The Last Leopard Read Online Free PDF

“Sorry I burned you, Red.”
    He smiled down at her. “No worries. All’s well that ends well,” he said, and Martine marveled at the way he and Jeff were able to take a near-catastrophe in their stride.
    It was only when the climbers were out of sight and Martine and Ben were alone that they began to take in what had happened. What could have happened. Ben started shivering quite badly and Martine, who felt responsible because she’d sat drinking coffee while Ben went to the ridge on his own, was wracked with guilt.
    “It’s because we were apart,” she said in anguish. “I should have stayed with you. Grace warned me. She said that any time we were separated during this journey, danger would follow us.”
    “I know Grace is very wise,” said Ben, removing his wet fleece and rubbing his arms to generate some body heat, “but it was nobody’s fault but mine. I stood on the edge of a waterfall. It was a dumb thing to do. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be in bits and pieces at the bottom of Rainbow Ridge right now.”
    Martine tried to block the image from her head. “It was Red and Jeff who saved your life,” she reminded Ben as they started down the path to their cabin. “I was so scared I could hardly even speak.”
    “No,” Ben said, “it was you. They had the equipment and the expertise, but if you hadn’t acted as quickly as you did I wouldn’t have been around to save.”
    Martine had a sudden flashback of Ben as she’d last seen him before his fall. “Why were you so close to the edge? What were you trying to prove? You seemed to be leaning right over it.”
    Ben gave an embarrassed laugh. “This is going to sound crazy. It’s just that . . . it’s just I thought I saw something, that’s all. A picture—a sort of drawing. It was on the rocks, practically hidden behind the curtain of water. I couldn’t really see it clearly, but it looked like a spotted wild cat of some kind. A leopard or cheetah or jaguar or something. I went closer to take a better look and that’s when the ground gave way beneath me. I guess it was just my imagination.”
    Martine’s mouth went dry. She tried to think of a suitable response, but none came. “We have to stay together,” was all she could manage. “Promise me we’ll stay together.”
    Ben saw that she was serious. “Okay, okay,” he said, putting a reassuring hand on her arm. “I promise.”

4
    T he remainder of the journey to the Zimbabwean border was uneventful. It wasn’t particularly scenic, consisting mainly of long stretches of dry bush and scrubland; the fast, scary highways of outer Johannesburg, and ugly mining towns— dorps, Gwyn Thomas called them. Martine and Ben dozed until they reached Messina, where they stopped for a lunch of Hawaiian burgers decorated with juicy rings of pineapple, and fries slathered with spicy tomato sauce, all washed down with chocolate milkshakes.
    Back in Storm Crossing, Gwyn Thomas refused to allow Martine to eat fast food, and she was at great pains to make it clear that this was a special one-time vacation treat. Martine had to hide a smile when the meal arrived and her grandmother tucked into her burger and fries with relish while doing her best to pretend that she really wasn’t enjoying it at all.
    “It’s pretty good, considering that it’s fast food,” she remarked innocently to her grandmother.
    “I’ve had worse,” Gwyn Thomas admitted grudgingly, eyeing a passing ice-cream sundae with what looked a lot like envy.
    She’d said very little about the incident at Rainbow Ridge, largely because Martine and Ben had said almost nothing about it themselves. On the way down the mountain, they’d decided that to mention Ben had nearly been killed falling down a waterfall would jeopardize the whole trip, which even Martine was now looking forward to. They’d told the truth but not, as judges say in courts of law, the whole truth. Ben had been very open about how he’d unwisely stood too close