his finger and  measured the spread  with  his arms and  kept crooning,
'Oo-oo-eee-eee', making small high noises of ecstasy and stroking the kudu's
muzzle and his mane.
     I  slapped the Roman on the back and  we went through the thumb-pulling
again,  me  pulling his thumb  too. I embraced  the Wanderobo-Masai and  he,
after a thumb-pulling of great  intensity and feeling, slapped his chest and
said very proudly, 'Wanderobo-Masai wonderful guide'.
     'Wanderobo-Masai wonderful Masai,' I said.
     M'Cola kept shaking  his  head,  looking at  the  kudu  and  making the
strange  small  noises. Then  he said, 'Doumi,  Doumi,  Doumi! B'wana  Kabor
Kidogo,  Kidogo'. Meaning  this was  a bull of bulls. That Karl's had been a
little one, a nothing.
     We all knew we had  killed the  other kudu that I had mistaken for this
one, while this first one was lying dead from the first shot, and it  seemed
of no importance beside the miracle of this kudu.  But  I  wanted to see the
other.
     'Come on, kudu,' I said.
     'He's dead,' said M'Cola. 'Kufa!'
     'Come on.'
     'This one best.'
     'Come on.'
     'Measure,' M'Cola pleaded. I ran the steel tape around the curve of one
horn, M'Cola holding it  down. It was  well over fifty inches. M'Cola looked
at me anxiously.
     'Big! Big!' I said. 'Twice as big as B'wana Rabor.'
     'Eee-eee,' he crooned.
     'Come on,' I said. The Roman was off already.
     We cut for where we saw the bull when I shot and  there were the tracks
with blood  breast high on the leaves in the  brush from  the  start.  In  a
hundred yards we came on him absolutely dead. He was not quite as big as the
first bull. The horns  were as long,  but narrower, but he was as beautiful,
and he lay on his side, bending down the brush where he fell.
     We  all  shook hands  again, using the  thumb  which evidently  denoted
extreme emotion.
     'This  askari,'  M'Cola explained.  This  bull  was  the  policeman  or
bodyguard for the  bigger one. He  had evidently been in the timber when  we
had seen  the first bull, had run with him, and  had looked back to  see why
the big bull did not follow.
     I wanted pictures and told M'Cola to go back to camp with the Roman and
bring the two cameras,  the Graflex and the cinema camera and my flashlight.
I knew we were on the same side of the stream and above the camp and I hoped
the Roman could make a short cut and get back before the sun set.
     They went off and now, at the end of the day, the sun came out brightly
below the clouds  and the WanderoboMasai and I looked at this kudu, measured
his  horns,  smelled  the  fine smell of him, sweeter  than an  eland  even,
stroked his nose, his neck, and  his shoulder, marvelling at his great ears,
and  the smoothness  and cleanness of his  hide, looked  at his hooves, that
were built long, narrow, and springy,  so he  seemed to walk on tiptoe, felt
under his shoulder for  the bullet-hole and then shook hands again while the
Wanderobo-Masai told what a man he was and I told him he was my pal and gave
him my best four-bladed pocket knife.
     'Let's go look at the first one, Wanderobo-Masai,' I said in English.
     The  Wanderobo-Masai nodded,  understanding perfectly,  and we  trailed
back to where the big one lay in the edge of the little clearing. We circled
him, looking at him and then the  Wanderobo-Masai, reaching underneath while
I held the shoulder up, found the bullet hole and put his finger in. Then he
touched  his forehead  with the  bloody  finger  and  made the speech  about
'Wanderobo-Masai wonderful guide!'
     'Wanderobo-Masai king of guides,' I said. 'Wanderobo-Masai my pal.'
     I was wet through with sweat  and I put on my raincoat that  M'Cola had
been carrying and left behind and turned the collar up around my neck. I was
watching the sun now  and  worrying about it being  gone before they got  up
with the  cameras. In a little  while we could hear them coming in the brush
and I shouted to let them know where we were. M'Cola answered and we shouted
back and forth and I could hear them talking and crashing in the brush while
I  would  shout and watch  the sun which was almost down. Finally I saw them
and  I shouted to M'Cola, 'Run, run', and pointed to  the sun, but there was
no  run left in them. They had made a fast trip uphill, through heavy brush,
and when I got  the camera, opened the lens wide and focused on the bull the
sun was only lighting the tops  of the trees.  I took half a dozen exposures
and used the cinema while they all dragged the kudu to where there seemed to
be a little more light, then the sun was down and, obligation to try  to get
a  picture over,  I put the  camera into its case and settled, happily, with
the darkness  into the unresponsibility of victory; only emerging  to direct
M'Cola  in where to  cut to make a full enough  cape when skinning  out  the
head-skin.  M'Cola  used  a  knife  beautifully  and  I liked  to  watch him
skin-out,  but to-night, after I had shown him where to make  the first cut,
well down on the legs, around the lower chest where it joined the  belly and
well back over the withers, I did not watch him because I wanted to remember
the bull as I had first seen him, so I went, in the dusk, to the second kudu
and waited there  until they came with the flashlight and  then, remembering
that I had  skinned-out or seen  skinned-out  every animal  that  I had ever
shot,  yet remembered every one  exactly as he was at every moment, that one
memory does not destroy another, and  that  the not-watching idea  was  only
laziness and a form of putting the dishes in the  sink until morning, I held
the flashlight  for M'Cola while he worked on the second  bull and, although
tired,  enjoyed as  always his  fast,  clean, delicate  scalpeling  with the
knife,  until,  the cape all  clear and  spread back he nocked  through  the
connection  of the skull and  the spine  and then, twisting  with the horns,
swung the head loose and  lifted  it, cape and all, free from  the neck, the
cape hanging heavy and wet in the light of the electric torch that shone  on
his  red  hands  and  on   the  dirty  khaki  of  his  tunic.  We  left  the
Wanderobo-Masai, Garrick, the Roman, and  his brother with a lantern to skin
out and pack in  the meat and M'Cola with a head,  the old  man with a head,
and me with the flashlight and the two guns, we started in the dark back for
camp.
     In the dark  the old man fell  flat and  M'Cola laughed; then  the cape
unrolled and came  down  over his  face  and  he  almost  choked and we both
laughed. The  old man laughed too. Then M'Cola fell in the  dark and the old
man  and  I laughed. A little farther on I went through the covering on some
sort of  game  pit  and  went  flat  on my  face and  got up to  hear M'Cola
chuckling and choking and the old man giggling.
     'What  the hell is this? A Chaplin  comedy?' I  asked them  in English.
They were both  laughing under  the  heads. We got  to the thorn-bush fence,
finally, after a nightmare  march through the  brush and saw the fire at the
camp and M'Cola  seemed to be delighted when the old man fell  going through
the thorns and got up cursing and seeming barely able to lift the head  as I
shone the flash ahead of him to show him the opening.
     We came up to the  fire and  I could see the old man's face bleeding as
he  put the head down against the stick  and mud cabin. M'Cola put  his head
down, pointed at the old man's face and laughed and shook his head. I looked
at the  old man. He was  completely done-in, his  face was badly  scratched,
covered with mud and bleeding, and he was chuckling happily.
     'B'wana  fell down,' M'Cola said and imitated me pitching forward. They
both chuckled.
     I made as though to take a swing at him and said, 'Shenzi!'
     He imitated  me falling down  again and  then  there was  Kamau shaking
hands  very gently and  respectfully and  saying, 'Good, B'wana! Very  good,
B'wana!' and then going  over to  the  heads, his eyes shining and kneeling,
stroking  the horns  and feeling  the ears and  crooning the same,  sighing,
'Ooo-ooo! Eee-eee!' noises M'Cola had made.
     I went into the dark of the tent, we had left the lantern with the meat
bringers, and washed, took  off my wet clothes and feeling in the dark in my
rucksack found a pair of pyjamas  and  a bath-robe. I came out to  the  fire
wearing  these  and mosquito  boots. I brought my wet things and my boots to
the  fire and  Kamau  spread  them on sticks,  and put the boots,  each  one
leg-down, on a stick and back far enough from the blaze where the fire would
not scorch them.
     In the firelight  I sat on a petrol box with my back against a tree and
Kamau  brought the  whisky flask and poured some in a cup and I  added water
from the canteen and sat drinking and looking in  the fire, not thinking, in
complete  happiness,  feeling  the  whisky  warm me  and smooth  me  as  you
straighten the  wrinkled sheet in a bed, while  Kamau brought tins  from the
provisions  to  see what  I  would eat for supper.  There were three tins of
Christmas special mincemeat, three tins of salmon, and three of mixed fruit,
there  were  also  a number  of  cakes  of  chocolate and  a  tin of Special
Christmas Plum Pudding. I  sent these back  wondering what Kati had imagined
the  mincemeat to  be. We had been  looking for that  plum pudding  for  two
months.
     'Meat?' I asked.
     Kamau brought  a thick, long chunk  of  roast Grant  gazelle tenderloin
from one  of the Grant Pop had shot on  the  plain while we had been hunting
the twenty-five-mile salt-lick, and some bread.
     'Beer?'
     He brought one of the big German litre bottles and opened it.
     It seemed too  complicated sitting on the petrol case  and I  spread my
raincoat on the ground in front of  the fire where the ground had been dried
by the heat  and stretched  my legs out, leaning my back against the  wooden
case. The old man was roasting meat on a stick. It was a choice piece he had
brought with him wrapped in his  toga.  In a little while  they all began to
come in carrying meat and the  hides and then I  was stretched  out drinking
beer and watching  the fire and all around they  were  talking and  roasting
meat on  sticks. It was getting cold  and the night was clear and there  was
the smell of the  roasting  meat, the smell of the  smoke of  the fire,  the
smell of  my boots steaming, and, where  he squatted close, the smell of the
good old Wanderobo-Masai.  But  I could remember the odour of the kudu as he
lay in the woods.
     Each man had his  own  meat or collection of  pieces of meat on  sticks
stuck around the fire, they turned them  and tended them, and there was much
talking. Two others that I had not seen had come over from the huts and  the
boy we  had seen in the afternoon was with them. I was eating a piece of hot
broiled liver I had lifted from one of the sticks of the Wanderobo-Masai and
wondering where  the  kidneys were. The liver was delicious. I was wondering
whether it was worth while getting up to get the dictionary to ask about the
kidneys when M'Cola said, 'Beer?'
     'All right.'
     He brought the bottle, opened it, and I lifted it  and drank half of it
off  to chase down  that  liver. 'It's  a  hell  of  a  life,' I told him in
English. He grinned and said, 'More beer?' in Swahili. My talking English to
him was an acceptable  joke. 'Watch,' I said, and  tipped the  bottle up and
let it all go down. It was an old trick we learned  in Spain drinking out of
wine skins  without swallowing.  This impressed  the Roman greatly.  He came
over, squatted down by the raincoat and  started  to talk.  He  talked for a
long time.
     'Absolutely,' I  told him in English. 'And furthermore he can take  the
sleigh.'
     'More beer?' M'Cola asked.
     'You want to see the old man tight, I suppose?'
     'N'Dio,' he said. 'Yes,' pretending to understand the English.
     'Watch it, Roman.'  I started to let the beer  go  down, saw the  Roman
following  the  motion  with  his  own  throat,  started  to  choke,  barely
recovered, and lowered the bottle.
     'That's  all.  Can't  do it more than twice  in  an  evening. Makes you
liverish.'
     The Roman went on talking in his language. I heard him say Simba twice.
     'Simba here?'
     'No,' he said. 'Over there,' waving at the dark,  and  I could not make
out the story. But it sounded very good.
     'Me  plenty  Simba,' I said.  'Hell of a man with Simba. Ask M'Cola.' I
could  feel that  I was  getting  the evening  braggies but  Pop and  P.O.M,
weren't here  to listen. It was not nearly so satisfactory  to brag when you
could not be understood, still it was better than nothing. I  definitely had
the braggies, on beer, too.
     'Amazing,' I told the Roman. He went on with his own story. There was a
little beer in the bottom of the bottle.
     'Old Man,' I said. 'Mzee.'
     'Yes, B'wana,' said the old man.
     'Here's some beer for you. You're old enough, so it can't hurt you.'
     I had seen the old man's eyes while he watched me drink  and I  knew he
was another of the same. He  took the  bottle, drained it to the last bit of
froth and crouched by his meat sticks holding the bottle lovingly.
     'More beer?' asked M'Cola.
     'Yes,' I said. 'And my cartridges.'
     The Roman had gone  on steadily  talking. He  could tell a longer story
even than Carlos in Cuba.
     'That's  mighty interesting,'  I told him. 'You're a hell of a  fellow,
too. We're both good. Listen.' M'Cola had brought the beer and my khaki coat
with  the cartridges in the pocket. I drank a little beer, noted the old man
watching and  spread out  six cartridges. 'I've got the braggies,'  I  said.
'You  have to stand  for  this, look!' I touched each of  the cartridges  in
turn, 'Simba, Simba, Faro,  Nyati, Tendalla, Tendalla.  What do you think of
that? You  don't have to  believe it.  Look, M'Cola!' and  I  named the  six
cartridges again. 'Lion, lion, rhino, buffalo, kudu, kudu.'
     'Ayee!' said the Roman excitedly.
     'N'Dio,' said M'Cola solemnly. 'Yes, it is true.'
     'Ayee!' said the Roman and grabbed me by the thumb.
     'God's truth,' I said. 'Highly improbable, isn't it?'
     'N'Dio,' said M'Cola, counting them over himself. 'Simba,  Simba, Faro,
Nyati, Tendalla, Tendalla!'
     'You can tell the  others,' I said in English. 'That's  a hell of a big
piece of bragging. That'll hold me for to-night.'
     The Roman went on talking to me  again and I listened carefully and ate
another piece  of the broiled  liver. M'Cola was  working on the heads  now,
skinning out one skull  and showing Kamau how to skin out the  easy  part of
the  other. It was  a big job to do for the  two of them, working  carefully
around the eyes and the muzzle and the cartilage of the ears, and afterwards
flesh all of  the head skins so  they would not spoil, and they were working
at it very delicately and  carefully  in the  firelight.  I  do not remember
going to bed, nor if we went to bed.
     I remember  getting the dictionary and  asking M'Cola to ask the boy if
he had a sister and M'Cola saying, 'No, No', to me very firmly and solemnly.
     'Nothing tendacious, you understand. Curiosity.'
     M'Cola was firm.  'No,'  he said and shook  his head. 'Hapana,'  in the
same tone he used when we followed the lion into the sanseviera that time.
     That disposed  of  the opportunities  for social life and  I  looked up
kidneys and the Roman's brother produced some from his lot and I put a piece
between two pieces of liver on a stick and started it broiling.
     'Make  an  admirable  breakfast,' I said  out loud.  'Much  better than
mincemeat.'
     Then  we  had  a  long talk about  sable.  The Roman  did not call them
Tarahalla and that name meant nothing to him. There was some confusion about
buffalo because the Roman kept saying  'nyati', but he meant they were black
like the buff. Then we drew pictures in  the dust of ashes from the fire and
what he meant were sable all  right. The  horns curved  back like scimitars,
way back over their withers.
     'Bulls?' I said.
     'Bulls and cows.'
     With the old man and Garrick interpreting, I believed  I made  out that
there were two herds.
     'To-morrow.'
     'Yes,' the Roman said. 'To-morrow.'
     ' 'Cola,' I said. 'To-day, kudu. To-morrow, sable, buffalo, Simba.'
     'Hapana, buffalo!' he said and shook his head. 'Hapana, Simba!'
     'Me  and  the  Wanderobo-Masai   buffalo,'  I  said.  'Yes,'  said  the
Wanderobo-Masai excitedly. 'Yes.'
     'There are very  big  elephants  near here,' Garrick  said. 'To-morrow,
elephants,' I said, teasing  M'Cola.  'Hapana  elephants!' He  knew  it  was
teasing but he did not even want to hear it said.
     'Elephants,' I said. 'Buffalo, Simba, leopard.'
     The Wanderobo-Masai was nodding excitedly. 'Rhino,' he put in.
     'Hapana!' M'Cola said shaking his head. He was beginning to suffer.
     'In those hills many buffalo,' the old man interpreted for the now very
excited Roman who was standing and pointing beyond where the huts were.
     'Hapana! Hapana!  Hapana!'  M'Cola said  definitely and finally.  'More
beer?' putting down his knife.
     'All  right,' I said. 'I'm just kidding you.' M'Cola was crouched close
talking, making  an explanation. I heard  Pop's title and  I thought  it was
that Pop would not like it. That Pop would not want it.
     'I  was  just  kidding  you,'  I  said  in  English.  Then in  Swahili,
'To-morrow, sable?'
     'Yes,' he said feelingly. 'Yes.'
     After that the Roman and I had a long talk in which I spoke Spanish and
he  spoke whatever  it  was  he spoke  and  I believe  we planned the entire
campaign for the next day.


        CHAPTER TWO

     I do not remember going to bed nor getting  up, only being by  the fire
in  the  grey before  daylight, with a tin cup  of hot tea in my hand and my
breakfast, on the stick, not looking nearly so admirable and very over-blown
with  ashes. The Roman  was standing making  an oration with gestures in the
direction where the light  was beginning to show and I remember wondering if
the bastard had talked all night.
     The head skins were all spread and neatly  salted and  the  skulls with
the horns were leaning against the  log and stick house. M'Cola  was folding
the head skins.  Kamau brought  me the tins  and I  told him  to open one of
fruit. It was  cold  from the night and the mixed fruit and the  cold syrupy
juice  sucked down smoothly. I drank  another cup of tea,  went in the tent,
dressed, put  on my dry boots and we were ready to start. The Roman had said
we would be back before lunch.
     We had the Roman's brother as guide. The Roman  was going, as near as I
could make  out, to spy  on one of the herds of sable  and we were going  to
locate the other. We started out with the brother ahead, wearing  a toga and
carrying  a  spear, then me  with the  Springfield slung  and my small Zeiss
glasses in  my pocket,  then M'Cola with  Pop's  glasses, slung on one side,
water  canteen  on  the  other,  skinning  knife, whetstone,  extra  box  of
cartridges, and cakes of chocolates in his pockets, and the big gun over his
shoulder, then the old man with the Graflex, Garrick  with the movie camera,
and the Wanderobo-Masai with a spear and bow and arrows.
     We said good-bye to the Roman and started  out  of the thorn-bush fence
just  as  the  sun  came  through  the  gap in  the  hills and shone on  the
cornfield,  the  huts and  the blue hills beyond. It promised  to  be a fine
clear day.
     The brother led the  way through some  heavy brush  that soaked us all;
then through the open  forest, then steeply uphill until we were  well up on
the slope that rose behind the edge of  the field where we were camped. Then
we were on a good smooth trail that graded back into these hills above which
the  sun had not yet risen. I was enjoying the early morning, still a little
sleepy, going along a little mechanically and starting to think that we were
a very big outfit to hunt quietly, although everyone  seemed to move quietly
enough, when we saw two people coming towards us.
     They were a tall, good-looking man with features like the Roman's,  but
slightly less noble, wearing a toga and carrying a bow and quiver of arrows,
and behind him, his wife,  very pretty,  very modest, very wifely, wearing a
garment of brown tanned skins  and  neck ornament of  concentric copper wire
circles  and  many  wire circles on  her  arms  and ankles. We  halted, said
'Jambo', and the brother talked to this seeming tribesman who had the air of
a business man on the  way to his office in the  city and,  as they spoke in
rapid question and answer,  I  watched  the most  freshly brideful  wife who
stood a little in  profile so that I saw her pretty pear-shaped  breasts and
the long, clean  niggery legs and  was studying  her  pleasant profile  most
profitably until her husband spoke  to her suddenly  and  sharply,  then  in
explanation  and quiet command, and she moved around  us, her eyes down, and
went  on along the trail that we had come,  alone, we all  watching her. The
husband was going on with  us, it seemed. He had seen the sable that morning
and,  slightly  suspicious,   obviously  displeased   at  leaving  that  now
out-of-sight wife  of wives that  we all had taken  with our eyes, he led us
off and  to  the right along  another trail, well-worn  and  smooth, through
woods  that looked like fall at home  and where you might expect to  flush a
grouse and have him whirr off to the other hill or pitch down in the valley.
     So, sure enough  we  put up  partridges and, watching them  fly,  I was
thinking  all the country in  the world is  the same country and all hunters
are  the same people.  Then  we saw a fresh kudu track beside the trail  and
then, as we moved  through the early morning woods,  no undergrowth now, the
first sun coming through  the tops of the trees, we came on the ever miracle
of elephant tracks,  each one as big around as the circle you make with your
arms putting your hands together,  and  sunk  a foot deep in the loam of the
forest floor, where some bull had  passed, travelling after rain. Looking at
the way the tracks graded down through the pleasant forest I thought that we
had the mammoths  too, a long time  ago, and when they travelled through the
hills in southern Illinois they made these same tracks. It was just that  we
were an older country in America and the biggest game was gone.
     We  kept  along  the face of this hill  on a  pleasant sort  of jutting
plateau  and then came out to  the edge of the hill where there was a valley
and a long open meadow with  timber on the far side and a circle of hills at
its upper end  where another valley  went off to the left.  We stood  in the
edge of the timber on the face of this hill looking across the meadow valley
which extended to the open  out in a steep sort of grassy basin at the upper
end where it was backed by the hills. To our left there were steep, rounded,
wooded hills, with  outcroppings of  limestone rock that ran, from  where we
stood, up to the very head of the valley, and there formed part of the other
range of hills that headed it. Below us, to the right, the country was rough
and broken in hills and stretches of meadow and  then a steep fall of timber
that ran to the blue hills we had seen to the westward beyond the huts where
the Roman and his family  lived. I  judged camp to be straight down below us
and about five miles to the north-west through the timber.
     The husband was  standing,  talking to the  brother  and gesturing  and
pointing out that he  had seen the sable feeding on the opposite side of the
meadow valley and that they  must have fed either up or  down the valley. We
sat in  the shelter of the trees and sent the  Wanderobo-Masai down into the
valley  to look  for tracks. He  came back and reported there were no tracks
leading  down the valley below  us and to the westward,  so we knew they had
fed on up the meadow valley.
     Now the problem was  to so use the terrain  that we might locate  them,
and get  up  and  into range of them without being seen. The sun was  coming
over the hills at the head of the valley and shone on us while everything at
the head of the valley was in heavy shadow.  I told the outfit to stay where
they were in  the woods, except for M'Cola and the husband who would go with
me, we keeping in the timber and grading up our side of the valley until  we
could be  above and see into the pocket of the  curve at  the  upper end  to
glass it for the sable.
     You ask how this was discussed, worked out, and understood with the bar
of language, and  I say it was as freely discussed and clearly understood as
though we were a cavalry  patrol all speaking the same language. We were all
hunters except, possibly, Garrick, and  the whole thing could be worked out,
understood, and agreed to without using  anything but a forefinger to signal
and a hand to caution. We left  them  and worked very carefully  ahead, well
back in  the timber to  get height. Then,  when  we were  far enough up  and
along, we crawled out on to a rocky  place and, being behind rock, shielding
the glasses  with my  hat so  they would not reflect the sun, M'Cola nodding
and grunting as  he saw the practicability  of that, we glassed the opposite
side of the meadow around the edge of the  timber, and up into the pocket at
the head of the valley;  and there they were. M'Cola saw  them just before I
did and pulled my sleeve.
     'N'Dio,' I  said. Then I held my breath to  watch them. All looked very
black,  big necked,  and heavy. All had the back-curving horns.  They were a
long way away. Some were lying down. One was standing. We could see seven.
     'Where's the bull?' I whispered.
     M'Cola motioned with his left hand and counted four fingers. It was one
of  those lying down  in the tall grass and  the animal did look much bigger
and the horns much  more sweeping. But we were looking into the  morning sun
and it  was  hard  to see well. Behind them a sort of  gully ran up into the
hill that blocked the end of the valley.
     Now we  knew what we had to  do. We  must go back, cross the meadow far
enough down so we were out of sight, get into the timber on the far side and
work along through the timber to get above  the sable. First we must try  to
make sure there were no  more of them  in the timber or  the meadow that  we
must work through before we made our stalk.
     I wet my finger and put it up. From the  cool side it seemed  as though
the breeze  came down  the valley. M'Cola took some dead leaves and crumpled
them  and  tossed them up.  They fell a  little toward us.  The wind was all
right and now we must glass the edge of the timber and check on it.
     'Hapana,'  M'Cola said  finally. I had  seen nothing either and my eyes
ached from the  pull  of the eight-power glasses. We could take a  chance on
the timber.  We might jump something  and spook the sable but we had to take
that chance to get around and above them.
     We made our way back and down and told the others. From where they were
we could cross  the valley out of sight of its upper end and bending low, me
with {my} hat off, we headed down into the high meadow grass and  across the
deeply cut watercourse that  ran  down through  the  centre  of the  meadow,
across its rocky shelf, and  up the  grassy bank on the other  side, keeping
under the edge of a fold of the valley into  the shelter of  the woods. Then
we  headed up through  the woods, crouched, in single  file,  to  try to get
above the sable.
     We went forward making as good time as we could and still move quietly.
I had made too many  stalks on big horn sheep only to find them fed away and
out of sight when you came round the shoulder of the mountain to trust these
sable to stay where they were and, since once we were in the timber we could
no longer see them, I thought it was important that we come up above them as
fast as we could without getting me too blown and shaky for the shooting.
     M'Cola's water bottle made a noise against the cartridges in his pocket
and I stopped and had him pass it to the Wanderobo-Masai. It seemed too many
people to be hunting with,  but they all  moved quietly as snakes, and I was
over-confident anyway. I was sure the sable could not see  us in the forest,
nor wind us.
     Finally I was certain we were above them and that they must be ahead of
us,  and past where the sun  was shining in a thinning of  the  forest,  and
below us, under the edge of the hill, I checked on the aperture in the sight
being  clean,  cleaned  my  glasses  and  wiped the  sweat from my  forehead
remembering to put  the  used handkerchief in my left pocket so I would  not
fog my  glasses wiping them with  it  again. M'Cola  and  I and the  husband
started to work our way to the  edge of the timber; finally  crawling almost
to the edge of the  ridge.  There were still some trees between us  and  the
open meadow below and we  were behind a small bush and a fallen  tree  when,
raising our heads, we could see them in the grassy open, about three hundred
yards  away, showing  big  and  very  dark in  the  shadow. Between  us  was
scattered  open timber full of sunlight and the openness of the gulch. As we
watched  two got to their feet and seemed to  be standing looking at us. The
shot was possible but it was too long to be certain and as I  lay, watching,
I felt  somebody  touch  me on  the  arm and  Garrick,  who had crawled  up,
whispered throatily, 'Piga!  Piga, B'wana!  Doumi! Doumi!' saying  to shoot,
that it was a bull.  I glanced back and there were the whole outfit on their
bellies or hands and knees,  the Wanderobo-Masai  shaking like a bird dog. I
was furious and motioned them all down.
     So  that was a bull, eh, well there was a much bigger bull that  M'Cola
and I had seen lying down.  The two sable were watching us and I dropped  my
head, I thought they might be getting a flash from my glasses. When I looked
up again, very slowly, I shaded  my  eyes  with my hand.  The two  sable had
stopped  looking and were feeding. But  one looked  up again nervously and I
saw  the dark,  heavy-built  antelope  with  scimitar-like horns swung  back
staring at us.
     I had  never seen a sable.  I knew nothing  about them, neither whether
their eyesight was keen, like  a ram  who sees you  at whatever distance you
see him, or like a bull elk  who cannot see you at two  hundred yards unless
you move. I was not sure of their size either, but I judged the range to  be
all of three hundred yards. I  knew I could hit one if I shot from a sitting
position or prone, but I could not say where I would hit him.
     Then Garrick again, 'Piga, B'wana, Piga!' I turned  on him as though to
slug him in the mouth. It would have been a great comfort  to do it. I truly
was  not  nervous when  I  first saw  the sable, but  Garrick was  making me
nervous.
     'Far?' I whispered to M'Cola who had crawled up and was lying by me.
     'Yes.'
     'Shoot?'
     'No. Glasses.'
     We both watched, using the  glasses  guardedly.  I could only see four.
There had been seven. If that was a bull that Garrick pointed out, then they
were all bulls. They all looked  the same colour in  the shadow. Their horns
all  looked big  to me.  I knew that with mountain  sheep the rams  all kept
together in bunches until late in the winter when  they went with the  ewes;
that  in  the  late summer you found  bull  elk in bunches  too, before  the
rutting season, and that later they herded up together again. We had seen as
many as twenty impalla rams together upon the Serenea. All right, then, they
could all be bulls, but  I wanted a good one, the best one, and  I tried  to
remember having read something about them, but  all I could  remember  was a
silly story of some man seeing the same bull every morning in the same place
and never getting up on him. All I could remember was  the wonderful pair of
horns we had seen in the Game Warden's office in Arusha. And here were sable
now, and I must play it right and get the best one. It never occurred  to me
that Garrick had never seen a sable and that he knew no more about them than
M'Cola or I.
     'Too far,' I said to M'Cola.
     'Yes.'
     'Come on,' I said, then  waved the others down, and we started crawling
up to reach the edge of the hill.
     Finally we lay behind a tree  and I looked  around it. Now we could see
their  horns clearly  with the  glasses and could  see the other three. One,
lying down,  was certainly much the biggest and the  horns, as I caught them
in silhouette, seemed to curve much higher and farther  back. I was studying
them, too excited to be happy as I watched them, when I heard M'Cola whisper
'B'wana.'
     I  lowered  the  glasses  and  looked  and there was Garrick, taking no
advantage of the cover,  crawling on his  hands and knees out to join  us. I
put my hand  out,  palm  toward  him,  and  waved him  down  but  he paid no
attention and  came crawling on, as conspicuous as a man walking down a city
street on hands  and knees. I saw one  sable looking toward us,  toward him,
rather. Then three more got to their feet. Then the big one got up and stood
broadside with head turned toward us as Garrick came up  whispering,  'Piga,
B'wana! Piga! Doumi! Doumi! Kubwa Sana.'
     There was  no  choice now. They were  definitely  spooked and I lay out
flat on my belly, put my arm through the sling, got my elbows settled and my
right  toe pushing the ground and squeezed off on the centre  of the  bull's
shoulder. But at the roar I knew it was bad. I was over him. They all jumped
and  stood looking, not  knowing where  the noise came from. I shot again at
the bull and threw dirt all over him and they were off. I was on my feet and
hit him as he ran and he was down. Then he was up and I hit him again and he
took it and was in the bunch. They passed him and I shot and was behind him.
Then I hit him again and he was trailing slowly and I knew I had him. M'Cola
was  handing  me  cartridges  and  I  was  shoving  shells   down  into  the
damned-to-hell, lousy, staggered,  Springfield magazine  watching the  sable
making heavy weather of it crossing the watercourse. We had him all right. I
could see he was very sick. The others were  trailing up into the timber. In
the sunlight on the other side they looked much lighter and the one I'd shot
looked  lighter, too. They looked a dark chestnut and the one I had shot was
almost black. But he  was not black and I felt there was  something wrong. I
shoved  the  last  shell  in  and  Garrick  was  trying to grab  my hand  to
congratulate me when, below us across the open space where the gully that we
could not  see opened on to the head of the valley, sable started to pass at
a running stampede.
     'Good God,' I thought. They all  looked like the one  I  had shot and I
was trying to pick  a big one. They  all looked about the same and they were
crowding running and then came the bull.  Even in the  shadow he was a  dead
black and shiny  as he hit the sun, and his horns  swept up high, then back,
huge and dark,  in two great curves nearly touching the middle of his  back.
He was a bull all right. God, what a bull.
     'Doumi,' said M'Cola in my ear. 'Doumi!'
     I  hit  him and  at  the roar he was  down. I  saw  him  up, the others
passing,  spreading out, then bunching. I missed him.  Then  I saw him going
almost straight away up the valley in the tall grass and I hit him again and
he  went out of sight. The sable  now were going up  the hill at the head of
the valley, up the hill at our right, up the hill in the  timber across  the
valley, spread out and  travelling  fast. Now that I had seen a bull I  knew
they all were cows including the first one I had shot. The bull never showed
and  I  was absolutely sure that  we would find him where I had  seen him go
down in the long grass.
     The outfit were all  up and I shook  off  handshaking and thumb pulling
before we started down through the trees and  over the edge of the gully and
to the  meadow on a dead run. My eyes,  my  mind, and all  inside of me were
full of  the blackness of that sable bull and the sweep of those horns and I
was  thanking God I had  the rifle reloaded before he  came out. But  it was
excited shooting, all of it, and I was not proud of it. I had gotten excited
and shot  at the whole  animal instead of the right place and I was ashamed,
but the outfit now were drunk excited. I would have walked but you could not
hold them, they were like a pack of dogs as we ran. As we crossed the meadow
opening where we had first seen the seven and went beyond where the bull had
gone out of sight, the grass suddenly was high and over our  heads and every
one slowed down. There  were two washed-out concealed ravines ten  or twelve
feet  deep that  ran down  to  the watercourse and what had  looked a smooth
grass-filled basin was very broken, tricky country with grass  that was from
waist-high to well above our heads. We found blood at once and it led off to
the left, across the  watercourse and up the hillside on the left toward the
head of the valley. I thought that was the first sable but it seemed a wider
swing than he had seemed to make when we watched him going from above in the
timber. I made a circle to  look for the big bull but I could not  pick  his
track from the mass of tracks and in the high  grass  and the broken terrain
it was difficult to figure just where he had gone.
     They  were  all for  the  blood  spoor and it was like  trying to  make
badly-trained bird dogs hunt a dead bird when they are crazy to be off after
the rest of the covey.
     'Doumi! Doumi!' I said. 'Kubwa Sana! The bull. The big bull.'
     'Yes,' everybody agreed. 'Here! Here!' The blood spoor that crossed the
watercourse.
     Finally I took that trail  thinking we must get them one at a time, and
knowing this one  was hard hit and the other would keep. Then, too, I  might
be  wrong and this might be the  big bull, he might possibly  have turned in
the high grass  and crossed here as we  were  running down. I had been wrong
before, I remembered.
     We  trailed fast  up  the hillside,  into  the timber,  the  blood  was
splashed freely; made a turn  toward the right, climbing steeply, and at the
head of the valley  in some  large  rocks jumped a sable. It went scrambling
and bounding off through the  rocks. I saw in an instant that it was not hit
and knew that, in spite of the back-swung dark horns, it  was a cow from the
dark chestnut colour. But  I saw this just in time to  keep from shooting. I
had started to pull when I lowered the rifle.
     'Manamouki,' I said. 'It's a cow.'
     M'Cola and the two Roman guides agreed. I had very nearly shot. We went
on perhaps five yards and another sable jumped. But this one was swaying its
head wildly and could  not clear  the rocks. It was  hard hit and I took  my
time, shot carefully, and broke its neck.
     We came  up to it,  lying in  the  rocks, a large,  deep chestnut-brown
animal, almost black, the horns black and curving handsomely back, there was
a white patch on the muzzle and back from the  eye, there was a white belly;
but it was no bull.
     M'Cola,  still  in   doubt,  verified  this   and  feeling  the  short,
rudimentary teats said 'Manamouki', and shook his head sadly.
     It was the first big bull that Garrick had pointed out.
     'Bull down there,' I pointed.
     'Yes,' said M'Cola.
     I thought  that we  would give him time to  get sick, if he  were  only
wounded,  and then go  down and find him. So I had M'Cola  make the cuts for
taking off the head skin and we would leave the old man to skin out the head
while we went down after the bull.
     I  drank some water from the  canteen. I was thirsty after the  run and
the climb, and the sun was up now and it was  getting hot. Then we went down
the opposite side of the valley from that  we had  just come up trailing the
wounded  cow, and below, in the tall grass, casting in circles, commenced to
hunt for the trail of the bull. We could not find it.
     The  sable  had  been  running in  a bunch as  they  came  out and  any
individual  track was confused  or obliterated.  We  found some blood on the
grass  stems where I had first hit him,  then lost it,  then  found it again
where the other blood spoor turned off. Then the  tracks had all split up as
they had gone, fan-wise, up the valley and  the hills and we could not  find
it again. Finally  I found blood on a grass blade  about fifty  yards up the
valley and I plucked it and held it up.  This was a  mistake.  I should have
brought them to  it.