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John Henry sat on a convenient log and listened in admiration as Jim Sinclair displayed a sound and comprehensive grasp of the fine art of swearing.  He did his best not to grin as he listened, because, every now and then, Jim would turn around and give him a suspicious look.  It wouldn't do for Jim to think that he was thinking 'I told you so' - even if he was.

"I think the axle's broken," he offered helpfully, when there was a pause in the vehement muttering.

He could practically hear the teeth grinding together as Sinclair gave him another speaking look.  The grin almost broke free, then, and he looked away hastily, taking in their surroundings in an attempt to distract himself from the bubble of laughter that was welling up inside him.  They were still exploring the strange new world they had found themselves in, and John Henry was constantly being startled and delighted by all the strange new plants and beasts he saw every time he left the Hayes ranch house. 

He'd been surprised when Jim had announced that he was going off to Africa.  At the time, John Henry had only had the vaguest idea of where Africa was, and it had come as an unpleasant shock to discover just how far away it actually was.  It had come as an even bigger shock to find out that Sinclair was assuming that John Henry would be staying in the US while he went off on this bizarre trip of his.  It had taken some fast talking - not to mention emotional blackmail - before Jim had agreed to let the young Navajo tag along.  Not that John Henry had the slightest urge to come and visit Africa.  It had simply been the lesser of two evils when it came to choosing between the options available to him. Besides, Sinclair needed to have someone to keep an eye on him and John Henry hadn't had much faith in the idea that some Englishman he had never met could do the job better than he could.

So he had tagged along, and so far the jury was still out on whether or not it had been one of his better ideas.  Africa was far more alien than any place he had ever been, and John Henry was still struggling to find his feet.  Oh, the day-to-day routines hadn't changed all that much, and roping a zebra was pretty much the same as roping a horse, and a wildebeest acted enough like a spooked steer that he knew how to cope.  His first encounter with a water buffalo had very nearly led to a quick trip to a Nairobi hospital, though, and he wanted to do nothing more than forget all about that incident with the lions.  The fact that it had been Jim's fault in the first place hadn't prevented John Henry from getting a lecture from just about everyone in Africa, it had seemed.

John Henry didn't see what all the fuss was about.  Yes, the accident with the water buffalo had been serious, but he could have sustained a similar injury right back on the ranch in New Mexico.  The lions had scared him, and he had spent some time with the local natives learning all the local lore about the animals.   He was a lot more confident, now, but Sinclair acted like he wasn't safe to be let out of his sight!  John Henry sighed to himself, then mentally shrugged.  At least this meant that he had no trouble in keeping an eye on the older man.  This was just as well, since Sinclair was twice as bad for getting himself into a mess.

This latest incident was a case in point.  This was supposed to have been just a leisurely drive up to where some herds of wildebeest had been sighted.  The horses had been worked fairly hard the previous day, so Jim had decided against bringing them, opting for the jeep instead.  Nothing wrong or unusual in that, but John Henry had felt his hackles rise when Jim had decided that they should take a detour down a dried out river bed, to see if they could find any tracks of other animals.  He wasn’t sure what had made him so uneasy, but he had advocated that they stay on the banks and only try to cross when they found a natural fording place – or where the ford would be if the river was flowing.  Sinclair had been too impatient, arguing that they had no idea if the ford would be up- or down-river, and that the jeep would be up to the task.  That might have been the case if they hadn’t driven across at a point where there were some sharp rocks hidden by what had looked like solid ground, but turned out to be dried mud.  The weight of the jeep had cracked the mud and sent them crashing down onto the rocks.  Even that might not have been so bad, except that one rock had been directly under the axle and the impact had cracked the shaft.

So now they were stuck out in the middle of nowhere, with a busted jeep and no means of getting back to the ranch under their own steam.  Once Sinclair had stopped grousing over their bad luck, he would get on the walkie-talkie and contact someone back at the ranch.  They’d send someone out to pick them up, and tow the jeep back to the ranch.  It wasn’t that big a deal, but Jim was mad at the fact that he had been the one driving and John Henry had been the one to advocate caution.  It would make it that much harder the next time he wanted to lecture John Henry on the evils of acting before you thought things through.  John Henry grinned in anticipation.

“You can wipe that smile off your face,” Sinclair growled.  John Henry sobered obediently and turned a wide-eyed look of innocence in Sinclair’s direction.  “And you can quit with the choir-boy impression, as well,” the older man continued.

“I don’t know what you mean,” John Henry said in hurt tones.

“Oh, don’t you,” Jim snorted.  “Don’t think that this is going to get you off the hook the next time you try one of your hair-brained schemes.  You’re still ahead of me when it comes to getting into trouble.”

“I don’t get into trouble on purpose,” John Henry argued.  “Stuff… just happens.”

“I’ll say,” Sinclair said in heartfelt tones.  He stepped back and kicked at the nearest tyre, heaving a gusty sigh.  “Well, I might as well admit that we’re not going anywhere under our own steam.  Pass me the walkie-talkie, willya?”

John Henry hopped off the log and rummaged around in the back of the jeep.  Finding the walkie-talkie, he tossed it over to Sinclair, then ambled over to where the river bank angled up to where some scrubby bushes grew.

“Don’t go too far!” Sinclair called, more out of reflex habit than any real concern, although the thought of lions was never very far from his mind.

John Henry waved a placating hand.  “I’m just going to climb up onto the bank and see what’s around,” he called back reassuringly.  If there lions around, I think we should know about it before they decide we’re on the menu, he thought to himself.  Of course, he saw no reason to say that to Sinclair, because he had a pretty good idea what Jim’s reaction to such a sensible observation would be.  John Henry would find himself hog-tied and in the back of the jeep before he could count to ten.

It was a bit of a scramble up the side of the riverbank, and there were a couple of moments when the dry mud and sun-baked soil disintegrated underneath his feet and threatened to send him tumbling back down to the riverbed.  Fortunately, he had an innate sense of balance and was able to recover himself almost immediately.  He was relieved the see the rim of the bank come level with his eyes, though, even though he had drifted a little to come up right in the middle of the bushes.  To his relief, they weren’t thorned and he was able to push past them without losing any skin.

He paused to glance back down to where Sinclair was pacing beside the jeep.  He was talking into the walkie-talkie with some considerable heat and John Henry wondered what was going on.  Maybe there wasn’t anyone available to come out and pick them up.  Or maybe Hayes was taking the opportunity to do a little lecturing of his own?  John Henry was torn between amusement at the thought, and indignation that some Englishman had the temerity to tell off his fellow-countryman.  After a moment, the amusement won, but John Henry thought it might be wise to stay away from Jim until the other man had had time to calm down.

It was a little more difficult to slide through the bushes than he had originally thought.  A little higher in height than himself, they were growing so close together that he was constantly having to push aside the branches that were supple enough to be moved and duck under the ones that weren’t.  At the same time, he kept a wary eye out for snakes.  He would get the mother of all lectures if he got bitten by one right after promising to be careful!  He could hear the furtive dash of small animals all around him, and some birds took off when he came a little too close to them for their own comfort.  He had already telegraphed his presence to any animal with one eye or ear working, so he expected to blunder out onto a landscape completely devoid of life.  Even lions would be wary, since the wind was blowing directly towards him and they wouldn’t know what was coming.  It might be a different matter if they were present and realised that he was a single human, but he had his gun and would be able to get back to Sinclair quickly enough.

The bushes showed signs of thinning out.  John Henry could catch glimpses of the open grassland and the grey of a rock outcrop directly in front of him.  He could climb onto that, keeping a low profile, and study the immediate area.   It would really annoy Jim if he could spot the herd they had been looking for.  Skirting around one last dense patch of bushes, John Henry came out into the open and promptly froze, unable to breath, as he suddenly realised that the ‘rock outcrop’ he had been meaning to climb was a full-grown elephant.  It was travelling ahead of a group of seven others, but it was right in front of him.

John Henry had no idea if it was a male or female.  All he cared about was the sheer size of the beast, and the immense pair of tusks that it sported as it loomed over him.  He barely came up past the giant’s knees.  It had moved back at his emergence from the bushes, raising its trunk and flapping the huge ears.  He was deafened by the trumpeting cry it made, followed by several groaning snorts.  John Henry froze.  No-one had thought to tell him what to do if he found himself nose-to-trunk with a full-grown African elephant, but common-sense told him that running would be a bad idea.  Of course, standing still might be just as stupid where this beast was concerned.  It could be a no-win situation, with anything he did provoking a frenzied charge and his disappearing beneath the massive feet.

His mind had gone completely blank.  Panic threatened to surge up and overwhelm him, since he had absolutely no previous experience to fall back on.  The wildebeest and buffalo had been about the same size as the bison and cattle he was familiar with back in the US.  The antelopes and zebras were the same as the deer and horses, while the lions weren’t that much bigger than the cougars he’d encountered now and again.  This animal, however, left all of them behind.  This was not an animal, this was a yei incarnate, a creature of the spirit world.  Without his realising it, his mouth opened and a chant he’d heard while still a child and on the reservation came tumbling out.  He barely knew what the actual words were; only the memory and the emotion that memory awoke held any real meaning.

The elephant loomed over him, the trunk reaching down to curl around some grass, ripping it out of the ground and tossing it into the air, where the wind took it and the dry soil clinging to the roots and fanned it out.  Almost without conscious thought, John Henry bent down and did the same, making it part of the chant.  He sank deeper into the childhood memory, summoning up the image of the old man who had stood outside the hogan, his strong voice rising up through the shimmering air and seeping into the cool shadowy interior.   That had been in the good days, before the plague had come and wiped out most of his family. 

A deep rumbling sound seemed to rise up from the ground itself and burrowed its way down to his bones.  He was dimly aware that the first elephant had been joined by two others, both large but not as huge as the first one.  They stood before him like a living cliff, throwing him into shadow.  The rumbling came again, a wave that poured over and through him.  It was coming from the elephants, he realised with detachment, a sound that more vibration that something that could be heard.  Their trunks came down to touch his head, their breath ruffling his hair.  The breath smelt of moist soil and warm hay, the scent of earth itself.   He could almost believe that they were joining in with the chant, their bass rumble a counterpoint to the rhythm of the words that continued to pour out of him.

John Henry felt an odd exhilaration seize him.  After his mother had died, he had run from the reservation and his own heritage, blaming the fact that he was Native American for all the ills that had happened to him.  He had denied his heritage, his culture, even his language in a frantic attempt to fit in and run away from the terrible memory of waking up to find his mother’s dead body beside him.  She had given him the precious second blanket during that viciously cold night.  He had lived, she had died and he had never stopped running from that day on, desperately trying to stay ahead of the guilt.  Until, of course, Jim Sinclair had come into his life and made him turn and face what was chasing him, standing by him while John Henry had faced down the demons in the night.  From that moment, John Henry had started to walk the path of his blood again, with Jim’s help and active support, but he had lost years of knowledge and experiences.  Now, in this alien land and faced by animals he had never seen before in his life, he felt something rise up inside him that he had never thought to feel again.  He was a child again, held safely in the embrace of a past where life had been good.  He gave in to the feeling and let him carry him where it willed.

oooOooo

Jim Sinclair dropped the walkie-talkie in shock when he heard the ear-splitting blast of a elephant from somewhere nearby.  He looked around wildly, but there was no sign of any elephants.  He was running in the direction John Henry had gone in before he had time to think about it.  He knew that Murphy was a full-blooded member of the Dineh where John Henry was concerned.  He scrambled up the bank of the river, but slowed before he came to the top as he heard John Henry’s voice raised in what sounded like a chant in his native tongue.  That was strange enough in itself.  John Henry might no longer be in the state of self-denial where his heritage was concerned, but he was still shy about flaunting it.  Mind you, being a Native American in the US could still be a massive handicap, since many white people were deeply prejudiced.

What was making him chant in Navajo?  Sinclair took the last few feet cautiously, wondering what he would see.  He assumed that John Henry had come across some of the local natives.  Jim had noticed that his young friend tended to relax amongst the Masai and the Kikadu, recognising people with an even stronger tribal identity than he had.  No African was going to poke fun at him for being a ‘Red Indian’.  The concept didn’t even exist to them.  They knew he wasn’t a white man, but he wasn’t African, either.  Lacking any proper niche for him, most of the natives did the equivalent of shrugging and treating him as an individual.  It had been a new experience for John Henry, to be abruptly free of the baggage the label ‘Indian’ brought with him.

The sight that met his eyes when he lifted his head above the bank very nearly gave him a heart attack.  John Henry was standing about fifty yards away from him, and right in front of him were three of the biggest elephants that Sinclair had ever seen.  He’d seen an Indian elephant once when he had visited a circus travelling with one of the rodeos he had taken part in.  That had been a seriously big animal, but the smallest of the ones standing in front of John Henry were a third again as large.  Jim had read that the African elephant was bigger than the Asian, but it was only now that he could appreciate just what that difference in size actually meant.  It was difficult to believe that something this immense could exist.

The main fact, however, was that John Henry was practically nose to trunk with three animals that could leave him a smear across the landscape without raising a sweat.  Everyone had gone to great lengths to tell Sinclair that getting close to elephants was a very bad idea.  Rhinos and buffalo were bad medicine in their own way, but elephants were twice as bad.  He’d had horror stories told to him about elephants that had left him convinced that he was never going anywhere near the beasts.  So it was probably inevitable that his young partner would run slap into them the moment Sinclair’s back was turned.

What to do?  The weapons that he and John Henry had would be worse than useless, since using them would irritate, rather than incapacitate any elephant other than a calf. Sinclair dreaded what would happen if anyone was stupid enough to injure a calf while there was an adult around to take revenge.  If Jim rose to his feet, he might startle the elephants into attacking.  Just crouching where he was and doing nothing was incredibly hard on his nerves, however.  He felt responsible for John Henry, just as he had felt that way about the almost feral youth he had come across all those years ago.  The idea that the young Navajo might have followed him all the way to Africa, only to die under the feet of the native animals, wasn’t one that he could cope with.

In the end, he opted to stay where he was.  He took out his sidearm, meaning to fire it into the air if the elephants looked like they were going to attack.  It wouldn’t even slow the elephants down, but it might startle them into retreating momentarily and give John Henry a chance to get away.  It was a lousy plan, but it was the only one he could come up with. 

The bizarre tableaux remained the same for half an hour.  John Henry seemed lost in some waking trance as he continued to chant.  At first, Sinclair expected the elephants to attack at any moment, and they were certainly on edge, constantly flapping their ears and moving restlessly about.  The lead elephant used its trunk to touch John Henry about the head and shoulders.  The first couple of times it happened, Sinclair nearly clawed his way up over the top, and to hell with the consequences.  He hesitated, and the moment of crisis passed, every time.  The other two elephants, marginally smaller than the first one, seemed content to follow the leader’s decision.  Their own trunks snaked towards John Henry, but they contented themselves with tracing his outline in lazy movements.  All the while the strange stalemate continued, the rest of the herd filed past, heading further up the dried river bed.

After nearly two hours, Sinclair heard the sound his ears had been straining for.  The sound of engines, thin with distance, but growing louder by the moment.  The men from the ranch were finally coming to pick them up, as he had asked via the walkie-talkie.  Originally they had wanted to wait until Hayes got back from his own trip, but Sinclair had guessed that might not be until the following day, and he didn’t feel confident enough to stay out in the bush just yet.  It would be another matter once they had become more familiar with their surroundings.

The elephants obviously knew that the trucks were coming.  One moved away and went off in the direction of the approaching vehicles, but the other two stayed where they were for several minutes longer.  Then, as if by some prearranged signal, John Henry finished his chanting and stepped back, reaching down to pick up a handful of soil and toss it into the air.  The second elephant immediately moved off in the direction that the herd had gone.  That left the first, and biggest, elephant.  It stayed where it was for another long series of minutes.  John Henry shook his head and seemed to be waking from a daze,  looking around himself as if unsure of where he was.  Sinclair knew the moment that John Henry registered the presence of the elephant, seeing the tension that gripped the young Navajo.  He knew that John Henry wasn’t the type to panic easily, but several tons of unfamiliar animal looming over him was very much out of the ordinary.

To his relief, nothing happened.  While John Henry craned his neck to look up at the gigantic beast, the elephant seemed to be peering down with equal interest.  The only sound to be heard was the rising drone of motor engines.  Then the elephant raised its trunk, gave one last series of grunts, and turned to move away, walking with a deceptive grace and silence that still managed to shake the ground.  Lying against the side of the riverbank, Sinclair could feel the vibrations where he was.  As soon as Jim was sure that the elephant was moving away for good, he scrambled up on to level ground and made for John Henry.  He kept a tight control on the urge to run.  A retreating elephant could just as easily turn into a charging demon in the blink of an eye.

John Henry had been watching the elephant walk away, an expression of awe on his face.  He jumped a little when Jim placed a hand on his shoulder.  He glanced up at Sinclair and the awe dissolved into a huge grin.  “That’s one big critter, Cowboy,” he said in heartfelt tones.

Sinclair smiled back at him.  “That it is, Indian, that it is,” he agreed.  “Pretty impressive.”  But not as impressive as watching you commune with three full-grown elephants, he continued to himself.  That was something it would take him a long time to forget.  “Come on,” he continued, “let’s go and meet the others.”

John Henry’s head cocked.  “Hey, that’s right, someone’s coming!  You got them to come out?”

Sinclair chuckled, then shrugged.  “What can I say; I’m a mover and a shaker.”

John Henry laughed and shook his head.  “You begged?”

“And pleaded.  Let’s not forget the pleading,” Sinclair said solemnly, then spoilt it with another grin.  “Let’s get back, Indian.  There’s a large glass of iced tea back at the ranch with my name on it!”