im
snort.'
     'Let's  get  higher, where we can  see  them  if  they break, and throw
something in,' I said.
     'Good idea,' Pop agreed. 'Maybe the bull's there.'
     We went a little higher  up the bank where we  could  look out over the
lake of high reeds  and, with  Pop holding his big gun ready and  I with the
safety  off mine, M'Cola threw a club into the reeds where he had  heard the
snort. There was a wooshing snort and no movement, not a stir  in the reeds.
Then  there was  a crashing farther away and we could  see the reeds swaying
with the rush of something through them toward  the opposite bank, but could
not  see  what  was making  the movement. Then I  saw  the  black  back, the
wide-swept, point-lifted horns and then the quick-moving, climbing rush of a
buffalo  up  the  other  bank. He  went up, his neck  up  and  out, his head
horn-heavy, his  withers rounded like a fighting bull, in fast strong-legged
climb.  I was holding on the point where  his neck joined his  shoulder when
Pop stopped me.
     'He's not  a big one,' he said softly. 'I wouldn't take him  unless you
want him for meat.'
     He looked big to nie and now he stood, his head up, broadside, his head
swung toward us.
     'I've got three more on the licence and we're leaving their country,' I
said.
     'It's awfully good meat,'  Pop whispered. 'Go ahead then. Bust him. But
be ready for the rhino after you shoot.'
     I sat down, the big  gun  feeling  heavy  and unfamiliar,  held on  the
buff's  shoulder, squeezed off and flinched without firing. Instead  of  the
sweet  clean pull of the Springfield with the smooth, unhesitant release  at
the end, this trigger came to what, in a squeeze, seemed metal stuck against
metal. It was like  when you shoot in a nightmare. I couldn't squeeze it and
I corrected  from  my flinch,  held my breath, and  pulled  the  trigger. It
pulled off with a jerk and the big gun made a rocking explosion out of which
I came, seeing the  buffalo still on his feet, and going out of sight to the
left in a  climbing run, to let off  the second barrel and  throw a burst of
rock dust and dirt over his hind quarters. He was out of shot before I could
reload the double-barrelled 470 and we  had all heard the  snorting  and the
crashing of another  rhino that had  gone out of the lower end of the  reeds
and on under the heavy trees on our side without showing more than a glimpse
of his bulk in the reeds.
     'It was the bull,' Pop said. 'He's gone down the stream.'
     'N'Dio. Doumi! Doumi!' Droopy insisted it was a bull. 'I hit the damned
buff,' I said. 'God knows where.
     To hell with those heavy guns. The trigger pull put me off.'
     'You'd have killed him with the Springfield,' Pop said.
     'I'd know where  I hit him anyway. I thought  with  the four-seven  I'd
kill him or miss him,' I said. 'Instead, now we've got him wounded.'
     'He'll keep,' Pop said. 'We want to give him plenty of time.'
     'I'm afraid I gut-shot him.'
     'You can't tell. Going off fast like that he might be dead in a hundred
yards.'
     'The hell with  that  four-seventy,'  I said.  'I  can't shoot it.  The
trigger's like the last turn of the key opening a sardine can.'
     'Come  on,' Pop said.  'We've got  God knows how many  rhino  scattered
about here.'
     'What about the buff?'
     'Plenty  of time for him later. We must let him stiffen up. Let him get
sick.'
     'Suppose we'd been down there with all that stuff coming out.'
     'Yes,' said Pop.
     All this in whispers. I looked at P.O.M. She  was like someone enjoying
a good musical show.
     'Did you see where it hit him?'
     'I couldn't tell?' she whispered. 'Do you suppose there are any more in
there?'
     'Thousands,' I said. 'What do we do, Pop?'
     'That bull may be just around the bend,' Pop said. 'Come on.'
     We went along the bank, our nerves cocked, and as we came to the narrow
end of the reeds there was another rush  of something heavy through the tall
stalks. I had the gun up waiting for whatever  it was to show. But there was
only the waving of the reeds. M'Cola signalled with his hand not to shoot.
     'The calf,'  Pop said. 'Must have been two  of them. Where's the bloody
bull?'
     'How the hell do you see them?'
     'Tell by the size.'
     Then  we  were standing  looking  down into the stream  bed,  into  the
shadows under the branches of the  big trees, and off  ahead down the stream
when M'Cola pointed up the hill on our right.
     'Faro,' he whispered and reached me the glasses.
     There  on the hillside, head-on, wide, black, looking  straight towards
us, ears twitching and  head  lifted,  swaying as the nose searched  for the
wind, was another rhino. He looked huge in the glasses. Pop was studying him
with his binoculars.
     'He's no better than what you have,' he said softly.
     'I can bust him right in the sticking place,' I whispered.
     'You have only one more,' Pop whispered. 'You want a good one.'
     I offered the glasses to P.O.M.
     'I can see him without,' she said. 'He's huge.'
     'He may charge,' Pop said. 'Then you'll have to take him.'
     Then, as we watched, another rhino  came into sight  from behind a wide
feathery-topped tree. He was quite a bit smaller.
     'By God,  it's  a calf,' Pop  said. 'That one's  a cow.  Good thing you
didn't shoot her. She bloody well {may} charge too.'
     'Is it the same cow?' I whispered.
     'No. That other one had a hell of a horn.'
     We  all  had the nervous exhilaration, like a  laughing  drunk,  that a
sudden over-abundance, idiotic abundance of game makes. It is a feeling that
can come from  any sort  of game or fish that is  ordinarily  rare and that,
suddenly, you find in a ridiculously unbelievable abundance.
     'Look  at her. She knows there's something wrong.  But she can't see us
or smell us.'
     'She heard the shots.'
     'She knows we're here. But she can't make it out.'
     The rhino  looked  so  huge,  so  ridiculous, and so fine to see, and I
sighted on her chest.
     'It's a nice shot.'
     'Perfect,' Pop said.
     'What are we going to do?' P.O.M. said. She was practical.
     'We'll work around her,' Pop said.
     'If  we keep  low I  don't believe  our scent will carry  up there once
we're past.'
     'You can't teil,' Pop said. 'We don't want her to charge.'
     She did  not charge, but dropped her  head, finally,  and worked up the
hill followed by the nearly full-grown calf.
     'Now,' said Pop, 'we'll  let Droop go ahead and see if he can find  the
bull's tracks. We might as well sit down.'
     We sat in the shade  and Droopy went up  one side of the stream and the
local guide the other. They came back and said the bull had gone on down.
     'Did any one ever see what son of horn he had?' I asked.
     'Droop said he was good.'
     M'Cola had gone up the hill a little way. Now he crouched and beckoned.
     'Nyati,' he said with his hand up to his face.
     'Where?' Pop asked him. He pointed, crouched down, and as we crawled up
to him he handed me the  glasses. They were a  long way away  on the jutting
ridge of one of the steep hillsides on the far side of the canyon, well down
the stream. We could see six,  then eight buffalo, black, heavy  necked, the
horns  shining,  standing on  the  point of a  ridge. Some were  grazing and
others stood, their heads up, watching.
     'That one's a bull, ' Pop said, looking through the glasses.
     'Which one?'
     'Second from the right.'
     'They all look like bulls to me.'
     'They're  a long way away.  That  one's a good bull.  Now  we've got to
cross the stream and work down toward them and try to get above them.'
     'Will they stay there?'
     'No.  Probably they'll work down into  this  stream bed as soon as it's
hot.'
     'Let's go.'
     We  crossed  the stream on a log and  then another log and on the other
side, half  way up  the hillside, there  was  a deeply worn game trail  that
graded  along the bank  under the heavily  leafed branches  of the trees. We
went along quite fast,  but walking carefully, and below us, now, the stream
bed was covered solidly with  foliage. It was still early in the morning but
the breeze was rising and  the leaves stirred over our heads. We crossed one
ravine that came down to the stream, going into the thick bush to be out  of
sight and stooping as we crossed behind trees in the small open place, then,
using the shoulder of the ravine as protection, we climbed so that we  might
get high up the hillside above the buffalo and work down to them. We stopped
in the shelter of the ridge,  me sweating heavily and fixing a  handkerchief
inside the sweatband of  my Stetson, and sent Droop  ahead to look.  He came
back to say they were gone. From above we could see nothing  of  them, so we
cut  across the ravine and the hillside thinking we might intercept  them on
their way down into the river bed. The next hillside had been burned and  at
the bottom of the hill there was a burned area of bush. In the ash dust were
the tracks of the buffalo as they came down and into the thick jungle of the
stream bed.  Here  it was too overgrown and  there  were too  many vines  to
follow them. There were no tracks going down the stream so we knew they were
down in the  part of  the stream bed  we  had looked down  on  from the game
trail. Pop said there was nothing to do about them in there. It was so thick
that if we jumped them we could not get a shot. You  could not tell one from
another, he said. All  you could see  would  be a rush of black. An old bull
would be grey but a good herd bull might be as black as a cow. It wasn't any
good to jump them like that.
     It was ten o'clock now and very hot in the open, the sun pegged and the
breeze lifted the ashes  of the burned-over ground as we  walked. Everything
would  be in the thick cover now. We decided to  find a  shady place and lie
down and read in the cool; to have lunch and kill the hot part of the day.
     Beyond  the  burned place  we  came  toward  the  stream  and  stopped,
sweating, in  the shadow of  some very  large trees. We unpacked our leather
coats  and  our raincoats and spread them  on the  grass at the foot  of the
trees  so that we  could lean back against the  trunks. P.O.M.  got out  the
books and M'Cola made a small fire and boiled water for tea.
     The breeze was coming up and we could hear it in the high  branches. It
was cool  in the shade,  but  if  you stirred into the  sun,  or  as the sun
shifted the  shadow while you  read  so that any part of you  was out of the
shadow,  the  sun was heavy.  Droopy had gone on down the stream  to  have a
look,  and  as we  lay there, reading,  I could smell  the heat  of the  day
coming,  the drying up of the dew, the heat on the leaves, and the heaviness
of the sun over the stream.
     P.O.M.  was reading  {Spanish Gold}, by  George A. Birmingham,  and she
said it was no good. I still  had the Sevastopol  book of Tolstoy and in the
same volume I was reading a  story called 'The Cossacks' that was very good.
In  it  were the summer heat, the mosquitoes,  the feel of the forest in the
different seasons, and that river that the Tartars  crossed, raiding, and  I
was living in that Russia again.
     I was thinking how real  that Russia of the time of our Civil War  was,
as real as any other place,  as Michigan, or the prairie  north of  town and
the woods around Evan's  game farm, of how, through Turgenev,  I knew that I
had  lived there, as  I had been in the family Buddenbrooks, and had climbed
in and out of her window in {Le Rouge  et Le Noir},  or  the morning we  had
come in the gates of Paris and seen Salcede torn apart by the  horses at the
Place de Greves.  I  saw all  that.  And it was me they did not break on the
rack that time because I had been polite  to the  executioner the  time they
killed Coconas and  me, and I remember the Eve of St.  Bartholomew's and how
we hunted Huguenots that night,  and when they trapped  me at her house that
time, and  no feeling more true than finding the  gate of  the Louvre  being
closed, nor of looking down at his body in the  water where he fell from the
mast, and always, Italy, better than any  book, lying in the chestnut woods,
and in the fall  mist behind the Duomo going across the town to the Ospedale
Maggiore,  the  nails  in my boots on the cobbles, and in the spring  sudden
showers in the mountains and the smell of the regiment like a copper coin in
your mouth. So in the heat the train stopped at Dezenzano and there was Lago
de  Garda and those  troops are the  Czech Legion, and the  next time it was
raining, and the next  time it was in the dark, and the next time you passed
it riding in a truck, and the next time you were coming from somewhere else,
and the next  time you walked to it in the dark from Sermione.  For we  have
been there in the books and out of the  books -- and where we  go, if we are
any good, there you can go as we have been. A country,  finally, erodes  and
the  dust  blows  away,  the people  all die and  none of them were  of  any
importance permanently, except those who practised the  arts, and  these now
wish to cease their work because it is  too  lonely, too hard to do, and  is
not fashionable.  A  thousand years makes economics  silly and a work of art
endures  for  ever, but  it  is  very difficult to  do and  now  it  is  not
fashionable. People  do not want to do  it any more because they will be out
of fashion  and  the lice who crawl on literature will not praise them. Also
it is  very hard  to  do. So what? So I would go on  reading about the river
that the Tartars  came across  when raiding,  and the drunken old hunter and
the girl and how it was then in the different seasons.
     Pop was reading {Richard  Carvell}. We had bought what there was to buy
in Nairobi and we were pretty well to the end of the books.
     'I've read this before,' Pop said. 'But it's a good story.'
     'I can just remember it. But it was a good story then.'
     'It's a jolly good story, but I wish I hadn't read it before.'
     'This is terrible,' P.O.M. said. 'You couldn't read it.'
     'Do you want this one?'
     'Don't be ornamental,' she said. 'No, I'll finish this.'
     'Goon. Take it.'
     'I'll give it right back.'
     'Hey, M'Cola,' I said. 'Beer?'
     'N'Dio,' he  said with great force, and from  the  chop box one  of the
natives had carried  on his head produced, in  its straw casing, a bottle of
German beer, one of the sixty-four bottles  Dan had  brought from the German
trading station. Its  neck  was wrapped  in silver foil and on its black and
yellow label there  was  a horseman in  armour. It  was still  cool from the
night and opened by the tin-opener it creamed into three cups, thick-foamed,
full-bodied.
     'No,' said Pop. 'Very bad for the liver.'
     'Come on.'
     'All right.'
     We  all  drank  and when M'Cola opened  the  second bottle Pop refused,
firmly.
     'Go on. It means more to you. I'm going to take a nap.'
     'Poor old Mama?'
     'Just a little.'
     'All  for  me,'  I  said.  M'Cola  smiled  and shook his  head  at this
drinking. I lay back  against  the tree and  watched the  wind  bringing the
clouds  and drank the beer slowly out of the bottle. It was cooler that  way
and it was excellent beer. After a while Pop and P.O.M. were both asleep and
I got  back the Sevastopol book and  read in 'The Cossacks'  again. It was a
good story.
     When they woke up we had  lunch  of  cold sliced tenderloin, bread, and
mustard, and  a can of plums, and drank the third, and last, bottle of beer.
Then we  read again and all went to sleep. I woke thirsty and was unscrewing
the  top from a water  bottle when I heard  a rhino  snort and crash in  the
brush of the river bed. Pop was awake and heard it too and we took our guns,
without speaking, and  started toward where the noise  had come from. M'Cola
found the tracks. The rhino  had come up the stream, evidently he had winded
us when he was  only about thirty yards away, and  had gone  on up. We could
not follow  the tracks the way the wind was  blowing so we circled away from
the  stream  and back to  the edge of the burned place  to get above him and
then hunted  very carefully  against the wind along the stream through  very
thick bush, but we did not find  him. Finally Droopy found where he had gone
up the other side  and  on into the hills. From the tracks it did not seem a
particularly large one.
     We were a long way from camp, at least four hours  as we had come,  and
much of it up-hill going back, certainly there would be that long climb  out
of the  canyon; we had a wounded buffalo to deal with, and when  we came out
on the edge of the burned country again, we agreed that we should get P.O.M.
and get started. It was still hot, but the sun was on its way down and for a
good way we would be on the heavily shaded game trail on the high bank above
the stream. When we found P.O.M. she pretended to be  indignant at our going
off and leaving her alone but she was only teasing us.
     We started off, Droop and his spearsman in the  lead, walking along the
shadow  of the trail  that was broken by the sun through the leaves. Instead
of the cool  early morning smell of  the forest there was a nasty stink like
the mess cats make.
     'What makes the stink?' I whispered to Pop.
     'Baboons,' he said.
     A whole tribe of them had gone  on just ahead of us and their droppings
were  everywhere. We came up  to the place where the rhinos and the buff had
come out of the reeds and I located where I thought the buff had been when I
shot.  M'Cola  and Droopy were casting about like hounds  and I thought they
were at least fifty yards too high up the bank when Droop held up a leaf.
     'He's  got blood,' Pop said.  We went up to  them.  There  was a  great
quantity of blood, black now on the grass, and the trail was easy to follow.
Droop and M'Cola trailed one  on each side, leaving the  trail between them,
pointing to  each blood spot  formally with a long stem  of  grass. I always
thought it would be better for one  to trail slowly and the other cast ahead
but this was the way they trailed, stooped heads, pointing each dried splash
with their grass  stems and occasionally,  when  they picked  up the  tracks
after losing  them, stooping to  pluck a  grass blade or a leaf that had the
black stain on it. I followed them with the Springfield, then came Pop, with
P.O.M.  behind him. Droop carried  my  big gun  and Pop  had his. M'Cola had
P.O.M.'s Mannlicher slung over his  shoulder. None of us spoke and  everyone
seemed  to regard it  as a pretty serious  business.  In some high grass  we
found blood, at a pretty good height on the  grass leaves on  both sides  of
the trail where  the buff had gone through the grass. That meant he was shot
clean through. You could not tell the original colour of the blood  now, but
I had a moment of hoping he might be shot through the lungs. But farther  on
we came on  some droppings  in the  rocks with blood in  them and then for a
while  he  had  dropped  dung  wherever  he  climbed  and   all  of  it  was
blood-spotted. It looked, now, like a gut shot or one  through the paunch. I
was more ashamed of it all the time.
     'If he comes don't worry about Droopy  or  the others,'  Pop whispered.
'They'll get out of his way. Stop him.'
     'Right up the nose,' I said.
     'Don't try anything fancy,' Pop  said. The trail climbed steadily, then
twice looped back on itself and for a time seemed  to wander, without  plan,
among some  rocks. Once  it lead down to the stream, crossed a rivulet of it
and then came back up on the same bank, grading up through the trees.
     'I think we'll find  him dead,' I whispered  to  Pop. That aimless turn
had made me see him, slow and hard hit, getting ready to go down.
     'I hope so,' Pop said.
     But the trail went on, where there was  little grass now, and  trailing
was  much slower and  more difficult. There were no tracks  now that I could
see, only the probable line he would take, verified by a shiny dark splatter
of dried blood on a stone. Several times we lost it entirely and, the  three
of us  making casts, one would find  it, point  and  whisper  'Damu', and we
would go on again. Finally it led down from  a rocky  hillside with the last
of the  sun on  it, down  into the stream  bed where there was a long,  wide
patch of  the highest dead  reeds that we  had  seen. These  were higher and
thicker even than the slough the  buff had  come out of in the  morning  and
there were several game trails that went into them.
     'Not good enough to take the little Memsahib in there,' Pop said.
     'Let her stay here with M'Cola,' I said.
     'It's not good enough for the  little Memsahib,' Pop repeated. 'I don't
know why we let her come.'
     'She can wait here. Droop wants to go on.'
     'Right you are. We'll have a look.'
     'You wait here with M'Cola,' I whispered over my shoulder.
     We followed Droopy into the thick, tall grass  that was five feet above
our  heads, walking carefully on the game trail, stooping forward, trying to
make  no noise breathing. I was thinking of the buff the way I had seen them
when we had gotten the three that time, how the old bull had come out of the
bush, groggy as he was, and I could see the horns, the boss coming far down,
the  muzzle  out,  the little  eyes, the  roll  of  fat and  muscle  on  his
thin-haired, grey, scaly-hided  neck, the heavy  power and the rage in  him,
and  I admired him and respected him, but he was slow, and all the  while we
shot I felt that it was fixed  and that we had him. This was different, this
was no rapid fire, no pouring it on him as he comes groggy into the open, if
he  comes now I  must be quiet inside and put  it down his nose as he  comes
with the head out. He will have to put the head down to hook, like any bull,
and that will uncover the old place the  boys  wet their  knuckles on and  I
will get one in  there and then must go sideways into the grass and he would
be Pop's from then on  unless I could keep  the  rifle  when I jumped. I was
sure I could get that one in  and jump  if I could  wait and  watch his head
come  down. I knew I could do that and that the shot would kill him but  how
long would it take?  That was the whole thing. How long  would it take? Now,
going forward, sure  he was in here, I felt the elation, the best elation of
all, of certain action to come, action in which  you had something to do, in
which you  can kill  and  come out of  it, doing  something you are ignorant
about and so not scared, no  one to worry about and no responsibility except
to perform something you feel sure you can perform, and I was walking softly
ahead watching Droopy's back  and remembering to keep  the sweat out  of  my
glasses  when I heard  a  noise behind us and turned my  head. It was P.O.M.
with M'Cola coming on our tracks.
     'For God's sake,' Pop said. He was furious.
     We  got  her back out of the grass  and up on to the  bank and made her
realize that she must stay  there. She  had  not understood that she  was to
stay behind. She had heard me whisper something but thought it was  for  her
to come behind M'Cola.
     'That spooked me,' I said to Pop.
     'She's like a little terrier,' he said. 'But it's not good enough.'
     We were looking out over that grass.
     'Droop wants to go still,' I said. 'I'll go as far as he will.  When he
says no that lets us out. After all, I gut-shot the son of a bitch.'
     'Mustn't do anything silly, though.'
     'I can kill the son of a bitch if I get a shot at him. If he comes he's
got to give me a shot.'
     The fright P.O.M. had given us about herself had made me noisy.
     'Come on,' said Pop. We followed  Droopy back in and  it  got worse and
worse, and I do not know  about Pop but about half-way I changed to  the big
gun and kept the safety off and my  hand over the trigger  guard and  I  was
plenty nervous by the time Droopy stopped and shook  his head  and whispered
'Hapana'. It  had gotten  so you  could not see a foot ahead  and it was all
turns  and  twists. It was really bad and the sun  was only  on the hillside
now.  We both felt good because we had made Droopy do the calling off  and I
was relieved  as  well. What we  had followed  him  into  had made  my fancy
shooting plans  seem very silly and I knew all we had in there  was  Pop  to
blast him  over with the four-fifty number two after I'd maybe miss him with
that lousy  four-seventy. I had no confidence  in anything but its noise any
more.
     We were  back trailing when we heard the porters  on the hillside shout
and we ran crashing through the  grass to try to get a high  enough place to
see to shoot. They waved their arms and shouted  that the buffalo  had  come
out  of  the  reeds  and gone  past them and  then  M'Cola  and Droopy  were
pointing, and  Pop had me by the sleeve trying  to pull me to where I  could
see  them and  then, in the sunlight,  high up on  the hillside  against the
rocks I saw two buffalo. They shone very black in  the  sun and one was much
bigger  than the other and I remember thinking this was our bull and that he
had picked up  a cow and she had made the pace and kept him going. Droop had
handed  me  the  Springfield  and  I  slipped my  arm through  the sling and
sighting, the buff now all seen through the aperture, I froze myself  inside
and held the bead  on the top of his shoulder and as I started to squeeze he
started running and I swung ahead of him and loosed off. I saw him lower his
head and jump like a bucking horse as he comes out  of the  chutes and as  I
threw the shell, slammed the bolt forward  and  shot again, behind him as he
went out of sight, I knew  I had him. Droopy and I started  to run and as we
were running  I heard a low bellow. I stopped  and yelled at Pop, 'Hear him?
I've got him, I tell you!'
     'You hit him,' said Pop. 'Yes.'
     'Goddamn it, I killed him. Didn't you hear him bellow?'
     'No.'
     'Listen!' We stood listening and there it came, clear, a long, moaning,
unmistakable bellow.
     'By God,' Pop said. It was a very sad noise.
     M'Cola grabbed my  hand and Droopy  slapped my back and all laughing we
started on a  running scramble, sweating, rushing,  up the ridge through the
trees and over rocks. I had to stop for breath, my heart pounding, and wiped
the sweat off my face and cleaned my glasses.
     'Kufa!'  M'Cola said,  making the word for dead almost explosive in its
force. 'N'Dio! Kufa!'
     'Kufa!' Droopy said grinning.
     'Kufa!'  M'Cola  repeated  and we  shook hands again before  we went on
climbing.  Then, ahead of us,  we saw him, on his back, throat stretched out
to the full, his weight on his  horns, wedged against a tree. M'Cola put his
finger in  the bullet hole in  the centre of the shoulder and shook his head
happily.
     Pop and P.O.M. came up, followed by the porters.
     'By God, he's a better bull than we thought,' I said.
     'He's not the same bull. This is a  real bull. That must  have been our
bull with him.'
     'I thought he was with a cow. It was so far away I couldn't tell.'
     'It  must  have been  four  hundred yards. By God, you {can} shoot that
little pipsqueak. '
     'When I saw him put  his head down between his legs  and buck I knew we
had him. The light was wonderful on him.'
     'I  knew  you  had hit  him, and I  knew he wasn't the same bull.  So I
thought we had  two wounded buffalo to  deal with.  I didn't hear  the first
bellow.'
     'It was wonderful when we heard  him bellow,' P.O.M. said. 'It's such a
sad sound. It's like hearing a horn in the woods.'
     'It sounded awfully jolly to me,' Pop said. 'By God, we deserve a drink
on this. That was a shot. Why didn't you ever tell us you could shoot?'
     'Go to hell.'
     'You know  he's a damned  good tracker, too,  and  what kind of  a bird
shot?' he asked P.O.M.
     'Isn't he a beautiful bull?'  P.O.M. asked. 'He's  a fine one. He's not
old but it's a fine head.'
     We tried to take pictures  but there was only the little box camera and
the shutter stuck, and there was  a bitter argument about the shutter  while
the light failed, and I was nervous now, irritable, righteous, pompous about
the shutter and inclined to be abusive because we could get no  picture. You
cannot live on a plane of the sort  of elation I had felt  in the  reeds and
having killed,  even  when it  is only  a buffalo, you  feel  a little quiet
inside. Killing is not a feeling that you share and I took a  drink of water
and  told P.O.M. I was sorry I was such a bastard about the camera. She said
it was all right and we were all right again looking at the buff with M'Cola
making the cuts for the headskin  and we standing close together and feeling
fond of each  other and understanding everything, camera and  all. I  took a
drink of the whisky and it had no taste and I felt no kick from it.
     'Let me have another,' I said. The second one was all right.
     We were going  on ahead to camp with the  chased-by-a-rhino spearman as
guide and Droop  was  going  to  skin out  the  head and they were going  to
butcher  and cache  the meat in trees so the hyenas would  not  get it. They
were afraid to  travel in  the  dark and I told  Droopy he could keep my big
gun.  He said he knew how  to shoot so I took out the shells  and put on the
safety and handing it to him told him to  shoot.  He put it to his shoulder,
shut  the wrong eye, and pulled hard on  the trigger, and again,  and again.
Then I showed him about the safety and had him put it  on and  off  and snap
the gun  a couple  of times.  M'Cola  became very  superior during  Droopy's
struggle to fire with the safety on and Droopy seemed to get much smaller. I
left him the gun and two cartridges and they were all busy butchering in the
dusk when we  followed the spearsman  and  the tracks  of the  smaller buff,
which had no blood on  them, up to the top of the hill and on our way toward
home. We climbed  around  the tops of valleys, went  across gulches, up  and
down ravines and  finally came on to the main ridge, it dark and cold in the
evening, the moon not yet up,  we plodded along, all  tired. Once M'Cola, in
the dark, loaded  with Pop's heavy gun  and an assortment of  water bottles,
binoculars, and a musette bag of books,  sung  out a stream of what  sounded
like curses at the guide who was striding ahead.
     'What's he say?' I asked Pop.
     'He's telling  him not to show off  his speed. That there is an old man
in the party.'
     'Who does he mean, you or himself?'
     'Both of us.'
     We saw the moon come up,  smoky red over the brown  hills,  and we came
down through  the chinky  lights of the  village, the mud  houses all closed
tight, and  the smells of goats and sheep, and then across the stream and up
the bare slope to where the fire was burning in front of our tents. It was a
cold night with much wind.
     In the  morning we hunted, picked up a track at  a spring and trailed a
rhino all over the high orchard country before  he  went down  into a valley
that led, steeply,  into the  canyon. It was very hot and the tight boots of
the day before had chafed P.O.M.'s feet. She did not complain about them but
I could see they hurt her. We were all luxuriantly, restfully tired.
     'The  hell with them,' I said to Pop. 'I don't want to kill another one
unless he's big. We might hunt a week for a good one. Let's stand on the one
we have and  pull out and join Karl. We can  hunt  oryx  down there  and get
those zebra hides and get on after the kudu.'
     We were sitting under a tree on  the summit of a hill and could see off
over all the country and the canyon running down to the Rift Valley and Lake
Manyara.
     'It would be  good fun to  take  porters and a light outfit and hunt on
ahead of them down through that valley and out to the lake,' Pop said.
     'That  would be  swell. We could send the lorries around  to meet us at
what's the name of the place?'
     'Maji-Moto.'
     'Why don't we do that?' P.O.M. asked.
     'We'll ask Droopy how the valley is.'
     Droopy  didn't know  but the  spearman said it was very rough  and  bad
going where the stream came down through the rift wall. He did  not think we
could get the loads through. We gave it up.
     'That's the sort of  trip to  make,  though,'  Pop said. 'Porters don't
cost as much as petrol.'
     'Can't we make trips like that when we come back?' P.O.M. asked.
     'Yes,' Pop said. 'But for a big rhino you want to go up on Mount Kenya.
You'll  get a real one there. Kudu's  the prize here. You'd have to go up to
Kalal to get one in Kenya. Then if we get them we'll have time to go on down
in that Handeni country for sable.'
     'Let's get going,' I said without moving.
     Since a long time we had all felt good about Karl's rhino. We were glad
he  had it and all of that had taken on  a correct perspective. Maybe he had
his oryx by  now. I hoped so. He was a fine fellow, Karl, and it was good he
got these extra fine heads.
     'How do you feel, poor old Mama?'
     'I'm fine. If we {are} going I'll be just as glad  to rest my feet. But
I love this kind of hunting.'
     'Let's get back, eat, break camp, and get down there to-night.'
     That night we got into our old camp at M'utu-Umbu, under the big trees,
not far from the road.  It had been our first  camp  in Africa and the trees
were  as  big, as  spreading, and as green,  the  stream as clear  and  fast
flowing, and the  camp  as  fine as when we had first been  there.  The only
difference was that now it was hotter at night, the road  in was hub-deep in
dust, and we had seen a lot of country.


        CHAPTER FOUR

     We had come  down to the Rift Valley by a sandy red road  across a high
plateau,  then  up and down through orchard-bushed hills,  around a slope of
forest to  the top of  the  rift wall  where we could  look down and see the
plain, the heavy forest below  the  wall, and the long, dried-up edged shine
of Lake Manyara rose-coloured at one end with a half million  tiny dots that
were  flamingoes. From  there the road dropped steeply along the face of the
wall, down  into the forest,  on to the  flatness  of  the  valley,  through
cultivated patches of green corn, bananas,  and  trees I  did  not know  the
names  of, walled thick with forest,  past a Hindu's  trading store and many
huts,  over two bridges where clear, fast-flowing streams  ran, through more
forest, thinning now to open glades, and into a dusty turn-off that led into
a deeply rutted, dust-filled track through bushes to the shade of M'utu-Umbu
camp.
     That night after dinner we  heard the flamingoes flighting in the dark.
It was like the sound  the wings  of ducks make as they go over before it is
light, but slower, with a steady beat, and multiplied  a thousand times. Pop
and I were a little drunk and P.O.M. was very tired. Karl was gloomy  again.
We  had taken the edge  from his victories over  rhino and now that was past
anyway and  he was facing possible defeat by oryx. Then, too, they had found
not a  leopard but a marvellous lion, a huge, black-maned  lion that did not
want to leave, on the  rhino  carcass  when they  had gone  there  the  next
morning  and  could not  shoot  him  because he was in some  sort  of forest
reserve.
     'That's rotten,' I said and  I tried to feel  bad about  it  but  I was
still feeling much too good to appreciate any one else's gloom,  and Pop and
I sat, tired through to our bones, drinking whisky and soda and talking.
     The next  day we  hunted  oryx in the  dried-up dustiness of  the  Rift
Valley and  finally found a herd way off at the edge  of the wooded hills on
the far side above a Masai village. They  were like a bunch of Masai donkeys
except  for the  beautiful  straight-slanting black horns and all  the heads
looked good. When you looked closely two or three were obviously better than
the others  and sitting on the  ground I picked what I thought  was the very
best of the  lot and as they strung out I made sure of this one. I heard the
bullet  smack and  watched  the  oryx  circle  out away from the others, the
circle quickening, and knew I had it. So I did not shoot again.
     This was  the one Karl  had picked, too. I  did not know that, but  had
shot, deliberately selfish, to make sure of the best this time at least, but
he got another good  one  and they  went off in a wind-lifted  cloud of grey
dust  as they galloped.  Except for  the miracle of their horns there was no
more  excitement in shooting  them than if  they had been donkeys, and after
the lorry came up and M'Cola and Charo had skinned the heads out  and cut up
the meat we rode home  in the blowing  dust, our faces grey with it, and the
valley one long heat mirage.
     We stayed at that camp two days. We had to get some zebra hides that we
had promised friends at home and it needed  time for  the  skinner to handle
them properly. Getting the zebra  was no fun; the  plain was  dull, now that
the  grass  had dried, hot and dusty after the  hills, and the picture  that
remains is of  sitting against an anthill with,  in  the distance, a herd of
zebra  galloping in  the grey heat haze,  raising  a dust, and on the yellow
plain, the birds circling over a white patch there, another beyond,  there a
third, and looking back, the plume  of dust  of  the lorry  coming with  the
skinners and the  men to  cut up the meat  for the village.  I did  some bad
shooting in the heat on a Grant's gazelle that the volunteer  skinners asked
me to kill them for meat,  wounding him in a running  shot after missing him
three or  four times, and then following him across  the plain  until almost
noon in that heat until I got within range and killed him.
     But that afternoon we  went out  along  the road  that ran through  the
settlement and past the corner of the Hindu's general store, where he smiled
at  us in  well-oiled, unsuccessful-storekeeping,  brotherly  humanity,  and
hopeful salesmanship, turned the car off to the left on to a track that went
into  the  deep  forest,  a narrow brush-bordered  track  through the  heavy
timber, that crossed a stream on an unsound log  and pole bridge and went on
until  the timber  thinned  and  we  came  out into  a grassy savannah  that
stretched  ahead to  the  reed-edged,  dried-up  bed of the  lake with,  far
beyond,  the shine of  the water and the rose-pink  of the flamingoes. There
were some grass huts of fishermen  in the shade of the last trees and  ahead
the wind blew across the grass of the savannah and the dried bed of the lake
showed a white-grey with many small animals humping across its baked surface
as our car  alarmed  them. They were reed  buck and they  looked strange and
awkward  as they moved in the distance but trim and graceful as you saw them
standing close.  We turned the car out through the thick, short grass and on
to the dried lake floor and everywhere, to the left and to  the right, where
the streams flowed out  into the  lake and made a reedy marsh  that ran down
toward the receded  lake,  cut  by canals of water, ducks were flying and we
could  see  big  flocks  of geese  spread over the grassy hummocks that rose
above the marsh. The dried bed was hard and firm  and we drove the car until
it commenced to look moist and soft ahead, then left the motor  car standing
there, and, Karl  taking Charo and I, M'Cola, to carry shells and  birds, we
agreed to  work one on one side and one the other of  the marsh  and try  to
shoot and keep the birds moving while  Pop and P.O.M. went into the  edge of
the high reeds on the  left shore of the lake  where  another stream  made a
thick marsh to which we thought the ducks might fly.
     We saw  them  walk  across the open,  a  big  bulky figure  in a  faded
corduroy  coat and a very small one  in  trousers, grey khaki jacket, boots,
and a big hat, and then disappear as they crouched in a point of dried reeds
before we started. But as we went out  to reach the edge  of  the  stream we
soon saw the plan was  no good.  Even watching  carefully  for  the  firmest
footing  you sunk down in the cool mud to the  knees, and, as it became less
mucky and  there were more hummocks broken by water, sometimes I went in  to
the waist. The  ducks  and  geese  flew up out of  range and after the first
flock had swung  across toward where the others were hidden in the reeds and
we heard  the sharp, small, double report of  P.O.M.'s 28-gauge  and saw the
ducks wheel off and go out  toward  the lake, the other scattered flocks and
the  geese all went toward the open water. A flock of  dark ibises, looking,
with their dipped bills, like gre