The Last Leopard by Lauren St. John Page A

on’t you bring trouble to our door.” The speaker was Ngwenya’s uncle’s wife, Mercy. She stood with her arms folded like a bodyguard, glowering at the horse wrangler. A baby was strapped to her back with a towel. Her husband, a wiry man a third of her size with the mournful expression of a bloodhound, trembled slightly at her side. His eyes never left the ground, although from time to time he stooped to pet two mongrels.
    Mercy jerked her chin toward Martine and Ben, whom she hadn’t even greeted. “My baby is not well. She has been crying all day. We have many problems and now you ask us to hide the children of a grandmother wanted by the police. Ha! You are very irresponsible, Ngwenya.”
    Martine thought it might be the wrong moment to inform her that a) Gwyn Thomas was not wanted by the police but had been wrongfully arrested, and b) she and Ben were not related.
    Mercy shook her head in disgust. “You are very irresponsible, Ngwenya,” she said again. “Do you think we want trouble coming to our house? Do you think we need the police at our door?”
    Ngwenya threw an anguished glance at Martine and Ben. “Mercy, please,” he begged. “These are two innocent children. Gogo and Martine’s grandmother are also innocent. They need our help. I cannot keep them in my own village because it is too near to the retreat. You would not want somebody to turn away baby Emelia if she is ever in need of sanctuary when she is older. It is not their fault this has happened. It is the fault of Mr. Ratcliffe.”
    Mercy said sharply, “Mr. Ratcliffe? What has Mr. Ratcliffe been doing now?”
    “He is the reason that Black Eagle Lodge is going out of business,” Ngwenya told her. “He is the reason that Gogo has had to lay off most of her staff. I have not spoken of this to anyone because I promised her I would not, but he has made her life hell by starting rumors about thieving employees and dirty rooms. He has poisoned our cattle and threatened Gogo. We can’t prove it, but we know he is behind these things. It is blackmail.”
    Mercy was briefly dumbstruck. “But why? What reason would he have to make his neighbor suffer like this?”
    “He wants the leopard. Gogo would not allow him to buy Khan so that he or his hunters could kill him, and he is not a man who understands the word no. She warned him she would shoot him if he came on our land, and he sent the police to arrest her. They have taken Martine’s grandmother for no reason.”
    Mercy addressed Martine and Ben for the first time. “This man Rat cost my husband his job,” she said. “Odilo, my husband, was a proud man, but Mr. Ratcliffe has friends in the government and together they shut down the mine where Odilo worked because it was close to the edge of Mr. Ratcliffe’s land. Now Odilo has a lot of sadness and life is not easy for us. There is little money. But an enemy of Mr. Ratcliffe is a friend to us. You will stay here, of course. Please, sit down for a cup of tea.”

    Martine was worried sick about her grandmother, but she found the experience of being in an African village fascinating. The huts had thatched roofs like inverted ice-cream cones, and their clay walls were prettily decorated. They were insulated with cow dung to keep them cool during the day and warm at night. Inside, mattresses with woven quilts were placed on platforms of bricks, raised to keep the sleeper safe from the dwarf spirit Tokoloshe, who, Mercy told them, kidnapped his victims and took them down to his watery den. Everything had the faint smell of wood smoke.
    Chickens pecked around the outdoor cooking area, where two women were pounding maize into the powdered meal used to make sadza porridge. The village was set on the edge of a large, flat plain, across which could be seen the low gray buildings of a school, closed since the previous Friday for vacation. Behind Martine and Ben’s temporary home, a red-brown hut with zigzag patterns, was a circle of low kopjes ,