The Pulse of Danger. Jon Cleary
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interested in flowers. He grows roses.’
He looked as if he was about to swear, then suddenly he laughed and slapped her on the rump. ‘Love, the last thing I ever want to do is raise bloody roses. I collect plants, not grow them. A lot of botanists do like to grow things, but not me. I’m like the obstetrician who doesn’t like to be surrounded by kids.’
‘Oh,’ she said, linking her hands behind his neck, ‘I was hoping we’d have lots of kids. We could start now.’
Two days later he had introduced her to climbing and she took to it as if she had been born on a mountain. He was an expert climber and had been invited to lead several mountaineering expeditions. But always he had found excuses and in the end he had not been asked to join a climbing team even as a member. He knew he had been branded with a reputation for stand-offishness, a climber who considered himself too good to climb with others. He had let the libel stand because it was better than broadcasting the truth. As time had gone on he had wondered if Eve had ever begun to suspect the truth.
He feared leadership. All his life, even as a boy at school, he had been big and confident-looking: a born leader, everyone had said. He had been captain of the school cricket and rugger teams in his last year and they had been the most disastrous seasons in the school’s history; but no one had blamed him and instead had commiserated with him on the poor material he had been given. At university he had been elected captain of the rugger team and the only two matches the team had won had been when he was out of action through injury. Again no one had blamed him, but by then he had come to know the truth about himself.
Still he had been plagued by people wanting to elect him a leader. Or, what was just as bad, wanting to dispute his title to leadership. It never seemed to matter to them that he had never been known to nominate himself for any leader’s job: they took it for granted that he was in the running and began attacking him sometimes even before his name was mentioned. They were invariably small men: the Big Bastard, as he knew he was called, was always fair game for small men. Sometimes he had wished a big man would dispute his title to leader: he couldn’t bring himself to throw a punch or two at the small men, even if they had attacked him in pairs. So he had retreated farther and farther, never committing himself to any expedition larger than this current one, comfortable in the thought that in such circumstances he was not called upon to be responsible for any man’s life. In small groups such as this each man was accountable for himself and indeed resented that it should be otherwise. Leadership of such an expedition often entailed no more than being responsible for the cost and the day-to-day running of the camp.
But he had regretted missing the opportunity to climb with some of the top mountaineering teams. Hunt had passed him over for the Everest ascent the year before, and his omission from other teams had been conspicuous to those who knew of his ability. He regretted the reputation he had and it worried him. He did not like arrogance in others and it disturbed him to know he was branded with the same sin.
He had also been worried when Eve had insisted she was going to accompany him on the trip to Ruwenzori, wondering if he would have the patience to tolerate her when he was immersed in his work; but she had proved more help than hindrance, and from then on he had never thought of making a trip without her. Her father had died a year after their marriage, leaving her without any close relatives and a fortune that came from shipping and mining. The first fact had bound her closer to him, the second was a barrier that kept pushing itself between them. He was depressed, weighed down by his wife’s wealth, a form of slavery dreamed of by most men who don’t know the value of their freedom.
But now, as it so often did, his depression suddenly lifted. Up ahead he saw the gooral working its way along the steep slope above him. Everything else now dropped out of his mind. He stopped, turning slowly as the gooral, still unaware of him, moved with unhurried and uncanny agility among the rocks and trees on the precipitous slope of the hill. It was no use going up there after it: the gooral would stop, look at him curiously, then be gone out of sight while he was still trying to find a foothold on the hillside. He had learned long ago never act like a goat to catch a goat. He would have to be patient, hope that the animal would come down closer within range. He started up the hill, all his concentration focused on the grey moving shape above him, his ears only half-hearing the other sounds here in the gorge: the hissing rumble of the racing river, the soft explosion of a pheasant taking off from a bush close by, the rattle of falling stones disturbed by the gooral as it bounded from one spot to another.
It worked its way above and past him, began moving back down the gorge towards the camp. He turned and began to follow it, keeping to the track and the cover of the trees. Sometimes it would disappear behind a screen of trees or bushes, and a moment later it would come into view again, still moving down towards the camp. It was lower down the hill now and he could see that it was a male and a big one. Both male and female gooral had horns and often it was difficult to tell which was which. But Marquis had remarkably good eyesight and on this beast he could see the thicker horns and the way they diverged outwards, the mark of the male.
The breeze had freshened and was now coming down the gorge, putting him at a disadvantage. He glanced up anxiously when he saw the gooral stop and look down towards him; he froze, wondering if it had caught his scent and was about to take off farther up the hill. He kept absolutely still, remembering the cardinal rule that even some experienced hunters often forgot in their excitement: that a wild animal, having no education in such things, was more times than not unable to distinguish a man at a glance unless the latter betrayed himself by some movement. To the gooral he could be no more than another object among the trees and rocks which surrounded him. Only his scent, if it got to the gooral, would give him away. The gooral would not recognise the scent, but it would be a strange one and he would be warned.
Then the animal bent down, wrenched at a shrub and a moment later, still chewing, moved on. Marquis relaxed, then he too began to move on. He knew now that the gooral could not smell him, despite the fact that the breeze was blowing from behind him. This often happened in these narrow valleys of the Himalayas: the breeze created its own crosscurrents by bouncing off the steep hills and a scent could be lost within a hundred yards.
The gooral was moving slowly down the hillside, and Marquis quickened his pace. The camp would soon be in sight, round the next bend in the valley, and he wanted to get his shot in before the gooral sighted the camp and was possibly frightened by some of the moving figures it would see down there. He was sweating a little with excitement, but his hands were cold from the breeze, which had a rumour of snow on it, and he kept blowing on his right hand, trying to get some flexibility into his trigger finger. The breeze was quickening by the minute, and once he turned his head it caught at his eye, making it water. Autumn was not the best time for hunting in these mountains: the cold fingers, the chill of the metal against the cheek, the wind that watered the eyes, none of it made for easy marksmanship.
The gooral stopped again, its head raised; it gave a hissing whistle, a sign that it was frightened. Then suddenly it bounded down the hill, racing with incredible swiftness ahead of the stones and small rocks disturbed by its progress. The hillside was open here and Marquis had a clear view of the animal as it raced down at right angles to him. Something had frightened the gooral, but there was no time to look for what it was; he raised his gun, tracking a little ahead of the flying gooral, then let go. The shot reverberated around the narrow valley, its echoes dying away quickly as the breeze caught them; the gooral missed its step, then turned a somersault and went plunging down to finish up against a rock just above the path. Marquis felt the thrill that a good shot always gave him. He moved down the path towards the dead gooral, the gun held loosely in one hand, relaxed and happy and forgetful of everything but what he had just done. He would not boast of his shot, but he never denied to himself the pride that he felt. He might have seemed less self-confident if he had talked more about his accomplishments, but at thirty-six a man found it difficult to change the habits and faults of a lifetime. A leopard couldn’t change his spots …
The leopard! He knew now what had frightened the gooral. He turned his head quickly, and the breeze, now a rising wind, sliced at his eyes. His gaze dimmed with tears, but not before he recognised the leopard coming down the hillside in smooth bounding strides that he knew would culminate in a great leap to bring the beast crashing down on him. He whipped