Ahmed's Revenge Read Online Free Page A

before it actually got to the Maasai. I looked at their faces and they were calm, so since Kamau had immediately got down behind one of the Maasai, I got down behind the other. That left only Jules in a fully upright position, standing there shining in his terry-cloth robe. Jules took his rifle off his shoulder at about the time the first of the lions got near. She was still at least twenty feet away but she wasn’t passing by fast enough. The elephants had stopped at the carcass of the calf, and the lions, who were still looking back, stopped too.
    Because Jules was terrified, he wasn’t very quick with his gun, even though the lead lioness was undecided about what to do next and thus had given him time. She first took a step toward the coffee, then turned back toward the elephants again and then turned to look at Jules. The Maasai and Kamau and I had pivoted in the lion’s direction each time she moved. We were like human tank turrets, so she finally decided to run past us on Jules’s side. Jules got his rifle up but the lioness was there instantly. She ran at him hard, then fell back suddenly and rose up above him, dancing in the dirt like a fish on a line, and swatting at Jules with the wide-open claw of what I thought of as her right hand. She immediately knocked the rifle away, into the dirt a few yards from Kamau and me, and then she backed up and began turning in circles, furious and completely unsure of what to do. The other two lions and the cub were gone now, so we all stood up, moving, again, toward the house, the Maasai spears pricking into the night air behind us. And I only realised that something was seriously wrong when Jules didn’t come along. He had slumped to the ground and the white of his robe, from his shoulder to the cuff of his left arm, was turning slowly and deeply dark. I thought the lion had only knocked the rifle away, but now I imagined a shredded arm, though the terry-cloth didn’t seem torn at all. “Julius!” I called. “Oh Christ, get up and come over here! Let’s take care of it inside!”
    The Maasai warriors took a couple of steps back toward Jules, and Kamau went over and quickly got the rifle. The lion was roaring again, still unsure, but when Kamau fired the gun, Jules leapt off the ground, the lion disappeared, and so did the elephants, all of them running back around the pond. For a moment I thought that was the end of it but it was not. We all soon realised that Kamau’s bullet, while it had successfully scared the animals away, had entered my husband’s back just to the side of his right shoulder blade, first sending him after the animals, then plunging him into the dried-out dirt a half dozen yards from where I stood. His robe rode up above his waist in an undignified way, and the moonlight bathed his buttocks and legs and the horrible, filthy ground.
    As soon as the shot was fired Kamau dropped the rifle and ran. One of the Maasai and I got to Jules at the same time, while the other hurried back toward the house, calling out for anyone.
    I was afraid to turn Jules over or even to touch his arm, but when we got to him he let us know he was alive, at least, by trumpeting out his own harrowing sound. I grabbed the spear from the Maasai and used its sharp tip to tear the cloth at the bottom of Jules’s robe. And once I had it started the Maasai and I pulled the robe apart quickly, making long thick strips of bandage.
    â€œHold on, Julius!” I said. “We’ll just stop this bleeding and then I’ll get on the radio. Looks like you’ll be going back into Nairobi a day ahead of time.”
    I tried to keep calmness and order in my voice, but when we finally did turn Jules so that we could wrap the strips of bandage around his arm, calmness and order went away. What I supposed to be Jules’s left bicep was flapping free of his bone, and though there had been a good deal of blood on the robe, the worst thing