Free 08 Safari Adventure by Willard Price Page B

nothing with him. Treat him well and he’ll treat you well. He’s nothing like a leopard - a leopard may become cross as it grows older, a cheetah doesn’t. He’s as faithful as a dog. You see, he’s used to men - it’s something that has grown into his nature because he has worked with men for more than four thousand years.’
    ‘Four thousand years?’
    ‘At least as long as that. On ancient Egyptian monuments you see pictures of men using cheetahs for hunting. Even today in Egypt cheetahs are used as watchdogs. Indian rajahs put a hood over the cheetah’s eyes just as a falconer blindfolds a hawk. They take a hooded cheetah with them on the hunt. As long as the hood is on, the cheetah is quiet. When they come within sight of wild game, they take off the hood. The cheetah looks round, sees the prey, and goes after it like a bullet. When it catches up with the animal, it gives it one pat on the side. It looks like a very little touch, but it’s enough to knock the animal flat. Then the cheetah picks it up, even if it is a good-sized antelope, and carries it back to the hunter. It still hangs on to its prey. I bet you can’t guess how they make the cheetah drop it.’
    ‘By saying “Drop it”?’
    ‘It might not understand that order. But there’s something it does understand. Gently pinch its nose. That shuts off its breathing and it will drop whatever is in its mouth.’
    ‘Is it any good for catching poachers?’
    ‘As good as any ranger. Better than a ranger - because it has better teeth. And gets over the ground three times as fast. We’ll try it on the next poacher we see.’

Chapter 12
Rescue
    The safari men set free all the animals that were still alive, and strong enough to stay alive.
    The seriously injured were placed in the lorries to be taken to the hospital. Those nearly dead of starvation and thirst were given food and water at once.
    The young, dying because their mothers had been killed, got special attention. A large cage was reserved for orphans. It was rapidly filled with as strange a crowd of babies as ever came together in one place - infant elephants, rhinos, wobbly little antelopes, lion cubs, and fluffy little monkeys.
    The men went down into the elephant pits, rooted out the poisoned stakes, put them in a pile and burned them. One wall of each pit was broken down so that if an animal fell in, it could climb out.
    The rescuers went from gap to gap of the mile-long thorn fence and collected every wire snare.
    They broke up every devilish trap - the ‘drop spear’ set in a tree and triggered so that it would fall upon an animal passing below; the crossbow so arranged in a tree that just a touch of an animal’s foot to the trigger-line in the grass would bring a poisoned arrow plunging down into its back; the cruel spiked wheel that would let an elephant’s foot in but not out and poachers could then take their time removing his tusks and tail, then leave him to starve to death; the ‘ant trap’ set on the side of an ant hill so that the angry, two-inch-long ants would swarm over the trapped animal and devour it, after which the tusks could be more easily removed; the ‘crippler’ that when stepped on would fly up and break the animal’s leg, making it impossible for him to escape the poachers - all the infernal devices that a diseased imagination could invent to inflict pain and death.
    ‘Let’s burn the fence,’ Hal suggested, and the warden agreed.
    The dry thorns leaped into flame and soon a bonfire a mile long was blazing.
    Now the poachers’ camp must be destroyed. First the contents of all the grass huts were brought out and put side by side.
    ‘Never saw anything like it in my life,’ Hal exclaimed as he looked at a collection of more than three hundred elephant feet that had been hollowed out to make waste-paper baskets.
    In another pile were scores of leopard heads. Every one would have brought the poacher king several thousand dollars. The man from America or