with four
bottles of beer. There was a canvas water bag and a ground cloth to use as a
tent. M'Cola was taking the big gun out to the car.
     'There's no  hurry about getting back,'  Pop  said. 'We'll look for you
when we see you.'
     'All right.'
     'We'll send the lorry to haul that sportsman into Handeni. He's sending
his men ahead walking.'
     'You're sure the lorry can stand it? Don't do it  because he's a friend
of mine.'
     'Have to get him out. The lorry will be in to-night.'
     'The Memsahib's still  asleep,' I said.  'Maybe she  can get out  for a
walk and shoot some guineas?'
     'I'm here,'  she said.  'Don't  worry about  us. {Oh},  I hope  you get
them.'
     'Don't  send  out  to  look for  us  along the  road  until  day  after
to-morrow,' I said. 'If there's a good chance we'll stay.'
     'Good luck.'
     'Good luck, sweet. Good-bye, Mr. J. P.'


        CHAPTER TWO

     We were out from under the shade of camp and along the sandy river of a
road, driving into the western sun, the bush thick  to the edge of the sand,
solid as a thicket, the little hills rising above it, and all along the road
we passed groups of people making their way to the westward. Some were naked
except  for a greasy  cloth knotted over one shoulder, and carried  bows and
sealed  quivers  of  arrows.  Others carried  spears.  The  wealthy  carried
umbrellas and wore draped  white cloth and  their  women walked behind them,
with their pots and pans.  Bundles and  loads of  skins were scattered along
ahead  on  the heads  of  other natives. All  were  travelling away from the
famine. And in  the heat, my  feet out over the side of the car to keep them
away from the  heat of  the engine,  hat low over the eyes against the  sun,
watching the road, the  people,  and all clearings in the  bush for game, we
drove to the westward.
     Once  we saw  three lesser  kudu cows in an open place of  broken bush.
Grey, big bellied,  long necked, small headed, and with big ears, they moved
quickly into the woods and were gone. We left  the car and tracked  them but
there was no bull track.
     A little beyond there a flock  of guineas quick-legged across  the road
running  steady-headed with the motion of trotters. As I jumped from the car
and sprinted after  them they rocketed up, their legs  tucked  close beneath
them,  heavy-bodied, short  wings drumming, cackling, to go  over the  trees
ahead. I dropped two that thumped hard when they fell and as they lay, wings
beating, Abdullah cut their heads off so they would be legal eating.  He put
them in the car where M'Cola sat laughing; his old  man's healthy laugh, his
making-fun-of-me laugh, his bird-shooting laugh that dated from a streak  of
raging misses one time that had delighted him. Now when  I killed,  it was a
joke, as  when we shot a hyena, the funniest joke of all. He laughed  always
to see the birds tumble and when I missed he roared and shook his head again
and again.
     'Ask him what the hell he's laughing about?' I asked Pop once.
     'At B'wana,' M'Cola said, and shook his head, 'at the little birds.'
     'He thinks you're funny,' Pop said.
     'Goddam it. I am funny. But the hell with him.'
     'He thinks you're very funny,' Pop said.  'Now the Memsahib and I would
never laugh.'
     'Shoot them. yourself.'
     'No, you're the bird shot. The self-confessed bird shot,' she said.
     So bird shooting became this marvellous joke. If I killed, the joke was
on. the birds and M'Cola would shake  his head and laugh  and make his hands
go round and round  to show  how the  bird turned over in  the air. And if I
missed, I  was the clown of the piece and he would look at me and shake with
laughing. Only the hyenas were funnier.
     Highly humorous was the hyena obscenely loping, full belly dragging, at
daylight on the plain, who, shot  from the stern, skittered on into speed to
tumble end over end. Mirth provoking was the hyena that stopped out of range
by an alkali lake to look back and, hit in the chest, went over on his back,
his  four feet and his full belly in  the air. Nothing could be  more  jolly
than the hyena coming suddenly wedge-headed and stinking  out of  high grass
by  a {donga},  hit at ten  yards,  who raced  his tail in three  narrowing,
scampering circles until he died.
     It was funny to M'Cola to see a hyena shot  at close  range. There  was
that  comic slap of the  bullet and the hyena's  agitated  surprise  to find
death inside of him. It was funnier to see a hyena shot at a great distance,
in the heat shimmer of  the plain, to see him  go over backwards, to see him
start that frantic circle, to see that electric speed that meant that he was
racing the  little nickeled death inside him. But the great joke of all, the
thing  M'Cola  waved  his hands across  his face  about, and turned away and
shook  his head and  laughed, ashamed even of  the  hyena, the  pinnacle  of
hyenic humour, was the hyena, the classic hyena, that hit too far back while
running, would circle madly, snapping and tearing at himself until he pulled
his  own intestines out, and then  stood there, jerking them  out and eating
them with relish.
     {'Fisi,'}  M'Cola would say  and shake his head in delighted sorrow  at
there  being  such   an  awful  beast.  Fisi,  the   hyena,  hermaphroditic,
self-eating  devourer  of the dead, trailer of  calving  cows, ham-stringer,
potential  biter-off of your  face  at night  while you slept,  sad  yowler,
camp-follower,  stinking, foul, with jaws  that  crack  the  bones  the lion
leaves,  belly  dragging, loping  away  on the brown  plain,  looking  back,
mongrel dog-smart in the face; whack from the little Mannlicher and then the
horrid circle  starting. 'Fisi,' M'Cola laughed, ashamed of him, shaking his
bald black head. 'Fisi. Eats himself. Fisi.'
     The hyena  was a  dirty joke but  bird  shooting was  a clean  joke. My
whisky was  a  clean joke. There were many variations of that joke. Some  we
come to later. The Mohammedans and all religions were a joke.  A joke on all
the people who  had  them.  Charo,  the other  gun bearer,  was  short, very
serious and  highly  religious.  All  Ramadan  he never swallowed his saliva
until  sunset  and  when the  sun  was  almost  down I'd  see  him  watching
nervously. He had a bottle with him of some sort of tea and  he would finger
it and watch the  sun and I would see M'Cola watching him and pretending not
to  see.  This  was not outrightly funny  to him. This was something that he
could not laugh about openly but that he felt  superior  to and  wondered at
the  silliness of  it. The Mohammedan religion  was very fashionable and all
the higher social grades  among the  boys were Mohammedans. It was something
that  gave  caste,  something  to  believe  in,  something  fashionable  and
god-giving  to  suffer  a  little for  each  year, something  that made  you
superior to other people, something that gave you more complicated habits of
eating, something that I understood and M'Cola did not understand,  nor care
about, and he watched Charo watch for the sun to set with that blank look on
his  face that it put  on about all things  that he was not a part of. Charo
was deadly thirsty and truly devout and the sun set very slowly. I looked at
it,  red  over the trees, nudged him and he grinned. M'Cola  offered me  the
water  bottle solemnly. I  shook my  head  and Charo  grinned again.  M'Cola
looked blank. Then the  sun was down and Charo had the bottle tilted up, his
Adam's  apple rising and falling greedily and M'Cola looking at him and then
looking away.
     In the  early days, before we became good  friends, he did not trust me
at all. When anything came  up  he went  into this  blankness. I liked Charo
much better then. We  understood each other  on the question of religion and
Charo admired my shooting  and always  shook  hands  and smiled when  we had
killed  anything particularly good. This was flattering and pleasing. M'Cola
looked on all this early shooting  as a series of  lucky accidents. We  were
supposed  to shoot.  We  had not yet shot anything that amounted to anything
and he was not really my gun bearer. He was Mr. Jackson Phillip's gun bearer
and he had been loaned to me. I meant nothing to him. He did not like me nor
dislike me. He was politely contemptuous of Karl. Who he liked was Mama.
     The evening we killed the first  lion it was dark when we came in sight
of  camp.  The killing  of the lion had been confused and unsatisfactory. It
was agreed beforehand that P.O.M. should have the first  shot  but since  it
was the  first lion any of  us had ever shot at, and it was very late in the
day, really  too late to take the lion on, once he was hit we were to make a
dogfight  of it  and anyone was free to get him. This was a good plan  as it
was  nearly sundown and if the lion got into cover, wounded, it would be too
dark to  do  anything about it without  a mess.  I remember  seeing the lion
looking yellow and heavy-headed and enormous against  a scrubby looking tree
in a patch of orchard bush and P.O.M. kneeling  to shoot and wanting to tell
her  to sit down and  make sure of him. Then there was  the  short-barrelled
explosion  of the Mannlicher and the lion was going to the left on a  run, a
strange,  heavy-shouldered,  foot-swinging,  cat  run.  I hit him  with  the
Springfield and he went down and  spun over and  I shot again,  too quickly,
and threw a cloud of dirt  over him. But there he was, stretched out, on his
belly, and, with the sun  just over the top of the trees, and the grass very
green, we walked up  on him like  a posse, or a gang of Black and Tans, guns
ready and cocked, not knowing whether he was stunned  or dead. When  we were
close M'Cola threw a stone at him. It hit him in  the flank and from the way
it  hit  you could tell he was  a dead animal. I was sure P.O.M. had hit him
but there  was  only one bullet hole, well  back, just  below  the spine and
ranging forward  to come to  the  surface under  the skin of the chest.  You
could feel the bullet under the skin  and M'Cola made a slit and cut it out.
It  was a 220-grain solid bullet from the Springfield and  it had raked him,
going through lungs and heart.
     I was  so surprised  by the way he  had rolled  over dead from the shot
after we had been prepared for  a charge, for heroics, and for drama, that I
felt more  let down  than  pleased.  It was  our first lion and we were very
ignorant and this was not what  we  had paid to see.  Charo  and M'Cola both
shook P.O.M.'s hand and then Charo came over and shook hands with me.
     'Good shot, B'wana,' he said in Swahili. {'Piga m'uzuri.'}
     'Did you shoot, Karl?' I asked.
     'No. I was just going to when you shot.'
     'You didn't shoot him, Pop?'
     'No. You'd have  heard it.' He opened the breech  and took  out the two
big 450 No. 2's.
     'I'm sure I missed him,' P.O.M. said.
     'I was sure you hit him.. I still think you hit him,' I said.
     'Mama hit,' M'Cola said.
     'Where?' Charo asked.
     'Hit,' said M'Cola. 'Hit.'
     'You  rolled  him  over,' Pop said to  me.  'God,  he went over  like a
rabbit.'
     'I couldn't believe it.'
     'Mama {piga,'} M'Cola said. {''Piga Simba.'}
     As we saw the camp fire in the dark ahead of us, coming in  that night,
M'Cola suddenly commenced to shout a stream of  high-pitched, rapid, singing
words in Wakamba ending in the word {'Simb}a{'}. Someone at the camp shouted
back one word. D 47
     'Mama!' M'Cola shouted. Then another long stream. Then 'Mama! Mama!'
     Through the dark came all the porters, the cook, the skinner, the boys,
and the headman.
     'Mama!' M'Cola shouted. 'Mama {piga Simba.'}
     The boys came dancing, crowing, and beating time and chanting something
from  down in their chests that started like a cough  and sounded like {'Hey
la Mama! Hay la Mama! Hey la Mama!'}
     The  rolling-eyed skinner picked P.O.M. up, the big  cook  and the boys
held her,  and the others pressing forward to lift  and  if not to  lift  to
touch and hold, they danced and sang through the dark around the fire and to
our tent.
     {'Hey la Mama! huh!  huh! huh!  Hay la Mama! huh! huh! huh!'} they sang
the lion dance  with that deep, lion asthmatic cough in it. Then at the tent
they put  her  down and everyone, very shyly, shook  hands,  the boys saying
{'m'uzuri, Memsahib,''} and M'Cola and the  porters all saying  {''m'uzuri},
Mama' with much feeling in the accenting of the word 'Mama'.
     Afterwards in the chairs in front of the fire, sitting with the drinks,
Pop said, 'You shot it. M'Cola would kill anyone who said you didn't.'
     'You know,  I  feel as though  I  did shoot it,' P.O.M. said.  'I don't
believe I'd be able to stand it if I really had  shot  it. I'd be too proud.
Isn't triumph marvellous?'
     'Good old Mama,' Karl said.
     'I believe you did shoot him,' I said.
     'Oh, let's not go into that,' P.O.M.  said. 'I feel so  wonderful about
just being supposed to have killed him. You know people  never used to carry
me on their shoulders much at home.'
     'No one knows how to behave in America,' Pop said. 'Most uncivilized.'
     'We'll carry you in Key West,' Karl said. 'Poor old Mama.'
     'Let's not talk about it,'  P.O.M. said. 'I like it too much. Shouldn't
I maybe distribute largess?'
     'They didn't do it for  that,' Pop  said. 'But it  is all right to give
something to celebrate.'
     'Oh, I want  to  give them  all  a  great  deal of money,' P.O.M. said.
'Isn't triumph simply marvellous?'
     'Good old Mama,' I said. 'You killed him.'
     'No, I didn't. Don't lie to me. Just let me enjoy my triumph.'
     Anyway M'Cola did not trust me for a long  time. Until P.O.M.'s licence
ran out,  she was  his favourite and we  were  simply a lot  of  people  who
interfered and kept Mama from shooting things. Once her  licence was out and
she was no longer  shooting, she dropped back into non-combatant status with
him  and as  we began to hunt kudu and Pop  stayed  in  camp and sent us out
alone with  the trackers, Karl with Charo and M'Cola and I  together, M'Cola
dropped Pop  visibly in his estimation. It was only temporary  of course. He
was Pop's man and I  believe  his  working estimations were only from day to
day  and  required  an unbroken  series of events  to have any  meaning. But
something had happened between us.


        PART II

        PURSUIT REMEMBERED

        CHAPTER ONE

     It dated back to the time  of Droopy, after I had come  back from being
ill in Nairobi and we had gone on a foot safari to hunt rhino in the forest.
Droopy  was a real savage  with lids  to  his eyes that nearly covered them,
handsome, with a great deal of style, a fine hunter and a beautiful tracker.
He was about thirty-five, I should  think,  and  wore only  a piece of cloth
knotted over  one shoulder, and  a  fez that some hunter  had given  him. He
always  carried a spear. M'Cola wore an old U. S. Army khaki tunic, complete
with buttons, that had originally been  brought out for Droopy, who had been
away somewhere and had missed getting it.  Twice  Pop had brought it out for
Droopy and finally M'Cola had said, 'Give it to me'.
     Pop  had let him have it and M'Cola had  worn it ever since. It, a pair
of shorts, his fuzzy wool curler's cap, and  a knitted army sweater he  wore
when washing  the tunic, were  the only garments I ever saw  on  the old man
until he took my bird-shooting coat. For shoes  he used sandals cut from old
motor-car tyres.  He had  slim, handsome legs with well-turned ankles on the
style of Babe Ruth's and I remember how surprised I was the first time I saw
him with the  tunic  off and noticed how old his upper body was. It had that
aged look you see in photographs of Jeffries and Sharkey posing thirty years
after, the ugly, old-man biceps and the fallen pectoral muscles.
     'How old is M'Cola?' I asked Pop.
     'He must be over fifty,' Pop  said.  'He's got a grown-up family in the
native reserve.'
     'How are his kids?'
     'No good, worthless. He can't  handle them. We  tried  one as a porter.
But he was no good.'
     M'Cola was not jealous  of  Droopy. He simply  knew  that  Droopy was a
better man than  he was.  More of a hunter, a  faster and a cleaner tracker,
and a great  stylist in everything he did. He admired Droopy in the same way
we did  and being out with  him, it made  him  realize that  he  was wearing
Droopy's tunic and  that he had been a  porter before he became a gun bearer
and suddenly he ceased being an old timer  and we  were hunting together; he
and I hunting together and Droopy in command of the show.
     That had been a  fine hunt. The afternoon of the day  we came  into the
country we walked about four miles from camp along a  deep rhino trail  that
graded through  the grassy hills with their abandoned orchard-looking trees,
as smoothly and evenly as though an engineer had planned it. The trail was a
foot  deep in the ground and smoothly worn and  we left it  where it slanted
down through a divide in the  hills like a dry irrigation ditch and climbed,
sweating, the small, steep hill on the  right to  sit there  with our  backs
against the hilltop and glass the country. It was a green, pleasant country,
with hills  below the forest that grew  thick on the side of a mountain, and
it  was cut by the valleys of several watercourses that came down out of the
thick timber on the mountain. Fingers of the forest came down on to the head
of some of the slopes and it was there, at the  forest edge, that we watched
for rhino to  come out. If you looked  away from the forest and the mountain
side you  could follow the watercourses and the hilly slope of the land down
until  the land flattened  and the  grass was brown and  burned  and,  away,
across  a long sweep of country, was the brown Rift Valley and  the shine of
Lake Manyara.
     We all lay there on the hillside  and watched the country carefully for
rhino. Droopy was on the other side of  the hilltop, squatted on his  heels,
looking, and M'Cola sat below us. There was a cool breeze from the  east and
it blew the grass in  waves  on the hillsides. There  were  many large white
clouds and the tall trees of the forest on the mountain side grew so closely
and were so  foliaged that it looked as though you could walk on their tops.
Behind this  mountain there was a gap and then another mountain and the  far
mountain was dark blue with forest in the distance.
     Until five o'clock we did not  see anything. Then, without the glasses,
I  saw something  moving  over the shoulder of one of  the valleys  toward a
strip of the timber. In  the glasses  it was a rhino, showing very clear and
minute at  the  distance,  red-coloured  in  the sun,  moving with  a  quick
waterbug-like  motion across  the hill. Then there were  three  more of them
that  came out  of the forest,  dark in the  shadow,  and  two  that fought,
tinily,  in the glasses,  pushing head-on, fighting in front  of a  clump of
bushes  while  we watched them and the light failed.  It was too dark to get
down the hill, across the valley and up the narrow slope of mountain side to
them in time for a  shot. So we went back  to the camp, down the hill in the
dark, edging down on our shoes and then feeling the trail smooth under foot,
walking along that  deep trail, that  wound through the dark hills, until we
saw the firelight in the trees.
     We  were excited  that  night because  we  had seen the three rhino and
early  the next  morning while we were eating breakfast before starting out,
Droopy came in to report a herd of buffalo  he had found feeding at the edge
of the forest not  two miles from camp. We went there, still  tasting coffee
and kippers  in  the  early  morning heart-pounding of  excitement,  and the
native Droopy had left watching them  pointed where  they had crossed a deep
gulch and gone into  an open  patch  of forest.  He said there were two  big
bulls in a herd of a dozen or more. We followed them in, moving very quietly
on the game trails,  pushing the vines aside and seeing  the tracks and  the
quantities of fresh dung, but though  we went on into the  forest, where  it
was too thick to shoot and made a wide circle, we did not see  or hear them.
Once we heard the tick birds and saw them flying, but  that  was all.  There
were numbers of rhino  trails there in the  woods and  may strawy  piles  of
dung, but  we  saw nothing but the green wood-pigeons and some  monkeys, and
when  we  came  out we were wet to our waists from  the dew, and the sun was
quite high. The day was very hot, now before the wind had gotten up,  and we
knew whatever rhino and buffalo had been out  would have gone back deep into
the forest to rest out of the heat.
     The others started back to camp with Pop and M'Cola.  There was no meat
in camp, and I wanted to  hunt back in a circle  with Droopy  to  see  if we
could kill a piece. I was beginning to feel strong again after the dysentery
and  it was a pleasure to walk in the easy rolling  country, simply to walk,
and to be  able to hunt, not knowing what we might see and free to shoot for
the meat we needed. Then, too, I liked  Droopy and liked to watch  him walk.
He  strode very loosely and with a slight lift, and I liked to watch him and
to feel  the grass under my  soft-soled boots and the pleasant weight of the
rifle,  held just back of the muzzle, the barrel resting on my shoulder, and
the sun hot enough  to sweat you  well as  it burned the dew from the grass;
with the breeze  starting and the country  like  an  abandoned  New  England
orchard to walk through.  I knew that I was shooting well again and I wanted
to make a shot to impress Droopy.
     From the  top  of  one rise we  saw two  kongoni showing  yellow  on  a
hillside about a  mile away and I  motioned to Droop that we would  go after
them. We started down and in a ravine jumped a waterbuck bull and  two cows.
Waterbuck was the  one animal we might get that I knew was worthless as meat
and I  had shot a better head than this one carried. I had the sights on the
buck as he tore away, remembered about the  worthless  meat,  and having the
head, and did not shoot.
     'No shoot kuro?' Droopy asked in Swahili. {'Doumi sana}. A good bull.'
     I tried to tell him that I had  a better one and that it was no good to
eat.
     He grinned.
     {'Piga kongoni m'uzuri.'}
     Piga' was a fine word. It sounded exactly as the command to fire should
sound or the announcement of a hit. 'M'uzuri', meaning  good,  well, better,
had sounded too much like the name of a state for a long time, and walking I
used to make up  sentences in Swahili with Arkansas and M'usuri in them, but
now it  seemed  natural, no longer to  be italicized, just  as all the words
came  to  seem  the  proper and natural  words and there  was nothing odd or
unseemly in  the  stretching of  the ears, in the tribal scars, or in a  man
carrying a spear.  The  tribal marks and  the tattooed places seemed natural
and handsome  adornments and I regretted not having  any  of my own. My  own
scars were  all informal, some  irregular and sprawling, others simply puffy
welts.  I had one on my forehead that people still commented on, asking if I
had bumped my head, but  Droop had handsome ones  beside  his cheekbones and
others, symmetrical and  decorative, on his chest and belly.  I was thinking
that I had one good one, a sort of embossed Christmas tree, on the bottom of
my  right foot  that  only served  to  wear out socks,  when  we jumped  two
reedbuck. They went off through the trees and then stood at sixty yards, the
thin, graceful buck looking back, and I shot him high and a touch behind the
shoulder. He gave a jump and went off very fast.
     'Piga.' Droopy smiled. We had both heard the whunk of the bullet.
     'Kufa,' I told him. 'Dead.'
     But when we  came up  to  him,  lying on his  side, his heart was still
beating  strongly, although to all appearances he  was  dead.  Droopy had no
skinning knife and I  had only a penknife to stick him with. I felt  for the
heart behind  the  foreleg  with my fingers and feeling it beating under the
hide slipped  the knife  in but  it was short and pushed the heart  away.  I
could feel  it, hot and rubbery against my  fingers, and feel the knife push
it, but I felt around  and cut the big artery and the blood came hot against
my fingers. Once bled,  I started to open  him, with the little knife, still
showing off to Droopy, and emptying him neatly took out the liver,  cut away
the gall, and laying the liver on a hummock of grass, put the kidneys beside
it.
     Droopy  asked for the  knife.  Now he  was going to show  me something.
Skilfully  he  slit open the stomach  and turned it inside, tripe side, out,
emptying the  grass  in it on the  ground, shook it, then put the liver  and
kidneys inside it and with the knife cut a switch from the tree the buck lay
under and sewed the stomach together with the withe so that the tripe made a
bag to carry the other delicacies in. Then he  cut a pole and put the bag on
the end of it, running it through the flaps, and put it over his shoulder in
the  way  tramps carried their property  in a handkerchief on the end  of  a
stick in  Blue Jay corn plaster advertisements when we were children. It was
a good trick and I thought how I would show it to John Staib in Wyoming some
time  and he would smile  his deaf man's smile (you had to throw  pebbles at
him to make  him  stop when you heard a bull bugle),  and  I knew what  John
would say. He would say, 'By Godd, Urnust, dot's smardt'.
     Droop handed  me the  stick, then took off his single garment,  made  a
sung and  got the buck up on his back. I tried to help him  and suggested by
signs  that  we cut a  pole and sling him, carrying him between  us, but  he
wanted to carry him  alone. So we started for camp, me with the tripe bag on
the end  of a stick over  my shoulder, my rifle slung, and Droopy staggering
steadily ahead, sweating heavily, under the buck. I tried to get him to hang
him in a tree and leave him until we could send out a couple of porters, and
to that end we  put him in the crotch of a tree. But when Droopy saw that  I
meant to go off and leave him there rather than simply allow him to drain he
got  him down on to  his shoulders again and we went on into camp, the boys,
around the cooking fire,  all laughing at the tripe bag over my shoulder  as
we came in.
     This  was the kind  of  hunting  that I liked. No riding  in  cars, the
country broken  up instead of the plains, and I was completely  happy. I had
been quite ill and had that pleasant feeling of getting stronger each day. I
was underweight, had a great  appetite for meat,  and could eat all I wanted
without feeling stuffy. Each  day I sweated out whatever we drank sitting at
the fire at night, and in  the heat of the day, now, I lay in the shade with
a breeze  in the  trees  and read with no  obligation  and  no compulsion to
write, happy  in knowing that at four o'clock  we  would be starting out  to
hunt again. I would not even write a letter. The only person  I really cared
about, except the children, was  with nie,  and I had no wish to  share this
life with anyone who was not there, only to live it, being completely  happy
and quite  tired. I  knew that I was shooting well and I had that feeling of
well-being and confidence that is so much more pleasant to have than to hear
about.
     As  it  turned out,  we started soon after three  to be on the  hill by
four.  But it  was nearly  five before we saw  the first rhino come bustling
short-leggedly across the ridge of hill in almost the same place we had seen
the rhino the night before. We sat where he went into the edge of the forest
near where  we had seen the  two fighting and then  took a course that would
lead us down the hill, across the grown-over gully at the bottom, and up the
steep slope to where there was a thorn tree with yellow blossoms that marked
the place where we had seen the rhino go in.
     Coming  straight up  the slope in  sight of the  thorn  tree,  the wind
blowing  across  the hill, I  tried to  walk as  slowly as I could and put a
handkerchief inside the sweatband  of my hat to keep the perspiration out of
my glasses. I expected to shoot at any minute and I wanted to slow up enough
so my  heart  would not be pounding. In shooting large  animals there  is no
reason ever to miss if you have a clear shot and can shoot and know where to
shoot,  unless you are unsteady from  a run or a climb or  fog your glasses,
break them or run out of cloth or paper to wipe them clean. The glasses were
the biggest hazard  and I used to carry  four handkerchiefs and  change them
from the left to the right pocket when they were wet.
     We  came  up  to  the yellow blossomed tree very carefully, like people
walking up  to a bevy of quail the dogs have pointed, and the rhino was  not
in sight.  We  went  all through  the edge of the forest  and it was full of
tracks and fresh rhino sign, but there was no rhino. The sun was setting and
it was getting too dark to shoot, but we followed the forest around the side
of  the mountain,  hoping  to see  a rhino  in  the open glades. When it was
almost too dark to shoot, I saw  Droopy stop and crouch. With  his head down
he motioned us forward. Crawling up,  we saw  a  large rhino and a small one
standing chest deep in brush, facing us across a little valley.
     'Cow and calf,' Pop said softly. 'Can't  shoot her. Let me  look at her
horn.' He took the glasses from M'Cola.
     'Can she see us?' P.O.M. asked.
     'No.'
     'How far are they?'
     'Must be nearly five hundred yards.'
     'My God, she looks big,' I whispered.
     'She's a big cow,'  Pop said. 'Wonder what became of the bull?'  He was
pleased and  excited by the sight of game. 'Too dark  to shoot  unless we're
right on him.'
     The  rhinos  had  turned  and were  feeding. They never seemed  to move
slowly. They either bustled or stood still.
     'What  makes  them so red?'  P.O.M. asked.  'Rolling  in the  mud,' Pop
answered. 'We better get along while there's light.'
     The sun --was down when  we  came out of the forest and looked down the
slope and across to the hill where we had  watched from with our glasses. We
should  have back-tracked and gone down, crossed the gulch, and climbed back
up the trail  the  way  we  had come, but  we decided, like fools,  to grade
straight across  the mountainside below  the edge of  the forest. So  in the
dark, following this ideal line, we descended into steep ravines that showed
only as wooded  patches  until you were in them, slid down, clung  to vines,
stumbled  and  climbed  and  slid  again,  down  and  down,  then   steeply,
impossibly,  up,  hearing  the rustle of night  things  and  the cough of  a
leopard hunting baboons,  me scared  of snakes, and  touching  each root and
branch with snake fear in the dark.
     To go down and up two hands-and-knee climbing ravines and then out into
the moonlight and the long,  too-steep shoulder of mountain that you climbed
one  foot up  to the other, one foot after the other, one stride at  a time,
leaning  forward against  the grade  and the  altitude,  dead  tired and gun
weary,  single file in the moonlight across the slope, on up and to the  top
where it was easy, the country spread in the moonlight, then up and down and
on, through the small hills, tired but now in sight of the fires and on into
camp.
     So then you sit, bundled against the evening chill, at the fire, with a
whisky and soda, waiting for the announcement that the  canvas bath had been
a quarter filled with hot water.
     {'Bathi}, B'wana.'
     'Goddamn it, I could never hunt sheep again,' you say.
     'I never could,' says P.O.M. 'You all made me.'
     'You climbed better than any of us.'
     'Do you suppose we could hunt sheep again, Pop?'
     'I wonder,' Pop said. 'I suppose it's merely condition.'
     'It's riding in the damned cars that ruins us.'
     'If we  did  that walk every  night we could come back in  three nights
from now and never feel it.'
     'Yes. But I'd be as scared  of snakes if  we  did it every night for  a
year.'
     'You'd get over it.'
     'No,'  I said.  'They  scare me  stiff. Do  you remember  that  time we
touched hands behind the tree?'
     'Rather,' said  Pop.  'You jumped two  yards. Are you really afraid  of
them, or only talking?'
     'They scare me sick,' I said. 'They always have.'
     'What's the matter  with you men?'  P.O.M. said.  'Why haven't I  heard
anything about the war to-night?'
     'We're too tired. Were you in the war, Pop?'
     'Not me,' said Pop. 'Where  is that boy  with the whisky?' Then calling
in that feeble, clowning falsetto, 'Kayti... Katy-ay!'
     {'Bathi,'} said Molo again softly, but insistently.
     'Too tired.'
     'Memsahib {bathi,'} Molo said hopefully.
     'I'll  go,' said P.O.M.  'But you two hurry up  with your drinking. I'm
hungry.'
     '{Bathi,'} said Kayti severely to Pop.
     {'Bathi} yourself,' said Pop. 'Don't bully me.'
     Kayti turned away in fire-lit slanting smile.
     'All right. All right,' said Pop. 'Going to have one?' he asked.
     'We'll have just one,' I said, 'and then we'll {bathi.'}
     {'Bathi},  B'wana M'Kumba,' Molo  said.  P.O.M.  came  toward the  fire
wearing her blue dressing-gown and mosquito boots.
     'Go on,'  she said. 'You  can have another  when you  come out. There's
nice, warm, muddy water.'
     'They bully us,' Pop said.
     'Do you remember the time we were  sheep hunting and your hat blew  off
and nearly fell  on to the ram?' I asked her, the whisky racing my mind back
to Wyoming.
     'Go take your {bathi,'} P.O.M. said. 'I'm going to have a gimlet.'
     In the morning we were dressed before daylight, ate breakfast, and were
hunting  the  forest edge  and the sunken valleys  where Droop had  seen the
buffalo before  the sun was up. But they were not there.  It was a long hunt
and we came back to camp  and  decided  to  send the lorries for porters and
move with a foot safari to where there was supposed  to be water in a stream
that came down out of the mountain beyond where we  had seen  the rhinos the
night  before. Being  camped  there  we could hunt a  new  country along the
forest edge and we would be much closer to the mountain.
     The trucks were to bring in Karl  from his kudu camp where he seemed to
be getting disgusted, or discouraged, or both, and  he could go down  to the
Rift Valley the next day and kill some meat and try for an oryx. If we found
good rhino we would send for him. We did not want to fire any shots where we
were going  except at rhino in order  not to scare them, and we needed meat.
The rhino seemed very shy and I knew from  Wyoming how the shy game will all
shift out of a small country, a country being an area,  a valley or range of
hills, a man can hunt in, after a  shot or two. We planned this all out, Pop
consulting with Droopy, and then sent the  lorries off  with Dan to  recruit
porters.
     Late in the afternoon they  were back with Karl, his outfit, and  forty
M'Bulus, good-looking savages with a pompous headman who wore  the only pair
of  shorts among them. Karl was  thin now, his  skin  sallow, his  eyes very
tired  looking and he seemed a little  desperate. He had been eight days  in
the kudu camp in the hills, hunting hard, with no one with him who spoke any
English, and they had only seen two cows and jumped a bull out of range. The
guides claimed  they  had  seen  another  bull but  Karl had  thought it was
kongoni, or that they said it was a kongoni, and had not shot. He was bitter
about this and it was not a happy outfit.
     'I never saw his horns. I don't believe it was  a bull,' he  said. Kudu
hunting was a touchy subject with him now and we let it alone.
     'He'll  get an oryx down  there and he'll feel better,' Pop said. 'It's
gotten on his nerves a little.'
     Karl agreed to the plan for us to move ahead  into the new country, and
for him to go down for meat.
     'Whatever you say,' he said. 'Absolutely whatever you say.'
     'It will give him some shooting,' Pop said. 'Then he'll feel better.'
     'We'll get one. Then you get one. Whoever gets his first can go on down
after oryx. You'll probably get an oryx to-morrow anyway when you're hunting
meat.'
     'Whatever you  say,'  Karl said. His mind was bitterly  revolving eight
blank days of hill climbing  in the heat, out before daybreak, back at dark,
hunting an animal  whose  Swahili name  he  could not  then  remember,  with
trackers in whom he had no confidence, coming back  to eat alone, no one  to
whom he could talk, his  wife nine thousand miles and three months away, and
how was  his dog and how  was  his job, and  god-damn it where were they and
what if he missed one when he got a shot, he wouldn't, you never missed when
it was really important, he was  sure of that, that was one of the tenets of
his faith, but what if he got excited and  missed, and why didn't he get any
letters, what did the guide  say kongoni for that  time, they  did, he  knew
they did,  but  he  said nothing  of  all  that, only, 'Whatever you say', a
little desperately.
     'Come on, cheer up, you bastard,' I said.
     'I'm cheerful. What's the matter with you?'
     'Have a drink.'
     'I don't want a drink. I want a kudu.'
     Later Pop said, 'I thought he'd do well off by himself  with no one  to
hurry him or rattle him. He'll be all right. He's a good lad.'
     'He wants  someone to  tell him  exactly what to do and still leave him
alone and not rattle  him,' I said. 'It's hell  for him to shoot in front of
everybody. He's not a damned show-off like me.'
     'He made a damned fine shot at that leopard,' Pop said.
     'Two  of  them,' I said. 'The second was as good as the first. Hell, he
can shoot. On the range he'll shoot  the pants  off of  any  of us.  But  he
worries about it and I rattle him trying to get him to speed up.'
     'You're a little hard on him sometimes,' Pop said.
     'Hell, he knows me. He knows what I think of him. He doesn't mind.'
     'I still think he'll find himself off by himself,' Pop said. 'It's just
a question of confidence. He's really a good shot.'
     'He's got the best buff, the best waterbuck, and the best lion, now,' I
said. 'He's got nothing to worry about.'
     'The Memsahib has the best  lion, brother. Don't make any mistake about
that.'
     'I'm glad of that. But he's got a damned fine lion  and  a big leopard.
Everything he has is good. We've got  plenty of  time.  He's got nothing  to
worry about. What the hell is he so gloomy about?'
     'We'll get an early start in the morning so we can finish it off before
it gets too hot for the little Memsahib.'
     'She's in the best shape of any one.'
     'She's marvellous. She's like a little terrier.'
     We  went out  that afternoon and glassed the country from the hills and
never  saw a  thing.  That night after  supper  we were in the  tent. P.O.M.
disliked intensely being  compared to a little  terrier. If she must be like
any dog, and she did not wish to be, she would prefer a wolfhound, something
lean, racy, long-legged and ornamental.  Her courage was so automatic and so
much  a simple state  of being  that she never thought of danger; then, too,
danger was in the hands of Pop and for Pop she had a complete, clear-seeing,
absolutely trusting adoration. Pop was her ideal  of how a  man  should  be,
brave,  gentle,  comic,  never losing  his  temper,  never  bragging,  never
complaining except in a joke, tolerant, understanding, intelligent, drinking
a little too much as a good man should, and, to her eyes, very handsome.
     'Don't you think Pop's handsome?'
     'No,' I said. 'Droopy's handsome.'
     'Droopy's {beautiful}. But don't you {really} think Pop's handsome?'
     'Hell,  no.  I  like  him  as well as any man I've ever known, but  I'm
damned if he's handsome.'
     'I think he's lovely looking. But you understand about how I feel about
him, don't you?'
     'Sure. I'm as fond of the bastard myself.'
     'But {don't} you think he's handsome, really?'
     'Nope.'
     Then, a little later:
     'Well, who's handsome to you?'
     'Belmonte and Pop. And you.'
     'Don't be patriotic,' I said. 'Who's a beautiful woman?'
     'Garbo.'
     'Not any more. Josie is. Margot is.'
     'Yes, they are. I know I'm not.'
     'You're lovely.'
     'Let's talk about Mr. J. P. I don't like you to call him  Pop. It's not
dignified.'
     'He and I aren't dignified together.'
     'Yes, but I'm dignified with him. Don't you think he's wonderful?'
     'Yes,  and  he doesn't  have to read  books writte