Leopard In The Snow

Something moved. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a movement, a trace of some colour up ahead of her. She blinked. What was it? An animal probably, foraging for food. Poor creatures. What could any animal find beneath this all-covering blanket?

Shielding her eyes, blinking again as snow settled on her lashes and melting ran down into her eyes, she tried to see what it was that had caught her attention. It was an animal, that much she could see, and no doubt her red coat had attracted its attention, too. It might be a dog, she thought hopefully, with an owner close at hand. Oh, please, she begged silently, let it be a domestic animal!

The creature was loping towards her. It looked like a dog. It was a curious tawny colour, and as it drew nearer she saw that it had splashes of black, too. A sort of tawny Dalmatian, only there weren’t such things.

Then her legs went weak. She felt sick with fear. Panic crawled to the surface. It was no dog. It was no domestic animal. It was a leopard! A leopard in the snow!

For a moment she was rooted to the spot. She was mesmerised by that silent, menacing gait. She moved her head helplessly from side to side. There were no leopards in Cumberland! This must be some terrible hallucination brought on by the blinding light of the snow. The creature made no sound. It couldn’t be real.

But as it got closer still, she could see its powerful shoulders, the muscles moving under the smooth coat, the strong teeth and pointed ears. She imagined she could even feel the heat of its breath.

With a terrified gasp she did the thing she had always been taught never to do in the face of a charging animal, she turned to run. In the days when she was a teenager, she had sometimes gone to stay with a friend from boarding school whose parents had kept a farm. They had taught her that to show any animal panic only inflamed the creature’s senses, but right now she knew only a desperate desire for self-preservation.

She stumbled through the deep snow at the side of the road and forced her way through the hedge, feeling the twigs tearing at her hair, scratching her cheeks painfully. But anything was better than the thought of the leopard’s claws on her throat and panic added its own strength to her weakened limbs. The field was a wilderness of white, the deepness of the snow hindering her progress. Any moment she expected to feel the animal’s hot breath on her neck, its paws weighing her down. Sobs rose in her throat, tears sprang to her eyes. She should never have left London, she thought bitterly. This was what came of behaving selfishly.

Beneath the snow her foot caught in a rabbit hole and she lost her balance and fell. Sobbing, she tried to crawl on, but as she did so she heard a sound which she had been beginning to think she would never hear again. That of a human voice – a human voice shouting with all the curtness of command: “Sheba! Sheba – heel!”

Helen’s shoulders sagged, and she glanced fearfully over her shoulder. The leopard had halted several feet away and was standing regarding her with disturbing intensity. A man was thrusting his way through the hedge, a tall lean man dressed all in black – black leather coat, black trousers, and knee-length black boots. His head was bare and as Helen scrambled to her feet she saw that his hair was so light as to appear silver in some lights. Yet for all that his skin was quite dark, not at all the usual skin to go with such light hair. There was something vaguely familiar about his harshly carved features, the deep-set eyes beneath heavy lids, the strongly chiselled nose, the wide mouth with its thin lips that were presently curved almost contemptuously as he approached her. And she saw as he climbed the ridge that he walked with a distinct limp which twisted his hip slightly.

The leopard turned its head at his approach and he put down a hand and fondled the proud head. “Easy, Sheba!” he murmured, his voice low and deep, and then he looked at Helen. “My apologies,” he said, without sounding in the least apologetic, “but you ought not to have run. Sheba wouldn’t have touched you.”

His contempt caught Helen on the raw. She was not used to having to run for her life, nor to feeling distressed and dishevelled in the face of any man. On the contrary, her warmth and beauty, the silky curtain of dark hair, her slender yet rounded figure, had all made her contacts with men very easy relationships, and although she wasn’t vain she was not unaware of her own attractiveness to the opposite sex. But the way this man was looking at her made her feel like a rather ridiculous child who had trespassed and found herself facing rather more than she had bargained for.

“How can you say that?” she demanded, annoyed to find that her voice had a tremor in it. “If you hadn’t called as you did just now, I might have been mauled!”

He shook his head slowly. “Sheba is trained to bring down her prey, not to maul it!”

“I wasn’t aware that I was prey!” retorted Helen, brushing the snow from her sleeves.

“You ran.”

“Oh, I see.” Helen tried to sound sarcastic. “I’ll try to remember not to do that in future.”

The man’s hard face softened slightly with mocking amusement. “We didn’t expect to find anything worth hunting today.”

Helen drew an unsteady breath. “You didn’t!”

“You underestimate yourself.” He glanced round. “Are you making a walking tour of the fells?”

Helen’s cheeks flamed. “My car has broken down back – back there.” She gestured vaguely towards the road. “I – I was trying to find help, when – when your leopard –”

“Sheba?” The man glanced down alt the big cat which stood so protectively beside him. “Sheba is a cheetah, not a leopard, although I suppose they’re members of the same family. A cheetah is sometimes calling the hunting leopard.”

“I really don’t care what she is,” said Helen tremulously. “Could – could you direct me to the nearest phone box and I’ll try and make arrangements to be picked up?”

The man smoothed the cheetah’s head. “I regret there are no phone boxes within walking distance.”

“Then – then private houses – someone who has a phone!”

He shrugged. “There are few dwellings about here.”

Helen clenched her fists. “Are you being deliberately obstructive, or is this your normal way of treating strangers?”

The man was annoyingly unperturbed by her rudeness. “I’m merely pointing out that you’re in a particularly isolated area. However, you’re welcome to my hospitality if such a thing is not abhorrent to you.”

Helen hesitated. “I – I don’t know who you are.”

“Nor I you.”

“No, but –” She chewed uneasily at her lower lip. “Are you married?”

His eyes narrowed. “No.”

“You live – alone? Apart from this – this creature?”

“No.” He moved as though standing too long in one place made his leg ache. “I have a manservant. There are just the two of us.”

Helen digested this. Oh, lord, she thought, what a situation! Faced with two impossible alternatives. Either to continue walking in these awful conditions in the hope that sooner or later she would come upon a shepherd’s croft or a hill farm, which was a decidedly risky thing to do. Or to accompany this man – this stranger – to his home, and risk spending the night with two strange men. What a dilemma!

“Please make up your mind,” the man said now, and Helen thought she could see lines of strain around his mouth. This outward sign of vulnerability decided her.

“I’ll accept your hospitality, if I may,” she murmured, with ill grace. “Ought I to go back for my suitcases?”

“Bolt will get them,” replied her companion, beginning to descend the slope to the hedged road. “Come. It will be dark soon.”

Helen licked her lips. “Ought – oughtn’t we to introduce ourselves?”

The man gave her a wry look. “I think it can wait, don’t you? Or are you enjoying getting soaked to the skin?”

Helen sighed. There was no answer to that. Instead, she followed him down the slippery slope, taking care to keep a distance from the sleek body and long tail of the cheetah. Once on to the track again, for that was all it was now with the drifts of snow at either side, the cheetah stalked disdainfully ahead and Helen was forced to walk at the man’s side. For all he limped, he moved with a certain grace, a certain litheness, which made her wonder if he had once been an athlete. Was that why his face had seemed momentarily familiar? Or was it simply that he reminded her of someone else – someone she knew?

Just beyond the bend in the road a narrower track left the main one and it was on to this narrower way that they turned. A sign, half covered with snow, indicated that it was a private road and Helen felt a twinge of nervousness. This man could be almost anyone. He could be taking her anywhere. He might even have lied about there being no callboxes or farms in the near neighbourhood.

As though reading her thoughts, he said: “If you would rather turn back, you’re at liberty to do so. I shan’t send Sheba after you, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

Helen moved her shoulders in a deprecating gesture. “I – why should I want to turn back?”

“Indeed.” The man glanced sideways at her and she noticed inconsequently that he had the longest lashes she had ever seen on a man. Dark and thick, they shaded eyes that were a peculiarly tawny colour, like the eyes of Sheba, his cheetah. And like Sheba’s, they were unpredictable.

The track wound upward steadily. They passed through a barred gateway, crossed some fields through which a track had been cleared, and climbed a stone wall, half hidden beneath the snow. Eventually, a belt of stark trees rose up ahead, and beyond them, no doubt concealed in summer when the trees were fully in leaf, Helen saw the house they were making for. It was a rambling kind of building, its stone walls shrouded with snow. Smoke was issuing from its chimneys, and there were lights in some of the downstairs windows. A grassy forecourt was just visible beneath the prints of man and beast, and this gave on to a cobbled area in front of the house.

Helen’s companion stamped his feet and advised her to do likewise to shake the snow from their boots. Then he thrust open the studded wooden door and indicated that she should precede him inside. Helen glance apprehensively at Sheba. The cheetah was watching her with an unblinking stare, but as it seemed perfectly willing to remain by its master’s side, she walked rather gingerly ahead of them into the hall of the building.

Warmth engulfed her and it was only then that she realised exactly how cold she was. The desolation, her terrifying encounter with the cheetah, her subsequent confrontation with its master – all had served to provide her with other matters to concern herself, but now in the warmth of that panelled hall she began to shiver violently and her teeth started to chatter.

Their entrance brought a man through a door at the back of the hall. Even in her shivering, shaking state, Helen could not help but stare at the newcomer. As tall as the man who had brought her here, and twice as broad, he was built on the lines of a wrestler, with massive shoulders and a completely bald head. The look he gave Helen was cursory before his gaze travelled to the man with her.

“You’re late, sir,” he announced, pulling down his shirt sleeves which had been rolled above his elbows. “I was beginning to get worried about you.”