The hunter and the leopard (part3)

About an hour after the leopard had taken his leave, the hunter returned home.

The sight that met his eyes was dismal.
Instead of the cheerful boy who usually smiled broadly on seeing him return safely home, and then peered with immense curiosity inside the hunter’s bag to see what animal(s) he had killed that day, he saw his son sitting on the bare floor, his hand on his cheek and presenting a most forlorn picture.

“Father! Oh Father! I thought I’d never see you again!” the boy said. He went on:

“A few hours after you had left, I was busy in the kitchen when I heard a loud bang on the kitchen door. My heart jumped! What could that be?

“Before I knew what was hap­pening, the kitchen door was ajar. And out there, behind the door stood a….a….a … .a….le-le-leop­ard!”

”WHAAAAAAT?” said the hunter. “Did you say a leopard came here?”

“Yes!” said the boy. “He said he wanted to kill me because you, my father, had killed all the animals in the forest that he, the leopard, feeds on”.

“My word! And what did you say to him?”

“I said that you only killed enough animals to feed the two of us, so if the animals were getting scarce in the forest, then it couldn’t be your fault. This annoyed him. He was (he boasted) Kurotwi­amansa, who was known to be capable of finishing off all the people in a whole town.

“I told him I was too young to know about such things and that I had only told him what I knew to be the truth.

He then changed tack. He became conciliatory and asked me, “Ei, is it true what they say about your father, that he has a special room in which he keeps the skulls of all the animals he kills?”

I wanted to deny that that was true, but I realised he might break down all the doors in the house in order to satisfy himself that I was telling the truth.

So I said yes, you had such a room full of animal “trophies.”

“He then ordered me to go and bring all the skulls from the room and assemble them on the floor. Next, he asked me to name each of them. I did as he asked….”

“You didn’t? You didn’t name the leopard whose skull is in the room with the others??????”

“No!” the boy said. “When I reached the skull of the leopard, I said that you hadn’t told me what animal that was. But I would ask you when you came back home, and Mr Leopard could come back tomorrow to hear what it was.

“The leopard then warned me not to tell you that he wanted to know the name of that particular animal from you. So I swore that I would not reveal anything about his visit here today to you.”

Over dinner, the hunter and his son planned what they would each do on the morrow, if the leopard really did show up.

And the next day, the hunter went into the forest as usual, leaving his son behind. The boy was incandescent with fear, but he trusted in his father’s plan.

At exactly the same time as the previous day, the leopard appeared. And it took the boy through the drill of naming the animals’ skulls again. Again, when it reached the skull of the leopard, the boy hesitated.

He said: “I told my father to tell me what animal it was. But he said that it was the sacred day of that particular animal and that if he mentioned its name to me, both of us would die!”

”What? Is he that superstitious? He goes into the forest with a gun and is such a coward that he uses the gun even on such a small ani­mal as a squirrel. Yet he is afraid to name an animal on a particular day, because he is afraid of the ghost – or is it spirit– of that animal? Who told him animals have ghosts? All right – I shall come back tomor­row. And I shall accept no excuse then – no excuse. If you are unable to tell me what I want to know, I shall bite your head off.” The leop­ard tried to smile at the implied joke, but the intended smile turned into an ugly snarl.

When the hunter returned from hunting that evening, he found the boy was beside himself with rage.

“What at all have I done to you?” he asked his father. Must you expose me to such a hideous creature twice in two days?

The hunter said to the boy, “Don’t worry.” And he went into the bush and brought some herbs, leaves and roots with which he “bathed” his gun, whilst murmur­ing some incantations which the boy didn’t understand.

He next told the boy: “Tomor­row, when the leopard comes, there are just two things you have to do. Do tell him that the name of the animal is the leopard. But as soon as you do so, don’t wait even for half a second, but move away when you hear me whistle. Stand aside very very quickly and make sure you don’t stand where the leopard will spring from – his left side. Have you got that?” The boy nodded.

The next morning, the hunter made all his preparations, as if he was going into the bush to hunt, as usual. But instead of going into the forest, he walked a little way out of the cottage and then circled back to hide behind a tree from which he could see the entire cottage within his gun-sights. He hid behind a tree. He put some extraordinarily powerful bullets in his gun, cocked it, and put it beside him. Then he waited.

(TO BE CONTINUED)