09 Lion Adventure by Willard Price Read Free Book Online Page A

can’t be everywhere at the same time,’ Hal said.
    ‘But your man - he was near, but he did not come and shoot.’
    Hal was puzzled. ‘Our man? We have no man.’
    ‘Your Dugan man. He work for you, yes?’
    ‘No, he does not.’
    A chorus of angry voices greeted this statement. The
    ‘Lion.
    men plainly did not believe Hal. They blamed him for what ‘his man’ had done or failed to do.
    Why had Dugan not shot the lion? Why had he allowed it to take another victim?
    Probably out of spite. Spite because he hadn’t been hired. He wasn’t being paid to kill lions so why should he bother? It was a chance to make Hal and Roger look foolish. There they had been, the idiots, in the wrong place, while a man was being killed somewhere else. If the station master had any sense he would fire these two dumb-bells and take back Dugan. And to bring this about Dugan was willing to stand by and let a man be killed.
    The boys went back to report to Tanga. The station master looked very grim as Hal explained that Dugan had been on the scene while Hal and Roger were a mile away down the track.
    It wasn’t pleasant to admit another failure - and to admit that if the job had been Dugan’s the lion might now be dead.
    ‘Perhaps I was wrong in letting him go,’ said Tanga, as if thinking to himself. ‘I’ll have to report this to King Ku. He will not be pleased.’
    With heavy hearts, Hal and Roger came out of the station and loitered on the platform, wondering what to do now.
    ‘We ought to be where we could see that whole three miles of track,’ Hal said.
    To do that we’d have to be sitting up on a cloud,’ replied Roger bitterly.
    Hal looked at his brother thoughtfully. ‘You have an idea there. That’s what we’ll do - sit up on a cloud.’
    ‘Are you kidding?’
    ‘No, I’m not kidding. Come on. We’ll go get the Stork.’

Chapter 8
The balloon
    The Stork was the small aeroplane belonging to Mark Crosby, warden of the Tsavo animal reserve. Hal had flown it many times while helping Crosby clear out the poachers who had been slaughtering the wildlife of Tsavo.
    The Land-Rover made short work of the twenty miles to Crosby’s safari camp. The warden greeted the boys warmly.
    ‘Good to see you again. How’s it going? How many man-eaters have you knocked off?’
    ‘Only one,’ Hal said. ‘In fact we’re doing so badly we expect to be fired at any moment.’
    ‘What seems to be the trouble?’
    ‘Too big a territory. While we’re patrolling one area, a lion kills a man somewhere else.’
    ‘But why do you leave your crew here? If you had your thirty men with you, they could spread out and cover the entire territory.’
    ‘I know,’ Hal said. ‘But King Ku won’t allow that. He says we must do the job alone.’
    ‘A pretty sure way to get you killed,’ Crosby said.
    ‘But why should he want to get us killed? We haven’t done anything to annoy him.’
    ‘You’re alive, and that annoys him. You’re white, and that annoys him. Don’t ask me why - I don’t know. It’s some secret having to do with his past. Perhaps you’ll learn what it is, if you live long enough. He’s a very strange and bitter man. His wife and children were murdered in the Mau Mau rebellion. Perhaps that may have something to do with it. But why he should pick on you I don’t know.’
    ‘Well, we’ll just have to make the best of it,’ Hal said. “The men are working on three miles of track. If we were up high enough we could watch the whole stretch. We wondered if you could lend us the Stork.’
    Crosby tapped the desk with his pencil as he thought this over.
    ‘Of course I can,’ he said finally. ‘But I’m not sure it’s just what you need. An aeroplane motor makes an infernal racket. It will scare off any man-eater. By the time you land and are ready to shoot, he’ll be gone. A helicopter would be better, but it’s noisy too. How about a balloon?’
    Hal laughed. ‘Where would we get a balloon?’
    ‘Easy