Part IV
Pursuit as Happiness

I

     The road was only a track and  the plain was very discouraging to  see.
As  we  went on we saw a few thin Grant's gazelles showing white against the
burnt yellow of the grass  and the grey trees. My exhilaration died with the
stretching out  of this  plain, the  typical  poor  game country, and it all
began  to {seem}.  very  impossible  and  romantic  and  quite  untrue.  The
Wanderobo had a very strong odour and I looked at  the way the lobes of  his
ear were stretched and then neatly wrapped on themselves and at his  strange
un-negroid, thin-lipped face. When  he saw me  studying his face  he  smiled
pleasantly and scratched his chest. I looked  around at the back of the car.
M'Cola  was  asleep.  Garrick  was  sitting  straight  up,  dramatizing  his
awakeness, and the old man was trying to see the road.
     By now  there was no more road, only a cattle track, but we were coming
to the edge of the plain. Then the plain was behind  us and ahead there were
big  trees and we were entering a country  the  loveliest that I had seen in
Africa. The grass was green and smooth, short as a meadow that has been mown
and is newly grown, and the trees  were big,  high-trunked,  and old with no
undergrowth but only the  smooth  green of the turf  like a deer park and we
drove on through shade and patches of  sunlight following  a faint trail the
Wanderobo pointed out. I could not  believe we had suddenly come to any such
wonderful country. It was a  country to  wake  from, happy to  have had  the
dream  and, seeing if  it  would  clown away, I reached  up  and touched the
Wanderobo's  ear. He jumped and Kamau snickered. M'Cola  nudged me from  the
back  seat  and  pointed  and  there, standing  in an open space between the
trees,  his head up, staring at us, the bristles  on his back  erect,  long,
thick,  white  tusks upcurving, his  eyes showing  bright, was a  very large
wart-hog boar watching us  from less than  twenty yards. I motioned to Kamau
to stop  and we sat looking at  him  and he  at us. I put  the rifle  up and
sighted on his chest. He watched and did not move. Then I motioned  to Kamau
to throw in the clutch and we went on and made a curve to the right and left
the wart-hog, who had never moved, nor showed any fright at seeing us.
     I could see that Kamau was excited and, looking back, M'Cola nodded his
head up  and  down in  agreement. None of  us had ever seen  a wart-hog that
would not bolt off, fast-trotting, tail in  air. This was a virgin  country,
an un-hunted pocket  in the million miles of bloody  Africa. I was  ready to
stop and make camp anywhere.
     This was the  finest country I had seen  but we went on,  winding along
through the big  trees over the softly rolling grass. Then ahead and  to the
right we  saw the high stockade of  a  Masai  village.  It was a  very large
village and out of it came running long-legged, brown, smooth-moving men who
all  seemed  to  be of  the same age  and who  wore their  hair  in a  heavy
club-like queue that swung against their shoulders as they ran. They came up
to the car and surrounded it, all laughing and smiling and talking. They all
were tall, their teeth were white and good, and their hair was stained a red
brown and arranged  in  a looped  fringe on their  foreheads.  They  carried
spears and they  were very  handsome and  extremely jolly, not  sullen,  nor
contemptuous like the northern Masai, and  they wanted to know what we  were
going to do. The Wanderobo evidently said we were hunting kudu and were in a
hurry. They had the  car surrounded so we could not move. One said something
and three or  four others joined  in and Kamau explained to me that they had
seen two kudu bulls go along the trail in the afternoon.
     'It can't be true,' I said to myself. 'It can't be.'
     I told  Kamau  to  start and  slowly we pushed  through them, they  all
laughing and trying  to  stop the car, making it all but run over them. They
were the tallest, best-built,  handsomest  people  I had  ever  seen and the
first truly light-hearted  happy people I had seen in Africa.  Finally, when
we were moving, they  started to run beside the car smiling and laughing and
showing how easily they could run and then, as the going was better,  up the
smooth valley of a stream, it became a contest and one after another dropped
out of the  running, waving  and smiling as they left until there  were only
two  still  running with  us, the  finest runners of  the lot, who kept pace
easily with the car as they moved  long-legged,  smoothly, loosely, and with
pride. They  were running too, at the pace  of  a fast  miler,  and carrying
their spears as well. Then we had  to turn to the right and climb out of the
putting-green smoothness of  the valley  into a rolling meadow  and,  as  we
slowed, climbing in first  gear, the whole pack  came up again, laughing and
trying not to seem winded. We  went  through  a little knot of  brush  and a
small  rabbit started out, zigzagging wildly and all the Masai behind now in
a mad sprint. They caught the rabbit and the tallest runner came up with him
to  the car and handed him to me. I  held him and could feel the thumping of
his heart through the soft, warm, furry body, and as I stroked him the Masai
patted my  arm.  Holding him  by the ears I  handed him back. No, no, he was
mine. He was  a present.  I  handed  him to M'Cola. M'Cola  did not take him
seriously and  handed him to one of the Masai. We were  moving and they were
running again now. The Masai stooped and put the rabbit on the ground and as
he ran  free  they all  laughed.  M'Cola shook  his  head. We  were all very
impressed by these Masai.
     'Good  Masai,'  M'Cola  said,  very moved. 'Masai many cattle. Masai no
kill to eat. Masai kill man.'
     The Wanderobo patted himself on the chest. 'Wanderobo . .  . Masai,' he
said,  very proudly, claiming  kin.  His ears were  curled  in  the same way
theirs were. Seeing them running and so damned handsome and so happy made us
all happy. I had never seen such quick disinterested friendliness, nor  such
fine-looking people.
     {'Good} Masai,' M'Cola repeated, nodding his head emphatically. {'Good,
good} Masai.' Only Garrick seemed impressed in a  different way. For all his
khaki  clothes  and his letter  from  B'wana  Simba, I  believe these  Masai
frightened  him  in a very old  place. They were our friends,  not his. They
certainly  were  our  friends though.  They  had  that  attitude  that makes
brothers, that unexpressed but instant and complete acceptance that you must
be  Masai wherever it is you come from. That  attitude you only get from the
best of the English, the best of the Hungarians and the very best Spaniards;
the thing that used to  be the most clear distinction of nobility when there
was nobility. It is an ignorant attitude  and  the people who have it do not
survive, but  very  few  pleasanter  things  ever  happen  to you  than  the
encountering of it.
     So now there were only the two of them left again, running, and  it was
hard  going and the  machine was beating  them. They were still running well
and still loose and long but  the machine was a  cruel pacemaker. So  I told
Kamau  to speed it up and get  it over with because  a sudden burst of speed
was  not  the  humiliation  of  a steady  using. They sprinted, were beaten,
laughed, and then  we were leaning  out, waving,  and they  stood leaning on
their spears and waved. We were  still great friends  but  now we were alone
again and there was no track, only  the general  direction to  follow around
clumps of trees and along the run of this green valley.
     After  a little the  trees grew  closer and we left the idyllic country
behind and  now  were picking our  way along a  faint  trail  through  thick
second-growth. Sometimes we  came to a dead halt and had to get out and pull
a  log  out of  the way or cut  a tree  that blocked the body  of  the  car.
Sometimes we had to back out of bush and look for a way to circle around and
come  upon  the trail again, chopping  our way through  with the long  brush
knives  that are called pangas.  The Wanderobo  was  a pitiful  chopper  and
Garrick was  little better.  M'Cola did everything well in which a knife was
used and  he swung a  panga with a fast yet heavy and vindictive  stroke.  I
used it badly. There was  too much wrist  in it  to learn  it quickly;  your
wrist tired and the blade seemed to have a weight  it did not have. I wished
that  I had  a Michigan double-bitted  axe, honed razor-sharp, to  chop with
instead of this sabring of trees.
     Chopping through  when we were  stopped,  avoiding all  we could, Kamau
driving  with  intelligence  and a  sound feeling for the country,  we  came
through the difficult  going and  out into  another  open-meadow stretch and
could  see a  range  of  hills off to our right.  But here there had been  a
recent heavy rain and  we had to be very careful about  the low parts of the
meadow where the tyres cut in through the turf to mud and spun  in the slick
greasiness. We cut brush and shovelled  out twice  and then,  having learned
not to trust any low part, we skirted  the high edge of the meadow and  then
were in  timber  again. As we  came out, after several  long  circles in the
woods to find places where we could get the car through, we were on the bank
of a stream, where there  was a sort of brushy bridging across the bed built
like  a  beaver  dam  and evidently designed to hold back the  water. On the
other side was a thorn-brush-fenced cornfield, a steep, stump-scattered bank
with  corn  planted  all  over  it  and  some  abandoned looking  corrals or
thorn-bush-fenced  enclosures with mud and stick buildings  and to the right
there  were cone-shaped grass huts projecting above a heavy thorn  fence. We
all got out, for this stream was a problem, and, on the other side, the only
place we could get up the bank led through the stump-filled maize field.
     The old man said the rain had come that day. There  had  been no  water
going over the brushy dam  when they had passed that  morning. I was feeling
fairly depressed. Here we  had  come  through a  beautiful country of virgin
timber where kudu had been once seen walking along the trail to end up stuck
on the bank of a little creek in someone's cornfield. I had not expected any
cornfield  and I resented it. I thought we would have to  get permission  to
drive through the maize, provided we could make it  across the stream and up
the bank  and  I took  off  my shoes and waded across the  stream to test it
underfoot.  The brush and saplings  on the  bottom were packed hard and firm
and  I was  sure we could cross if we took it fairly fast.  M'Cola and Kamau
agreed and we walked up the bank to see how it would be. The mud of the bank
was  soft but there was  dry  earth underneath and I figured we could shovel
our  way up if we could get through the stumps. But we would need to  unload
before we tried it.
     Coming  toward us, from the direction of the huts, were two men  and  a
boy. I  said  'Jambo', as they came up.  They answered 'Jambo', and then the
old man and the Wanderobo talked with  them. M'Cola shook his head at me. He
did not understand a word. I thought we were asking permission to go through
the corn. When the  old man finished talking the two men  came closer and we
shook hands.
     They looked like  no negroes I had ever  seen. Their  faces were a grey
brown, the oldest looked to be about fifty, had thin lips, an almost Grecian
nose,  rather  high cheekbones,  and  large, intelligent eyes. He  had great
poise and dignity and seemed to be very intelligent. The younger man had the
same  cast of features and I took him for a younger brother. He looked about
thirty-five.  The boy  was  as pretty as  a girl and looked rather  shy  and
stupid. I had thought he  was a  girl from his  face for an instant  when he
first  came up, as they all wore a  sort of Roman toga of unbleached  muslin
gathered at the shoulder that revealed no line of their bodies.
     They were  talking  with the  old man, who, now  that I looked  at  him
standing with  them,  seemed  to  bear  a sort  of  wrinkled and  degenerate
resemblance  to  the  classic-featured  owner  of  the shamba, just  as  the
Wanderobo-Masai was a shrivelled caricature of the handsome Masai we had met
in the forest.
     Then we all went down to the stream and Kamau and I rigged ropes around
the tyres  to act as chains while the Roman elder and the rest unloaded  the
car and carried the  heaviest things up the steep bank. Then we crossed in a
wild, water-throwing  smash and, all pushing heavily, made it halfway up the
bank before we stuck. We chopped and dug out and finally  made it to the top
of the  bank but ahead was that maize field and I could not  figure where we
were to go from there.
     'Where do we go?' I asked the Roman elder.
     They did not understand Garrick's interpreting and the old man made the
question clear.
     The Roman pointed  toward the heavy thorn-bush fence to the left at the
edge of the woods.
     'We can't get through there in the car.'
     'Campi,' said M'Cola, meaning we were going to camp there.
     'Hell of a place,' I said.
     'Campi,' M'Cola said firmly and they all nodded.
     'Campi! Campi!' said the old man.
     'There we camp,' Garrick announced pompously.
     'You go to hell,' I told him cheerfully.
     I walked toward the camp site  with the Roman who was talking  steadily
in a language  I could not understand a word of. M'Cola was  with me and the
others were loading and following with the car. I was remembering that I had
read you must never camp in abandoned native quarters because of  ticks  and
other hazards and I was preparing to hold  out against this camp. We entered
a break  in the  thorn-bush fence  and inside  was  a building of  logs  and
saplings stuck in the ground and crossed with branches. It looked like a big
chicken coop. The  Roman made us  free of this and  of the enclosure  with a
wave of his hand and kept on talking.
     'Bugs,' I said to M'Cola in Swahili, speaking with strong disapproval.
     'No,' he said, dismissing the idea. 'No bugs.'
     'Bad bugs. Many bugs. Sickness.'
     'No bugs,' he said firmly.
     The no-bugs had it and with the Roman talking steadily, I hoped on some
congenial  topic, the  car  came  up, stopped under a  huge tree about fifty
yards  from  the  thorn-bush  fence  and  they  all  commenced carrying  the
necessities in  for the  making  of  camp.  My ground-sheet  tent was  slung
between a tree and one side of the  chicken coop and I sat down  on a petrol
case to discuss the shooting  situation with  the  Roman,  the old  man, and
Garrick,  while  Kamau and  M'Cola  fixed  up a camp and the Wanderobo-Masai
stood on one leg and let his mouth hang open.
     'Where were kudu?'
     'Back there,' waving his arm.
     'Big ones?'
     Arms spread to show hugeness of horns and a torrent from the Roman.
     Me, dictionary-ing heavily, 'Where was the one they were watching?'
     No  results  on this  but a  long speech from the Roman which I took to
mean they were watching them all.
     It was  late afternoon now and the sky was heavy with clouds. I was wet
to the  waist and my socks were mud soaked. Also I was sweating from pushing
on the car and from chopping.
     'When do we start?' I asked.
     'To-morrow,' Garrick answered without bothering to question the Roman.
     'No,' I said. To-night.'
     'To-morrow,' Garrick said. 'Late now. One hour light.' He showed me one
hour on my watch.
     I dictionaried. 'Hunt to-night. Last hour best hour.'
     Garrick implied that the kudu were too far away. That it was impossible
to hunt and return, all this with gestures, 'Hunt to-morrow'.
     'You bastard,' I said  in English.  All this time the Roman and the old
man had  been standing saying  nothing. I shivered. It was cold with the sun
under the clouds in spite of the heaviness of the air after rain.
     'Old man,' I said.
     'Yes,  Master,'  said  the old man.  Dictionary-ing  carefully, I said,
'Hunt kudu to-night. Last hour best hour. Kudu close?'
     'Maybe.'
     'Hunt now?'
     They talked together.
     'Hunt to-morrow,' Garrick put in.
     'Shut up, you actor,' I said. 'Old man. Little hunt now?'
     'Yes,' said the old man and Roman nodded. 'Little while.'
     'Good,' I said, and went to  find a shirt  and undershirt and a pair of
socks.
     'Hunt now,' I told M'Cola.
     'Good,' he said. 'M'uzuri.'
     With the clean feeling of dry shirt, fresh socks and a  change of boots
I sat on the petrol case and drank a whisky and water while I waited for the
Roman to come back. I felt certain I was going to have a shot at kudu and  I
wanted to  take the edge off so I would not be nervous. Also I wanted not to
catch a cold. Also I wanted the whisky for itself, because I loved the taste
of  it and  because,  being  as happy  as I could be, it  made me feel  even
better.
     I saw the Roman coming and I pulled the zippers up on my boots, checked
the cartridges in the magazine  of the Springfield,  took  off the foresight
protector and blew through the rear aperture.  Then I drank what was left in
the tin cup that was on the ground by the box and stood up, checking  that I
had a pair of handkerchiefs in my shirt pockets.
     M'Cola came carrying his knife and Pop's big glasses.
     'You stay here,' I said to Garrick. He did not mind. He thought we were
silly to go out so late  and he  was glad to prove us  wrong. The  Wanderobo
wanted to go.
     'That's plenty,' I said, and  waved the old man back and we started out
of the corral with the Roman ahead, carrying  a spear, then me, then  M'Cola
with  glasses  and   the   Mannlicher,   full  of   solids,  and   last  the
Wanderobo-Masai with another spear.
     It was after five when we struck off across the maize field and down to
the stream, crossing where it narrowed in a high grass a hundred yards above
the  dam and then, walking slowly and carefully, went  up the grassy bank on
the far  side,  getting soaked to the waist as we stooped going through  the
wet  grass  and  bracken. We had  not been gone  ten minutes and were moving
carefully up the stream bank, when, without warning,  the  Roman grabbed  my
arm  and pulled me bodily down to the ground as he crouched; me pulling back
the bolt to cock the rifle as I  dropped. Holding his breath he pointed  and
across the stream on the far bank at the edge of the trees was a large, grey
animal, white stripes showing on his flanks and huge horns curling back from
his  head as he stood, broadside to us, head up, seeming to be listening.  I
raised the rifle, but  there was  a bush in the way of the shot. I could not
shoot over the bush without standing.
     'Piga,' whispered  M'Cola. I  shook my finger  and commenced  to  crawl
forward to be clear of the bush, sick afraid the bull would jump while I was
trying to make  the shot certain, but  remembering  Pop's 'Take  your time'.
When I saw I was clear I got on one knee, saw the bull through the aperture,
marvelling  at how  big  he looked, and  then,  remembering not  to  have it
matter, that  it was  the same  as  any other shot,  I saw the bead  centred
exactly where it should be just  below the  top of the shoulder and squeezed
off. At  the  roar he jumped and was  going into the brush, but I knew I had
hit him. I shot at a show of grey between the trees as he went in and M'Cola
was shouting, 'Piga! Piga!' meaning 'He's hit! He's hit!' and the Roman  was
slapping me on the shoulder, then he had his toga up around his neck and was
running naked, and the four of us were running now, full speed, like hounds,
splashing across the stream, tearing up the bank, the Roman  ahead, crashing
naked  through the  brush, then stooping and holding  up a  leaf with bright
blood, slamming me on the back, M'Cola saying, 'Damu! Damu!' (blood, blood),
then the deep cut tracks off  to the right, me reloading, we all trailing in
a  dead run, it almost dark in the timber, the  Roman, confused  a moment by
the trail, making a cast off to the right,  then picking up blood once more,
then pulling me down again with a jerk on my arm and none of us breathing as
we saw him  standing  in  a  clearing a  hundred yards ahead, looking to  me
hard-hit and  looking back, wide ears spread, big, grey,  white-striped, his
horns a marvel, as he looked straight toward us over his shoulder. I thought
I must make absolutely sure this time, now, with  the dark coming and I held
my breath and shot him a touch behind the fore-shoulder. We heard the bullet
smack  and saw him buck heavily with the shot. M'Cola shouted, 'Piga!  Piga!
Piga!' as he went  out  of sight and as we ran again, like hounds, we almost
fell  over something. It was a huge, beautiful kudu bull, stone-dead, on his
side, his horns in great dark spirals, widespread and unbelievable as he lay
dead five  yards from  where we stood when I had  just  that instant shot. I
looked at him, big,  long-legged,  a smooth grey with  the white stripes and
the great curling, sweeping horns, brown as walnut meats, and ivory pointed,
at  the big ears and the  great, lovely heavy-maned  neck, the white chevron
between his eyes and the white  of his muzzle and I stooped over and touched
him to try to believe it. He was lying on the side where the bullet had gone
in and there was not a  mark on him and he smelled sweet and lovely like the
breath of cattle and the odour of thyme after rain.
     Then the Roman had his arms around my neck and M'Cola was shouting in a
strange high sing-song voice and Wanderobo-Masai  kept slapping  me  on  the
shoulder and jumping up and down and then one after the other they all shook
hands in a strange way that I had never known in which they  took your thumb
in  their  fist  and  held it and shook it and pulled it and held  it again,
while they looked you in the eyes, fiercely.
     We all looked at him and M'Cola knelt and traced the curve of his horns
with his finger and  measured the spread  with  his arms and  kept crooning,
'Oo-oo-eee-eee', making small high noises of ecstasy and stroking the kudu's
muzzle and his mane.
     I  slapped the Roman on the back and  we went through the thumb-pulling
again,  me  pulling his thumb  too. I embraced  the Wanderobo-Masai and  he,
after a thumb-pulling of great  intensity and feeling, slapped his chest and
said very proudly, 'Wanderobo-Masai wonderful guide'.
     'Wanderobo-Masai wonderful Masai,' I said.
     M'Cola kept shaking  his  head,  looking at  the  kudu  and  making the
strange  small  noises. Then  he said, 'Doumi,  Doumi,  Doumi! B'wana  Kabor
Kidogo,  Kidogo'. Meaning  this was  a bull of bulls. That Karl's had been a
little one, a nothing.
     We all knew we had  killed the  other kudu that I had mistaken for this
one, while this first one was lying dead from the first shot, and it  seemed
of no importance beside the miracle of this kudu.  But  I  wanted to see the
other.
     'Come on, kudu,' I said.
     'He's dead,' said M'Cola. 'Kufa!'
     'Come on.'
     'This one best.'
     'Come on.'
     'Measure,' M'Cola pleaded. I ran the steel tape around the curve of one
horn, M'Cola holding it  down. It was  well over fifty inches. M'Cola looked
at me anxiously.
     'Big! Big!' I said. 'Twice as big as B'wana Rabor.'
     'Eee-eee,' he crooned.
     'Come on,' I said. The Roman was off already.
     We cut for where we saw the bull when I shot and  there were the tracks
with blood  breast high on the leaves in the  brush from  the  start.  In  a
hundred yards we came on him absolutely dead. He was not quite as big as the
first bull. The horns  were as long,  but narrower, but he was as beautiful,
and he lay on his side, bending down the brush where he fell.
     We  all  shook hands  again, using the  thumb  which evidently  denoted
extreme emotion.
     'This  askari,'  M'Cola explained.  This  bull  was  the  policeman  or
bodyguard for the  bigger one. He  had evidently been in the timber when  we
had seen  the first bull, had run with him, and  had looked back to  see why
the big bull did not follow.
     I wanted pictures and told M'Cola to go back to camp with the Roman and
bring the two cameras,  the Graflex and the cinema camera and my flashlight.
I knew we were on the same side of the stream and above the camp and I hoped
the Roman could make a short cut and get back before the sun set.
     They went off and now, at the end of the day, the sun came out brightly
below the clouds  and the WanderoboMasai and I looked at this kudu, measured
his  horns,  smelled  the  fine smell of him, sweeter  than an  eland  even,
stroked his nose, his neck, and  his shoulder, marvelling at his great ears,
and  the smoothness  and cleanness of his  hide, looked  at his hooves, that
were built long, narrow, and springy,  so he  seemed to walk on tiptoe, felt
under his shoulder for  the bullet-hole and then shook hands again while the
Wanderobo-Masai told what a man he was and I told him he was my pal and gave
him my best four-bladed pocket knife.
     'Let's go look at the first one, Wanderobo-Masai,' I said in English.
     The  Wanderobo-Masai nodded,  understanding perfectly,  and we  trailed
back to where the big one lay in the edge of the little clearing. We circled
him, looking at him and then the  Wanderobo-Masai, reaching underneath while
I held the shoulder up, found the bullet hole and put his finger in. Then he
touched  his forehead  with the  bloody  finger  and  made the speech  about
'Wanderobo-Masai wonderful guide!'
     'Wanderobo-Masai king of guides,' I said. 'Wanderobo-Masai my pal.'
     I was wet through with sweat  and I put on my raincoat that  M'Cola had
been carrying and left behind and turned the collar up around my neck. I was
watching the sun now  and  worrying about it being  gone before they got  up
with the  cameras. In a little  while we could hear them coming in the brush
and I shouted to let them know where we were. M'Cola answered and we shouted
back and forth and I could hear them talking and crashing in the brush while
I  would  shout and watch  the sun which was almost down. Finally I saw them
and  I shouted to M'Cola, 'Run, run', and pointed to  the sun, but there was
no  run left in them. They had made a fast trip uphill, through heavy brush,
and when I got  the camera, opened the lens wide and focused on the bull the
sun was only lighting the tops  of the trees.  I took half a dozen exposures
and used the cinema while they all dragged the kudu to where there seemed to
be a little more light, then the sun was down and, obligation to try  to get
a  picture over,  I put the  camera into its case and settled, happily, with
the darkness  into the unresponsibility of victory; only emerging  to direct
M'Cola  in where to  cut to make a full enough  cape when skinning  out  the
head-skin.  M'Cola  used  a  knife  beautifully  and  I liked  to  watch him
skin-out,  but to-night, after I had shown him where to make  the first cut,
well down on the legs, around the lower chest where it joined the  belly and
well back over the withers, I did not watch him because I wanted to remember
the bull as I had first seen him, so I went, in the dusk, to the second kudu
and waited there  until they came with the flashlight and  then, remembering
that I had  skinned-out or seen  skinned-out  every animal  that  I had ever
shot,  yet remembered every one  exactly as he was at every moment, that one
memory does not destroy another, and  that  the not-watching idea  was  only
laziness and a form of putting the dishes in the  sink until morning, I held
the flashlight  for M'Cola while he worked on the second  bull and, although
tired,  enjoyed as  always his  fast,  clean, delicate  scalpeling  with the
knife,  until,  the cape all  clear and  spread back he nocked  through  the
connection  of the skull and  the spine  and then, twisting  with the horns,
swung the head loose and  lifted  it, cape and all, free from  the neck, the
cape hanging heavy and wet in the light of the electric torch that shone  on
his  red  hands  and  on   the  dirty  khaki  of  his  tunic.  We  left  the
Wanderobo-Masai, Garrick, the Roman, and  his brother with a lantern to skin
out and pack in  the meat and M'Cola with a head,  the old  man with a head,
and me with the flashlight and the two guns, we started in the dark back for
camp.
     In the dark  the old man fell  flat and  M'Cola laughed; then  the cape
unrolled and came  down  over his  face  and  he  almost  choked and we both
laughed. The  old man laughed too. Then M'Cola fell in the  dark and the old
man  and  I laughed. A little farther on I went through the covering on some
sort of  game  pit  and  went  flat  on my  face and  got up to  hear M'Cola
chuckling and choking and the old man giggling.
     'What  the hell is this? A Chaplin  comedy?' I  asked them  in English.
They were both  laughing under  the  heads. We got  to the thorn-bush fence,
finally, after a nightmare  march through the  brush and saw the fire at the
camp and M'Cola  seemed to be delighted when the old man fell  going through
the thorns and got up cursing and seeming barely able to lift the head  as I
shone the flash ahead of him to show him the opening.
     We came up to the  fire and  I could see the old man's face bleeding as
he  put the head down against the stick  and mud cabin. M'Cola put  his head
down, pointed at the old man's face and laughed and shook his head. I looked
at the  old man. He was  completely done-in, his  face was badly  scratched,
covered with mud and bleeding, and he was chuckling happily.
     'B'wana  fell down,' M'Cola said and imitated me pitching forward. They
both chuckled.
     I made as though to take a swing at him and said, 'Shenzi!'
     He imitated  me falling down  again and  then  there was  Kamau shaking
hands  very gently and  respectfully and  saying, 'Good, B'wana! Very  good,
B'wana!' and then going  over to  the  heads, his eyes shining and kneeling,
stroking  the horns  and feeling  the ears and  crooning the same,  sighing,
'Ooo-ooo! Eee-eee!' noises M'Cola had made.
     I went into the dark of the tent, we had left the lantern with the meat
bringers, and washed, took  off my wet clothes and feeling in the dark in my
rucksack found a pair of pyjamas  and  a bath-robe. I came out to  the  fire
wearing  these  and mosquito  boots. I brought my wet things and my boots to
the  fire and  Kamau  spread  them on sticks,  and put the boots,  each  one
leg-down, on a stick and back far enough from the blaze where the fire would
not scorch them.
     In the firelight  I sat on a petrol box with my back against a tree and
Kamau  brought the  whisky flask and poured some in a cup and I  added water
from the canteen and sat drinking and looking in  the fire, not thinking, in
complete  happiness,  feeling  the  whisky  warm me  and smooth  me  as  you
straighten the  wrinkled sheet in a bed, while  Kamau brought tins  from the
provisions  to  see what  I  would eat for supper.  There were three tins of
Christmas special mincemeat, three tins of salmon, and three of mixed fruit,
there  were  also  a number  of  cakes  of  chocolate and  a  tin of Special
Christmas Plum Pudding. I  sent these back  wondering what Kati had imagined
the  mincemeat to  be. We had been  looking for that  plum pudding  for  two
months.
     'Meat?' I asked.
     Kamau brought  a thick, long chunk  of  roast Grant  gazelle tenderloin
from one  of the Grant Pop had shot on  the  plain while we had been hunting
the twenty-five-mile salt-lick, and some bread.
     'Beer?'
     He brought one of the big German litre bottles and opened it.
     It seemed too  complicated sitting on the petrol case  and I  spread my
raincoat on the ground in front of  the fire where the ground had been dried
by the heat  and stretched  my legs out, leaning my back against the  wooden
case. The old man was roasting meat on a stick. It was a choice piece he had
brought with him wrapped in his  toga.  In a little while  they all began to
come in carrying meat and the  hides and then I  was stretched  out drinking
beer and watching  the fire and all around they  were  talking and  roasting
meat on  sticks. It was getting cold  and the night was clear and there  was
the smell of the  roasting  meat, the smell of the  smoke of  the fire,  the
smell of  my boots steaming, and, where  he squatted close, the smell of the
good old Wanderobo-Masai.  But  I could remember the odour of the kudu as he
lay in the woods.
     Each man had his  own  meat or collection of  pieces of meat on  sticks
stuck around the fire, they turned them  and tended them, and there was much
talking. Two others that I had not seen had come over from the huts and  the
boy we  had seen in the afternoon was with them. I was eating a piece of hot
broiled liver I had lifted from one of the sticks of the Wanderobo-Masai and
wondering where  the  kidneys were. The liver was delicious. I was wondering
whether it was worth while getting up to get the dictionary to ask about the
kidneys when M'Cola said, 'Beer?'
     'All right.'
     He brought the bottle, opened it, and I lifted it  and drank half of it
off  to chase down  that  liver. 'It's  a  hell  of  a  life,' I told him in
English. He grinned and said, 'More beer?' in Swahili. My talking English to
him was an acceptable  joke. 'Watch,' I said, and  tipped the  bottle up and
let it all go down. It was an old trick we learned  in Spain drinking out of
wine skins  without swallowing.  This impressed  the Roman greatly.  He came
over, squatted down by the raincoat and  started  to talk.  He  talked for a
long time.
     'Absolutely,' I  told him in English. 'And furthermore he can take  the
sleigh.'
     'More beer?' M'Cola asked.
     'You want to see the old man tight, I suppose?'
     'N'Dio,' he said. 'Yes,' pretending to understand the English.
     'Watch it, Roman.'  I started to let the beer  go  down, saw the  Roman
following  the  motion  with  his  own  throat,  started  to  choke,  barely
recovered, and lowered the bottle.
     'That's  all.  Can't  do it more than twice  in  an  evening. Makes you
liverish.'
     The Roman went on talking in his language. I heard him say Simba twice.
     'Simba here?'
     'No,' he said. 'Over there,' waving at the dark,  and  I could not make
out the story. But it sounded very good.
     'Me  plenty  Simba,' I said.  'Hell of a man with Simba. Ask M'Cola.' I
could  feel that  I was  getting  the evening  braggies but  Pop and  P.O.M,
weren't here  to listen. It was not nearly so satisfactory  to brag when you
could not be understood, still it was better than nothing. I  definitely had
the braggies, on beer, too.
     'Amazing,' I told the Roman. He went on with his own story. There was a
little beer in the bottom of the bottle.
     'Old Man,' I said. 'Mzee.'
     'Yes, B'wana,' said the old man.
     'Here's some beer for you. You're old enough, so it can't hurt you.'
     I had seen the old man's eyes while he watched me drink  and I  knew he
was another of the same. He  took the  bottle, drained it to the last bit of
froth and crouched by his meat sticks holding the bottle lovingly.
     'More beer?' asked M'Cola.
     'Yes,' I said. 'And my cartridges.'
     The Roman had gone  on steadily  talking. He  could tell a longer story
even than Carlos in Cuba.
     'That's  mighty interesting,'  I told him. 'You're a hell of a  fellow,
too. We're both good. Listen.' M'Cola had brought the beer and my khaki coat
with  the cartridges in the pocket. I drank a little beer, noted the old man
watching and  spread out  six cartridges. 'I've got the braggies,'  I  said.
'You  have to stand  for  this, look!' I touched each of  the cartridges  in
turn, 'Simba, Simba, Faro,  Nyati, Tendalla, Tendalla.  What do you think of
that? You  don't have to  believe it.  Look, M'Cola!' and  I  named the  six
cartridges again. 'Lion, lion, rhino, buffalo, kudu, kudu.'
     'Ayee!' said the Roman excitedly.
     'N'Dio,' said M'Cola solemnly. 'Yes, it is true.'
     'Ayee!' said the Roman and grabbed me by the thumb.
     'God's truth,' I said. 'Highly improbable, isn't it?'
     'N'Dio,' said M'Cola, counting them over himself. 'Simba,  Simba, Faro,
Nyati, Tendalla, Tendalla!'
     'You can tell the  others,' I said in English. 'That's  a hell of a big
piece of bragging. That'll hold me for to-night.'
     The Roman went on talking to me  again and I listened carefully and ate
another piece  of the broiled  liver. M'Cola was  working on the heads  now,
skinning out one skull  and showing Kamau how to skin out the  easy  part of
the  other. It was  a big job to do for the  two of them, working  carefully
around the eyes and the muzzle and the cartilage of the ears, and afterwards
flesh all of  the head skins so  they would not spoil, and they were working
at it very delicately and  carefully  in the  firelight.  I  do not remember
going to bed, nor if we went to bed.
     I remember  getting the dictionary and  asking M'Cola to ask the boy if
he had a sister and M'Cola saying, 'No, No', to me very firmly and solemnly.
     'Nothing tendacious, you understand. Curiosity.'
     M'Cola was firm.  'No,'  he said and shook  his head. 'Hapana,'  in the
same tone he used when we followed the lion into the sanseviera that time.
     That disposed  of  the opportunities  for social life and  I  looked up
kidneys and the Roman's brother produced some from his lot and I put a piece
between two pieces of liver on a stick and started it broiling.
     'Make  an  admirable  breakfast,' I said  out loud.  'Much  better than
mincemeat.'
     Then  we  had  a  long talk about  sable.  The Roman  did not call them
Tarahalla and that name meant nothing to him. There was some confusion about
buffalo because the Roman kept saying  'nyati', but he meant they were black
like the buff. Then we drew pictures in  the dust of ashes from the fire and
what he meant were sable all  right. The  horns curved  back like scimitars,
way back over their withers.
     'Bulls?' I said.
     'Bulls and cows.'
     With the old man and Garrick interpreting, I believed  I made  out that
there were two herds.
     'To-morrow.'
     'Yes,' the Roman said. 'To-morrow.'
     ' 'Cola,' I said. 'To-day, kudu. To-morrow, sable, buffalo, Simba.'
     'Hapana, buffalo!' he said and shook his head. 'Hapana, Simba!'
     'Me  and  the  Wanderobo-Masai   buffalo,'  I  said.  'Yes,'  said  the
Wanderobo-Masai excitedly. 'Yes.'
     'There are very  big  elephants  near here,' Garrick  said. 'To-morrow,
elephants,' I said, teasing  M'Cola.  'Hapana  elephants!' He  knew  it  was
teasing but he did not even want to hear it said.
     'Elephants,' I said. 'Buffalo, Simba, leopard.'
     The Wanderobo-Masai was nodding excitedly. 'Rhino,' he put in.
     'Hapana!' M'Cola said shaking his head. He was beginning to suffer.
     'In those hills many buffalo,' the old man interpreted for the now very
excited Roman who was standing and pointing beyond where the huts were.
     'Hapana! Hapana!  Hapana!'  M'Cola said  definitely and finally.  'More
beer?' putting down his knife.
     'All  right,' I said. 'I'm just kidding you.' M'Cola was crouched close
talking, making  an explanation. I heard  Pop's title and  I thought  it was
that Pop would not like it. That Pop would not want it.
     'I  was  just  kidding  you,'  I  said  in  English.  Then in  Swahili,
'To-morrow, sable?'
     'Yes,' he said feelingly. 'Yes.'
     After that the Roman and I had a long talk in which I spoke Spanish and
he  spoke whatever  it  was  he spoke  and  I believe  we planned the entire
campaign for the next day.

II

    I do not remember going to bed nor getting  up, only being by  the fire
in  the  grey before  daylight, with a tin cup  of hot tea in my hand and my
breakfast, on the stick, not looking nearly so admirable and very over-blown
with  ashes. The Roman  was standing making  an oration with gestures in the
direction where the light  was beginning to show and I remember wondering if
the bastard had talked all night.
     The head skins were all spread and neatly  salted and  the  skulls with
the horns were leaning against the  log and stick house. M'Cola  was folding
the head skins.  Kamau brought  me the tins  and I  told him  to open one of
fruit. It was  cold  from the night and the mixed fruit and the  cold syrupy
juice  sucked down smoothly. I drank  another cup of tea,  went in the tent,
dressed, put  on my dry boots and we were ready to start. The Roman had said
we would be back before lunch.
     We had the Roman's brother as guide. The Roman  was going, as near as I
could make  out, to spy  on one of the herds of sable  and we were going  to
locate the other. We started out with the brother ahead, wearing  a toga and
carrying  a  spear, then me  with the  Springfield slung  and my small Zeiss
glasses in  my pocket,  then M'Cola with  Pop's  glasses, slung on one side,
water  canteen  on  the  other,  skinning  knife, whetstone,  extra  box  of
cartridges, and cakes of chocolates in his pockets, and the big gun over his
shoulder, then the old man with the Graflex, Garrick  with the movie camera,
and the Wanderobo-Masai with a spear and bow and arrows.
     We said good-bye to the Roman and started  out  of the thorn-bush fence
just  as  the  sun  came  through  the  gap in  the  hills and shone on  the
cornfield,  the  huts and  the blue hills beyond. It promised  to  be a fine
clear day.
     The brother led the  way through some  heavy brush  that soaked us all;
then through the open  forest, then steeply uphill until we were  well up on
the slope that rose behind the edge of  the field where we were camped. Then
we were on a good smooth trail that graded back into these hills above which
the  sun had not yet risen. I was enjoying the early morning, still a little
sleepy, going along a little mechanically and starting to think that we were
a very big outfit to hunt quietly, although everyone  seemed to move quietly
enough, when we saw two people coming towards us.
     They were a tall, good-looking man with features like the Roman's,  but
slightly less noble, wearing a toga and carrying a bow and quiver of arrows,
and behind him, his wife,  very pretty,  very modest, very wifely, wearing a
garment of brown tanned skins  and  neck ornament of  concentric copper wire
circles  and  many  wire circles on  her  arms  and ankles. We  halted, said
'Jambo', and the brother talked to this seeming tribesman who had the air of
a business man on the  way to his office in the  city and,  as they spoke in
rapid question and answer,  I  watched  the most  freshly brideful  wife who
stood a little in  profile so that I saw her pretty pear-shaped  breasts and
the long, clean  niggery legs and  was studying  her  pleasant profile  most
profitably until her husband spoke  to her suddenly  and  sharply,  then  in
explanation  and quiet command, and she moved around  us, her eyes down, and
went  on along the trail that we had come,  alone, we all  watching her. The
husband was going on with  us, it seemed. He had seen the sable that morning
and,  slightly  suspicious,   obviously  displeased   at  leaving  that  now
out-of-sight wife  of wives that  we all had taken  with our eyes, he led us
off and  to  the right along  another trail, well-worn  and  smooth, through
woods  that looked like fall at home  and where you might expect to  flush a
grouse and have him whirr off to the other hill or pitch down in the valley.
     So, sure enough  we  put up  partridges and, watching them  fly,  I was
thinking  all the country in  the world is  the same country and all hunters
are  the same people.  Then  we saw a fresh kudu track beside the trail  and
then, as we moved  through the early morning woods,  no undergrowth now, the
first sun coming through  the tops of the trees, we came on the ever miracle
of elephant tracks,  each one as big around as the circle you make with your
arms putting your hands together,  and  sunk  a foot deep in the loam of the
forest floor, where some bull had  passed, travelling after rain. Looking at
the way the tracks graded down through the pleasant forest I thought that we
had the mammoths  too, a long time  ago, and when they travelled through the
hills in southern Illinois they made these same tracks. It was just that  we
were an older country in America and the biggest game was gone.
     We  kept  along  the face of this hill  on a  pleasant sort  of jutting
plateau  and then came out to  the edge of the hill where there was a valley
and a long open meadow with  timber on the far side and a circle of hills at
its upper end  where another valley  went off to the left.  We stood  in the
edge of the timber on the face of this hill looking across the meadow valley
which extended to the open  out in a steep sort of grassy basin at the upper
end where it was backed by the hills. To our left there were steep, rounded,
wooded hills, with  outcroppings of  limestone rock that ran, from  where we
stood, up to the very head of the valley, and there formed part of the other
range of hills that headed it. Below us, to the right, the country was rough
and broken in hills and stretches of meadow and  then a steep fall of timber
that ran to the blue hills we had seen to the westward beyond the huts where
the Roman and his family  lived. I  judged camp to be straight down below us
and about five miles to the north-west through the timber.
     The husband was  standing,  talking to the  brother  and gesturing  and
pointing out that he  had seen the sable feeding on the opposite side of the
meadow valley and that they  must have fed either up or  down the valley. We
sat in  the shelter of the trees and sent the  Wanderobo-Masai down into the
valley  to look  for tracks. He  came back and reported there were no tracks
leading  down the valley below  us and to the westward,  so we knew they had
fed on up the meadow valley.
     Now the problem was  to so use the terrain  that we might locate  them,
and get  up  and  into range of them without being seen. The sun was  coming
over the hills at the head of the valley and shone on us while everything at
the head of the valley was in heavy shadow.  I told the outfit to stay where
they were in  the woods, except for M'Cola and the husband who would go with
me, we keeping in the timber and grading up our side of the valley until  we
could be  above and see into the pocket of the  curve at  the  upper end  to
glass it for the sable.
     You ask how this was discussed, worked out, and understood with the bar
of language, and  I say it was as freely discussed and clearly understood as
though we were a cavalry  patrol all speaking the same language. We were all
hunters except, possibly, Garrick, and  the whole thing could be worked out,
understood, and agreed to without using  anything but a forefinger to signal
and a hand to caution. We left  them  and worked very carefully  ahead, well
back in  the timber to  get height. Then,  when  we were  far enough up  and
along, we crawled out on to a rocky  place and, being behind rock, shielding
the glasses  with my  hat so  they would not reflect the sun, M'Cola nodding
and grunting as  he saw the practicability  of that, we glassed the opposite
side of the meadow around the edge of the  timber, and up into the pocket at
the head of the valley;  and there they were. M'Cola saw  them just before I
did and pulled my sleeve.
     'N'Dio,' I  said. Then I held my breath to  watch them. All looked very
black,  big necked,  and heavy. All had the back-curving horns.  They were a
long way away. Some were lying down. One was standing. We could see seven.
     'Where's the bull?' I whispered.
     M'Cola motioned with his left hand and counted four fingers. It was one
of  those lying down  in the tall grass and  the animal did look much bigger
and the horns much  more sweeping. But we were looking into the  morning sun
and it  was  hard  to see well. Behind them a sort of  gully ran up into the
hill that blocked the end of the valley.
     Now we  knew what we had to  do. We  must go back, cross the meadow far
enough down so we were out of sight, get into the timber on the far side and
work along through the timber to get above  the sable. First we must try  to
make sure there were no  more of them  in the timber or  the meadow that  we
must work through before we made our stalk.
     I wet my finger and put it up. From the  cool side it seemed  as though
the breeze  came down  the valley. M'Cola took some dead leaves and crumpled
them  and  tossed them up.  They fell a  little toward us.  The wind was all
right and now we must glass the edge of the timber and check on it.
     'Hapana,'  M'Cola said  finally. I had  seen nothing either and my eyes
ached from the  pull  of the eight-power glasses. We could take a  chance on
the timber.  We might jump something  and spook the sable but we had to take
that chance to get around and above them.
     We made our way back and down and told the others. From where they were
we could cross  the valley out of sight of its upper end and bending low, me
with {my} hat off, we headed down into the high meadow grass and  across the
deeply cut watercourse that  ran  down through  the  centre  of the  meadow,
across its rocky shelf, and  up the  grassy bank on the other  side, keeping
under the edge of a fold of the valley into  the shelter of  the woods. Then
we  headed up through  the woods, crouched, in single  file,  to  try to get
above the sable.
     We went forward making as good time as we could and still move quietly.
I had made too many  stalks on big horn sheep only to find them fed away and
out of sight when you came round the shoulder of the mountain to trust these
sable to stay where they were and, since once we were in the timber we could
no longer see them, I thought it was important that we come up above them as
fast as we could without getting me too blown and shaky for the shooting.
     M'Cola's water bottle made a noise against the cartridges in his pocket
and I stopped and had him pass it to the Wanderobo-Masai. It seemed too many
people to be hunting with,  but they all  moved quietly as snakes, and I was
over-confident anyway. I was sure the sable could not see  us in the forest,
nor wind us.
     Finally I was certain we were above them and that they must be ahead of
us,  and past where the sun  was shining in a thinning of  the  forest,  and
below us, under the edge of the hill, I checked on the aperture in the sight
being  clean,  cleaned  my  glasses  and  wiped the  sweat from my  forehead
remembering to put  the  used handkerchief in my left pocket so I would  not
fog my  glasses wiping them with  it  again. M'Cola  and  I and the  husband
started to work our way to the  edge of the timber; finally  crawling almost
to the edge of the  ridge.  There were still some trees between us  and  the
open meadow below and we  were behind a small bush and a fallen  tree  when,
raising our heads, we could see them in the grassy open, about three hundred
yards  away, showing  big  and  very  dark in  the  shadow. Between  us  was
scattered  open timber full of sunlight and the openness of the gulch. As we
watched  two got to their feet and seemed to  be standing looking at us. The
shot was possible but it was too long to be certain and as I  lay, watching,
I felt  somebody  touch  me on  the  arm and  Garrick,  who had crawled  up,
whispered throatily, 'Piga!  Piga, B'wana!  Doumi! Doumi!' saying  to shoot,
that it was a bull.  I glanced back and there were the whole outfit on their
bellies or hands and knees,  the Wanderobo-Masai  shaking like a bird dog. I
was furious and motioned them all down.
     So  that was a bull, eh, well there was a much bigger bull that  M'Cola
and I had seen lying down.  The two sable were watching us and I dropped  my
head, I thought they might be getting a flash from my glasses. When I looked
up again, very slowly, I shaded  my  eyes  with my hand.  The two  sable had
stopped  looking and were feeding. But  one looked  up again nervously and I
saw  the dark,  heavy-built  antelope  with  scimitar-like horns swung  back
staring at us.
     I had  never seen a sable.  I knew nothing  about them, neither whether
their eyesight was keen, like  a ram  who sees you  at whatever distance you
see him, or like a bull elk  who cannot see you at two  hundred yards unless
you move. I was not sure of their size either, but I judged the range to  be
all of three hundred yards. I  knew I could hit one if I shot from a sitting
position or prone, but I could not say where I would hit him.
     Then Garrick again, 'Piga, B'wana, Piga!' I turned  on him as though to
slug him in the mouth. It would have been a great comfort  to do it. I truly
was  not  nervous when  I  first saw  the sable, but  Garrick was  making me
nervous.
     'Far?' I whispered to M'Cola who had crawled up and was lying by me.
     'Yes.'
     'Shoot?'
     'No. Glasses.'
     We both watched, using the  glasses  guardedly.  I could only see four.
There had been seven. If that was a bull that Garrick pointed out, then they
were all bulls. They all looked  the same colour in  the shadow. Their horns
all  looked big  to me.  I knew that with mountain  sheep the rams  all kept
together in bunches until late in the winter when  they went with the  ewes;
that  in  the  late summer you found  bull  elk in bunches  too, before  the
rutting season, and that later they herded up together again. We had seen as
many as twenty impalla rams together upon the Serenea. All right, then, they
could all be bulls, but  I wanted a good one, the best one, and  I tried  to
remember having read something about them, but  all I could  remember  was a
silly story of some man seeing the same bull every morning in the same place
and never getting up on him. All I could remember was  the wonderful pair of
horns we had seen in the Game Warden's office in Arusha. And here were sable
now, and I must play it right and get the best one. It never occurred  to me
that Garrick had never seen a sable and that he knew no more about them than
M'Cola or I.
     'Too far,' I said to M'Cola.
     'Yes.'
     'Come on,' I said, then  waved the others down, and we started crawling
up to reach the edge of the hill.
     Finally we lay behind a tree  and I looked  around it. Now we could see
their  horns clearly  with the  glasses and could  see the other three. One,
lying down,  was certainly much the biggest and the  horns, as I caught them
in silhouette, seemed to curve much higher and farther  back. I was studying
them, too excited to be happy as I watched them, when I heard M'Cola whisper
'B'wana.'
     I  lowered  the  glasses  and  looked  and there was Garrick, taking no
advantage of the cover,  crawling on his  hands and knees out to join  us. I
put my hand  out,  palm  toward  him,  and  waved him  down  but  he paid no
attention and  came crawling on, as conspicuous as a man walking down a city
street on hands  and knees. I saw one  sable looking toward us,  toward him,
rather. Then three more got to their feet. Then the big one got up and stood
broadside with head turned toward us as Garrick came up  whispering,  'Piga,
B'wana! Piga! Doumi! Doumi! Kubwa Sana.'
     There was  no  choice now. They were  definitely  spooked and I lay out
flat on my belly, put my arm through the sling, got my elbows settled and my
right  toe pushing the ground and squeezed off on the centre  of the  bull's
shoulder. But at the roar I knew it was bad. I was over him. They all jumped
and  stood looking, not  knowing where  the noise came from. I shot again at
the bull and threw dirt all over him and they were off. I was on my feet and
hit him as he ran and he was down. Then he was up and I hit him again and he
took it and was in the bunch. They passed him and I shot and was behind him.
Then I hit him again and he was trailing slowly and I knew I had him. M'Cola
was  handing  me  cartridges  and  I  was  shoving  shells   down  into  the
damned-to-hell, lousy, staggered,  Springfield magazine  watching the  sable
making heavy weather of it crossing the watercourse. We had him all right. I
could see he was very sick. The others were  trailing up into the timber. In
the sunlight on the other side they looked much lighter and the one I'd shot
looked  lighter, too. They looked a dark chestnut and the one I had shot was
almost black. But he  was not black and I felt there was  something wrong. I
shoved  the  last  shell  in  and  Garrick  was  trying to grab  my hand  to
congratulate me when, below us across the open space where the gully that we
could not  see opened on to the head of the valley, sable started to pass at
a running stampede.
     'Good God,' I thought. They all  looked like the one  I  had shot and I
was trying to pick  a big one. They  all looked about the same and they were
crowding running and then came the bull.  Even in the  shadow he was a  dead
black and shiny  as he hit the sun, and his horns  swept up high, then back,
huge and dark,  in two great curves nearly touching the middle of his  back.
He was a bull all right. God, what a bull.
     'Doumi,' said M'Cola in my ear. 'Doumi!'
     I  hit  him and  at  the roar he was  down. I  saw  him  up, the others
passing,  spreading out, then bunching. I missed him.  Then  I saw him going
almost straight away up the valley in the tall grass and I hit him again and
he  went out of sight. The sable  now were going up  the hill at the head of
the valley, up the hill at our right, up the hill in the  timber across  the
valley, spread out and  travelling  fast. Now that I had seen a bull I  knew
they all were cows including the first one I had shot. The bull never showed
and  I  was absolutely sure that  we would find him where I had  seen him go
down in the long grass.
     The outfit were all  up and I shook  off  handshaking and thumb pulling
before we started down through the trees and  over the edge of the gully and
to the  meadow on a dead run. My eyes,  my  mind, and all  inside of me were
full of  the blackness of that sable bull and the sweep of those horns and I
was  thanking God I had  the rifle reloaded before he  came out. But  it was
excited shooting, all of it, and I was not proud of it. I had gotten excited
and shot  at the whole  animal instead of the right place and I was ashamed,
but the outfit now were drunk excited. I would have walked but you could not
hold them, they were like a pack of dogs as we ran. As we crossed the meadow
opening where we had first seen the seven and went beyond where the bull had
gone out of sight, the grass suddenly was high and over our  heads and every
one slowed down. There  were two washed-out concealed ravines ten  or twelve
feet  deep that  ran down  to  the watercourse and what had  looked a smooth
grass-filled basin was very broken, tricky country with grass  that was from
waist-high to well above our heads. We found blood at once and it led off to
the left, across the  watercourse and up the hillside on the left toward the
head of the valley. I thought that was the first sable but it seemed a wider
swing than he had seemed to make when we watched him going from above in the
timber. I made a circle to  look for the big bull but I could not  pick  his
track from the mass of tracks and in the high  grass  and the broken terrain
it was difficult to figure just where he had gone.
     They  were  all for  the  blood  spoor and it was like  trying to  make
badly-trained bird dogs hunt a dead bird when they are crazy to be off after
the rest of the covey.
     'Doumi! Doumi!' I said. 'Kubwa Sana! The bull. The big bull.'
     'Yes,' everybody agreed. 'Here! Here!' The blood spoor that crossed the
watercourse.
     Finally I took that trail  thinking we must get them one at a time, and
knowing this one  was hard hit and the other would keep. Then, too, I  might
be  wrong and this might be the  big bull, he might possibly  have turned in
the high grass  and crossed here as we  were  running down. I had been wrong
before, I remembered.
     We  trailed fast  up  the hillside,  into  the timber,  the  blood  was
splashed freely; made a turn  toward the right, climbing steeply, and at the
head of the valley  in some  large  rocks jumped a sable. It went scrambling
and bounding off through the  rocks. I saw in an instant that it was not hit
and knew that, in spite of the back-swung dark horns, it  was a cow from the
dark chestnut colour. But  I saw this just in time to  keep from shooting. I
had started to pull when I lowered the rifle.
     'Manamouki,' I said. 'It's a cow.'
     M'Cola and the two Roman guides agreed. I had very nearly shot. We went
on perhaps five yards and another sable jumped. But this one was swaying its
head wildly and could  not clear  the rocks. It was  hard hit and I took  my
time, shot carefully, and broke its neck.
     We came  up to it,  lying in  the  rocks, a large,  deep chestnut-brown
animal, almost black, the horns black and curving handsomely back, there was
a white patch on the muzzle and back from the  eye, there was a white belly;
but it was no bull.
     M'Cola,  still  in   doubt,  verified  this   and  feeling  the  short,
rudimentary teats said 'Manamouki', and shook his head sadly.
     It was the first big bull that Garrick had pointed out.
     'Bull down there,' I pointed.
     'Yes,' said M'Cola.
     I thought  that we  would give him time to  get sick, if he  were  only
wounded,  and then go  down and find him. So I had M'Cola  make the cuts for
taking off the head skin and we would leave the old man to skin out the head
while we went down after the bull.
     I  drank some water from the  canteen. I was thirsty after the  run and
the climb, and the sun was up now and it was  getting hot. Then we went down
the opposite side of the valley from that  we had  just come up trailing the
wounded  cow, and below, in the tall grass, casting in circles, commenced to
hunt for the trail of the bull. We could not find it.
     The  sable  had  been  running in  a bunch as  they  came  out and  any
individual  track was confused  or obliterated.  We  found some blood on the
grass  stems where I had first hit him,  then lost it,  then  found it again
where the other blood spoor turned off. Then the  tracks had all split up as
they had gone, fan-wise, up the valley and  the hills and we could not  find
it again. Finally  I found blood on a grass blade  about fifty  yards up the
valley and I plucked it and held it up.  This was a  mistake.  I should have
brought them to  it. Already everyone but M'Cola  was  losing faith  in  the
bull.
     He was not there. He  had disappeared. He had vanished. Perhaps he  had
never existed.  Who could say  he was a real  bull? If I had not plucked the
grass with the blood  on it I might have held them. Growing there with blood
on  it, it was evidence.  Plucked, it  meant  nothing except  to me  and  to
M'Cola.  But  I  could  find  no  more  blood  and  they  were  all  hunting
half-heartedly  now. The only  possible way was to quarter every foot of the
high grass and trace every foot of the gullies. It was very hot now and they
were only making a pretence of hunting.
     Garrick came up. 'All  cows,' he said. 'No bull. Just biggest  cow. You
killed biggest cow. We found her. Smaller cow get away.'
     'You wind-blown  son  of a  bitch,'  I said,  then,  using my  fingers.
'Listen. Seven cows. Then fifteen cows and one bull. Bull hit. Here.'
     'All cows,' said Garrick.
     'One big cow hit. One bull hit.'
     I  was  so  sure sounding  that they agreed to this and searched for  a
while but I could see they were losing belief in the bull.
     'If I had one good dog,' I thought. 'Just one good dog.'
     Then Garrick came up. 'All cows,' he said. 'Very big cows.'
     'You're a cow,' I said. 'Very big cow.'
     This got a  laugh from the Wanderobo-Masai, who was  getting  to look a
picture of sick misery. The brother half believed in the  bull, I could see.
Husband,  by  now, did not  believe in any  of us.  I didn't think  he  even
believed in the kudu of  the night before. Well, after  this shooting, I did
not blame him.
     M'Cola came up. 'Hapana,' he said glumly. Then,  'B'wana, you shot that
bull?'
     'Yes,' I said.  For a minute I began to doubt whether there ever  was a
bull. Then I saw again his heavy, high-withered blackness and  the high rise
of his  horns before they swept back, him running with  the bunch,  shoulder
higher than them and black as hell and as I saw it, M'Cola saw  it again too
through the rising  mist  of the  savage's unbelief in what he can no longer
see.
     'Yes,' M'Cola agreed. 'I see him. You shoot him.'
     I told it again. 'Seven cows.  Shoot biggest.  Fifteen cows,  one bull.
Hit that bull.'
     They all believed it now for  a  moment and circled, searching, but the
faith died at once in the heat of the sun and the tall grass blowing.
     'All cows,' Garrick said. The Wanderobo-Masai nodded, his mouth open. I
could feel the comfortable lack of faith coming over me too. It was a damned
sight easier not to hunt in that sun in that shadeless pocket and in the sun
on that steep hillside.  I told M'Cola we would  hunt up the valley on  both
sides, finish skinning out the head, and  he and I would come down alone and
find the bull.  You could not hunt them against that unbelief. I  had had no
chance to train them; no  power  to discipline. If there had been  no  law I
would have  shot  Garrick and they would  all have hunted  or cleared out. I
think they would have hunted. Garrick was not popular. He was simply poison.
     M'Cola and I came back down the  valley, quartered  it like bird  dogs,
circled  and followed and  checked track  after  track.  I was hot  and very
thirsty. The sun was something serious by now.
     'Hapana,' M'Cola said. We could not  find him. Whatever he was,  we had
lost him.
     'Maybe he was a cow.  Maybe  it was all goofy,' I thought, letting  the
unbelief come in as a comfort. We  were going to hunt up the hillside to the
right and then we would have checked it all and would take the cow head into
camp and see what the Roman had located.
     I was dead thirsty and drained the canteen. We would get water in camp.
     We  started up the  hill and I jumped a sable  in some brush.  I almost
loosed off at it before I saw  it was a cow.  That  showed how one could  be
hidden, I thought.  We  would have to get the men and go over it all  again;
and then, from the old man, came a wild shouting.
     'Doumi! Doumi!' in a high, screaming shout.
     'Where?' I shouted, running across the hill toward him.
     'There! There!' he shouted, pointing into  the timber on the other side
of the head of the valley. 'There! There! There he goes! There!'
     We came on  a dead run but the bull  was out of sight in the  timber on
the hillside. The old man  said  he  was huge, he  was black,  he  had great
horns, and he came by him ten yards away, hit in two places,  in the gut and
high up in the rump, hard  hit but going fast, crossing the valley,  through
the boulders and going up the hillside.
     I gut-shot him, I thought. Then as he was going away I laid that one on
his  stern. He  lay down and was sick and we missed him. Then, when we  were
past, he jumped.
     'Come on,' I said. Everyone was excited and ready to go now and the old
man was chattering  about the  bull as he folded the  head skin and put  the
head  upon his own  head  and  we started  across through  the rocks and up,
quartering up on to  the hillside. There, where the old man had pointed, was
a very big sable track, the hoof marks  spread  wide, the  tracks grading up
into the timber and there was blood, plenty of it.
     We  trailed him fast, hoping  to  jump him and have  a shot, and it was
easy trailing in the shade of the trees with plenty of blood to  follow. But
he kept climbing, grading up around the hill, and he was travelling fast. We
kept the blood bright and wet  but  we could  not come up on  him. I did not
track but kept watching ahead thinking I might see him as he looked back, or
see him down, or cutting down across the hill through the timber, and M'Cola
and Garrick were tracking, aided by every one but the  old man who staggered
along with the sable skull and  head skin  held on his own grey head. M'Cola
had hung the empty  water bottle on him, and Garrick had loaded him with the
cinema camera. It was hard going for the old man.
     Once we came on a place where the bull had  rested and watched his back
track, there was a little pool of blood on a rock where he had stood, behind
some bushes, and I cursed the wind that blew our scent on ahead of us. There
was  a  big breeze  blowing  now and  I  was certain  we  had no  chance  of
surprising him, our scent would keep everything moving  out of the way ahead
of  us as  long as anything could  move. I thought of trying to circle ahead
with M'Cola and let them track but we  were moving fast, the blood was still
bright on the stones and on the  fallen leaves and grass and the hills  were
too steep for us to make a circle. I did not see how we could lose him.
     Then  he  took  us  up and into a rocky, ravine-cut  country  where the
trailing was slow and the climbing difficult. Here, I thought, we would jump
him in a gully but the spatters of blood,  not so bright now, went on around
the boulders, over the rocks and up and up and left us on a rim-rock  ledge.
He must have gone down from there.  It was too steep above for him.  to have
gone over the  top of the hill.  There was no  other way to go but down, but
how had  he  gone,  and down which ravine?  I sent them  looking down  three
possible ways and got out  on the rim to  try  to  sight him. They could not
find any  spoor, and then  the  Wanderobo-Masai called from below and to the
right that he had blood and, climbing  down, . we saw it on a rock and  then
followed it  in occasional drying splatters  down through a steep descent to
the meadow below.  I  was encouraged  when he started  down  hill and in the
knee-high,  heavy grass of the  meadow trailing was easy again, because  the
grass  brushed against his  belly and while you could not see tracks clearly
without  stooping double and parting the grass to look, yet the blood  spoor
was plain on the grass blades. But it was dry now and dully shiny and I knew
we had lost much time on him when he rim-rocked us on the hill.
     Finally his trail crossed the dry watercourse  about where we had first
come in sight of the meadow in  the morning and led  away into the  sloping,
sparsely-wooded  country on the far side.  There were no clouds and  I could
feel the sun  now, not just as heat but as  a heavy deadly weight on my head
and  I was  very  thirsty. It was very hot but  it  was  not  the  heat that
bothered. It was the weight of the sun.
     Garrick  had  given  up tracking  seriously  and was only  contributing
theatrical successes of discovering blood when M'Cola and I were checked. He
would  do no  routine tracking  any more, but would  rest and  then track in
irritating spurts.  The Wanderobo-Masai was useless as a blue-jay and I  had
M'Cola give him the big rifle to  carry so that we would get some use out of
him. The Roman's brother was obviously not a hunter  and the husband was not
very  interested. He did not seem  to  be a hunter either.  As  we  trailed,
slowly, the ground, hard now as the sun had baked it,  the blood only  black
spots and splatters on the short grass, one by one the brother, Garrick, and
the Wanderobo-Masai dropped out and sat in the shade of the scattered trees.
     The sun was terrific and as it  was necessary to track with  heads bent
down  and stooping, in spite of a handkerchief  spread  over my neck I had a
pounding ache in my head.
     M'Cola was tracking  slowly, steadily, and absolutely  absorbed in  the
problem. His bare, bald head gleamed with sweat and when it  ran down in his
eyes he would pluck a grass stem, hold it with each hand and shave the sweat
off his forehead and bald black crown with the stem.
     We went  on  slowly. I  had always sworn to Pop that I could  out-track
M'Cola  but I  realized now that in the past  I  had  been giving a sort  of
Garrick  performance in picking up  the  spoor  when it was lost and that in
straight, steady trailing, now  in the heat, with the sun really  bad, truly
bad  so that you could feel what  it was doing to your  head, cooking  it to
hell, trailing in short  grass on hard  ground where a blood spot was a dry,
black blister on  a grass blade, difficult to see; that you  must  find  the
next little black spot perhaps twenty yards away, one holding the last blood
while  the  other found  the next, then  going  on, one on  each side of the
trail; pointing with a grass stem at the spots to save talking, until it ran
out again and you marked the last  bood with your eye and both made casts to
pick it up again,  signalling with a hand up,  my mouth  too dry  to talk, a
heat shimmer  over the ground now when you straightened up to  let your neck
stop aching and looked ahead, I knew M'Cola was immeasurably the better  man
and the better tracker. Have to tell Pop, I thought.
     At this point M'Cola made  a joke. My mouth was so dry that it was hard
to talk.
     'B'wana,' M'Cola said, looking at  me  when I  had straiglitened up and
was leaning my neck back to get the crick out of it.
     'Yes?'
     'Whisky?' and he offered me the flask.
     'You bastard,' I said in English, and he chuckled and shook his head.
     'Hapana whisky?'
     'You savage,' I said in Swahili.
     We started tracking again, M'Cola shaking his head and very amused, and
in a little while the grass  was longer and  it was easier again. We crossed
all that semi-open country we  had seen from the hillside in the morning and
going down  a  slope the tracks swung back into  high grass.  In this higher
grass I found that by half  shutting my eyes  I could see his trail where he
had shouldered through the grass  and  I went ahead fast without trailing by
the blood,  to M'Cola's amazement, but then  we came out on very short grass
and rock again and now the trailing was the hardest yet.
     He was not bleeding much now; the sun and the  heat must have dried the
wounds  and we found only an occasional small  starry  splatter on the rocky
ground.
     Garrick came  up and made  a couple of  brilliant  discoveries of blood
spots, then sat  down under  a tree. Under another tree I could see the poor
old  Wanderobo-Masai  holding his  first and  last job as  gun-bearer. Under
another  was  the old  man, the sable head beside  him like  some black-mass
symbol,  his  equipment hanging from his  shoulders. M'Cola  and I  went  on
trailing very  slowly and laboriously across  the long stony slope and  back
and up into another tree-scattered meadow,  and through it, and  into a long
field with piled up boulders at the end. In the middle of this field we lost
the trail completely  and circled and hunted  for nearly two hours before we
found blood again.
     The old man found it for us below the boulders and to the right half  a
mile  away. He had gone ahead down  there on  his own  idea of what the bull
would have done. The old man was a hunter.
     Then we trailed him very slowly,  on to hard stony  ground a mile away.
But we could not trail from there. The ground was  too hard to leave a track
and we never found blood again.  Then we hunted  on our  various theories of
where the bull would go, but the country was too big and we had no luck.
     'No good,' M'Cola said.
     I  straightened  up and went  over to the  shade of a big tree. It felt
cool  as water and the breeze  cooled my skin  through the wet  shirt. I was
thinking  about the bull  and wishing  to God I had never hit him. Now I had
wounded him and lost him. I believe he kept right on travelling and went out
of that  country. He never showed any  tendency to circle back.  To-night he
would die and the hyenas would eat him, or, worse, they would get him before
he died, hamstringing him and pulling his guts  out while he was alive.  The
first one  that hit that blood  spoor would stay with it until he found him.
Then he would call up the others.  I  felt a son of a bitch to  have hit him
and not killed him. I did not mind killing anything, any animal, if I killed
it cleanly, they all had to die and my interference with the nightly and the
seasonal killing  that went on all  the  time  was very minute  and I had no
guilty feeling at all. We  ate the meat and  kept the hides and horns. But I
felt  rotten sick over  this sable bull. Besides, I wanted him, I wanted him
damned badly, I wanted  him more than I would admit. Well, we had played our
string out  with  him. Our chance  was at the start when he was down  and we
missed him.  We  had  lost  that.  No,  our best chance, the only  chance  a
rifleman should ever ask, was when I had a shot and shot at the whole animal
instead of calling  the shot. It was my own  lousy fault. I  was a  son of a
bitch to have gut-shot him. It came from over-confidence in being able to do
a thing and then omitting one  of the steps in how it is done. Well, we  had
lost him. I doubted  if there was a dog in the  world could trail him now in
that  heat. Still  that was the  only chance. I got  out the  dictionary and
asked the old man if there were any dogs at the Roman's place.

'No,' said the old man. 'Hapana.'
     We  made a very wide circle and I sent  the brother and the husband out
in another circle. We found nothing, no  trace, no tracks,  no blood,  and I
told M'Cola we would start  for camp. The  Roman's brother  and  the husband
went up  the valley to get  the meat  of the  sable cow we had shot. We were
beaten.
     M'Cola and I ahead, the  other following, we went  across the long heat
haze of the open country, down to cross the dry watercourse, and up and into
the grateful  shade of  the trail through the woods. As we were going  along
through the broken  sunlight and shadow, the floor  of the forest smooth and
springy where we cut across to save distance from  the trail, we  saw,  less
than a hundred yards away, a herd of sable standing in the timber looking at
us. I pulled back the bolt and looked for the best pair of horns.
     'Doumi,' Garrick whispered. 'Doumi kubwa sana!'
     I looked  where he pointed. It was a very big cow sable, dark chestnut,
white  marks on the face,  white belly,  heavy built and with a fine curving
pair  of horns. She was standing  broadside to  us  with  her  head  turned,
looking. I looked carefully at  the whole lot. They were all cows, evidently
the bunch whose bull I had wounded and lost, and they had come over the hill
and herded up again together here.
     'We go to camp,' I said to M'Cola.
     As we started forward  the sable jumped and  ran past  us, crossing the
trail ahead. At every  good pair of cow horns,  Garrick said, 'Bull, B'wana.
Big, big bull. Shoot, B'wana. Shoot, oh shoot!'
     'All cows,' I  said to  M'Cola  when they were past, running in a panic
through the sun-splashed timber.
     'Yes,' he agreed.
     'Old man,' I said. The old man came up.
     'Let the guide carry that,' I said.
     The old man lowered the cow sable head.
     'No,' said Garrick.
     'Yes,' I said. 'Bloody well yes.'
     We went  on  through  the woods toward camp. I was feeling better, much
better.  All through  the day  I had never thought once of the  kudu. Now we
were coming home to where they were waiting.
     It seemed much  longer coming home although, usually, the return over a
new trail  is shorter. I was  tired all  the way into my bones, my head felt
cooked, and I  was thirstier than I  had ever been in my life. But suddenly,
walking through the woods,  it was  much cooler. A cloud  had come  over the
sun.
     We came out of  the timber and down on to the flat and in sight of  the
thorn fence. The  sun was behind a bank of clouds now  and then in a  little
while  the sky  was  covered completely  and  the  clouds looked  heavy  and
threatening. I thought perhaps this had been the last clear hot day; unusual
heat  before the rains. First  I thought: if it had only rained, so that the
ground would  hold a track, we  could have  stayed with  that bull for ever;
then, looking  at the heavy, woolly clouds  that  so quickly had covered all
the sky, I thought that if we were going to join the outfit, and get the car
across that ten-mile stretch  of black cotton road on the way to Handeni, we
had better start. I pointed to the sky.
     'Bad,' M'Cola agreed.
     'Go to the camp of B'wana M'Kubwa?'
     'Better.' Then, vigorously, accepting the decision, 'N'Dio. N'Dio.'
     'We go,' I said.
     Arrived at the thorn fence and the hut, we broke camp fast. There was a
runner  there  from  our last camp  who had brought a  note, written  before
P.O.M, and Pop had  left, and bringing my mosquito net. There was nothing in
the note, only good luck and that they were  starting.  I drank  some  water
from  one of our canvas  bags, sat on a petrol tin and looked at the  sky. I
could not, conscientiously, chance staying. If it rained here we  might  not
even be able to get out to  the  road. If  it rained heavily on the road, we
would never get out to the coast that season.  Both the Austrian and Pop had
said that, I had to go.
     That was settled, so. there was  no  use to think  how much I wanted to
stay. The  day's fatigue helped make the decision easy. Everything was being
loaded  into the car and they  were all gathering  up their  meat  from  the
sticks around the ashes of the fire.
     'Don't you want to eat, B'wana?' Kamau asked me.
     'No,' I said. Then in English, 'Too bloody tired.'
     'Eat. You are hungry.'
     'Later, in the car.'
     M'Cola went by with a load, his  big, flat face completely blank again.
It only {came} alive about  hunting or some joke.  I found  a tin cup by the
fire and called to him  to bring the whisky,  and the blank  face cracked at
the eyes and mouth into a smile as he took the flask out of his pocket.
     'With water better,' he said.
     'You black Chinaman.'
     They  were all working fast and the Roman's women came over and stood a
little way away watching the carrying and the packing of the car. There were
two of them, good-looking, well built, and  shy,  but interested.  The Roman
was not back yet. I felt  very badly to go off like this with no explanation
to him. I liked the Roman very much and had a high regard for him.
     I  took a drink of the whisky and water  and looked at the two pairs of
kudu horns  that leaned against the wall of the chicken coop  hut.  From the
white,  cleanly  picked skulls the horns rose in slow spirals that spreading
made a  turn, another turn,  and then  curved delicately into  those smooth,
ivory-like points. One pair was narrower and taller against  the side of the
hut.  The other was almost as tall  but wider in spread and heavier in beam.
They were the colour of black walnut meats and they were beautiful to see. I
went over and  stood  the Springfield against the hut  between  them and the
tips reached past the muzzle  of the rifle. As Kamau came back from carrying
a load  to the  car I  told him to  bring  the camera and then had him stand
beside  them while I took  a  picture.  Then he  picked them up, each head a
load, and carried them over to the car.
     Garrick was talking loudly and in  a roostery way to the Roman's women.
As near as I could make  out he was offering them the  empty petrol boxes in
exchange for a piece of something.
     'Come here,' I called to him. He came over still feeling smart.
     'Listen,' I told him in English. 'If I get through this safari  without
socking you it's  going to be a bloody  marvel. And  if I ever hit you  I'll
break your mucking jaw. That's all.'
     He did not understand the words  but the tone made it clearer than if I
had got something out of the dictionary to tell him. I stood up and motioned
to  the  women  that they could have the  petrol tins  and the  cases. I was
damned if I could not have anything to do with them  if I would let  Garrick
make any passes.
     'Get in the car,' I  told him. 'No,' as he started  to make delivery of
one of the petrol tins, 'in the car.' He went over to the car.
     We were all packed now and ready  to go. The horns were curling out the
back of the car, tied on  to the loads. I left some money for the  Roman and
one of  the kudu hides with the boy.  Then we got  in the car. I got in  the
front seat with the Wanderobo-Masai. Behind  were M'Cola,  Garrick, and  the
runner, who was a man from the  old man's  village by  the road. The old man
was crouched on top of the loads at the back, close under the roof.
     We waved  and started, passing more of the Roman's household, the older
and  uglier part,  roasting up piles of meat by a  log fire beside the trail
that came up from the  river  through the maize field.  We made the crossing
all right, the creek was down and the banks  had  dried and I looked back at
the field, the Roman's huts, and  the stockade where we had camped,  and the
blue hills, dark under the heavy sky, and I felt very badly not to have seen
the Roman and explain why we had gone off like this.
     Then we were going through the woods, following our trail and trying to
make time to get out before dark. We had trouble, twice, at boggy places and
Garrick seemed  to be  in a state of  great  hysteria, ordering people about
when we were  cutting brush and shovelling; until I was certain I would have
to hit  him. He called  for corporal punishment the  way a showing-off child
does for  a  spanking. Kamau and  M'Cola  were both laughing at  him. He was
playing  the  victorious  leader home from the  chase now.  I thought it was
really a shame that he could not have his ostrich plumes.
     Once when  we were stuck and I was shovelling and he was  stooping over
in  a frenzy  of  advice and  command-giving, I  brought the  handle of  the
shovel, with manifest un-intention, up hard into his belly and he  sat down,
backwards. I never looked  toward  him, and M'Cola, Kamau, and I  could  not
look --at each other for fear we would laugh.
     'I am hurt,' he said in astonishment, getting to his feet.
     'Never  get  near  a  man  shovelling,'  I  said  in  English.  'Damned
dangerous.'
     'I am hurt,' said Garrick holding his belly.
     'Rub it,' I told him and  rubbed mine to show  him how. We all got into
the car again  and  I  began  to feel  sorry for the poor,  bloody, useless,
theatrical bastard, so I  told M'Cola I would drink a bottle of beer. He got
one  out  from  under  the  loads in  the  back, we  were going through  the
deer-park-looking  country now,  opened it, and  I drank it slowly. I looked
around  and  saw  Garrick was  all right now, letting his mouth  run  freely
again. He rubbed his belly and  seemed to  be telling them  what a hell of a
man  he was and how he had never felt it. I could feel the  old man watching
me from up under the roof as I drank the beer.
     'Old man,' I said.
     'Yes, B'wana.'
     'A  present,' and  I handed what was  left in  the  bottle  back. There
wasn't much left but the foam and a very little beer.
     'Beer?' asked M'Cola.
     'By  God, yes,' I  said. I was thinking about beer  and in my  mind was
back to  that year in the spring  when we walked on the mountain road to the
Bains  de Alliez and the  beer-drinking  contest where we  failed to win the
calf and came home that niglit around the mountain with the moonlight on the
fields of  narcissi that  grew  on the meadows,  and  how  we were drunk and
talked about how you would  describe that light  on  that paleness, and  the
brown beer  sitting at the wood tables under the wistaria vine at Aigle when
we came  in across  the Rhone  Valley from fishing the  Stockalper with  the
horse chestnut trees in bloom, and  Chink and I again discussing writing and
whether you  could call them waxen candela-bras. God,  what  bloody literary
discussions we  had; we were  literary as hell then just after the war,  and
later  there was the good beer at Lipp's at midnight after Mascart-Ledoux at
the Cirque  de Paris or Routis-Ledoux, or  after any other great fight where
you lost  your  voice  and were still too excited  to turn in; but beer  was
mostly those years just after the war with Chink and in the mountains. Flags
for the Fusilier, crags  for the Mountaineer, for English poets beer, strong
beer for me.  That was  Chink then, quoting Robert  Graves, then. We outgrew
some countries and we went to others but beer was still a bloody marvel. The
old man knew it too. I had seen  it in his eye the first time he saw me take
a drink.
     'Beer,' said M'Cola. He had it open, and I looked out at that park-like
country,  the engine hot  under  my boots, the Wanderobo-Masai  as strong as
ever beside me, Kamau  watching the  grooves of the tyre tracks in the green
turf, and I hung my booted legs over  the side to let my feet cool and drank
the beer  and wished old Chink was  along. Captain Eric Edward Dorman-Smith,
M.C., of His Majesty's Fifth Fusiliers. Now if he were here we could discuss
how to describe this deer-park country  and whether deer-park was  enough to
call it. Pop and Chink were much alike. Pop was older and more tolerant  for
his  years  and  the same sort of company. I was  learning  under Pop, while
Chink  and  I had discovered a big part  of the  world together and then our
ways had gone a long way apart.
     But that damned sable  bull.  I should have killed him,  but  it was  a
running shot. To hit him at  all I had to use  him all as a target. Yes, you
bastard, but what about the cow you missed twice, prone, standing broadside?
Was that a running shot?  No. If I'd gone to bed last night I would not have
done  that. Or if I'd  wiped out the bore to get the oil out she  would  not
have thrown high the  first time. Then I would not have pulled down and shot
under her the  second shot.  Every damned thing  is your own fault if you're
any  good. I thought I could shoot a shot-gun  better than I could and I had
lost plenty of money  backing my  opinion, but  I knew, coldly, and  outside
myself,  that I could shoot a rifle  on game as  well  as any son of a bitch
that ever lived.  Like hell I could. So what? So I gut-shot a sable bull and
let him get away. Could I shoot as well as I thought I could? Sure. Then why
did I  miss on  that cow? Hell,  everybody  is off sometime. You've  got  no
bloody  business to be off. Who the hell are you? My conscience? Listen, I'm
all right with my conscience. I know just what kind of a son of a bitch I am
and I know what I can do well. If I hadn't had to leave and pull out I would
have got  a sable bull. You know the Roman was  a  hunter. There was another
herd.  Why did I have to make a  one-night stand? Was that any way to  hunt?
Hell,  no. I'd make  some money some way and when we came back we would come
to  the old man's village in  lorries,  then pack in with  porters  so there
wouldn't be any damned car to worry about, send the porters --back, and make
a camp in the timber up the  stream above the Roman's and hunt  that country
slowly, living there  and hunting out  each day,  sometimes laying  off  and
writing for a week, or writing  half the day, or every other day, and get to
know it as I knew the country around the lake where we were  brought up. I'd
see the  buffalo  feeding where  they lived, and  when  the  elephants  came
through the hills we would see them and watch them breaking branches and not
have to shoot, and  I would lie in the fallen leaves and watch the kudu feed
out and never fire a shot unless  I saw  a better  head than this one in the
back,  and instead of trailing that sable  bull, gut-shot to hell, all  day,
I'd  lie  behind  a  rock and watch them on the  hillside and  see them long
enough  so they belonged to me for  ever. Sure, if Garrick  didn't take  his
B'wana Simba car in there and shoot the country out. But if he did I'd go on
down beyond those hills and there would be another country where a man could
live and hunt if he had time to live and hunt. They'd gone in wherever a car
could go. But there  must be pockets  like this  all over, that no one knows
of, that the cars pass all along the road. They all hunt the same places.
     'Beer?' asked M'Cola.
     'Yes,' I said.
     Sure, you  couldn't  make a living.  Everyone had  explained  that. The
locusts came  and ate your crops  and the monsoon failed, and the  rains did
not come, and everything dried up and died. There were ticks and fly to kill
the stock, and the mosquitoes  gave you fever  and maybe you got blackwater.
Your cattle would die and you would get no price for your coffee. It took an
Indian  to  make money  from sisal and on the coast every coconut plantation
meant  a  man ruined by the idea of making money  from copra. A white hunter
worked three months  out of the year and drank for twelve and the Government
was ruining  the country for the benefit of the  Hindu and the natives. That
was what they told you. Sure. But I did not want to make money. All I wanted
was  to  live  in it and have  time to hunt. Already I  had  had one  of the
diseases and had experienced the necessity of washing a three-inch bit of my
large intestine with soap and water and tucking it back where it belonged an
unnumbered  amount  of times a day. There were remedies which cured this and
it was well worth  going through for what I had  seen  and where I had been.
Besides I caught that  on the dirty  boat out from Marseilles. P.O.M, hadn't
been ill  a day.  Neither had Karl. I loved this country and I  felt at home
and where a man feels  at home, outside of where  he's born, is  where  he's
meant to go. Then, in my grandfather's time, Michigan was  a  malaria ridden
state.  They  called  it  fever  and ague. And in  Tortugas, where I'd spent
months, a thousand men once died of yellow fever. New continents and islands
try to  frighten  you  with  disease  as  a snake hisses. The  snake  may be
poisonous too. You kill them off. Hell,  what I  had a month ago would  have
killed me in the old days before they invented the remedies.  Maybe it would
and maybe I would have got well.
     It  is  easier  to  keep  well in  a  good  country  by  taking  simple
precautions than to pretend that a country which is finished is still good.
     A continent ages quickly once we  come. The  natives I live in  harmony
with it. But the  foreigner destroys, cuts down the trees, drains the water,
so that the water supply  is altered, and in a short time the soil, once the
sod is turned under, is  cropped out, and next it starts to  blow away as it
has blown  away in every old country and  as  I had seen it start to blow in
Canada. The earth gets tired of being exploited. A country wears out quickly
unless man puts back in it all his residue and that of all his  beasts. When
he quits using beasts and  uses machines the earth defeats him quickly.  The
machine can't reproduce, nor does it fertilize the soil, and it eats what he
cannot raise. A country was made to  be as we found it. We are the intruders
and  after we are dead we may  have ruined it but it will still be there and
we don't  know what the next changes  are. I  suppose they all  end  up like
Mongolia.
     I would come back  to  Africa but not to make a living from it. I could
do that with two pencils and a few hundred sheets of the cheapest paper. But
I would come back to  where it pleased me  to live, to really live. Not just
to let my life pass. Our people went  to America because  that was the place
to go  then. It had been a good country and we had made a mess of  it and  I
would go, now, somewhere else as we had always had the right to go somewhere
else and as  we had always gone.  You could always come back. Let the others
come to America who did not know that they had come too late. Our people had
seen it at its best and  fought for it when it was  well worth fighting for.
Now I would go somewhere else. We always went in the old days and there were
still good places to go.
     I  knew a good country when I saw  one. Here there  was game, plenty of
birds,  and  I  liked  the natives. Here I could  shoot and fish.  That, and
writing, and reading, and seeing pictures was all I cared about doing. And I
could remember all the pictures. Other things I liked to watch but they were
what  I liked to do. That and ski-ing. But my legs were  bad now and  it was
not worth the time you spent  hunting good snow any more.  You saw too  many
people ski-ing now.
     Now, the car  making a turn around a bank  and crossing a green, grassy
field, we came in sight of the Masai village.
     When the Masai  saw us they started running and we stopped,  surrounded
by  them, just below the stockade. There were the young warriors who had run
with  us, and now their women and the children all  came out to see us.  The
children were all quite young and the men and women all seemed the same age.
There were  no old  people. They all seemed  to be our  great friends and we
gave a  very successful party with refreshments  in the  shape of our  bread
which they all ate with much laughing, the men first, then the women. Then I
had  M'Cola open  the  two cans of mincemeat and the plum pudding and I  cut
these into rations and passed them out. I had heard and  read that the Masai
subsisted only on the  blood  of their cattle  mixed with  milk, drawing the
blood {off} from a wound in a vein of the  neck made by shooting an arrow at
close  range.  These Masai,  however,  ate bread,  cold  mincemeat, and plum
pudding with  great  relish and much  laughter and joking. One very tall and
handsome one kept asking me something  that  I  did not understand  and then
five  or six more joined in. Whatever this was they wanted  it  very  badly.
Finally the tallest one  made a very strange face and emitted a sound like a
dying pig. I understood finally: he was asking if we had one of those, and I
pressed  the button of the klaxon. The children ran screaming, the  warriors
laughed  and laughed, and then as  Kamau,  in  response to  popular  demand,
pressed the klaxon again and  again, I watched the look of utter rapture and
ecstasy on the women's faces  and knew  that with that klaxon he could  have
had any woman in the tribe.
     Finally we had to go and after distributing the empty beer bottles, the
labels  from the bottles, and  finally the bottle  caps, picked up by M'Cola
from the floor, we left, klaxoning the women into ecstasy, the children into
panic, and the warriors  into delight. The warriors ran with  us for  a good
way but  we  had to make  time,  the  going was  good through the  park-like
country and,  in a  little while,  we  waved  to the  last of them  standing
straight  and  tall, in  their  brown skin garments, their clubbed  pigtails
hanging, their faces  stained a red-brown, leaning on  their spears, looking
after us and smiling.
     The sun was almost down and as I did not know the road I had the runner
get up in front to sit with the Wanderobo-Masai and help direct  Kamau and I
sat in the back with M'Cola and Garrick. We were out of the park country and
on to the  dry  bush-spattered plain before the  sun went  down  and  I  had
another bottle of the  German beer and, watching the country, saw, suddenly,
that all the  trees were full of white storks. I  did not  know whether they
were there in migration or were following the  locusts but, in the twilight,
they were lovely to see and, deeply moved by them, I gave the old man a good
two fingers of beer that was left in the bottom of the bottle.
     On the  next bottle I forgot and drank it all  before I  remembered the
old man.  (There  were still  storks  in the trees and we  saw  some Grant's
gazelles feeding off to the right. A jackal, like a grey fox, trotted across
the road.) So I told M'Cola  to  open another bottle and we were through the
plain and climbing the long  slope toward the road and  the village, the two
mountains in sight now, and it almost dark and  quite cold when I handed the
bottle to the old man, who took it where  he was crouched up under the roof,
and nursed it tenderly.
     At the  village we  stopped  in the  road in the dark,  and  I paid the
runner the amount it said to give him in the note he had brought. I paid the
old  man the  amount Pop said to pay him and  a  bonus. Then there was a big
dispute among them all. Garrick was to go to the main camp to get his money.
Abdullah  insisted  upon  going  along.   He  did  not  trust  Garrick.  The
Wanderobo-Masai  insisted pitifully that he go. He was sure the others would
cheat him out of his share and I was fairly sure they would, too.  There was
petrol that had been left for us to use in case we were short and  for us to
bring  in any event. We were overloaded and I did not know how the  road was
ahead. But I thought  we might carry Abdullah and Garrick and squeeze in the
Wanderobo-Masai.  There was no question of  the old  man  going. He had been
paid off and had  agreed to the  amount, but now he would not leave the car.
He crouched on top of the load and hung on to the  ropes saying, 'I am going
with B'wana'.
     M'Cola  and  Kamau had to  break his  handholds and  pull" him  off  to
re-load, him shouting, 'I want to go with B'wana!'
     While they were loading in  the dark he held  on to  my arm and  talked
very quietly in a language that I could not understand.
     'You have the shillings,' I said.
     'Yes, B'wana,' he said. That was not what it was  about. The money  was
all right.
     Then, when  we started to get  in the car  he broke away and started to
climb up through the back and on  to the loads. Garrick and Abdullah  pulled
him down.
     'You can't go. There isn't room.'
     He talked to me softly again, begging and pleading.
     'No, there is no room.'
     I remembered I had a small penknife and I got it  out of my  pocket and
put it in his hand. He pushed it back in my hand.
     'No,' he said. 'No.'
     He was  quiet  then  and  stood by  the  road. But  when we started, he
started to  run  after the  car  and I could hear him in the dark screaming,
'B'wana! I want to go with B'wana!'
     We went on up the road, the headlights making it seem like  a boulevard
after where we had been. We drove fifty-five  miles on that road in the dark
night without incident. I stayed awake until  after we  were through the bad
part, a long plain of deeply rutted black cotton where the headlights picked
out the trail through bushes and  then, when the road was  better, I went to
sleep, waking occasionally  to see the  headlights shining on a wall of tall
trees, or a naked bank, or when we ground in low  gear up a steep place, the
light slanting up ahead.
     Finally, when the speedometer showed fifty miles, we stopped and woke a
native in his hut  and M'Cola asked about the camp.  I slept again and  then
woke  as we were turning off the road and on a track through trees with  the
fires of  the camp showing ahead. Then as we came to where  our lights shone
on the  green  tents I shouted and we all commenced  to shout  and blew  the
klaxon  and  I  let  the  gun off, the flame cutting up into the dark and it
making a great noise. Then we were stopped and out from Pop's tent I saw him
coming, thick  and heavy in his dressing-gown,  and  then he  had  his  arms
around  my  shoulders  and said, 'You god damned  bull  fighter', and  I was
clapping him on the back.
     And I said, 'Look at them, Pop'.
     'I saw them,' he said. 'The whole back of the car's full of them.'
     Then I  was holding  P.O.M,  tight, she feeling  very  small inside the
quilted  bigness of  the dressing-gown,  and we were  saying things to  each
other.
     Then Karl came out and I said, 'Hi, Karl'.
     'I'm so damned glad,' he said. 'They're marvellous.'
     M'Cola had the horns down by now  and he and Kamau were holding them so
they could all see them in the light of the fire.
     'What did  you get?'  I asked Karl. 'Just another one of those. What do
you call them?
     Tendalla.'
     'Swell,' I said. I knew I had one no  one could beat and I hoped he had
a good one too. 'How big was he?'
     Oh, fifty-seven,' Karl said.
     'Let's see him,' I said, cold in the pit of my stomach.
     'He's over there,' Pop  said, and we went over. They were the  biggest,
widest, darkest, longest-curling, heaviest, most  unbelievable pair  of kudu
horns in the world. Suddenly, poisoned with envy, I did not want to see mine
again; never, never.
     'That's great,' I said, the words coming out as cheerfully as a  croak.
I tried it again. 'That's swell. How did you get him?'
     'There were  three,'  Karl  said.  'They  were  all  as  big as that. I
couldn't tell which was the biggest. We had a hell of a time. I hit him four
or five times.'
     'He's a wonder,' I said. I was getting so I could do it a little better
but it would not fool anybody yet.
     'I'm awfully glad you got yours,' Karl said. 'They're beauties. I  want
to hear all about them in  the morning. I know you're tired  to-night.  Good
night.'
     He went off, delicate as always, so we could talk about it if we wanted
to.
     'Come on over and have a drink,' I called.
     'No thanks, I think I better go to bed. I've got a sort of headache.'
     'Good night, Karl.'
     'Good night. Good night, Poor Old Mamma.'
     'Good night,' we all said.
     By the fire, with whisky and soda, we  talked and  I told them about it
all.
     'Perhaps they'll find  the bull,' Pop said.  'We'll offer a reward  for
the  horns.  Have them sent to the Game Department. How big  is your biggest
one?'
     'Fifty-two.'
     'Over the curve?'
     'Yes. Maybe he's a little better.'
     'Inches don't  mean anything,'  Pop  said.  'They're  damned  wonderful
kudu.'
     'Sure. But why does he have to beat me so {bloody} badly?'
     'He's  got the luck,'  Pop  said. 'God, what a kudu. I've only seen one
head killed over fifty in my life before. That was up on Kalal.'
     'We knew he had it when  we left the other  camp. The lorry came in and
told us,' P.O.M, said. 'I've spent all my time  praying for you.  Ask Mr. J.
P.'
     'You'll never know  what  it  meant  to  see that  car  come  into  the
firelight  with  those  damned  horns  sticking  out,'  Pop  said.  'You old
bastard.'
     'It's wonderful,' P.O.M, said. 'Let's go and look at them again.'
     'You can always remember how you  shot them. That's what you really get
out of it,' Pop said. 'They're damned wonderful kudu.'
     But  I  was bitter and I was bitter  all  night  long.  In the morning,
though, it was gone. It was all gone and I have never had it again.
     Pop and I were  up  and looking at the heads before breakfast. It was a
grey, overcast morning and cold. The rains were coming.
     'They're three marvellous kudu,' he said.
     'They look all right with the big  one this morning,' I said. They did,
too, strangely enough. I had accepted the big one now  and  was happy to see
him and that Karl  had him. When you  put  them side by side they looked all
right. They really did. They all were big.
     'I'm  glad  you're  feeling  better,'  Pop said.  'I'm  feeling  better
myself.'
     'I'm really glad he has him,' I said truly. 'Mine'll hold me.'
     'We have very primitive emotions,' he said.  'It's impossible not to be
competitive. Spoils everything, though.'
     'I'm all through with  that,' I said. 'I'm all right again. I had quite
a trip, you know.'
     'Did you not,' said Pop.
     'Pop,  what does it  mean when they shake  hands  and get  hold of your
thumb and pull it?'
     'It's on the order of blood brotherhood but a little less formal. Who's
been doing that to you?'
     'Everybody but Kamau.'
     'You're getting to  be a hell of  a fellow,'  Pop said. 'You must be an
old timer out here. Tell me, are you much of a tracker and bird shot?'
     'Go to hell.'
     'M'Cola has been doing that with you too?'
     'Yes.'
     'Well, well,' said Pop. 'Let's get the little  Memsahib and  have  some
breakfast. Not that I'm feeling up to it.'
     'I am,' I said. 'I haven't eaten anything since day before yesterday.'
     'Drank some beer though, didn't you?'
     'Ah, yes.'
     'Beer's a food,' Pop said.
     We got the little Memsahib and old Karl and had a very jolly breakfast.
     A month later P.O.M., Karl, and Karl's wife who had come out and joined
us at Haifa,  were sitting in the  sun  against a stone wall by  the Sea  of
Galilee  eating some lunch and  drinking a  bottle of  wine and watching the
grebes out on the lake. The hills made shadows on the  water, which was flat
calm and rather  stagnant  looking. There were many grebes, making spreading
wakes in the water as they  swam, and I was counting them and  wondering why
they never were mentioned in the Bible. I decided that those people were not
naturalists.
     'I'm not  going  to walk  on it,' Karl said, looking out at  the dreary
lake. 'It's been done already.'
     'You know,' P.O.M, said, 'I can't  remember it. I can't remember Mr. J.
P.'s face. And he's beautiful.
     I  think  about  him  and  think about him  and I can't  see him.  It's
terrible. He isn't  the way he looks in  a photograph. In a little  while  I
won't be able to remember him at all. Already I can't see him.'
     'You must  remember him,' Karl  said to  her. 'I can  remember  him,' I
said. 'I'll write you a piece some time and put him in.'