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leave?'
'After to-morrow.'
'That bloody savage.'
'I suppose Karl is blasting up the sable down there.'
'We won't be able to get into camp for the horns. Have you heard
anything?'
'No.'
'I'm going to give up smoking for six months for you to get one,'
P.O.M. said. 'I've started already.'
We had lunch and afterwards I went into the tent and lay down and read.
I knew we still had a chance on the lick in the morning and I was not going
to worry about it. But I {was} worried and I did not want to go to sleep and
wake up feeling dopey so I came out and sat in one of the canvas chairs
under the open dining tent and read somebody's life of Charles the Second
and looked up every once in a while to watch the locusts. The locusts were
exciting to see and it was difficult for me to take them as a matter of
course.
Finally I went to sleep in the chair with my feet on a chop-box and
when I woke there was Garrick, the bastard, wearing a large, very floppy,
black and white ostrich-plume head-dress.
'Go away,' I said in English.
He stood smirking proudly, then turned so I could see the head-dress
from the side.
I saw Pop coming out of his tent with a pipe in his mouth. 'Look what
we have,' I called to him.
He looked, said, 'Christ', and went back into the tent.
'Come on,' I said. 'We'll just ignore it.'
Pop came out, finally, with a book and we took no notice of Garrick's
head-dress at all, sitting and talking, while he posed with it.
'Bastard's been drinking, too,' I said.
'Probably.'
'I can smell it.'
Pop, without looking at him, spoke a few words to Garrick in a very
soft voice.
'What did you tell him?'
'To go and get dressed properly and be ready to start.'
Garrick walked off, his plums waving.
'Not the moment for his ostrich plumes,' Pop said.
'Some people probably like them.'
'That's it. Start photographing them.'
'Awful,' I said.
'Frightful,' Pop agreed.
'On the last day if we don't get anything, I'm going to shoot Garrick
in the behind. What would that cost me?'
'Might make lots of trouble. If you shoot one, you have to shoot the
other, too.'
'Only Garrick.'
'Better not shoot then. Remember it's me you get into trouble.'
'Joking, Pop.'
Garrick, un-head-dressed and with Abdullah, appeared and Pop spoke with
them.
'They want to hunt around the hill a new way.'
'Splendid. When?'
'Any time now. It looks like rain. You might get going.'
I sent Molo for my boots and a raincoat, M'Cola came out with the
Springfield, and we walked down to the car. It had been heavily cloudy all
day although the sun had come through the clouds in the forenoon for a time
and again at noon. The rains were moving up on us. Now it was starting to
rain and the locusts were no longer flying.
'I'm dopey with sleep,' I told Pop. 'I'm going to have a drink.'
We were standing under the big tree by the cooking fire with the light
rain pattering in the leaves. M'Cola brought the whisky flask and handed it
to me very solemnly.
'Have one?'
'I don't see what harm it can do.'
We both drank and Pop said, 'The hell with them'.
'The hell with them.'
'You may find some tracks.'
'We'll run them out of the country.'
In the car we turned to the right on the road, drove on up past the mud
village and turned off the road to the left on to a red, hard, clay track
that circled the edge of the hills and was close bordered on either side
with trees. It was raining fairly hard now and we drove slowly. There seemed
to be enough sand in the clay to keep the car from slipping. Suddenly, from
the back seat, Abdullah, very excited, told Kamau to stop. We stopped with a
skid, all got out, and walked back. There was a freshly cut kudu track in
the wet clay. It could not have been made more than five minutes before as
it was sharp-edged and the dirt, that had been picked up by the inside of
the hoof, was not yet softened by the rain.
'Doumi,' Garrick said and threw back his head and spread his arms wide
to show horns that hung back over his withers. 'Kubwa Sana!' Abdullah agreed
it was a bull; a huge bull.
'Come on,' I said.
It was easy tracking and we knew we were close. In rain or snow it is
much easier to come up close to animals and I was sure we were going to get
a shot. We followed the tracks through thick brush and then out into an open
patch. I stopped to wipe the rain off my glasses and blew through the
aperture in the rear sight of the Springfield. It was raining hard now, and
I pulled my hat low down over my eyes to keep my glasses dry. We skirted the
edge of the open patch and then, ahead, there was a crash and I saw a grey,
white-striped animal making off through the brush. I threw the gun up and
M'Cola grabbed my arm, 'Manamouki!' he whispered. It was a cow kudu. But
when we came up to where it had jumped there were no other tracks. The same
tracks we had followed led, logically and with no possibility of doubt, from
the road to that cow.
'Doumi Kubwa Sana!' I said, full of sarcasm and disgust to Garrick and
made a gesture of giant horns flowing back from behind his ears.
'Manamouki Kubwa Sana,' he said very sorrowfully and patiently. 'What
an enormous cow.'
'You lousy ostrich-plumed punk,' I told him in English. 'Manamouki!
Manamouki! Manamouki!'
'Manamouki,' said M'Cola and nodded his head.
I got out the dictionary, couldn't find the words, and made it clear to
M'Cola with signs that we would circle back in a long swing to the road and
see if we could find another track. We circled back in the rain, getting
thoroughly soaked, saw nothing, found the car, and as the rain lessened and
the roads still seemed firm decided to go on until it was dark. Puffs of
cloud hung on the hillside after the rain and the trees dripped but we saw
nothing. Not in the open glades, not in the fields where the bush thinned,
not on the green hillsides. Finally it was dark and we went back to camp.
.The Springfield was very wet when we got out of the car and I told M'Cola
to clean it carefully and oil it well. He said he would and I went on and
into the tent where a lantern was burning, took off my clothes, had a bath
in the canvas tub and came out to the fire comfortable and relaxed in
pyjamas, dressing-gown and mosquito boots.
P.O.M. and Pop were sitting in their chairs by the fire and P.O.M. got
up to make me a whisky and soda.
'M'Cola told me,' Pop said from his chair by the fire.
'A damned big cow,' I told him. 'I nearly busted her. What do you think
about the morning?'
'The lick I suppose. We've scouts out to watch both of these hills. You
remember that old man from the village? He's on a wild-goose chase after
them in some country over beyond the hills. He and the Wanderobo. They've
been gone three days.'
'There's no reason why we shouldn't get one on the lick where Karl shot
his. One day is as good as another.'
'Quite.'
'It's the last damned day though and the lick may be rained out. As
soon as it's wet there's no salt. Just mud.'
'That's it.'
'I'd like to see one.'
'When you do, take your time and make sure of him. Take your time and
kill him.'
'I don't worry about that.'
'Let's talk about something else,' P.O.M. said. 'This makes me too
nervous.'
'I wish we had old Leather Pants,' Pop said. 'God, he was a talker. He
made the old man here talk too. Give us that spiel on modern writers again.'
'Go to hell.'
'Why don't we have some intellectual life?' P.O.M. asked. 'Why don't
you men ever discuss world topics? Why am I kept in ignorance of everything
that goes on?'
'World's in a hell of a shape,' Pop stated.
'Awful.'
'What's going on in America?'
'Damned if I know! Some sort of Y.M.C.A. show. Starry eyed bastards
spending money that somebody will have to pay. Everybody in our town quit
work to go on relief. Fishermen all turned carpenters. Reverse of the
Bible.'
'How are things in Turkey?'
'Frightful. Took the fezzes away. Hanged any amount of old pals.
Ismet's still around though.'
'Been in France lately?'
'Didn't like it. Gloomy as hell. Been a bad show there just now.'
'By God,' said Pop, 'it must have been if you can believe the papers.'
'When they riot they really riot. Hell, they've got a tradition.'
'Were you in Spain for the revolution?'
'I got there late. Then we waited for two that didn't come. Then we
missed another.'
'Did you see the one in Cuba?'
'From the start.'
'How was it?'
'Beautiful. Then lousy. You couldn't believe how lousy.'
'Stop it,' P.O.M. said. 'I know about those things. I was crouched down
behind a marble-topped table while they were shooting in Havana. They came
by in cars shooting at everybody they saw. I took my drink with me and I was
very proud not to have spilled it or forgotten it. The children said,
"Mother, can we go out in the afternoon to see the shooting?" They got so
worked up about revolution we had to stop mentioning it. Bumby got so
bloodthirsty about Mr. M. he had terrible dreams.'
'Extraordinary,' Pop said.
'Don't make fun of nie. I don't want to just hear about revolutions.
All we see or hear is revolutions. I'm sick of them. '
'The old man must like them.'
'I'm sick of them.'
'You know, I've never seen one,' Pop said.
'They're beautiful. Really. For quite a while. Then they go bad.'
'They're very exciting,' P.O.M. said. 'I'll admit that. But I'm sick of
them. Really, I don't care anything about them.'
'I've been studying them a little.'
'What did you find out?' Pop asked.
'They were all very different but there were some things you could
co-ordinate. I'm going to try to write a study of them.'
'It could be damned interesting.'
'If you have enough material. You need an awful lot of past
performances. It's very hard to get anything true on anything you haven't
seen yourself because the ones that fail have such a bad press and the
winners always lie so. Then you can only really follow anything in places
where you speak the language. That limits you of course. That's why I would
never go to Russia. When you can't overhear it's no good. All you get are
handouts and sight-seeing. Any one who knows a foreign language in any
country is damned liable to lie to you. You get your good dope always from
the people and when you can't talk with people and can't overhear you don't
get anything that's of anything but journalistic value.'
'You want to knuckle down on your Swahili then.'
'I'm trying to.'
'Even then you can't overhear because they're always talking their own
language.'
'But if I ever write anything about this it will just be landscape
painting until I know something about it. Your first seeing of a country is
a very valuable one. Probably more valuable to yourself than to anyone else,
is the hell of it. But you ought to always write it to try to get it stated.
No matter what you do with it.'
'Most of the damned Safari books are most awful bloody bores.'
'They're terrible.'
'The only one I ever liked was Streeter's. What did he call it?
{Denatured Africa}. He made you feel what it was like. That's the best.'
'I liked Charlie Curtis's. It was very honest and it made a fine
picture.'
'That man Streeter was damned funny though. Do you remember when he
shot the kongoni?'
'It was very funny.'
'I've never read anything, though, that could make you feel about the
country the way we feel about it. They all have Nairobi fast life or else
rot about shooting beasts with horns half an inch longer than someone else
shot. Or muck about danger.'
'I'd like to try to write something about the country and the animals
and what it's like to someone who knows nothing about it.'
'Have a try at it. Can't do any harm. You know I wrote a diary of that
Alaskan trip.'
'I'd love to read it,' P.O.M. said. 'I didn't know you were a writer,
Mr. J. P.'
'No bloody fear,' said Pop. 'If you'd read it, though, I'll send for
it. You know it's just what we did each day and how Alaska looked to an
Englishman from Africa. It'd bore you.'
'Not if you wrote it,' P.O.M. said.
'Little woman's giving us compliments,' Pop said.
'Not me. You.'
'I've read things by him,' she said. 'I want to read what Mr. J. P.
writes.'
'Is the old man really a writer?' Pop asked her. <! haven't seen
anything to prove it. You're sure he doesn't support you by tracking and
wing shooting?'
'Oh, yes. He writes. When he's going well he's awfully easy to get
along with. But just before he gets going he's frightful. His temper has to
go bad before he can write. When he talks about never writing again I know
he's about to get started.'
'We ought to get more literary conversation from him,' Pop said.
'Leather Breeches was the lad. Give us some literary anecdotes.'
'Well, the last night we were in Paris I'd been out shooting at Ben
Gallagher's in the Sologne the day before and he had a {fermee}, you know,
they put up a low fence while they're out feeding, and shot rabbits in the
morning and in the afternoon we had several drives and shot pheasants and I
shot a chevreuil.'
'That isn't literary.'
'Wait. The last night Joyce and his wife came to dinner and we had a
pheasant and a quarter of the chevreuil with the saddle and Joyce and I got
drunk because we were off for Africa the next day. God, we had a night.'
'That's a hell of a literary anecdote,' Pop said. 'Who's Joyce?'
'Wonderful guy,' I said. 'Wrote {Ulysses}.'
'Homer wrote {Ulysses},' Pop said.
'Who wrote {Aeschylus?'}
'Homer,' said Pop. 'Don't try to trap me. D'you know many more literary
anecdotes?'
'Ever heard of Pound?'
'No,' said Pop. 'Absolutely no.'
'I know some good ones about Pound.'
'Suppose you and he ate some funny-sounding beast and then got drunk.'
'Several times,' I said.
'Literary life must be awfully jolly. Think I'd make a writer?'
'Rather.'
'We're going to chuck all this,' Pop told P.O.M., 'and both be writers.
Give us another anecdote.'
'Ever heard of George Moore?'
'Chap that wrote "But before I go, George Moore, here's a last long
health to you?" '
'That's him.'
'What about him?'
'He's dead.'
'That's a damned dismal anecdote. You can do better than that.'
'I saw him in a book-shop once.'
'That's better. See how lively he can make them?'
'I went to call on him once in Dublin,' P.O.M. said. 'With Clara Dunn.'
'What happened?'
'He wasn't in.'
'By God. I tell you the literary life's the thing,' Pop said. 'You
can't beat it.'
'I hate Clara Dunn,' I said.
'So do I,' said Pop. 'What did she write?'
'Letters,' I said. 'You know Dos Passos?'
'Never heard of him.'
'He and I used to drink hot kirsch in the winter time.'
'What happened then?'
'People objected, finally.'
'Only writer I ever met was Stewart Edward White,' Pop said. 'Used to
admire his writing no end. Damned good, you know. Then I met him. Didn't
like him.'
'You're coming on,' I said. 'See. There's no trick to a literary
anecdote.'
'Why didn't you like him?' P.O.M. asked.
'Do I have to tell? Isn't the anecdote complete? It's just like the old
man tells them.'
'Go ahead and tell.'
'Too much the old timer about him. Eyes used to vast distances and that
sort of thing. Killed too many bloody lions. No credit kill so many lions.
Gallop 'em, yes. Couldn't kill that many. Lion kill you instead. Writes
damned fine things in {The Saturday Evening Post} about, what's the bloke's
name, Andy Burnett. Oh, damned fine. Took an awful dislike to him, though.
See him in Nairobi with his eyes used to vast distances. Wore his oldest
clothes in town. Hell of a fine shot, everybody says.'
'Why you're a literary bastard,' I said. 'Look at that for an
anecdote.'
'He's marvellous,' P.O.M. said. 'Aren't we ever going to eat?'
'Thought by God we'd eaten,' Pop said. 'Start these anecdotes. No end
to 'em.'
After dinner we sat by the fire a little while and then went to bed.
One thing seemed to be on Pop's mind and before I went in the tent he said,
'After you've waited so long, when you get a shot take it easy. You're fast
enough so you can take your time, remember. Take it easy. '
'All right.'
'I'll have them get you up early.'
'All right. I'm plenty sleepy.'
'Good night, Mr. J. P.,' P.O.M. called from the tent.
'Good night,' Pop said. He moved toward his tent carrying himself with
comic stiffness, walking in the dark as carefully as though he were an
opened bottle.
Molo waked me by pulling on the blanket in the morning and I was
dressing, dressed, and out washing the sleep out of my eyes before I was
really awake. It was still very dark and I could see Pop's back shadowed
against the fire. I walked over holding the early morning cup of hot tea and
milk in my hand waiting for it to be cool enough to drink.
'Morning,' I said.
'Morning,' he answered in that husky whisper.
'Sleep?'
'Very well. Feeling fit?'
'Sleepy is all.'
I drank the tea and spat the leaves into the fire.
'Tell your bloody fortune with those,' Pop said.
'No fear.'
Breakfast in the dark with a lantern, cool juice-slippery apricots,
hash, hot-centred, brown, and catsup spread, two fried eggs and the warm
promise-keeping coffee. On the third cup Pop, watching, smoking his pipe,
said, 'Too early for me to face it yet.'
'Get you?'
'A little.'
'I'm getting exercise,' I said. 'It doesn't bother me.'
'Bloody anecdotes,' Pop said. 'Memsahib must think we're silly
beggars.'
'I'll think up some more.'
'Nothing better than drinking. Don't know why it should make you feel
bad.'
'Are you bad?'
'Not too.'
'Take a spot of Eno's?'
'It's this damned riding in cars.'
'Well, to-day's the day.'
'Remember to take it very easy.'
'You're not worried about that, are you?'
'Just a touch.'
'Don't. It never worries me a minute. Truly.'
'Good. Better get going.'
'Have to make a trip first.'
Standing in front of the canvas circle of the latrine I looked, as each
morning, at that fuzzy blur of stars that the romanticists of astronomers
called the Southern Cross. Each morning at this moment I observed the
Southern Cross in solemn ceremony.
Pop was at the car. M'Cola handed me the Springfield and I got in the
front. The tragedian and his tracker were in the back. M'Cola climbed in
with them.
'Good luck,' Pop said. Someone was coming from towards the tents. It
was P.O.M. in her blue robe and mosquito boots. '{Oh}, good luck,' she said.
{Please}, good luck.'
I waved and we started, the headlights showing the way to the road.
There was nothing on the salt when we came up to it after leaving the
car about three miles away and making a very careful stalk. Nothing came all
morning. We sat with our heads down in the blind, each covering a different
direction through openings in the thatched withes, and always I expected the
miracle of a bull kudu coming majestic and beautiful through the open scrub
to the grey, dusty opening in the trees where the salt lick was worn,
grooved, and trampled. There were many trails to it through the trees and on
any one a bull might come silently. But nothing came. When the sun was up
and we were warmed after the misty cold of the morning I settled my rump
deeper in the dust and lay back against the wall of the hole, resting
against the small of my back and my shoulders, and still able to see out
through the slit in the blind. Putting the Springfield across my knees I
noticed that there was rust on the barrel. Slowly I pulled it along and
looked at the muzzle. It was freshly brown with rust.
'The bastard never cleaned it last night after that rain,' I thought,
and, very angry, I lifted the lug and slipped the bolt out. M'Cola was
watching me with his head down. The other two were looking out through the
blind. I held the rifle in one hand for him to look through the breech and
then put the bolt back in and shoved it forward softly, lowering it with my
finger on the trigger so that it was ready to cock rather than keeping it on
the safety.
M'Cola had seen the rusty bore. His face had not changed and I had said
nothing but I was full of contempt and there had been indictment, evidence,
and condemnation without a word being spoken. So we sat there, he with his
head bent so only the bald top showed, me leaning back and looking out
through the slit, and we were no longer partners, no longer good friends,
and nothing came to the salt.
At ten o'clock the breeze, which had come up in the east, began to
shift around and we knew it was no use. Our scent was being scattered in all
directions around the blind as sure to frighten any animals as though we
were revolving a searchlight in the dark. We got up out of the blind and
went over to look in the dust of the lick for tracks. The rain had moistened
it but it was not soaked and we saw several kudu tracks, probably made early
in the night and one big bull track, long, narrow, heart-shaped, clearly,
deeply cut.
We took the track and followed it on the damp reddish earth for two
hours in thick bush that was like second-growth timber at home. Finally we
had to leave it in stuff we could not move through. All this time I was
angry about the uncleaned rifle and yet happy and eager with anticipation
that we might jump the bull and get a snap at him in the brush. But we did
not see him and now, in the big heat of noon, we made three long circles
around some hills and finally came out into a meadow full of little, humpy
Masai cattle and, leaving all shade behind, trailed back across the open
country under the noon sun to the car.
Kamau, sitting in the car, had seen a kudu bull pass a hundred yards
away. He was headed toward the saltlick at about nine o'clock when the wind
began to be tricky, had evidently caught our scent and gone back into the
hills. Tired, sweating, and feeling more sunk than angry now, I got in
beside Kamau and we headed the car toward camp. There was only one evening
left now, and no reason to expect we would have any better luck than we were
having. As we came to camp, and the shade of the heavy trees, cool as a
pool, I took the bolt out of the Springfield and handed the rifle, boltless,
to M'Cola without speaking or looking at him. The bolt I tossed inside the
opening of our tent on to my cot.
Pop and P.O.M. were sitting under the dining tent.
'No luck?' Pop asked gently.
'Not a damn bit. Bull went by the car headed toward the salt. Must have
spooked off. We hunted all over hell.'
'Didn't you see anything?' P.O.M. asked. 'Once we thought we heard you
shoot.'
'That was Garrick shooting his mouth off. Did the scouts get anything?'
'Not a thing. We've been watching both hills.'
'Hear from Karl?'
'Not a word.'
'I'd like to have seen one,' I said. I was tired out and slipping into
bitterness fast. 'God damn them. What the hell did he have to blow that lick
to hell for the first morning and gut-shoot a lousy bull and chase him all
over the son-of-a-bitching country spooking it to holy bloody hell?'
'Bastards,' said P.O.M., staying with me in. my unreasonableness.
'Sonsabitches.'
'You're a good girl,' I said. 'I'm all right. Or I will be.'
'It's been. awful,' she said. 'Poor old Poppa.'
'You have a drink,' Pop said. 'That's what you need.'
'I've hunted them hard, Pop. I swear to God I have. I've enjoyed it and
I haven't worried up until to-day. I was so damned sure. Those damned tracks
all the time -- what if I never see one? How do I know we can ever get back
here again?'
'You'll be back,' Pop said. 'You don't have to worry about that. Go
ahead. Drink it.'
'I'm just a lousy belly-aching bastard but I swear they haven't gotten
on my nerves until to-day.'
'Belly-ache,' said Pop. 'Better to get it out.'
'What about lunch?' asked P.O.M. 'Aren't you frightfully hungry?'
'The hell with lunch. The thing is, Pop, we've never seen them on the
salt in the evening and we've never seen a bull in the hills. I've only got
to-night. It looks washed up. Three times I've had them cold and Karl and
the Austrian and the Wanderobo beat us.'
'We're not beaten,' said Pop. 'Drink another one of those.'
We had lunch, a very good lunch, and it was just over when Kati came
and said there was someone to see Pop. We could see their shadows on the
tent fly, then they came around to the front of the tent. It was the old man
of the first day, the old farmer, but now he was gotten up as a hunter and
carried a long bow and a sealed quiver of arrows.
He looked older, more disreputable and tireder than ever and his get-up
was obviously a disguise. With him was the skinny, dirty, Wanderobo with the
slit and curled up ears who stood on one leg and scratched the back of his
knee with his toes. His head was on one side and he had a narrow, foolish,
and depraved-looking face.
The old man was talking earnestly to Pop, looking him in the eye and
speaking slowly, without gestures.
'What's he done? Gotten himself up like that to get some of the scout
money?' I asked.
'Wait,' Pop said.
'Look at the pair of them,' I said. 'That's goofy Wanderobo and that
lousy old fake. What's he say, Pop?'
'He hasn't finished,' Pop said.
Finally the old man was finished and he stood there leaning on his
property bow. They both looked very tired but I remember thinking they
looked a couple of disgusting fakes.
'He says,' Pop began, 'they have found a country where there are kudu
and sable. He has been there three days. They know where there is a big kudu
bull and he has a man watching him now.'
'Do you believe it?' I could feel the liquor and the fatigue drain out
of me and the excitement come in.
'God knows,' said Pop.
'How far away is the country?'
'One day's march. I suppose that's three or four hours in the car if
the car can go.'
'Does he think the car can get in?'
'None ever has been in but he thinks you can make it. '
'When did they leave the man watching the kudu?'
'This morning.'
'Where are the sable?'
'There in the hills.'
'How do we get in?'
'I can't make out except that you cross the plain, go around that
mountain and then south. He says no one has ever hunted there. He hunted
there when he was young. '
'Do you believe it?'
'Of course natives lie like hell, but he tells it very straight.'
'Let's go.'
'You'd better start right away. Go as far as you can in the car and
then use it for a base and hunt on from there. The Memsahib and I will break
camp in the morning, move the outfit and go on to where Dan and Mr. T. are.
Once the outfit is over that black cotton stretch we're all right if the
rain catches us. You come on and join us. If you're caught we can always
send the car back by Kandoa, if worst comes, and the lorries down to Tanga
and around.'
'Don't you want to come?'
'No. You're better off alone on a show like this. The more people the
less game you'll see. You should hunt kudu alone. I'll move the outfit and
look after the little Memsahib.'
'All right,' I said. 'And I don't have to take Garrick or Abdullah?'
'Hell, no. Take M'Cola, Kamau and these two. I'll teil Molo to pack
your things. Go light as hell.'
'God damn it, Pop. Do you think it could be true?'
'Maybe,' said Pop. 'We have to play it.'
'How do you say sable?'
'Tarahalla.'
'Valhalla, I can remember. Do the females have horns?'
'Sure, but you can't make a mistake. The bull is black and they're
brown. You can't go wrong.'
'Has M'Cola ever seen one?'
'I don't think so. You've got four on your licence. Any time you can
better one, go ahead.'
'Are they hard to kill?'
'They're tough. They're not like a kudu. If you've got one down be
careful how you walk up to him.'
'What about time?'
'We've got to get out. Make it back to-morrow night if you can. Use
your own judgment. I think this is the turning point. You'll get a kudu.'
'Do you know what it's like?' I said. 'It's just like when we were kids
and we heard about a river no one had ever fished out on the huckleberry
plain beyond the Sturgeon and the Pigeon.'
'How did the river turn out?'
'Listen. We had a hell of a time to get in and the night we got there,
just before dark, and saw it, there was a deep pool and a long straight
stretch and the water so cold you couldn't keep your hand in it and I threw
a cigarette butt in and a big trout hit it and they kept snapping it up and
spitting it out as it floated until it went to pieces.'
'Big trout?'
'The biggest kind.'
'God save us,' said Pop. 'What did you do then?'
'Rigged up my rod and made a cast and it was dark, and there was a
nighthawk swooping around and it was cold as a bastard and then I was fast
to three fish the second the flies hit the water.'
'Did you land them?'
'The three of them.'
'You damned liar.'
'I swear to God.'
'I believe you. Tell me the rest when you come back. Were they big
trout?'
'The biggest bloody kind.'
'God save us,' said Pop. 'You're going to get a kudu. Get started.'
In the tent I found P.O.M. and told her.
'Not really?'
'Yes.'
'Hurry up,' she said. 'Don't talk. Get started.'
I found raincoat, extra boots, socks, bathrobe, bottle of quinine
tablets, citronella, note book, a pencil, my solids, the cameras, the
emergency kit, knife, matches, extra shirt and undershirt, a book, two
candles, money, the flask . . .
'What else?'
'Have you got soap? Take a comb and a towel. Got handkerchiefs?'
'All right.'
Molo had everything packed in a rucksack and I found my field glasses,
M'Cola taking Pop's big field glasses, a canteen with water and Kati sending
a chop-box with food. 'Take plenty of beer,' Pop said. 'You can leave it in
the car. We're short on whisky but there's a bottle.'
'How will that leave you?'
'All right. There's more at the other camp. We sent two bottles on with
Mr. K.'
'I'll only need the flask,' I said. 'We'll split the bottle.'
'Take plenty of beer then. There's any amount of it.'
'What's the bastard doing?' I said, pointing at Garrick who was getting
into the car.
'He says you and M'Cola wont be able to talk with the natives there.
You'll have to have some one to interpret.'
'He's poison.'
'You {will} need someone to interpret whatever they speak into
Swahili.'
'All right. But tell him he's not running the show and to keep his
bloody mouth shut.'
'We'll go to the top of the hill with you,' Pop said and we started
off, the Wanderobo hanging to the side of the car. 'Going to pick the old
man up in the village.'
Everyone in camp was out to watch us go.
'Have we plenty of salt?'
'Yes.'
Now we were standing by the car on the road in the village waiting for
the old man and Garrick to come back from their huts. It was early afternoon
and the sky was clouding over and I was looking at P.O.M., very desirable,
cool, and neat-looking in her khaki and her boots, her Stetson on one side
of her head, and at Pop, big, thick, in the faded corduroy sleeveless jacket
that was almost white now from washing and the sun.
'You be a good girl.'
'Don't ever worry. I wish I could go.'
'It's a one-man show,' Pop said. 'You want to get in fast and do the
dirty and get out fast. You've a big load as it is.'
The old man appeared and got into the back of the car with M'Cola who
was wearing my old khaki sleeveless, quail-shooting coat.
'M'Cola's got the old man's coat,' Pop said.
'He likes to carry things in the game pockets,' I said.
M'Cola saw we were talking about him. I had forgotten about the
uncleaned rifle. Now I remembered it and said to Pop, 'Ask him where he got
the new coat'.
M'Cola grinned and said something.
'He says it is his property.'
I grinned at him and he shook his old bald head and it was understood
that I had said nothing about the rifle.
'Where's that bastard Garrick?' I asked.
Finally he came with his blanket and got in with M'Cola and the old man
behind. The Wanderobo sat with me in front beside Kamau.
'That's a lovely-looking friend you have,' P.O.M. said. 'You be good
too.'
I kissed her good-bye and we whispered something.
'Billing and cooing,' Pop said. 'Disgusting.'
'Good-bye, you old bastard.'
'Good-bye, you damned bullfighter.'
'Good-bye, sweet.'
'Good-bye and good luck.'
'You've plenty of petrol and we'll leave some here,' Pop called.
I waved and we were starting down hill through the village on a narrow
track that led down and on to the scrubby dry plain that spread out below
the two great blue hills.
I looked back as we went down the hill and saw the two figures, the
tall thick one and the small neat one, each wearing big Stetson hats,
silhouetted on the road as they walked back toward camp, then I looked ahead
at the dried-up, scrubby plain.
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.
'After to-morrow.'
'That bloody savage.'
'I suppose Karl is blasting up the sable down there.'
'We won't be able to get into camp for the horns. Have you heard
anything?'
'No.'
'I'm going to give up smoking for six months for you to get one,'
P.O.M. said. 'I've started already.'
We had lunch and afterwards I went into the tent and lay down and read.
I knew we still had a chance on the lick in the morning and I was not going
to worry about it. But I {was} worried and I did not want to go to sleep and
wake up feeling dopey so I came out and sat in one of the canvas chairs
under the open dining tent and read somebody's life of Charles the Second
and looked up every once in a while to watch the locusts. The locusts were
exciting to see and it was difficult for me to take them as a matter of
course.
Finally I went to sleep in the chair with my feet on a chop-box and
when I woke there was Garrick, the bastard, wearing a large, very floppy,
black and white ostrich-plume head-dress.
'Go away,' I said in English.
He stood smirking proudly, then turned so I could see the head-dress
from the side.
I saw Pop coming out of his tent with a pipe in his mouth. 'Look what
we have,' I called to him.
He looked, said, 'Christ', and went back into the tent.
'Come on,' I said. 'We'll just ignore it.'
Pop came out, finally, with a book and we took no notice of Garrick's
head-dress at all, sitting and talking, while he posed with it.
'Bastard's been drinking, too,' I said.
'Probably.'
'I can smell it.'
Pop, without looking at him, spoke a few words to Garrick in a very
soft voice.
'What did you tell him?'
'To go and get dressed properly and be ready to start.'
Garrick walked off, his plums waving.
'Not the moment for his ostrich plumes,' Pop said.
'Some people probably like them.'
'That's it. Start photographing them.'
'Awful,' I said.
'Frightful,' Pop agreed.
'On the last day if we don't get anything, I'm going to shoot Garrick
in the behind. What would that cost me?'
'Might make lots of trouble. If you shoot one, you have to shoot the
other, too.'
'Only Garrick.'
'Better not shoot then. Remember it's me you get into trouble.'
'Joking, Pop.'
Garrick, un-head-dressed and with Abdullah, appeared and Pop spoke with
them.
'They want to hunt around the hill a new way.'
'Splendid. When?'
'Any time now. It looks like rain. You might get going.'
I sent Molo for my boots and a raincoat, M'Cola came out with the
Springfield, and we walked down to the car. It had been heavily cloudy all
day although the sun had come through the clouds in the forenoon for a time
and again at noon. The rains were moving up on us. Now it was starting to
rain and the locusts were no longer flying.
'I'm dopey with sleep,' I told Pop. 'I'm going to have a drink.'
We were standing under the big tree by the cooking fire with the light
rain pattering in the leaves. M'Cola brought the whisky flask and handed it
to me very solemnly.
'Have one?'
'I don't see what harm it can do.'
We both drank and Pop said, 'The hell with them'.
'The hell with them.'
'You may find some tracks.'
'We'll run them out of the country.'
In the car we turned to the right on the road, drove on up past the mud
village and turned off the road to the left on to a red, hard, clay track
that circled the edge of the hills and was close bordered on either side
with trees. It was raining fairly hard now and we drove slowly. There seemed
to be enough sand in the clay to keep the car from slipping. Suddenly, from
the back seat, Abdullah, very excited, told Kamau to stop. We stopped with a
skid, all got out, and walked back. There was a freshly cut kudu track in
the wet clay. It could not have been made more than five minutes before as
it was sharp-edged and the dirt, that had been picked up by the inside of
the hoof, was not yet softened by the rain.
'Doumi,' Garrick said and threw back his head and spread his arms wide
to show horns that hung back over his withers. 'Kubwa Sana!' Abdullah agreed
it was a bull; a huge bull.
'Come on,' I said.
It was easy tracking and we knew we were close. In rain or snow it is
much easier to come up close to animals and I was sure we were going to get
a shot. We followed the tracks through thick brush and then out into an open
patch. I stopped to wipe the rain off my glasses and blew through the
aperture in the rear sight of the Springfield. It was raining hard now, and
I pulled my hat low down over my eyes to keep my glasses dry. We skirted the
edge of the open patch and then, ahead, there was a crash and I saw a grey,
white-striped animal making off through the brush. I threw the gun up and
M'Cola grabbed my arm, 'Manamouki!' he whispered. It was a cow kudu. But
when we came up to where it had jumped there were no other tracks. The same
tracks we had followed led, logically and with no possibility of doubt, from
the road to that cow.
'Doumi Kubwa Sana!' I said, full of sarcasm and disgust to Garrick and
made a gesture of giant horns flowing back from behind his ears.
'Manamouki Kubwa Sana,' he said very sorrowfully and patiently. 'What
an enormous cow.'
'You lousy ostrich-plumed punk,' I told him in English. 'Manamouki!
Manamouki! Manamouki!'
'Manamouki,' said M'Cola and nodded his head.
I got out the dictionary, couldn't find the words, and made it clear to
M'Cola with signs that we would circle back in a long swing to the road and
see if we could find another track. We circled back in the rain, getting
thoroughly soaked, saw nothing, found the car, and as the rain lessened and
the roads still seemed firm decided to go on until it was dark. Puffs of
cloud hung on the hillside after the rain and the trees dripped but we saw
nothing. Not in the open glades, not in the fields where the bush thinned,
not on the green hillsides. Finally it was dark and we went back to camp.
.The Springfield was very wet when we got out of the car and I told M'Cola
to clean it carefully and oil it well. He said he would and I went on and
into the tent where a lantern was burning, took off my clothes, had a bath
in the canvas tub and came out to the fire comfortable and relaxed in
pyjamas, dressing-gown and mosquito boots.
P.O.M. and Pop were sitting in their chairs by the fire and P.O.M. got
up to make me a whisky and soda.
'M'Cola told me,' Pop said from his chair by the fire.
'A damned big cow,' I told him. 'I nearly busted her. What do you think
about the morning?'
'The lick I suppose. We've scouts out to watch both of these hills. You
remember that old man from the village? He's on a wild-goose chase after
them in some country over beyond the hills. He and the Wanderobo. They've
been gone three days.'
'There's no reason why we shouldn't get one on the lick where Karl shot
his. One day is as good as another.'
'Quite.'
'It's the last damned day though and the lick may be rained out. As
soon as it's wet there's no salt. Just mud.'
'That's it.'
'I'd like to see one.'
'When you do, take your time and make sure of him. Take your time and
kill him.'
'I don't worry about that.'
'Let's talk about something else,' P.O.M. said. 'This makes me too
nervous.'
'I wish we had old Leather Pants,' Pop said. 'God, he was a talker. He
made the old man here talk too. Give us that spiel on modern writers again.'
'Go to hell.'
'Why don't we have some intellectual life?' P.O.M. asked. 'Why don't
you men ever discuss world topics? Why am I kept in ignorance of everything
that goes on?'
'World's in a hell of a shape,' Pop stated.
'Awful.'
'What's going on in America?'
'Damned if I know! Some sort of Y.M.C.A. show. Starry eyed bastards
spending money that somebody will have to pay. Everybody in our town quit
work to go on relief. Fishermen all turned carpenters. Reverse of the
Bible.'
'How are things in Turkey?'
'Frightful. Took the fezzes away. Hanged any amount of old pals.
Ismet's still around though.'
'Been in France lately?'
'Didn't like it. Gloomy as hell. Been a bad show there just now.'
'By God,' said Pop, 'it must have been if you can believe the papers.'
'When they riot they really riot. Hell, they've got a tradition.'
'Were you in Spain for the revolution?'
'I got there late. Then we waited for two that didn't come. Then we
missed another.'
'Did you see the one in Cuba?'
'From the start.'
'How was it?'
'Beautiful. Then lousy. You couldn't believe how lousy.'
'Stop it,' P.O.M. said. 'I know about those things. I was crouched down
behind a marble-topped table while they were shooting in Havana. They came
by in cars shooting at everybody they saw. I took my drink with me and I was
very proud not to have spilled it or forgotten it. The children said,
"Mother, can we go out in the afternoon to see the shooting?" They got so
worked up about revolution we had to stop mentioning it. Bumby got so
bloodthirsty about Mr. M. he had terrible dreams.'
'Extraordinary,' Pop said.
'Don't make fun of nie. I don't want to just hear about revolutions.
All we see or hear is revolutions. I'm sick of them. '
'The old man must like them.'
'I'm sick of them.'
'You know, I've never seen one,' Pop said.
'They're beautiful. Really. For quite a while. Then they go bad.'
'They're very exciting,' P.O.M. said. 'I'll admit that. But I'm sick of
them. Really, I don't care anything about them.'
'I've been studying them a little.'
'What did you find out?' Pop asked.
'They were all very different but there were some things you could
co-ordinate. I'm going to try to write a study of them.'
'It could be damned interesting.'
'If you have enough material. You need an awful lot of past
performances. It's very hard to get anything true on anything you haven't
seen yourself because the ones that fail have such a bad press and the
winners always lie so. Then you can only really follow anything in places
where you speak the language. That limits you of course. That's why I would
never go to Russia. When you can't overhear it's no good. All you get are
handouts and sight-seeing. Any one who knows a foreign language in any
country is damned liable to lie to you. You get your good dope always from
the people and when you can't talk with people and can't overhear you don't
get anything that's of anything but journalistic value.'
'You want to knuckle down on your Swahili then.'
'I'm trying to.'
'Even then you can't overhear because they're always talking their own
language.'
'But if I ever write anything about this it will just be landscape
painting until I know something about it. Your first seeing of a country is
a very valuable one. Probably more valuable to yourself than to anyone else,
is the hell of it. But you ought to always write it to try to get it stated.
No matter what you do with it.'
'Most of the damned Safari books are most awful bloody bores.'
'They're terrible.'
'The only one I ever liked was Streeter's. What did he call it?
{Denatured Africa}. He made you feel what it was like. That's the best.'
'I liked Charlie Curtis's. It was very honest and it made a fine
picture.'
'That man Streeter was damned funny though. Do you remember when he
shot the kongoni?'
'It was very funny.'
'I've never read anything, though, that could make you feel about the
country the way we feel about it. They all have Nairobi fast life or else
rot about shooting beasts with horns half an inch longer than someone else
shot. Or muck about danger.'
'I'd like to try to write something about the country and the animals
and what it's like to someone who knows nothing about it.'
'Have a try at it. Can't do any harm. You know I wrote a diary of that
Alaskan trip.'
'I'd love to read it,' P.O.M. said. 'I didn't know you were a writer,
Mr. J. P.'
'No bloody fear,' said Pop. 'If you'd read it, though, I'll send for
it. You know it's just what we did each day and how Alaska looked to an
Englishman from Africa. It'd bore you.'
'Not if you wrote it,' P.O.M. said.
'Little woman's giving us compliments,' Pop said.
'Not me. You.'
'I've read things by him,' she said. 'I want to read what Mr. J. P.
writes.'
'Is the old man really a writer?' Pop asked her. <! haven't seen
anything to prove it. You're sure he doesn't support you by tracking and
wing shooting?'
'Oh, yes. He writes. When he's going well he's awfully easy to get
along with. But just before he gets going he's frightful. His temper has to
go bad before he can write. When he talks about never writing again I know
he's about to get started.'
'We ought to get more literary conversation from him,' Pop said.
'Leather Breeches was the lad. Give us some literary anecdotes.'
'Well, the last night we were in Paris I'd been out shooting at Ben
Gallagher's in the Sologne the day before and he had a {fermee}, you know,
they put up a low fence while they're out feeding, and shot rabbits in the
morning and in the afternoon we had several drives and shot pheasants and I
shot a chevreuil.'
'That isn't literary.'
'Wait. The last night Joyce and his wife came to dinner and we had a
pheasant and a quarter of the chevreuil with the saddle and Joyce and I got
drunk because we were off for Africa the next day. God, we had a night.'
'That's a hell of a literary anecdote,' Pop said. 'Who's Joyce?'
'Wonderful guy,' I said. 'Wrote {Ulysses}.'
'Homer wrote {Ulysses},' Pop said.
'Who wrote {Aeschylus?'}
'Homer,' said Pop. 'Don't try to trap me. D'you know many more literary
anecdotes?'
'Ever heard of Pound?'
'No,' said Pop. 'Absolutely no.'
'I know some good ones about Pound.'
'Suppose you and he ate some funny-sounding beast and then got drunk.'
'Several times,' I said.
'Literary life must be awfully jolly. Think I'd make a writer?'
'Rather.'
'We're going to chuck all this,' Pop told P.O.M., 'and both be writers.
Give us another anecdote.'
'Ever heard of George Moore?'
'Chap that wrote "But before I go, George Moore, here's a last long
health to you?" '
'That's him.'
'What about him?'
'He's dead.'
'That's a damned dismal anecdote. You can do better than that.'
'I saw him in a book-shop once.'
'That's better. See how lively he can make them?'
'I went to call on him once in Dublin,' P.O.M. said. 'With Clara Dunn.'
'What happened?'
'He wasn't in.'
'By God. I tell you the literary life's the thing,' Pop said. 'You
can't beat it.'
'I hate Clara Dunn,' I said.
'So do I,' said Pop. 'What did she write?'
'Letters,' I said. 'You know Dos Passos?'
'Never heard of him.'
'He and I used to drink hot kirsch in the winter time.'
'What happened then?'
'People objected, finally.'
'Only writer I ever met was Stewart Edward White,' Pop said. 'Used to
admire his writing no end. Damned good, you know. Then I met him. Didn't
like him.'
'You're coming on,' I said. 'See. There's no trick to a literary
anecdote.'
'Why didn't you like him?' P.O.M. asked.
'Do I have to tell? Isn't the anecdote complete? It's just like the old
man tells them.'
'Go ahead and tell.'
'Too much the old timer about him. Eyes used to vast distances and that
sort of thing. Killed too many bloody lions. No credit kill so many lions.
Gallop 'em, yes. Couldn't kill that many. Lion kill you instead. Writes
damned fine things in {The Saturday Evening Post} about, what's the bloke's
name, Andy Burnett. Oh, damned fine. Took an awful dislike to him, though.
See him in Nairobi with his eyes used to vast distances. Wore his oldest
clothes in town. Hell of a fine shot, everybody says.'
'Why you're a literary bastard,' I said. 'Look at that for an
anecdote.'
'He's marvellous,' P.O.M. said. 'Aren't we ever going to eat?'
'Thought by God we'd eaten,' Pop said. 'Start these anecdotes. No end
to 'em.'
After dinner we sat by the fire a little while and then went to bed.
One thing seemed to be on Pop's mind and before I went in the tent he said,
'After you've waited so long, when you get a shot take it easy. You're fast
enough so you can take your time, remember. Take it easy. '
'All right.'
'I'll have them get you up early.'
'All right. I'm plenty sleepy.'
'Good night, Mr. J. P.,' P.O.M. called from the tent.
'Good night,' Pop said. He moved toward his tent carrying himself with
comic stiffness, walking in the dark as carefully as though he were an
opened bottle.
Molo waked me by pulling on the blanket in the morning and I was
dressing, dressed, and out washing the sleep out of my eyes before I was
really awake. It was still very dark and I could see Pop's back shadowed
against the fire. I walked over holding the early morning cup of hot tea and
milk in my hand waiting for it to be cool enough to drink.
'Morning,' I said.
'Morning,' he answered in that husky whisper.
'Sleep?'
'Very well. Feeling fit?'
'Sleepy is all.'
I drank the tea and spat the leaves into the fire.
'Tell your bloody fortune with those,' Pop said.
'No fear.'
Breakfast in the dark with a lantern, cool juice-slippery apricots,
hash, hot-centred, brown, and catsup spread, two fried eggs and the warm
promise-keeping coffee. On the third cup Pop, watching, smoking his pipe,
said, 'Too early for me to face it yet.'
'Get you?'
'A little.'
'I'm getting exercise,' I said. 'It doesn't bother me.'
'Bloody anecdotes,' Pop said. 'Memsahib must think we're silly
beggars.'
'I'll think up some more.'
'Nothing better than drinking. Don't know why it should make you feel
bad.'
'Are you bad?'
'Not too.'
'Take a spot of Eno's?'
'It's this damned riding in cars.'
'Well, to-day's the day.'
'Remember to take it very easy.'
'You're not worried about that, are you?'
'Just a touch.'
'Don't. It never worries me a minute. Truly.'
'Good. Better get going.'
'Have to make a trip first.'
Standing in front of the canvas circle of the latrine I looked, as each
morning, at that fuzzy blur of stars that the romanticists of astronomers
called the Southern Cross. Each morning at this moment I observed the
Southern Cross in solemn ceremony.
Pop was at the car. M'Cola handed me the Springfield and I got in the
front. The tragedian and his tracker were in the back. M'Cola climbed in
with them.
'Good luck,' Pop said. Someone was coming from towards the tents. It
was P.O.M. in her blue robe and mosquito boots. '{Oh}, good luck,' she said.
{Please}, good luck.'
I waved and we started, the headlights showing the way to the road.
There was nothing on the salt when we came up to it after leaving the
car about three miles away and making a very careful stalk. Nothing came all
morning. We sat with our heads down in the blind, each covering a different
direction through openings in the thatched withes, and always I expected the
miracle of a bull kudu coming majestic and beautiful through the open scrub
to the grey, dusty opening in the trees where the salt lick was worn,
grooved, and trampled. There were many trails to it through the trees and on
any one a bull might come silently. But nothing came. When the sun was up
and we were warmed after the misty cold of the morning I settled my rump
deeper in the dust and lay back against the wall of the hole, resting
against the small of my back and my shoulders, and still able to see out
through the slit in the blind. Putting the Springfield across my knees I
noticed that there was rust on the barrel. Slowly I pulled it along and
looked at the muzzle. It was freshly brown with rust.
'The bastard never cleaned it last night after that rain,' I thought,
and, very angry, I lifted the lug and slipped the bolt out. M'Cola was
watching me with his head down. The other two were looking out through the
blind. I held the rifle in one hand for him to look through the breech and
then put the bolt back in and shoved it forward softly, lowering it with my
finger on the trigger so that it was ready to cock rather than keeping it on
the safety.
M'Cola had seen the rusty bore. His face had not changed and I had said
nothing but I was full of contempt and there had been indictment, evidence,
and condemnation without a word being spoken. So we sat there, he with his
head bent so only the bald top showed, me leaning back and looking out
through the slit, and we were no longer partners, no longer good friends,
and nothing came to the salt.
At ten o'clock the breeze, which had come up in the east, began to
shift around and we knew it was no use. Our scent was being scattered in all
directions around the blind as sure to frighten any animals as though we
were revolving a searchlight in the dark. We got up out of the blind and
went over to look in the dust of the lick for tracks. The rain had moistened
it but it was not soaked and we saw several kudu tracks, probably made early
in the night and one big bull track, long, narrow, heart-shaped, clearly,
deeply cut.
We took the track and followed it on the damp reddish earth for two
hours in thick bush that was like second-growth timber at home. Finally we
had to leave it in stuff we could not move through. All this time I was
angry about the uncleaned rifle and yet happy and eager with anticipation
that we might jump the bull and get a snap at him in the brush. But we did
not see him and now, in the big heat of noon, we made three long circles
around some hills and finally came out into a meadow full of little, humpy
Masai cattle and, leaving all shade behind, trailed back across the open
country under the noon sun to the car.
Kamau, sitting in the car, had seen a kudu bull pass a hundred yards
away. He was headed toward the saltlick at about nine o'clock when the wind
began to be tricky, had evidently caught our scent and gone back into the
hills. Tired, sweating, and feeling more sunk than angry now, I got in
beside Kamau and we headed the car toward camp. There was only one evening
left now, and no reason to expect we would have any better luck than we were
having. As we came to camp, and the shade of the heavy trees, cool as a
pool, I took the bolt out of the Springfield and handed the rifle, boltless,
to M'Cola without speaking or looking at him. The bolt I tossed inside the
opening of our tent on to my cot.
Pop and P.O.M. were sitting under the dining tent.
'No luck?' Pop asked gently.
'Not a damn bit. Bull went by the car headed toward the salt. Must have
spooked off. We hunted all over hell.'
'Didn't you see anything?' P.O.M. asked. 'Once we thought we heard you
shoot.'
'That was Garrick shooting his mouth off. Did the scouts get anything?'
'Not a thing. We've been watching both hills.'
'Hear from Karl?'
'Not a word.'
'I'd like to have seen one,' I said. I was tired out and slipping into
bitterness fast. 'God damn them. What the hell did he have to blow that lick
to hell for the first morning and gut-shoot a lousy bull and chase him all
over the son-of-a-bitching country spooking it to holy bloody hell?'
'Bastards,' said P.O.M., staying with me in. my unreasonableness.
'Sonsabitches.'
'You're a good girl,' I said. 'I'm all right. Or I will be.'
'It's been. awful,' she said. 'Poor old Poppa.'
'You have a drink,' Pop said. 'That's what you need.'
'I've hunted them hard, Pop. I swear to God I have. I've enjoyed it and
I haven't worried up until to-day. I was so damned sure. Those damned tracks
all the time -- what if I never see one? How do I know we can ever get back
here again?'
'You'll be back,' Pop said. 'You don't have to worry about that. Go
ahead. Drink it.'
'I'm just a lousy belly-aching bastard but I swear they haven't gotten
on my nerves until to-day.'
'Belly-ache,' said Pop. 'Better to get it out.'
'What about lunch?' asked P.O.M. 'Aren't you frightfully hungry?'
'The hell with lunch. The thing is, Pop, we've never seen them on the
salt in the evening and we've never seen a bull in the hills. I've only got
to-night. It looks washed up. Three times I've had them cold and Karl and
the Austrian and the Wanderobo beat us.'
'We're not beaten,' said Pop. 'Drink another one of those.'
We had lunch, a very good lunch, and it was just over when Kati came
and said there was someone to see Pop. We could see their shadows on the
tent fly, then they came around to the front of the tent. It was the old man
of the first day, the old farmer, but now he was gotten up as a hunter and
carried a long bow and a sealed quiver of arrows.
He looked older, more disreputable and tireder than ever and his get-up
was obviously a disguise. With him was the skinny, dirty, Wanderobo with the
slit and curled up ears who stood on one leg and scratched the back of his
knee with his toes. His head was on one side and he had a narrow, foolish,
and depraved-looking face.
The old man was talking earnestly to Pop, looking him in the eye and
speaking slowly, without gestures.
'What's he done? Gotten himself up like that to get some of the scout
money?' I asked.
'Wait,' Pop said.
'Look at the pair of them,' I said. 'That's goofy Wanderobo and that
lousy old fake. What's he say, Pop?'
'He hasn't finished,' Pop said.
Finally the old man was finished and he stood there leaning on his
property bow. They both looked very tired but I remember thinking they
looked a couple of disgusting fakes.
'He says,' Pop began, 'they have found a country where there are kudu
and sable. He has been there three days. They know where there is a big kudu
bull and he has a man watching him now.'
'Do you believe it?' I could feel the liquor and the fatigue drain out
of me and the excitement come in.
'God knows,' said Pop.
'How far away is the country?'
'One day's march. I suppose that's three or four hours in the car if
the car can go.'
'Does he think the car can get in?'
'None ever has been in but he thinks you can make it. '
'When did they leave the man watching the kudu?'
'This morning.'
'Where are the sable?'
'There in the hills.'
'How do we get in?'
'I can't make out except that you cross the plain, go around that
mountain and then south. He says no one has ever hunted there. He hunted
there when he was young. '
'Do you believe it?'
'Of course natives lie like hell, but he tells it very straight.'
'Let's go.'
'You'd better start right away. Go as far as you can in the car and
then use it for a base and hunt on from there. The Memsahib and I will break
camp in the morning, move the outfit and go on to where Dan and Mr. T. are.
Once the outfit is over that black cotton stretch we're all right if the
rain catches us. You come on and join us. If you're caught we can always
send the car back by Kandoa, if worst comes, and the lorries down to Tanga
and around.'
'Don't you want to come?'
'No. You're better off alone on a show like this. The more people the
less game you'll see. You should hunt kudu alone. I'll move the outfit and
look after the little Memsahib.'
'All right,' I said. 'And I don't have to take Garrick or Abdullah?'
'Hell, no. Take M'Cola, Kamau and these two. I'll teil Molo to pack
your things. Go light as hell.'
'God damn it, Pop. Do you think it could be true?'
'Maybe,' said Pop. 'We have to play it.'
'How do you say sable?'
'Tarahalla.'
'Valhalla, I can remember. Do the females have horns?'
'Sure, but you can't make a mistake. The bull is black and they're
brown. You can't go wrong.'
'Has M'Cola ever seen one?'
'I don't think so. You've got four on your licence. Any time you can
better one, go ahead.'
'Are they hard to kill?'
'They're tough. They're not like a kudu. If you've got one down be
careful how you walk up to him.'
'What about time?'
'We've got to get out. Make it back to-morrow night if you can. Use
your own judgment. I think this is the turning point. You'll get a kudu.'
'Do you know what it's like?' I said. 'It's just like when we were kids
and we heard about a river no one had ever fished out on the huckleberry
plain beyond the Sturgeon and the Pigeon.'
'How did the river turn out?'
'Listen. We had a hell of a time to get in and the night we got there,
just before dark, and saw it, there was a deep pool and a long straight
stretch and the water so cold you couldn't keep your hand in it and I threw
a cigarette butt in and a big trout hit it and they kept snapping it up and
spitting it out as it floated until it went to pieces.'
'Big trout?'
'The biggest kind.'
'God save us,' said Pop. 'What did you do then?'
'Rigged up my rod and made a cast and it was dark, and there was a
nighthawk swooping around and it was cold as a bastard and then I was fast
to three fish the second the flies hit the water.'
'Did you land them?'
'The three of them.'
'You damned liar.'
'I swear to God.'
'I believe you. Tell me the rest when you come back. Were they big
trout?'
'The biggest bloody kind.'
'God save us,' said Pop. 'You're going to get a kudu. Get started.'
In the tent I found P.O.M. and told her.
'Not really?'
'Yes.'
'Hurry up,' she said. 'Don't talk. Get started.'
I found raincoat, extra boots, socks, bathrobe, bottle of quinine
tablets, citronella, note book, a pencil, my solids, the cameras, the
emergency kit, knife, matches, extra shirt and undershirt, a book, two
candles, money, the flask . . .
'What else?'
'Have you got soap? Take a comb and a towel. Got handkerchiefs?'
'All right.'
Molo had everything packed in a rucksack and I found my field glasses,
M'Cola taking Pop's big field glasses, a canteen with water and Kati sending
a chop-box with food. 'Take plenty of beer,' Pop said. 'You can leave it in
the car. We're short on whisky but there's a bottle.'
'How will that leave you?'
'All right. There's more at the other camp. We sent two bottles on with
Mr. K.'
'I'll only need the flask,' I said. 'We'll split the bottle.'
'Take plenty of beer then. There's any amount of it.'
'What's the bastard doing?' I said, pointing at Garrick who was getting
into the car.
'He says you and M'Cola wont be able to talk with the natives there.
You'll have to have some one to interpret.'
'He's poison.'
'You {will} need someone to interpret whatever they speak into
Swahili.'
'All right. But tell him he's not running the show and to keep his
bloody mouth shut.'
'We'll go to the top of the hill with you,' Pop said and we started
off, the Wanderobo hanging to the side of the car. 'Going to pick the old
man up in the village.'
Everyone in camp was out to watch us go.
'Have we plenty of salt?'
'Yes.'
Now we were standing by the car on the road in the village waiting for
the old man and Garrick to come back from their huts. It was early afternoon
and the sky was clouding over and I was looking at P.O.M., very desirable,
cool, and neat-looking in her khaki and her boots, her Stetson on one side
of her head, and at Pop, big, thick, in the faded corduroy sleeveless jacket
that was almost white now from washing and the sun.
'You be a good girl.'
'Don't ever worry. I wish I could go.'
'It's a one-man show,' Pop said. 'You want to get in fast and do the
dirty and get out fast. You've a big load as it is.'
The old man appeared and got into the back of the car with M'Cola who
was wearing my old khaki sleeveless, quail-shooting coat.
'M'Cola's got the old man's coat,' Pop said.
'He likes to carry things in the game pockets,' I said.
M'Cola saw we were talking about him. I had forgotten about the
uncleaned rifle. Now I remembered it and said to Pop, 'Ask him where he got
the new coat'.
M'Cola grinned and said something.
'He says it is his property.'
I grinned at him and he shook his old bald head and it was understood
that I had said nothing about the rifle.
'Where's that bastard Garrick?' I asked.
Finally he came with his blanket and got in with M'Cola and the old man
behind. The Wanderobo sat with me in front beside Kamau.
'That's a lovely-looking friend you have,' P.O.M. said. 'You be good
too.'
I kissed her good-bye and we whispered something.
'Billing and cooing,' Pop said. 'Disgusting.'
'Good-bye, you old bastard.'
'Good-bye, you damned bullfighter.'
'Good-bye, sweet.'
'Good-bye and good luck.'
'You've plenty of petrol and we'll leave some here,' Pop called.
I waved and we were starting down hill through the village on a narrow
track that led down and on to the scrubby dry plain that spread out below
the two great blue hills.
I looked back as we went down the hill and saw the two figures, the
tall thick one and the small neat one, each wearing big Stetson hats,
silhouetted on the road as they walked back toward camp, then I looked ahead
at the dried-up, scrubby plain.
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.