n by some female he's
tried to help get published saying how he's yellow.'
     'She's just  jealous and malicious. You never should  have helped  her.
Some people never forgive that.'
     'It's a shame, though, with all that talent gone to malice and nonsense
and self-praise. It's a goddamned shame, really. It's a shame you never knew
her before she went to pot.  You know a  funny thing; she  never could write
dialogue. It was terrible. She learned how to do  it  from my stuff and used
it  in  that book.  She had never written like that before. She never  could
forgive learning that and she was afraid people would notice it, where she'd
learned it,  so  she had to attack me.  It's a funny  racket,  really. But I
swear she was  nice before she got ambitious. You would have liked her then,
really.'
     'Maybe, but I don't think  so,' said P.O.M.  'We have fun though, don't
we? Without all those people.'
     'God damn it if we don't. I've had a better time every year since I can
remember.'
     'But isn't Mr. J. P. wonderful? Really?'
     'Yes. He's wonderful.'
     'Oh, you're nice to say it. Poor Karl.'
     'Why?'
     'Without his wife.'
     'Yes,' I said. 'Poor Karl.'


        CHAPTER TWO

     So in the morning, again, we started ahead of the porters and went down
and across the  hills and through  a deeply forested valley and then up  and
across  a  long  rise  of  country  with  high grass that made  the  walking
difficult, and  on and  up and  across, resting  sometimes in the shade of a
tree, and then on and  up and down  and across, all in high grass  now, that
you  had to break  a  trail in, and the  sun was very hot. The five of us in
single file,  Droop and M'Cola with a big gun apiece, hung with musettes and
water bottles and the cameras, we all  sweating in the sun, Pop and  I  with
guns and the Memsahib trying to walk like Droopy,  her Stetson tilted on one
side, happy to be on  a trip,  pleased about how comfortable her boots were,
we came finally to a thicket of thorn trees over a ravine that ran down from
the side of  a ridge to the water and we leaned the guns  against the  trees
and went in under the close shade and lay on the ground P O M. got the books
out of one of the musettes and she  and Pop read while I followed the ravine
down to the little stream  that came out  of  the mountainside, and  found a
fresh lion track and many rhino tunnels  in the tall grass that  came higher
than your head. It was very hot climbing back up the sandy ravine  and I was
glad  to lean  my  back  against  the  tree  trunk  and  read  in  Tolstoy's
{Sevastopol}.  It  was a  very  young book and  had one fine description  of
fighting  in  it,  where  the French take the redoubt,  and I  thought about
Tolstoy and  about  what a  great  advantage  an experience of war was to  a
writer. It was one of the major subjects and certainly one of the hardest to
write  truly of, and  those writers  who  had  not seen it were always  very
jealous and tried to make it seem unimportant, or abnormal,  or a disease as
a subject, while, really,  it was just  something quite  irreplaceable  that
they had missed. Then Sevastopol made me think  of the  Boulevard Sevastopol
in  Paris, about riding  a bicycle down it in the rain on  the way home from
Strassburg  and  the  slipperiness  of  the rails  of the tram cars and  the
feeling  of riding on greasy,  slippery asphalt and cobble stones in traffic
in the  rain, and how we had  nearly lived on  the Boulevard du  Temple that
time, and I remembered  the look of that apartment, how it was arranged, and
the wall paper,  and instead  we  had taken the upstairs of  the pavilion in
Notre Dame des  Champs in  the  courtyard with the  sawmill {(and the sudden
whine of the saw, the smell of  sawdust and the chestnut tree over  the roof
with a mad woman  downstairs)},  and the year worrying about  money {(all of
the stories back in the  post  that came  in through a  slit in the saw-mill
door, with notes of rejection that would never call them stories, but always
anecdotes,  sketches,  conies, etc. They did not want  them, and we lived on
poireaux  and  drank cahors and water)}, and how fine  the fountains were at
the Place  de L'Observatoire ({water sheen rippling on the bronze of horses'
manes, bronze breasts and shoulders, green under thin-flowing} {water)}, and
when they  put  up the bust of  Flaubert in the Luxembourg on the  short cut
through  the gardens on the way to the  rue Soufflot  {(one that we believed
in, loved without  criticism, heavy now in stone  as an idol should be)}. He
had  not seen  war but he  had  seen a  revolution  and the  Commune,  and a
revolution is much the best if you  do  not become bigoted because every one
speaks  the same language.  Just as civil war is the best war for  a writer,
the most complete. Stendhal had seen a war and Napoleon taught him to write.
He was teaching everybody then; but no one else learned. Dostoevski was made
by being sent to  Siberia.  Writers  are  forged in injustice as  a sword is
forged. I wondered if it would make a writer of him, give him  the necessary
shock to cut the  over-flow  of words and give him a sense of proportion, if
they  sent Tom Wolfe to Siberia or to  the  Dry Tortugas. Maybe it would and
maybe it wouldn't. He seemed  sad, really, like Camera. Tolstoy  was a small
man. Joyce was of  medium height and  he wore  his eyes out. And  that  last
night,  drunk, with Joyce and the  thing  he kept quoting from Edgar Quinet,
'Fraiche  et rose comme au jour  de  la bataille'. I didn't have  it right I
knew. And when you saw him he would take up a conversation interrupted three
years before. It was nice to see a great writer in our time.
     What  I  had  to do was work. I did not care, particularly,  how it all
came out. I  did not take  my  own  life seriously any more, any  one else's
life, yes, but not mine. They all wanted something that I did not want and I
would get it without wanting it, if I worked. To work was the only thing, it
was the one thing that always made you feel good, and in the meantime it was
my own damned life and I would lead  it where and how I pleased. And where I
had led it now pleased  me very  much. This was a better sky than Italy. The
hell it was.  The best sky was  in Italy and Spain and  Northern Michigan in
the fall and in the fall in the Gulf off Cuba. You could beat  this sky; but
not the country.
     All I wanted to do now was get back to Africa. We had not left it, yet,
but when I would wake in the  night  I would lie, listening, homesick for it
already.
     Now, looking out the tunnel of trees over  the  ravine at the  sky with
white  clouds moving across in the wind, I loved  the  country so that I was
happy as you are after  you have  been with a  woman that  you really  love,
when, empty, you feel  it welling up again and there it is and you can never
have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you  want more and
more, to have,  and be, and  live in,  to possess now again for always,  for
that long, sudden-ended always, making  time stand  still, sometime  so very
still  that  afterwards  you  wait to  hear it  move,  and,< it  is  slow in
starting. But you are not alone, because if you  have  ever really loved her
happy and untragic, she loves you always, no matter whom she loves nor where
she goes  she loves  you  more. So if  you  have loved some  woman and  some
country  you are very  fortunate  and,  if you  die afterwards, it  makes no
difference.  Now,  being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it, the changes
of the seasons, the rains  with no need to travel, the  discomforts that you
paid to make it real, the names of the trees,  of the small animals, and all
the birds,  to know the  language and  have  time to be  in  it  and to move
slowly. I have loved country all my life, the country was always better than
the people. I could only care about people a very few at a time.
     P.O.M. was sleeping. She was always lovely to  look at asleep, sleeping
quietly, close  curled like an animal, with  nothing of the being  dead look
that  Karl  had  asleep. Pop slept quietly too,  you could see his soul  was
close in his body. His body no longer  housed him fittingly. It  had gone on
and changed, thickening here, losing its lines, bloating a little there, but
inside he was young and lean and tall  and hard  as when he galloped lion on
the  plain below  Wami, and the pouches under  his eyes were all outside, so
that now I  saw him asleep the way P.O.M.  saw him always. M'Cola was an old
man  asleep, without history and without mystery. Droopy  did  not sleep. He
sat on his heels and watched for the safari.
     We saw them coming a long way off. At first the boxes just showed above
the high grass, then a line of heads,  then they were in a hollow, and there
was only the point of a spear in the sun, then they came up a rise of ground
and I could see  the strung out line  coming  towards us. They  had  gone  a
little too far to the  left and Droopy waved to signal them  toward us. They
made camp, Pop warning  them to be quiet, and we  sat under the dining  tent
and were comfortable in  the chairs and talked. That night we hunted and saw
nothing. The next morning we hunted and saw nothing and the next evening the
same. It was very interesting but there were no results. The  wind blew hard
from the east and the ground was broken in short ridges of hills coming down
close {from} the forest so you could not get above  it without sending  your
scent on ahead of you on the wind to warn everything. You could not see into
the sun  in  the evening, nor on  the heavy shadowed hillsides to the  west,
beyond which the sun was setting at  the time  the rhino would be coming out
of the forest, so all the country to the westward was  a loss in the evening
and in the country we could  hunt we found nothing. Meat came in from Karl's
camp by some porters we sent  back. They came in carrying quarters of tommy,
grant,  and  wildebeeste,  dusty, the  meat seared  dry by the sun, and  the
porters were happy, crouched around their fires roasting the meat on sticks.
Pop was puzzled why the rhino were all gone.  Each day we had seen  less and
we discussed whether  it  could be the full moon, that they fed out at night
and were back in the forest in the morning before it was light, or that they
winded us, or heard the men, and were simply shy  and kept in the forest, or
what was it?  ' Me putting out the theories, Pop pricking them with his wit,
sometimes considering them  from politeness, sometimes  with  interest, like
the one about the moon.
     We went  to bed early and  in the night it rained a little, not a  real
rain  but a shower from the mountains, and in the morning we  were up before
daylight and had climbed up to the top of the steep grassy ridge that looked
down on to the camp, on  to the  ravine of the river bed,  and across to the
steep opposite bank of the stream, and from where we could see all the hilly
slopes and the edge of the forest. It was not yet light when some geese flew
overhead and the light was still too grey to be able to see the  edge of the
forest clearly in  the  glasses. We  had scouts out on three  different hill
tops and we were waiting  for it  to be light enough  for us to see  them if
they signalled.
     Then Pop  said, 'Look at that son of a bitch', and shouted at M'Cola to
bring the rifles. M'Cola  went jumping down the hill, and across the stream,
directly opposite us, a rhino was running with a quick trot along the top of
the bank.  As we watched he speeded up and came, fast trotting, angling down
across the face of the bank. He was a  muddy red, his  horn showed  clearly,
and there  was  nothing ponderous in his quick,  purposeful movement. I  was
very excited at seeing him.
     'He'll cross the stream,' Pop said. 'He's shootable.'
     M'Cola put  the Springfield in my hand and I opened it  to  make sure I
had solids. The Rhino was out of  sight now but I could  see the  shaking of
the high grass.
     'How far would you call it?'
     'All of three hundred.'
     'I'll bust the son of a bitch.'
     I was  watching,  freezing  myself deliberately  inside,  stopping  the
excitement as you close a  valve, going into that impersonal state you shoot
from.
     He showed, trotting into the  shallow, boulder-filled  stream. Thinking
of one thing, that the shot was perfectly possible, but that I must lead him
enough, must get ahead, I got on  him, then well ahead of  him, and squeezed
off. I heard  the {whonk}  of the  bullet and, from his trot,  he seemed  to
explode forward. With  a whooshing snort he  smashed ahead, splashing  water
and snorting. I shot again and  raised a  little column of water behind him,
and shot again as he went into the grass; behind him again.
     'Piga,' M'Cola said. 'Piga!'
     Droopy agreed.
     'Did you. hit him?' Pop said.
     'Absolutely,' I said. 'I think I've got him.'
     Droopy was running and I re-loaded and ran off after him. Half the camp
was  strung  out across the  hills waving and yelling. The rhino had come in
right  below  where  they  were and gone on up the valley towards  where the
forest came close down into the head of the valley.
     Pop and P.O.M. came up. Pop with his big gun and M'Cola carrying mine.
     'Droopy will get the tracks,' Pop said. 'M'Cola swears you hit him.'
     'Piga!' M'Cola said.
     'He  snorted  like  a  steam engine,'  P.O.M.  said.  'Didn't  he  look
wonderful going along there?'
     'He was late getting home with the milk,' Pop said. 'Are you {sure} you
hit him? It was a godawful long shot.'
     'I {know} I hit him. I'm {pretty} sure I've killed him.'
     'Don't tell any one if you did,' Pop said. 'They'll never  believe you.
Look! Droopy's got blood.'
     Below,  in the high grass,  Droop was holding up a grass  blade towards
us. Then, stooped, he went on trailing fast by the blood spoor.
     'Piga,' M'Cola said. 'M'uzuri!'
     'We'll keep up above where we can see  if he makes a break,'  Pop said.
'Look at Droopy.'
     Droop had removed his fez and held it in his hand.
     'That's all the  precautions he needs,' Pop said. 'We bring up a couple
of  heavy  guns  and  Droopy goes in  after  him  with  one article less  of
clothing.'
     Below us  Droopy and his partner who was trailing with him had stopped.
Droopy held up his hand.
     'They hear him,' Pop said. 'Come on.'
     We started toward them. Droopy came toward us and spoke to Pop.
     'He's in there,'  Pop whispered. 'They can hear the tick birds.  One of
the boys says  he heard the faro, too. We'll go  in against the wind. You go
ahead with Droopy. Let the  Memsahib stay behind me.  Take the  big gun. All
right.'
     The  rhino was in high grass, somewhere in there behind some bushes. As
we went forward we heard a deep, moaning sort of groan. Droopy looked around
at  me  and  grinned.  The  noise  came  again,  ending  this  time  like  a
blood-choked  sigh. Droopy was laughing. 'Faro,' he  whispered  and  put his
hand palm  open on  the side of his head in the gesture that means to  go to
sleep. Then in a jerky-flighted, sharp-beaked  little flock we  saw the tick
birds  rise  and  fly away.  We knew where  he  was and, as  we  went slowly
forward, parting the high grass, we saw him. He was on his side, dead.
     'Better shoot him once to make  sure,' Pop  said. M'Cola handed me  the
Springfield he had been carrying. I noticed it was cocked, looked at M'Cola,
furious with him, kneeled down and shot the rhino in  the sticking place. He
never moved. Droopy shook my hand and so did M'Cola.
     'He had that damned Springfield cocked,' I said to Pop. The cocked gun,
behind my back, made me black angry.
     That  meant nothing to  M'Cola. He was very happy, stroking the rhino's
horn, measuring it with his fingers spread, looking for the bullet hole.
     'It's on the side he's lying on,' I said.
     'You  should  have  seen him when  he  was protecting Mama,'  Pop said.
'That's why he had the gun cocked.'
     'Can he shoot?'
     'No,' Pop said. 'But he would.'
     'Shoot me in the  pants,' I said.  'Romantic  bastard.' When the  whole
outfit came up, we rolled the rhino into a sort of kneeling position and cut
away the grass to take some pictures. The bullet hole was fairly high in the
back, a little behind the lungs.
     'That was a  hell of  a shot,' Pop said. 'A hell of a shot.  Don't ever
tell any one you made that one.'
     'You'll have to give me a certificate.'
     'That  would  just  make us both liars. They're a strange beast, aren't
they?'
     There he was, long-hulked,  heavy-sided, prehistoric looking, the  hide
like vulcanized rubber and faintly transparent looking, scarred with a badly
healed  horn wound that the birds  had pecked at, his tail thick, round, and
pointed, flat many-legged ticks crawling on him, his ears fringed with hair,
tiny pig  eyes, moss growing on  the  base of his horn that grew out forward
from his  nose. M'Cola looked at him and shook his head. I agreed with  him.
This was the hell of an animal.
     'How is his horn?'
     'It  isn't bad,' Pop  said. 'It's nothing  extra. That was a hell of  a
shot you made on him though, brother.'
     'M'Cola's pleased with it,' I said.
     'You're pretty pleased with it yourself,' P.O.M. said.
     'I'm  crazy  about  it,' I  said. 'But don't let me start on  it. Don't
worry  about  how I feel about it. I  can wake up and think about  that  any
night.'
     'And you're a good tracker, and a hell of  a fine bird shot, too,'  Pop
said. 'Tell us the rest of that.'
     'Lay off me. I only said that once when I was drunk.'
     'Once,' said P.O.M. 'Doesn't he tell us that every night?'
     'By God, I {am} a good bird shot.'
     'Amazing,' said Pop. 'I never would have  thought  it. What else is  it
you do?'
     'Oh, go to hell.'
     'Mustn't  ever let  him  realize what  a shot  that  was or  he'll  get
unbearable,' Pop said to P.O.M.
     'M'Cola and I know,' I said.
     M'Cola came up. 'M'uzuri, B'wana,' he said. 'M'uzuri sana.'
     'He thinks you did it on purpose,' Pop said.
     'Don't you ever tell him different.'
     'Piga m'uzuri,' M'Cola said. 'M'uzuri.'
     'I believe he feels just the way you do about it,' Pop said.
     'He's my pal.'
     'I believe he is, you know,' Pop said.
     On our way back across country to our main camp  I made a fancy shot on
a reedbuck at about  two hundred  yards, offhand, breaking  his neck  at the
base of the skull. M'Cola was very pleased and Droopy was delighted.
     'We've got  to put  a stop to him,' Pop  said to P.O.M. 'Where did  you
shoot for, really?'
     'In the neck,' I lied. I had held full on the centre of the shoulder.
     'It was awfully pretty,' P.O.M. said. The bullet had  made a crack when
it hit like  a bat swung against a  fast  ball  and  the  buck had collapsed
without a move.
     'I think he's a damned liar,' Pop said.
     'None of us great shots is appreciated. Wait till we're gone.'
     'His idea  of  being  appreciated  is  for  us  to  carry  him  on  our
shoulders,' Pop said. 'That rhino shot has ruined him.'
     'All right. You  watch from  now  on. Hell, I've  shot  well the  whole
time.'
     'I seem to remember  a grant of some sort,' Pop  was teasing.  So did I
remember him. I'd followed a fine one out  of the country missing shot after
shot all morning after a series of stalks in the heat, then crawled up to an
ant hill to shoot one that was not nearly as  good, taken a rest on the  ant
hill,  missed the buck at fifty yards, seen him  stand facing me, absolutely
still, his nose up, and shot him in the chest. He went over backwards and as
I went up to him he jumped up and went off, staggering.
     I sat  down and waited  for  him to  stop  and  when he did,  obviously
anchored,  I sat there, using the sling,  and shot  for his neck, slowly and
carefully, missing  him eight  times  straight in a mounting, stubborn rage,
not making  a correction but shooting exactly for the same place in the same
way each time, the gun bearers all laughing, the truck that had come up with
the outfit holding more amused  niggers,  P.O.M.  and Pop saying nothing, me
sitting  there  cold, crazy-stubborn-furious, determined to  break  his neck
rather  than walk up and  perhaps start him off over that heat-hazy, baking,
noontime  plain.  Nobody said  anything. I reached up my hand to M'Cola  for
more cartridges, shot  again, carefully,  and  missed, and on the tenth shot
broke his damned neck. I turned away without looking toward him.
     'Poor Papa,' P.O.M. said.
     'It's the light and the  wind,' Pop said. We  had not known each  other
very well then.  'They  were  all hitting the  same place. I could see  them
throw the dust.'
     'I was a bloody, stubborn fool,' I said.
     Anyway,  I could shoot  now.  So far, and  aided by flukes, my luck was
running now.
     We  came  on into sight  of camp and shouted. No one came  out. Finally
Karl came out of his tent. He went back as soon  as he saw us, then came out
again.
     'Hey, Karl,' I yelled. He waved and went back  in the  tent again. Then
came toward us.  He was shaky  with excitement and I saw he had been washing
blood off his hands.
     'What is it?'
     'Rhino,' he said.
     'Did you get in trouble with him?'
     'No. We killed him.'
     'Fine. Where is he?'
     'Over there behind that tree.'
     We went  over. There was the newly severed head of a rhino that  was  a
rhino. He was twice the  size  of the one I had killed. The little eyes were
shut  and a fresh drop of blood stood  in the corner of one like a tear. The
head bulked enormous  and the  horn swept up and  back in a  fine curve. The
hide was an inch  thick where it hung  in  a cape behind the head and was as
white where it was cut as freshly sliced coco-nut.
     'What is he? About thirty inches?'
     'Hell, no,' said Pop. 'Not thirty inches.'
     'But he iss a very fine one, Mr. Jackson,' Dan said.
     'Yes. He's a fine one,' Pop said.
     'Where did you get him?'
     'Just outside of camp.'
     'He wass standing in some bush. We heard him grunt.'
     'We thought he was a buffalo,' Karl said.
     'He iss a very fine one,' Dan repeated.
     'I'm damned glad you got him,' I said.
     There we were,  the three of us, wanting to congratulate, waiting to be
good sports about this rhino whose smaller horn was longer than our big one,
this huge, tear-eyed marvel of a rhino, this dead, head-severed dream rhino,
and instead we  all spoke  like people who were about to become seasick on a
boat, or  people who had suffered some heavy financial loss. We were ashamed
and  could  do  nothing  about it.  I wanted to  say something pleasant  and
hearty, instead, 'How many times did you shoot him?' I asked.
     'I don't know. We didn't count. Five or six, I guess.'
     'Five, I think,' said Dan.
     Poor Karl, faced by these three sad-faced congratulators, was beginning
to feel his pleasure in the rhino drained away from him.
     'We got one too,' said P.O.M.
     'That's fine,' said Karl. 'Is he bigger than this one?'
     'Hell, no. He's a lousy runt.'
     'I'm sorry,' Karl said. He meant it, simply and truly.
     'What the hell have you  got  to be sorry about with a rhino like that?
He's a beauty. Let me get the camera and take some pictures of him.'
     I went after  the camera. P.O.M. took me  by  the  arm and walked close
beside me.
     'Papa, please try to  act like  a human  being,' she  said. 'Poor Karl.
You're making him feel dreadfully.'
     'I know it,' I said. 'I'm trying not to act that way.'
     There was  Pop.  He shook his head. 'I never felt more of a four-letter
man,' he said. 'But it was like a kick in the stomach. I'm really delighted,
of course.'
     'Me too,' I said. 'I'd rather  have him beat me. You know that.  Truly.
But why couldn't he just get a good one, two or three inches longer? Why did
he have to get one that makes mine ridiculous? It just makes ours silly.'
     'You can always remember that shot.'
     'To hell with  that  shot.  That bloody  fluke. God,  what  a beautiful
rhino.'
     'Come  on,  let's pull  ourselves  together  and  try to act like white
people with him.'
     'We were {awful,'} P.O.M. said.
     'I know  it,' I said. 'And all the  time I was trying to be  jolly. You
{know} I'm delighted he has it.'
     'You were certainly jolly. Both of you,' P.O.M. said.
     'But did you  see M'Cola,' Pop asked.  M'Cola had looked  at  the rhino
dismally, shaken his head and walked away.
     'He's a wonderful  rhino,' P.O.M. said. 'We must act  decently and make
Karl feel good.'
     But it was too  late. We could not make Karl  feel good  and for a long
time we could not feel  good  ourselves. The porters came into camp with the
loads and we could see them all, and all of our outfit, go over to where the
rhino head lay in the shade. They were  all very quiet. Only the skinner was
delighted to see such a rhino head in camp.
     'M'uzuri  sana,' he said to me. And measured the horn with shiftings of
his widespread hand. 'Kubwa sana!'
     'N'Dio. M'uzuri sana,' I agreed.
     'B'wana Kabor shoot him?'
     'Yes.'
     'M'uzuri sana.'
     'Yes,' I agreed. 'M'uzuri sana.'
     The  skinner was  the only gent in the outfit. We had tried, in all the
shoot, never to be competitive. Karl and
     I had each tried to give the other the better chance on everything that
came up. I was, truly, very fond of  him and  he  was entirely unselfish and
altogether self-sacrificing. I knew  I could outshoot him and I could always
outwalk him  and,  steadily, he  got  trophies  that  made  mine  dwarfs  in
comparison. He had done some of  the worst shooting at game I  had ever seen
and I had shot badly twice on the trip, at that grant  and at a bustard once
on the  plain, still he beat me  on all the tangible things we  had to show.
For  a while we had joked about it  and I knew everything would even up. But
it didn't even up. Now, on this rhino hunt, I had taken  the  first crack at
the country.  We had  sent  him after  meat  while  we  had  gone into a new
country. We had not treated him badly, but we had not  treated him too well,
and still he had  beaten me. Not  only beaten, beaten was all right.  He had
made my  rhino look so small that  I could  never keep him in the same small
town where we lived. He had wiped him out. I had the shot I had made on  him
to  remember  and nothing could take that  away except that it was so bloody
marvellous  I knew  I would wonder, sooner or later, if it was not  really a
fluke in spite of my unholy self-confidence.  Old Karl had put it  on us all
right with that rhino. He was in his tent now, writing a letter.
     Under the dining tent fly Pop and I talked over what we had better do.
     'He's  got  his  rhino anyway,' Pop said.  'That saves us time. Now you
can't stand on that one.'
     'No.'
     'But this country is washed out. Something wrong with it. Droopy claims
to  know  a good  country  about  three hours from here  in the  lorries and
another hour or so on with the porters. We can head for there this afternoon
with  a light  outfit,  send the lorries back, and Karl  and Dan can move on
down to M'uto Umbu and he can get his oryx.'
     'Fine.'
     'He has a chance to  get a leopard on that  rhino carcass this evening,
too,  or in the morning. Dan said they  heard one. We'll  try to get a rhino
out of this country of Droopy's and then you join up with them and go on for
kudu. We want to leave plenty of time for them. '
     'Fine.'
     'Even if you don't get an oryx. You'll pick one up somewhere.'
     'Even if I don't get one at all, it's  all right. We'll get one another
time. I want a kudu, though. '
     'You'll get one. You're sure to.'
     'I'd rather get one, a good one, than all the rest. I don't give a damn
about  these rhino  outside of the fun of hunting them. But I'd  like to get
one that wouldn't look silly beside that dream rhino of his.'
     'Absolutely.'
     So we told Karl and he said: 'Whatever you  say. Sure.  I  hope you get
one  twice as  big. ' He really meant it. He  was feeling  better now and so
were we all.


        CHAPTER THREE

     Droopy's  country, when  we reached it  that evening,  after a hot ride
through red-soiled, bush-scrubby hills, looked awful. It was at the  edge of
a belt where all the  trees had been girdled  to  kill the tsetse flies. And
across from camp  was  a dusty, dirty native  village. The  soil was red and
eroded  and seemed to be  blowing away, and camp was pitched in a  high wind
under the sketchy  shade of  some dead  trees  on  a  hillside overlooking a
little stream and the mud village beyond. Before dark we followed Droopy and
two  local  guides  up past the  village and in a long climb to the top of a
rock-strewn ridge  that overlooked a deep  valley that was almost a  canyon.
Across  on the other side, were broken valleys that sloped steeply down into
the canyon. There  were  heavy growths  of  trees in the valleys  and grassy
slopes on the ridges between, and above there was the thick bamboo forest of
the  mountain. The canyon ran down  to the Rift Valley, seeming to narrow at
the  far  end where it  cut through the wall of the rift.  Beyond, above the
grassy ridges and slopes, were heavily forested hills. It looked a hell of a
country to hunt.
     'If you.  see one  across  there  you  have to go straight  down to the
bottom of the canyon. Then up one  of those timber  patches and across those
damned gullies.  You  can't  keep him in  sight  and  you'll  kill  yourself
climbing. It's  too steep. Those are the kind of innocent-looking gullies we
got into that night coming home.'
     'It looks very bad,' Pop agreed.
     'I've  hunted  a  country  just  like this for deer. The south slope of
Timber Creek in Wyoming. The slopes are  all too steep.  It's hell. It's too
broken. We'll take some punishment to-morrow.'
     P.O.M. said nothing.  Pop  had brought us here and  Pop would bring  us
out. All she had to do  was see her boots  did not hurt her feet.  They hurt
just a little now, and that was her only worry.
     I went on to dilate on the difficulties the country showed  and we went
home to  camp  in  the  dark all  very gloomy and full of  prejudice against
Droopy. The fire flamed brightly in the wind and we sat and watched the moon
rise and listened to the hyenas.  After we had a  few drinks we did not feel
so badly about the country.
     'Droopy swears it's good,' Pop said. 'This isn't where he wanted to  go
though, he  says. It  was another  place farther on. But he  swears this  is
good.'
     'I love Droopy,' P.O.M. said. 'I have perfect confidence in Droopy.'
     Droopy came up to the fire with two spear-carrying natives.
     'What does he hear?' I asked.
     There was  some  talk  by  the natives,  then Pop  said:  'One of these
sportsmen claims he was  chased by a huge rhino to-day. Of course nearly any
rhino would look huge when he was chasing him.'
     'Ask him how long the horn was.'
     The native showed that the horn was as long as his arm. Droopy grinned.
     'Tell him to go,' said Pop.
     'Where did all this happen?'
     'Oh, over  there somewhere,' Pop said. 'You know. Over there.  Way over
there. Where these things always happen.'
     'That's marvellous. Just where we want to go.'
     'The  good aspect is that Droopy's not at all depressed,' Pop said. 'He
seems very confident. After all, it's his show.'
     'Yes, but we have to do the climbing.'
     'Cheer him  up, will  you?' Pop said to  P.O.M. 'He's  getting  me very
depressed.'
     'Should we talk about how well he shoots?'
     'Too early in the evening. I'm not gloomy.  I've just seen that kind of
country before. It will be good for us  all right. Take  some of your  belly
off, Governor.'
     The next day I found that I was all wrong about that country.
     We had  breakfast before  daylight  and  were started  before  sunrise,
climbing the hill beyond the village  in single file.  Ahead  there  was the
local guide with a spear, then  Droopy with my heavy gun and a water bottle,
then me with the  Springfield, Pop with the  Mannlicher,  P.O.M. pleased, as
always  to  carry nothing,  M'Cola with  Pop's heavy gun and  another  water
bottle, and finally  two local  citizens with spears, water bags, and a chop
box with lunch. We planned to lay up in the  heat of the  middle of the  day
and not get back until  dark. It was fine climbing in the cool fresh morning
and  very  different  from toiling up this same trail  last evening  in  the
sunset  with all the  rocks  and dirt giving back the  heat  of the day. The
trail  was used regularly by cattle and the dust was powdered dry  and, now,
lightly  moistened from the dew. There  were many hyena  tracks and, as  the
trail came on to a ridge of  grey  rock so that you could look  down on both
sides into a steep ravine, and then went on along the edge of the canyon, we
saw a fresh rhino track in one of the dusty patches below the rocks.
     'He's just gone on ahead,' Pop said. 'They must wander all over here at
night.'
     Below, at the bottom of the canyon, we could see the tops of high trees
and in an opening see the flash of water. Across were the steep hillside and
the gullies  we had studied last night. Droopy and  the local guide, the one
who  had  been  chased  by  the  rhino, were  whispering together. Then they
started  down a steep path that  went in long  slants  down the  side of the
canyon.
     We  stopped. I had not seen P.O.M. was limping, and in sudden whispered
family   bitterness  there   was  a  highly-righteous-on-both-sides   clash,
historically on unwearable shoes and boots  in the past, and imperatively on
these, which hurt. The  hurt was  lessened  by cutting off the  toes of  the
heavy short wool socks  worn over  ordinary socks, and then, by removing the
socks entirely, the boots made possible. Going  down-hill steeply made these
Spanish shooting boots too short in  the toe and there was an old  argument,
about this length of boot and whether the bootmaker, whose part I had taken,
unwittingly first, only as  interpreter, and  finally  embraced  his  theory
patriotically  as a  whole  and,  I  believed, by logic,  had overcome it by
adding  on  to the  heel.  But  they  hurt  now,  a stronger  logic, and the
situation was unhelped by the statement that men's new boots always hurt for
weeks  before  they became comfortable. Now, heavy  socks removed,  stepping
tentatively,  trying  the pressure  of  the leather  against  the toes,  the
argument  past, she wanting not to suffer, but to keep up and please  Mr. J.
P.,  me  ashamed  at having  been  a four-letter man about  boots, at  being
righteous against pain, at being righteous at all, at ever being  righteous,
stopping to whisper about it, both of us grinning at  what was whispered, it
all  right now,  the boots  too,  without  the heavy socks,  much better, me
hating  all  righteous bastards now,  one absent American friend especially,
having  just  removed  myself  from  that category, certainly  never  to  be
righteous again, watching Droopy ahead, we  went down the long  slant of the
trail  toward the  bottom of the canyon  where the trees were heavy and tall
and the floor of the canyon, that from above had been a narrow  gash, opened
to a forest-banked stream.
     We stood now in the shade of trees with great smooth trunks, circled at
their  base with the  line of  roots that showed  in rounded  ridges  up the
trunks  like arteries, the trunks  the yellow green of a French forest  on a
day in winter after rain. But these trees had a great spread of branches and
were  in leaf  and  below them,  in the stream  bed in the  sun,  reeds like
papyrus grass grew thick  as wheat and  twelve feet tall. There  was a  game
trail through the grass along the stream and Droopy was bent down looking at
it.  M'Cola  went over and looked and they  both  followed it a little  way,
stooped close over it, then came back to us.
     'Nyati,' M'Cola whispered. 'Buffalo.' Droopy whispered to Pop and  then
Pop said, softly in his throaty, whisky whisper, 'They're buff gone down the
river. Droop says there are some big bulls. They haven't come back.'
     'Let's follow them,' I said. 'I'd rather get another buff than rhino.'
     'It's as good a chance as any for rhino, too,' Pop said.
     'By God, isn't it a great looking country?' I said.
     'Splendid,' Pop said. 'Who would have imagined it?'
     'The trees  are  like  Andre's  pictures,'  P.O.M.  said. 'It's  simply
beautiful. Look  at that green.  It's Masson. Why can't a  good  painter see
this country?'
     'How are your boots?'
     'Fine.'
     As we trailed the buffalo we went very slowly and quietly. There was no
wind and we knew that when the breeze came up  it would be from the east and
blow up the canyon toward us. We  followed the game trail down the river-bed
and as we went the  grass was much higher. Twice we had to get down to crawl
and the reeds were so thick  you could not  see two feet  into  them.  Droop
found  a  fresh rhino track,  too, in the mud. I  began to think about  what
would  happen if  a rhino came  barging along this tunnel and  who  would do
what. It was exciting but I did not like it. It was too much like being in a
trap and there was P.O.M. to think about. Then as the stream made a bend and
we came out of the high grass to the bank I smelled  game very distinctly. I
do not  smoke, and hunting at home I  have several times  smelled elk in the
rutting season before I have seen them, and I can smell clearly where an old
bull has lain in the forest.  The bull elk has a strong musky smell. It is a
strong but pleasant odour and I know it well, but this smell I did not know.
     'I can smell them,' I whispered to Pop. He believed me.
     'What is it?'
     'I don't know but it's plenty strong. Can't you?'
     'No.'
     'Ask Droop.'
     Droopy nodded and grinned.
     'They take snuff,' Pop said. 'I don't know  whether  they can  scent or
not.'
     We  went on  into another bed of reeds that were  high  over our heads,
putting each foot down silently before lifting the other, walking as quietly
as in  a dream  or a slow motion  picture. I could  smell  whatever  it  was
clearly now, all  of the time, sometimes  stronger than at others. I did not
like it at all. We  were close  to the bank  now, and ahead, the  game trail
went straight out into a long  slough  of higher reeds than any we had  come
through.
     'I  can smell them  close as hell,'  I  whispered to Pop. 'No  kidding.
Really.'
     'I  believe you,' Pop said. 'Should  we get up  here on to the bank and
skirt this bit? We'll be above it.'
     'Good.' Then, when we were up, I said. 'That tall stun' had me spooked.
I wouldn't like to hunt in that.'
     'How'd you like to hunt elephant in that?' Pop whispered.
     'I wouldn't do it.'
     'Do you really hunt elephant in grass like that?' P.O.M. asked.
     'Yes,' Pop said. 'Get up on somebody's shoulders to shoot.'
     Better men than I am do it, I thought. I wouldn't do it.
     We  went along  the grassy right  bank,  on a sort of shelf, now in the
open, skirting a slough  of high dry reeds. Beyond on the opposite bank were
the heavy trees and above them the steep  bank of the canyon. You could  not
see the stream. Above us, on the right, were the hills, wooded in patches of
orchard bush.  Ahead, at the end of the slough of  reeds the banks  narrowed
and the branches of the big trees almost covered the stream. Suddenly Droopy
grabbed me and we both crouched down. He put the big gun in my hand and took
the Springfield. He pointed and around a curve in the bank I saw the head of
a  rhino with  a  long, wonderful-looking horn.  The  head was swaying and I
could  see  the ears forward and twitching, and see the  little pig  eyes. I
slipped the  safety  catch and motioned  Droopy  down.  Then I heard  M'Cola
saying,  'Toto!  Toto!'  and  he  grabbed  my arm.  Droopy  was  whispering,
'Manamouki! Manamouki! Manamouki!'  very fast and he and M'Cola were frantic
that I should  not shoot. It was a cow rhino with  a calf, and  as I lowered
the gun  she  gave a snort, crashed in the reeds, and was gone. I never  saw
the calf. We could see the  reeds  swaying where the two of them were moving
and then it was all quiet.
     'Damn shame,' Pop whispered. 'She had a beautiful horn.'
     'I was all set to bust her,' I said. 'I couldn't tell she was a cow.'
     'M'Cola saw the calf.'
     M'Cola was whispering to Pop and nodding his head emphatically.
     'He says there's another rhino in there,' Pop said. 'That he  heard h