Luana Read Free Page B

especially sad they could not laugh.
    One day Luana and Ohoh were sitting on the broad low limb of an mzizi tree, dividing the morning’s gathering of nuts. Both big cats had been out prowling for small game and now Jukakhan returned. A single breathtaking leap and he was up in the branches with them.
    Luana put her arms around the sinewy neck, squeezed hard, and licked the lion’s ear. He squirmed and snarled, “Not now, man-sister. This is important.” He looked around then.
    “Where is Chaugh?”
    “It had better be important, to bring brother from hunting.” She stood on the branch, cupped her hands, and let out a deep-throated roar.
    Minutes later the panther appeared and joined them in the tree.
    “What is it then, brother?” the panther asked irritably.
    “I was over by the rocky place, at the nearer river,” he murmured. “River-rat spore is strong there and I’d hoped to catch one out of his hole . . .”
    “I hope I did not break my own stalk to hear about the failures of your own,” Chaugh interrupted.
    “Patience, brother,” admonished the lion. “I caught man-smell, then. It was deeper in the forest, so I went to look. And it was true. There were many men.”
    “What of that?” replied Luana, cracking a thick nut with her rock. “We have seen men in the forest before, and they have seen us.”
    “That is true enough,” agreed Jukakhan. “But this was different. These men carry many strange things with them I did not recognize. And there was one whose skin—whose skin was as yours once was, man-sister. As yours still hints at. I thought you would want to see. It is curious strange.”
    Luana pondered. Thoughts twisted like thornbush through her mind. Long left-alone memories began to trickle back, mixing with remembered pictures in the books. These recollections rushed in on her mind like a rising tide, filling in crevices and canyons and wetting her interest.
    “I would not do this, man-sister,” Ohoh put in. The chimp could be brave until confronted with the need to actually make decisions or commit himself to something.
    Luana glanced down at him and cuffed him gently on the arm.
    “What harm could it do? Come, let us have a look-see at this strange man.”

Chapter II
    The machete described a silvery arc, and vines and creepers parted, making perhaps tiny cellulose screams. Barrett wiped his forearm across his forehead to sweep clean the beaded sweat and found time for a slight grin.
    He’d once run safari for a number of inexperienced explorers from another jungle, New York. There was one good-looking young fellow who obviously saw himself as another Stanley, Sir Henry. Barrett only saw him as Stanley, Laurel.
    Of course, this young trailblazer was not content to relax and let Barrett and his men do the dirty work. Oh, no. He had to participate. He had his own machete, too, clean and shiny new.
    Actually, he’d done rather well with the big knife. Until in a tired, sweaty moment he’d gone to wipe the perspiration from his brow and instead made a neat five-centimeter-long gash just over his eyebrows. Moral: never wipe sweat, scratch yourself, or swat bugs with the hand holding a machete.
    Barrett turned, shouted, “Njoo, njoo!” to his men. Moving through the gap he shifted his machete to the other hand. There was a faint trail present, but it was clogged with overgrowth and protruding limbs ready to take a man’s pack off his back—or an eye from his head. He moved steadily forward. It was slow, back-breaking work.
    Barrett’s arms and back, however, were reinforced and strengthened by a powerful dream. No creeper, no tough liana, no stubborn green-brown vine can resist the cutting power of a knife pushed by the promise of great sums of money.
    Any dream that would motivate a man like George Barrett to challenge jungle like this had to be prosaic. Because George Barrett was no saint. Certainly he didn’t have the face of a saint.
    It was rather like East Africa itself,