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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.
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,
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.
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,