The Leopards of Sho’ng
Paul Jaco
Human & Rousseau
To Joel and Jemma
To teenagers who don’t have parents,
and to parents
who don’t have teenagers,
but still they have them
1. Dead or Alive
The Mother
A pair of fiery eyes was fixed on us. To the leopard, we were two dots approaching over a saddle of granite. Carefully selected, her den was virtually impregnable, but as her yellow-spotted tail whipped up the sand behind her, her wild leopard fury grew.
Everything became vulnerable when man showed up.
We were walking along a southern path where the cliff dropped straight down into a noon haze of bushes far below. This was the Mountain of Sh’ong: a huge plateau, its secrets tempting us to go in search of the grim truths hidden under its crust of unseen landslides. Rugged traces exposed age-old surface volcanic activity.
A jut of rock rising from the earth, a cone of solid stone seen from afar, lured us with its cave, like an open, toothless mouth. We pressed on, never suspecting death to lie waiting inside.
Tensy was breathing hard.
“Will you make it?” I asked as she came up from behind me.
She looked down at my dirty boots. “Easier than you, tough guy!”
Subconsciously, we were steering our thoughts away from an early morning at the hospital where we visited our friends, Ashlea and her brother Shane. While hiking on a nearby mountain, they were assaulted by two gangmen wearing leopard skin loincloths.
“I’m sure they wore those loincloths in tribal fashion,” Tensy had said to Ashlea, and, knowing the switchovers that occurred so easily in strife-torn Kwa-Violentia, I could agree. After the attack the men fled into the wildlife reserve bordering the area.
Now, on a risky mountain search, we were doing more than just hiking. We were examining caves, thinking attacks like those on Ashlea and Shane would not happen to us. Life was still uncomplicated and we had a lot to look forward to. Both of us were hoping to finish school and study Medicine.
A few months before, we had joined the Speleobeetles club, where most members were looking for adventure, saying that “cave hunting” could be a pastime till you’re “a hundred”.
To us there was, however, more to it.
Driven by an obsession, we were explorers, two amateur detectives on a relentless quest. With a huge green grassland on the one side and those juts on the other, we were making our way over the rifts and ruts.
Somewhere up there, on that mountain, was my sister’s grave. No one knew exactly where. To me it meant more than just solving a family mystery. I needed to find that grave for personal reasons. I’ve always suspected that I was an adopted child and learning about DNA in our Biology class made my suspicions grow.
The Sh’ong Mountain plateau widened out like a table in front of us. Another cone, also with its cave, loomed higher up, above a ridge. On the north side, there were more giant stalagmite-type juts like this one, protruding from the ground.
Closing in on the jut we were aiming for, Tensy exclaimed: “This one looks like a crook!”
Holding a branch for her to pass under, I turned sideways to see what she was pointing at. The top of that protruding rock appeared to be slightly tilted, like an anthill tower crippled by too much rain. “And it’s wearing a Phrygian night cap!” I said. We were always discovering new things, making us feel like we were in a wildlife paradise.
But neither of us had time to wonder what the crook’s tonsils were going to be like. I didn’t even finish speaking when we heard a vicious snarl as a yellow-coloured, spotted streak leaped out, making me snatch my rifle from my shoulder.
“Wait!” In a quick movement, Tensy tilted the barrel upwards. I was too late to fire anyway. Within seconds, the leopard was already a hundred metres away in the grass, Madame Agility, bolting headlong towards a patch of thorn trees and bushes on the northwestern side of the mountain.
Expecting more trouble, my rifle cocked, I peeped inside the cave. In the sand were her tracks, deeper than those of a normal female, and I could see where her tail had beaten the sand. “This was a place to have cubs,” I gathered. I knew leopards.
A few hairs on a large rock forming a ledge and some sand marks immediately behind it, told me exactly where she must have been lying, waiting to attack, being diverted probably at the last moment by the sound of human voices. What else?
“She was watching us,” said Tensy, hardly believing our luck. “She must have realised that she was outnumbered and decided to back off.”
“Still, she could’ve attacked us.” The fluff on my arm remained standing on end as I studied the signs in the sand covering the floor of the cave. Had we come here a week or even a day later, we would have been unlucky enough to experience her hospitality – in maternal wrath. “Guess this was to be the nursery.”
“Did we upset the family planning?” Tensy wondered as she also entered to investigate.
“Leopard cave,” I said, trying to sound brave. Our other caves also had names. This one was no deeper than the distance between two goalposts. At the far end, it narrowed down to form a hollow area, which undoubtedly was the main source of attraction to the expectant mother. In this now remote area, it would be ideal for raising a family.
After that shock, we stuck around for a while, trying to see if we could find anything in line of what we were looking for. “Nothing.” Then we left, glancing back at the jut quite a few times in case there was a male hiding somewhere or stalking us. This was unlikely now, but one never knew.
To avoid passing near the bushes where the leopard had entered, we needed to descend southward, follow a loop eastward, and ascend over some rough terrain to reach the next cave.
Suddenly a mighty voice rose up from where we had just stood. “Brilliant, you two!”
We swung round. A giant figure was standing opposite the Leopard Cave.
“Gum!” I was a little perplexed as we walked up to the man who had taught me everything about the bush since I was nine.
“You were lucky!” He must have seen everything from a distance. His direction of approach was from the village below, where he and Grace were staying over in their new house while the opera season in Milan was in recess. Undoubtedly, his approach would also have scared the leopard. Was that why she took off so hurriedly?
“We didn’t want to shoot her,” I said.
“Of course not! But you may have had to shoot her if she came for you; and you would have been rather late.”
“Okay-y,” I said, knowing very well that his father, the
