“Where has Dean got to?” Xiviti and I are in the deck kitchen when we hear Bram stamping around, sounding furious. “First off, I’d like to know why he neglected to radio or phone through to my vehicle and let us know about the sighting, as per rules. Leaving us to learn about it from his party of guests when we got back here, while he disappears. A rhino and her calf!”

“And now we need to rely on those same guests’ reports to track them, if we want to guard them,” Mphakati growls.

“When Mphakati finds them, you’re on fulltime rhino watch, Theo,” Bram says.

“I’m on my way,” Mphakati says. “I’ll drive to where they think they saw them, and hope they’re still around. I’ll report back, and you can let me have co-ordinates when Dean shows up. We’ve wasted time looking for him. A fresh trail is easiest.”

Simple envy fills me, hearing him. I could be the one tracking that rhino and her calf, or at least assisting him.

A little later, I’m replacing the dried flower arrangement in Reception when I see Dean.

“They were looking for you,” I tell him. “Bram and them.”

“‘Mr Rieker’ to you.”

“Bram.” I’m defiant.

“What, Lubela?” Bram has come through from his office down the passage and thinks I’m talking to him. “Dean. Where were you?”

“What? Oh, I took a little drive. Why?”

“When you’d just spotted a rhino and calf? Obviously we’d want to know exactly where they are.” Bram is still angry.

“Oh, sorry. I thought the fewer people who knew the better.”

My breath catches because it shocks me to hear how dismissively he speaks, and how stupidly.

“And you included Thandaza personnel in that?” Bram rages. “Your employers?”

“Jeez, sorry man.” But Dean doesn’t sound sorry.

“Well, let me have their exact location now so I can tell Mphakati. He’s gone to track them–” Bram stops because some German guests have just wandered in to look at the rack of maps and other info. “Come to my office.”

So I don’t get to hear where the rhino and her baby are. I picture them, the calf moving along in front of its mother, or sometimes alongside.

Dean comes down the passage from Bram’s office as I’m leaving Reception with the old flower arrangement. He doesn’t look at me, just strides past.

Some weird stuff hits me. Like – what if his not telling about the rhinos gave poachers the chance to get to them before Bram and Mphakati could arrange to guard them? What if it was meant to give them time?

What if he took his ‘little drive’ to make contact with the poachers? Maybe to guide them to the rhino? Or simply to phone them from where there was no danger of anyone overhearing him?

Bram comes out of his office, walking very fast.

“Bram?” I say

“Not now, Lubela.” He slows down but doesn’t stop. “I can’t make contact with Mphakati. His phone is ringing, but he’s not answering. I need to find him to tell him exactly where these rhinos are, now that fool Dean has remembered his responsibilities.”

Then he’s gone and my wondering gets even wilder. How does he know Dean has given him the true location? But maybe Mphakati has already found the rhinos, or is tracking them. He’s brilliant. That’s what makes it so hard and so hurtful that he won’t recognise how good I am.

I keep thinking about him not answering his phone. If he wasn’t able to use it to call Theo either, maybe he’s doing guard duty himself and Theo is at the waterhole as usual?

It’s like brushing against a spider’s web when I’m out in the bush, this vague uneasiness that’s suddenly touching me. I’m not sure where it comes from, if it’s the two rhinos’ vulnerability, or Mphakati being out of contact, or the things I’ve begun to suspect about Dean.

The next thing is I’m making tea for Xiviti and me when Theo comes rushing into the kitchen.

“Lubela!” He’s urgent. “Mr Rieker sent me to get you. He’s found the bakkie Mr Shakwane was using. Abandoned. No Mr Shakwane, no rhinos, but signs of a struggle, he thinks. He called to tell me to leave the waterhole and come help him look. He reckons whoever it was went on foot. I said we should get you with your tracking skills, and he said yes, to fetch you first.”

Everything else falls away. There’s just this. I don’t hesitate.

“Let’s go.”

In Theo’s bakkie, racing along a dirt road, I think how bizarre it will be to do my first ever authorised tracking in my domestic worker’s uniform and work takkies.

“What do you think has happened to Mphakati?” I ask.

“Maybe poachers held him up and are forcing him to track the rhinos for them.”

“He’d mislead them.”

“I think so too.”

I can’t believe he suggested to Bram that they could use my tracking skills – that means something. The act of a friend. Or more? I look at his mouth, remembering our almost-kiss.

Stop it.

When we get to the place where Bram has found Mphakati’s bakkie, I look all around.

“Yes, a rhino and calf were here,” I confirm.

“Where the tourists said – and Dean, once he bothered to pitch up.” Bram is grim and I’m realising that of course Dean couldn’t lie about the place, with the guests able to prove he was lying. “What else can you tell us, Lubela?”

“The rhino and her baby went through there.” I show them the track through a stretch of thorn thicket. “And the people, Mphakati and I think two, maybe three others, they went over that way. On foot.”

“So it looks like this,” Bram says. “In whichever order Mphakati and these others arrived here, the rhinos were already gone. And how did the poachers know to look here, I’d like to know? But, can you find them, Lubela?”

I know he means Mphakati and the poachers.

“Yes,” I say.

“I’ve notified the police in town and they’re on their way, but I have a bad feeling that time may be vital here.”

“Yes, when they realise Mr Shakwane is leading them away from the rhinos,” Theo says.

“We need to hurry,” Bram says. “At the same time, we don’t want to signal our presence before we’re in position to do whatever we have to – go in and get Mphakati out, is what I’m hoping.”

“Let me go ahead. I can be quick and quiet. Wait a few minutes and then follow me. We’ll need to switch our phones off so they don’t ring and give us away. If I need you to hurry–” I try to think which bird the poachers might be used to hearing, and won’t make them guess someone is approaching. “Listen for a fish eagle. I’ll make it easy for you to follow. Always quietly. Look for the broken flowers.”

I tug up a clump of the orange-flowered plants that grow only on this part of Thandaza.

“Be careful,” Theo says.

I set off, thinking how weird the scene would look to anyone seeing us, two men with rifles sending an unarmed girl in a domestic worker’s uniform into the bush! I don’t even have my knife on me.

The trail is easy to follow, and I go fast. I could do it running, but then I might not be able to stop in time when I find them. Anyway, running would either alarm or attract any animals around.

I remember to tear off flowers from the plants I’m holding, dropping them at intervals.

Occasionally there’s a sign that makes me think Mphakati might have left a few deliberate clues. A wild foxglove broken by the weight of a booted foot, impala droppings scattered by the same foot.

I’ll tell him it wasn’t necessary when we get him back.

For a few seconds I want to laugh. If he knew it was me doing the tracking–

But then I think: What if we don’t get him back? And nothing seems funny anymore.

I begin to have the sense that I’m catching up with them. I can’t hear anything except insects, but perhaps some sound or movement has set up a vibration or drifted back to me on the air, or maybe they’ve left their smell behind and it hasn’t had time to fade.

I go more cautiously, taking extra trouble to be silent.

Then a human sound. A grunt.

I’ve been bending over to be close to their trail, but now I crouch right down in the long grass. I know where they are now, and that they’ve stopped.

I lift my head carefully and look around. There’s a cluster of tall trees off to one side, but also nearer to where the men are. I should be able to see them from there.

I begin to crawl as fast and silently as I can, scattering my last few flowers. This is part of Thandaza where the vegetation is lush, not true rhino country. Won’t the men have realised by now that Mphakati has deceived them?

I work some saliva into my dry mouth because I need to let Theo and Bram know to hurry. Not daring to stand up, I lift my head and send up the fish eagle’s cry, hoping the men are too busy to realise the sound is rising from the earth instead of coming from above a waterhole.

Crawling is tiring, and the ground here isn’t as dry as I’d like. It takes like forever to reach the trees.

I lift myself off the ground a little, and see two trees so close together they’ll hide me from the men. I know exactly where they are, down a slope directly in front of the trees that hide me. I raise myself, using the two tree trunks for support until I’m standing behind them spying through a small gap.

There they are, Mphakati and two other men.

One of the poachers has two rifles, but it’s the other one who is pointing his gun at Mphakati. Mphakati is talking. I can hear his tone but not the actual words. He seems to be trying to convince them of something, perhaps that they’re still on the trail of the rhinos.

The man aiming his gun is angry, making a threatening move towards Mphakati when he stops talking. The other man seems jumpy, looking around, and back over his shoulder. Once he even looks up at my sheltering trees. I hold my breath. He doesn’t see me. He appears awkward holding the two rifles. It’s the other one who will be most dangerous if there’s shooting.

Mphakati speaks again, urgently – desperately. The man steps forward and prods at him with his rifle. I hate to see it. I have never known Mphakati anything but dignified.

Now I can hear Theo and Bram approaching, very quietly. The men down the slope don’t hear a thing. Even Mphakati doesn’t appear to hear, but then he’s busy pleading, fighting for his life, if I’m right.

Theo and Bram are right behind me now and the man who has prodded Mphakati starts shouting at him. I can hear the words: XiTsonga words. He’s calling Mphakati a liar. My heart is thundering, my mouth has gone dry again, and I can feel a scream rising, wanting to escape, because now he has stepped back and is taking aim at Mphakati, and with such a small distance between them I’m sick with the thought of what I’m going to see.

“Don’t move, Lubela. Stay here.” Theo’s voice, tight and quiet.

Then he and Bram are passing me, one on either side, going round my two trees with their rifles raised.

And shooting.

To kill or not, I don’t know. Don’t want to. The man who was going to shoot Mphakati looks hurt, but he’s still on his feet and now it’s Theo and Bram he’s trying to shoot at.

Bram seems to stumble, shot or just clumsy, I don’t know, but Theo shoots and this time the man goes down and there’s a burst of blood from one of his legs. He drops his rifle.

The nervous man hesitates, discards one rifle and takes aim with the other; I dread his shot.

But the moment Mphakati snatches up the dropped rifle, it’s over. He doesn’t shoot. He uses the thick end of the rifle to club the nervous man over the head.

Both poachers down.

I watch the three Thandaza men having a sort of reunion. I’m forgotten, even though I’ve stepped out from behind the trees.

That’s what I think.

“Lubela, come on down,” Theo calls up to me.

I slide my palms down the sides of my uniform to dry the sweat off them. Then I walk down the slope, thinking about how it’s Theo who has thought to include me.

Mphakati is talking when I get down.

“… know how timely you were. They’d just realised I wasn’t leading them to any rhino. Even if I had been, they were going to kill me anyway, because I’d seen them arriving at our mother and calf’s last location, with the person who was their source of information. It was wrong of me to confront them when I was outnumbered. Anger clouded my judgement. But guess who their source was?”

Theo and Bram look at him, waiting. I can’t resist.

“Dean Shelford,” I say. “I just clicked this morning.”

Mphakati looks at me and I can see he’s surprised.

“You’re right,” he says.

“D’you know how we got here just in time, Sir?” It’s Theo. “Lubela tracked you. Really fast and quiet. She left a flower trail for Mr Rieker and me.”

Mphakati stands dead still.

Bram says, “We’ve talked about needing an extra tracker, haven’t we? Someone local. But as always, trackers are your department, Mphakati.”

Mphakati turns his head and looks at me, reluctantly.

“All right.” His voice is stones. “I don’t have to like it, but all right. We’ll organise a new contract for you.”

I can feel my whole face spreading into a smile. I don’t mind that he doesn’t like it. It’s a step. If there can be a first step, there can be a next one.

I can do it, and he can change. I have to believe it. I can’t wait to tell Mama and Fiki there’ll be a little more money coming in.

I look at Theo. Theo, who done this for me. He’s smiling at me, and I smile back at him.

“Hey, tracker girl,” he says softly, and there’s a promise in his voice.

I can’t wait for us to be alone together.

***

Tell us what you think: What can women and girls like Lubela do to overcome prejudice against them doing traditionally “male” jobs?