The Last Leopard Read Online Free Page B

complain.
    While Jeff fired up his miniature gas stove, Red dug out a kettle, coffee, and sandwiches. Martine sat on a log, glad of a chance to rest and take in the scenery. Ben waited politely but they were within sight of the ridge and Martine noticed that he couldn’t take his eyes off it. His eagerness made her smile. Ben always came alive in nature.
    “You can go on ahead if you like,” she told him. “I’ll catch up with you.”
    “Would that be all right?” Ben asked Red and Jeff.
    “No problem,” said Red. “We’re almost there anyway. Watch yourself, now.”
    “Sure?” Ben bounced to his feet. “Great, I’ll see you in a few minutes.” He jogged off up the steep track.
    The climbers were impressed.
    “He’s very fit, your friend,” commented Red. He switched off the gas stove and poured the coffee. Jeff munched on a sandwich and rummaged through his backpack. He wanted to show Martine a photograph of his children.
    Ben grew smaller and smaller. He reached the top of the ridge and stood outlined against the rainbow and the hazy gray sky, mist roiling up all around him. As Martine watched, he leaned over the smoking void as if he was trying to see into the very heart of it.
    Ben was the least annoying boy Martine knew, but she suddenly felt very irritated with him. What was he thinking, doing something so risky? His mum and dad would have a fit if they saw him teetering so precariously on the brink of a waterfall. Her heart began to thud in her chest.
    “Sugar?” queried Red.
    “What?” Martine blurted out. In her anxiety, she’d forgotten about both coffee and climbers. “Oh, excuse me. No sugar, thanks.”
    She took the mug from him, sipped some coffee, and looked back at the ridge. Ben was no longer there. She shaded her eyes and scanned the horizon in case the clouds of mist and spray had temporarily obscured him, but he was gone.
    Martine flung down the coffee and leaped to her feet.
    “Ow!” cried Red as the scalding liquid splashed him. “What the heck do you think you’re doing?”
    “He’s fallen,” Martine heard herself say in a grown-up voice that didn’t belong to her. “Grab a rope, he’s fallen.”
    And then she was off up the twisting, rocky trail, running faster than she’d ever run in her life, her breath coming in short, painful gasps. When she reached the top of the ridge, it was immediately obvious what had happened. A jagged section of the overhanging bank was missing, as if a gap-toothed dinosaur had taken a chunk out of it. As Martine approached, a fresh shower of shale crumbled into the void.
    “Ben!” she called, hoping against hope that there was a perfectly rational explanation for his disappearance. Red and Jeff were moving swiftly up the slope with their climbing gear. She lay flat on her belly, so that if another section of the bank broke off, some part of her might be left on solid ground, and crawled toward the edge. The thunder of the waterfall filled her ears and mist drenched her face.
    Steeling herself, she peered over the side. The cascading rush of water ended over a hundred feet below in a foaming, sucking whirlpool. A ring of spiky rocks surrounded it like a fence of spears. The chances of Ben surviving either were zero.
    “Ben!” screamed Martine hysterically. “BEN!”
    “Martine!” Ben’s voice was so faint that it was barely audible against the roar. It seemed to come out of the ground beneath her stomach. “Down here!”
    Martine wriggled forward. There was nothing to grip on to and the yawning cavern gave her a strong feeling of vertigo, as though it were pulling her over the edge.
    “Here,” Ben called again, and that’s when she saw him. He was about thirty feet below, clinging to the withered gray trunk of a bonsai-shaped tree that grew sideways out of the rock. He didn’t appear to be injured, but he was soaking wet and very pale. Several of the tree’s shallow roots had been ripped from the rock by the force of his fall,