Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/116174
thrust of his jaws, caught the soft under-throat of the jackal as it lurched to its feet. The jackal whined in fury, knowing immediately its predicament. Clamped to its throat, the dog bettered his grip, driving his teeth deeper, shaking his head violently, raising the jackal from the ground and snapping it to-and-fro like a throw-rug. In seconds, it was over. The jackal lay dying under the half-light of the moon, its intestines dirtied and strewn across the sand, spasmodically paddling the last of its life away. As the uncertainty of his limbs, the burning fever and malaise. So depressing and depleting was its possession, he had not felt like hunting. Or eating. Or mounting his usual patrols. Rapidly it had advanced, so that now his throat was swollen, spastic and aching. He could no longer swallow. Each spasm brought searing pain, and forced ropes of slobber to leak past his lips and drool involuntarily from his jaws. Still he fought, struggling weakly, seeking to right himself. But he was too far spent, wasted and exhausted. In the past 12 hours death had crept ever closer. His muscles had stiffened. His body had been wracked again and again by convulsion, each time diminishing him the more, drawing him closer to his end. Now it came again. His torso tensed and withered, trembling uncontrollably against a vicious seize of paralysis, then jerked with a series of spasms, his feet flailing hopelessly, his teeth clenched, his eyes rolled back into his head. So that their pupils, the windows of his life, were pulled shut, and there was no longer the sense of light, or being, but only the uncomprehending whites, bloodshot and gray. Gradually it subsided, leaving his body to loosen slowly, lost this time deeply beyond perception . . . to the dim world between, liberated at last to the mercy of a coma. While the scythe of death hissed closer, closer. Until at last it severed the very little that was left of life, and his uncompromising heart failed. Death has no dignity. Hideously scruffy and depleted, he lay in the bush at the edge of a veld. Urine staining his underbelly, his bowels loosening brown and putrid upon the once pure fur of his tail and thighs. Soon he would be picked over by the vultures and returned to the parched African dust. A piteous and contemptuous caricature of what he had been. Proud and sovereign. Wild and free. He could no longer control the fate of his band. Even had he been left there, he could not have stopped the horror that had been set irrevocably to motion. Day by day between predator and prey, life is won – and life is lost . . . Sometimes it cannot be seen, or heard, or smelled, or tasted, or felt. Always, in every night, lies the threat of betrayal. The danger that what seems nearly natural, is not. if it were running in slow motion, through an illusion, on to eternity. Its throat was torn, its life vein ruptured, its small river of blood spilling out onto the ground. The dog had backed away, considering the smaller canid, and what it had cost him in wounds. Nothing lifethreatening, it seemed. But the jackal had fought with an unprecedented, demonic vehemence, a demented fury the dog had never known. Licking at a cut on his foreleg, he felt the sting of others on his head and muzzle. He had not escaped unscathed. It was a thing he would remember. His reunion with the pack that evening was especially joyous, the cacaphony of welcoming voices, the ritual of rank and order, dominance and submission, validating and fulfilling. To a dog, even the alpha-female, all licked exuberantly at his lips, the yearlings particularly expressive in their respect, dropping to the ground and rolling, exposing their throats and underbellies in subservience. Cleansing the cuts about his face and neck with the soothing care of their tongues. By instinct, they knew he had been called upon that night to protect them. But there was a thing more they could not know, nor in the pure character of their being, avoid. A thing unsensed and unseen, far more dangerous than the jackal itself. T he third night afterward the remainder of the pack, disadvantaged by the absence of the alphamale, would return unsuccessfully from its hunt. To a member, tired, hungry and badly in need of rest. They had not killed in days and all had accompanied the quest. The nine pups, left alone for the first time since they were born, would spill gleefully from the den. Jubilant at the return of the troop, and famished, for it had been some time since they had fed. Grinning, ears back and tails wagging, they would rush to greet and lick the mouths of the homing dogs, begging food. The reunion would seem replete of its usual joy. But the beginnings of betrayal are often benign. The yearlings would reach the den first. The boldest Continued on 174 S even days had passed since the alpha-male had encountered the jackal. The wounds he had suffered in the offing had scabbed, were in the early stages of healing. He had hunted with the pack five days before. Yet, now – on the same evening a Hadzabi hunter, 200 miles to the north, sought to purify his soul from some unexpected evil – he lay dying. Cruelly dying, under the macabre light of the moon, in a land given to cruelty. It had come swiftly, unbeknown, the debilitation that would kill him. First the fatigue, then the disorientation, S P O R T I N G C 98 L A S S I C S