Read Online The Leopard Hunts in Darkness by Wilbur Smith - Free Book Online Page B

trade.
    It was after sunset when Craig limped back into his rudimentary camp under the wild figs, his face and arms reddened by the sun, tsetse-fly bites itching and swollen on the back of his neck, and
the stump of his leg tender and aching from the unaccustomed exertions. He was too tired to eat. He unstrapped his leg, drank a single whisky from the plastic mug, rolled into his blanket and was
almost immediately asleep. He woke for a few minutes during the night, and while he urinated he listened with sleepy pleasure to the distant roaring of a pride of hunting lions, and then returned
to his blanket.
    He was awakened by the whistling cries of the green pigeons feasting on the wild figs above his head, and found he was ravenously hungry and happy as he could not remember being for years.
    After he had eaten, he hopped down to the water’s edge, carrying a rolled copy of the Farmers’ Weekly magazine, the African farmers’ bible. Then, seated in the shallows
with the coarse-sugar sand pleasantly rough under his naked backside and the cool green waters soothing his still aching stump, he studied the prices of stock offered for sale in the magazine and
did mental arithmetic with the figures.
    His ambitious plans were swiftly moderated when he realized what it would cost to restock King’s Lynn and Queen’s Lynn with thoroughbred bloodstock. The consortium had sold the
original stud for a million and a half, and prices had gone up since then.
    He would have to begin with good bulls, and grade cows – slowly build up his blood lines. Still, that would cost plenty, the ranches would have to be re-equipped, and the development of
the tourist camp here on the Chizarira river was going to cost another bundle. Then he would have to move the squatter families and their goats off his grazing – the only way to do that was
to offer them financial compensation. Old grandfather Bawu had always told him, ‘Work out what you think it will cost, then double it. That way you will come close.’
    Craig threw the magazine up onto the bank, and lay back with only his head above water while he did his sums.
    On the credit side, he had lived frugally aboard the yacht, unlike a lot of other suddenly successful authors. The book had been on the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic for almost
a year, main choice of three major book-clubs, translations into a number of foreign languages, including Hindi, Reader’s Digest condensed books, the TV series, paperback contracts –
even though, at the end, the taxman had got in amongst his earnings.
    Then again he had been lucky with what was left to him after these depredations. He had speculated in gold and silver, had made three good coups on the stock exchange, and finally had
transferred most of his winnings into Swiss francs at the right time. Added to that, he could sell the yacht. A month earlier he had been offered a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for Bawu , but he would hate to part with it. Apart from that, he could try hitting Ashe Levy for a substantial advance on the undelivered novel and hock his soul in the process.
    He reached the bottom line of his calculations and decided that if he pulled out all the stops, and used up all his lines of credit, he might be able to raise a million and a half, which would
leave him short of at least as much again.
    ‘Henry Pickering, my very favourite banker, are you ever in for a surprise!’ He grinned recklessly as he thought of how he was planning to break the first and cardinal rule of the
prudent investor and put it all in one basket. ‘Dear Henry, you have been selected by our computer to be the lucky lender of one and a half big Ms to a one-legged dried-up sometime
scribbler.’ That was the best he could come up with at the moment, and it wasn’t really worth worrying seriously until he had an answer from Jock Daniels’ consortium. He switched
to more mundane considerations.
    He ducked down and sucked a