Pride of the Veld

told the others that I’d be out for an hour, and the direction I was headed. I’d done this before at each stop on the trip, so no one made any comment.”
    “Without an escort?” Danie was incredulous.
    “I suppose that should have clued me in to begin with― eh?” Andrea chuckled darkly, then went on. “I decided to cut it short, there wasn’t anything there… you get an instinct after a while. I’d moved in a circle this time, not out and back like I’d done each time before…” He paused again, and Danie could hear the swallow from his seat.
    “Andrea, it’s okay…” Geo began, locking eyes with Danie in the mirror again. This overprotective streak was not helping.
    “ Geo ,” Danie snapped. “He needs to tell us, and you need to back off and let him. You can’t shield him from this.”
    “Thank you, Danie,” Andrea replied. “He’s right Geo, I’m fine. You’ve already done a brilliant job caring for me. Yes? But you can’t protect me from this.” Geo sighed and nodded, but he stuck close to the Italian with one hand on his knee and the other back around his shoulder.
    “So, I am not quite a… a ninja? Yes, not quite as stealthy, but close. So close. To be a good wildlife photographer, you must blend into your environment, you must walk so softly that even the breeze does not touch you. Yes? So from the time I was a little boy, my grandfather would take me into the woods outside Perugia and we would pretend to be great hunters. We would stalk our game and capture them not with a gun, or a bow… but with our old camera. He was a painter, very famous in the area. He painted the woods, and the animals. Soon, it was just me. I would track through the forest and bring him back little snapshots on the Polaroid, and he would paint them.”
    “So it is second nature to me. I float over the ground; you will not hear me come unless I make noise on purpose. Around these men, I make lots of noise. But this time I did not. I was maybe twenty-five feet away from the truck. I was behind several thorn trees and some bushes and brush, and I froze. Something that I heard, a word or a tone, alerted me― I’m not sure which, but I dropped down and took that picture that I showed you.
    “I stayed there and the wind shifted and I could hear them clearly. They were talking about… about killing me there and leaving me for the animals…” Danie winced, remembering Christiansen’s joke from the night before. Andrea continued: “I backed away; I was opposite from the direction I’d originally left camp. When I was sure I was far enough away, I ran.”
    “How did you get hurt?” Geo pressed closer to him, and lightly touched the bandage on his arm.
    “I ran on and off for the first three hours. I keep fit, I run in my spare time, and truthfully, this isn’t the first time my feet have saved me in the wild. I can also climb most trees. That is a very useful skill, I must say. I practice that at home as well.”
    Andrea’s mood seemed to lighten.
    “It was dusk and I was worried about being out all night on the savannah. All I had on me was my camera, my pocketknife, my documents, and a couple of energy bars. I also had an empty water bottle still clipped to my belt.
    “I finally reached a ravine. It looked about forty, forty-five feet down, with a fairly steep bank. At the bottom was some running water. It was the first I’d seen since I started to run. My bottle was empty, and I hoped there would be shelter among the boulders…” Danie raised a brow in disbelief. Andrea shrugged and grimaced in pain.
    “The short answer is… half-way down I slipped and fell, landing in the rocks. Something had my arm pinned and I yanked it loose, which was a bad idea as you can see. I managed to slide down the rest of the way… by the time I reached the bottom my bottle was gone, and there was no way back up the banks.”
    “You’re damned lucky there wasn’t a cloud burst upstream. That ravine can turn into a washer within minutes. You wouldn’t have survived. Stay out of any wash or ravine… even dry as a bone and with a clear-blue sky, they’re deadly under the right conditions,” Danie lectured their guest from the front as Geo nodded vigorously in agreement.
    “Uh, okay― next time, eh?” Andrea agreed before resuming his story. “I tried to clean myself up, and the bleeding slowed― though I didn’t realize it was so deep until you started poking around in it…”
    “Probably