerful light hit their eyes.

The track was steep and rough, and oh so long. Each step was an agony of impatience for Claudia as she stumbled along behind her father, not watching her footing, watching instead those pale feline shapes that paraded around them.

"Here comes Snarly Sue!" Sean warned quietly as the old lioness screwed up her courage and came at them out of the night, grunting like a steam locomotive, deafening gusts of sound surging up her throat and out of her open mouth, her long tail lashing from side to side like a hippo-hide whip. They stopped in a tight group, and Sean swung the flashlight and the rifle onto the charging animal.

"Get out of it!" he yelled at her. "Go on, scat!" But the lioness came on, her ears flattened against her skull, long yellow fangs and pink tongue curling between her gaping jaws.

"Yah! Snarly Sue!" Sean howled. "I'll blow your stupid head off!"

She broke her charge at the last possible moment, skidding to a halt on stiff front legs, ten feet from where they were bunched, and the dust swirled around her in the light.

"Piss off!" Sean ordered her sternly. Her ears stood erect, and she turned and trotted obediently back into the forest.

"That was a game of chicken," Sean chuckled. "She was just trying it on."

"How did you know that?" Claudia's voice was cracked and shrill in her own ears.

"Her tail. As long as she keeps waving it, she's only kidding.

When she holds it stiff, then look out!"

"Here's the truck," Riccardo said, and they could see the Toyota's headlights through the trees as it bumped up the dry river-bed below them.

"Praise the Lord," Claudia whispered.

"It's not over yet," Sean warned as they moved off down the track once more. "There's still Growly Gertie to deal with."

Claudia had forgotten the younger lioness, and now she glanced around fearfully as she stumbled after her father, hanging on to his belt.

At last they were on the bank of the river-bed, fully lit by the headlights of the parked truck, which was standing only thirty yards away with its engine running. She could make out the heads of the trackers in the front seat beyond the blaze of headlights. So close, so very close, and she could not help herself. Claudia let go of her father's belt and ran for the truck, pelting wildly through the thick loose white sand of the river-bed.

She heard Sean shout behind her, "You bloody idiot!"

Immediately afterward came the fearsome grunting roar of the lioness as she charged. Claudia glanced sideways as she ran, and the great cat was almost on her, coming in at an angle out of the tail reeds that lined the open river-bed. She was huge and pale in the headlights of the Toyota, snake swift, and her roaring cramped Claudia's belly and her feet dragged in the thick white sand. She saw that the charging lioness carried her tail high and stiff as a steel ramrod, and even in her terror she remembered what Sean had said and thought with icy clarity, "This time she's not going to stop.

She's going to kill me!" For a vital instance Sean had not realized that the girl had run.

He was backing carefully down the steep path into the river-bed, the flashlight in his left hand and the double rifle in his right. He held the rifle by the grip with the barrels tilted up over his shoulder and his thumb on the slide of the safety catch, watching the old lioness out there on the edge of the reed bed as she crawled toward them on her belly. But he was sure she was now merely going through the motions of aggression since he had stared down her mock charge. Two of the cubs were well back behind her, sitting up in the grass and watching the performance with huge eyes and candid fascination but too timid to take part. He had lost sight of the younger lioness, though he was sure she was now the main threat, but the river reeds were dense and tall.

He had felt Claudia bump against his hip, but he thought she had stumbled, not realizing she had bumped him as she turned to run. He was still searching for the younger lioness, probing the reed beds with the flashlight beam, when he heard the crunch of Claudia's running feet in the sugary river sand. He whirled and saw her out there alone in the dry river-bed.

"You bloody idiot!" he yelled in fury. The girl had been a constant source of irritation and dissent since she had arrived four days ago. Now she had flagrantly disobeyed his order, and he knew in an instant, even before the lioness launched her charge, that he was going to lose her. Getting a client killed or mauled was the blackest disgrace that could befall a professional hunter. It would mean the end of his career, the end of twenty years of work and striving.