us
killed a kudu the guide would receive fifteen shillings.
     'You mean a pound,' said the leading guide.
     'They seem to know  what they're  up to,' Pop said. 'I must say I don't
care for this sportsman in spite of what B'wana Simba says.'
     B'wana Simba, by  the way, we later found out to be an excellent hunter
with a wonderful reputation on the coast.
     'We'll  put them into two  lots and you draw from them,' Pop suggested,
'one naked  one  and one with breeches in each lot.  I'm all  for the  naked
savage, myself, as a guide.'
     On suggesting  to  the  two testimonial-equipped, breeched  guides that
they select an  unclothed  partner, we found this  would not  work out. Loud
Mouth,  the  financial  and,  now,  theatrical,  genius  who  was  giving  a
gesture-by-gesture reproduction  of How B'wana  Simba  Killed His  Last Kudu
interrupted it long  enough  to  state  he would  only  hunt with  Abdullah.
Abdullah, the short, thick-nosed, educated one, was His Tracker. They always
hunted  together.  He himself  did  not track. He resumed the  pantomime  of
B'wana  Simba and another character known as  B'wana Doktor  and  the horned
beasts.
     'We'll take the  two savages as one lot and  these two Oxonians  as the
other,' Pop said.
     <! {hate} that theatrical bastard,' I said.
     'He may be marvellous,' Pop said doubtfully. 'Anyway, you're a tracker,
you know. The old man says the other two are good.'
     'Thank you. Go to hell. Will you hold the straws?'
     Pop arranged two  grass stems  in his fist.  'The long one is for David
Garrick  and  his pal,' he  explained. 'The short  one  is  the  two  nudist
sportsmen.'
     'Do you want to draw first?'
     'Go ahead,' Karl said.
     I drew David Garrick and Abdullah.
     'I got the bloody tragedian.'
     'He may be very good,' Karl said.
     'Do you want to trade?'
     'No. He may be a marvel.'
     'Now we'll draw for choice of beats. The long straw gets first choice,'
Pop explained.
     'Go ahead and draw.'
     Karl drew the short one.
     'What are the beats?' I asked Pop.
     There was  a long conversation in which our David simulated the killing
of half a dozen kudu from different types of ambush, surprise, stalks in the
open, and jumping them in the bush.
     Finally Pop said, 'It seems there's some sort of a  saltlick where they
come to  lick salt  and thousands are slain. Then  sometimes you just stroll
around the  hill there and  pot  the  poor  beggars in the  open.  If you're
feeling frightfully  fit, you climb for  them  and up in the crags you knock
them over as they stroll out to feed.'
     'I'll take the salt-lick.'
     'Mind you only shoot the very biggest sort,' Pop said.
     'When do we start?' Karl asked.
     'The  salt-lick is supposed to be an early  morning show,' Pop told us.
'But Old Hem might as well have a look at it to-night. It's about five miles
down the road before you start to walk. He'll start first and take the  car.
You can start back in the hills any time after the sun gets a little farther
down.'
     'What about the Memsahib?' I asked. 'Should she go with me?'
     'I don't think it's advisable,' Pop  said seriously. 'The fewer  people
when you're after kudu the better.'
     M'Cola,  Theatre Business, Abdullah, and I  came back that evening late
in  the cool  of the night and full of excitement as we came up to the fire.
The  dust of the saltlick had been  cut up and  printed deep with fresh kudu
tracks and there were several big bull tracks. The  blind made a  marvellous
ambush and I was as confident and as sure of a shot at kudu the next morning
as I  would be sure  of a shot at ducks from a good blind, with a fine stock
of decoys out, cold weather, and the certainty of a flight on.
     'It's  airtight.  It's foolproof. It's even a shame. What's  his  name,
Booth, Barrett, McCulIough -- you know who I mean . . .'
     'Charles Laughton,' said Pop, pulling on his pipe.
     'That's  the one. Fred Astaire. Society's hoofer and the world's.  He's
an ace. Found the blind and everything. Knew where the  salt-lick was. Could
tell which way the wind blew by  simply  scattering  dust.  He's  a  marvel.
B'wana Simba trains  'em, pal. Pop, we have them in the container. It's only
a question of not spoiling the meat and selecting the more rugged specimens.
I'll kill you two to-morrow on that lick. Citizens, I feel very well.'
     'What {have} you been drinking?'
     'Not a damned thing, really. Call Garrick. Tell him I'll put him in the
cinema. Got a  part for him. Little  thing I thought up on the way  home. It
may not work out but I like the plot. Othello  or The Moor  of Venice. D'you
like it? It's got a wonderful  idea. You  see this jig we call Othello falls
in love with  this  girl who's never been  around  at  all so  we  call  her
Desdemona. Like it? They've been after me  to write it for years  but I drew
the  colour line. Let him  go  out and get a reputation, I told  them. Harry
Wills, hell.  Paulino beat  him.  Sharkey  beat him. Dempsey  beat  Sharkey.
Camera  knocked  him out. What if nobody saw the punch? Where  the hell were
we, Pop? Harry Greb is dead you know.'
     'We were just  coming into Town,' Pop said. 'Chaps were throwing things
at you and we couldn't find out why.'
     'I remember,'  P.O.M. said. 'Why didn't you make him  draw  the  colour
line, Mr. J. P?'
     'I was frightfully tired,' Pop said.
     'You're very distinguished looking,  though,' P.O.M. said. 'What are we
going to do with this goofy?'
     'Throw a drink into the brute and see if he'll quiet down.'
     'I'm quiet  now,'  I  said.  'But,  by God, I feel  awfully good  about
to-morrow.'
     Just then  who should  come into camp but old  Karl  with his two naked
savages and his half-size, very devout Mohammedan gun bearer, Charo. In  the
firelight old Karl looked a greyish, yellowish white in the face and he took
off his Stetson.
     'Well, did you get one?' he asked.
     'No. But they're there. What did you do?'
     'Walked along a goddamned road. How do they expect to find kudu along a
road with nothing but cattle and huts and people?'
     He did not look like himself  and I thought he must be ill. But  coming
in like  a death's head when we had been clowning made me behave badly again
and I said, 'We drew lots, you know'.
     'Of course,' he said bitterly. 'We hunted along  a road. What would you
expect to see? Does that seem the way to hunt kudu to you?'
     'But you'll get  one  on the salt-lick in the morning,' P.O.M. told him
very cheerfully.
     I drank  off the  glass of whisky and soda and heard my voice  say very
cheerfully, 'You'll be sure to get one on the salt-lick in the morning'.
     'You're hunting it in the morning,' Karl said.
     'No. You're hunting it. I had  it to-night.  We're changing off. That's
been understood. Isn't it, Pop?'
     'Quite,' Pop said. No one was looking at anyone else.
     'Have a whisky and soda, Karl,' P.O.M. said.
     'All right,' Karl said.
     We  had one of those quiet meals. In bed in the  tent, I said, 'What in
God's  name prompted you to say  that  about  him  having  the lick  in  the
morning?'
     'I don't know. I  don't think that's what I meant  to say.  I got mixed
up. Let's not talk about it.'
     'I won the damned thing drawing lots. You can't go against lots. That's
the only way the luck has a chance to even up, ever.'
     'Don't let's talk about it.'
     'I don't think he's  well now and he doesn't  feel  himself. The damned
things have  gotten his goat and he's liable to  blow  that salt-lick higher
than a kite in the state he's in.'
     'Please stop talking about it.'
     'I will.'
     'Good.'
     'Well, we made him feel good anyway.'
     'I don't know that we did. Please stop talking about it.'
     'I will.'
     'Good.'
     'Good night,' she said.
     'The hell with it,' I said. 'Good night.'
     'Good night.'


        CHAPTER SEVEN

     In  the  morning  Karl and  his outfit  started  for the  saltlick  and
Garrick, Abdullah, M'Cola and I crossed the road, angled  behind the village
up a dry watercourse and started climbing the mountains in a mist. We headed
up  a pebbly, boulder-filled, dry stream bed  overgrown with vines and brush
so that,  climbing,  you walked, stooping, in  a steep tunnel of  vines  and
foliage. I  sweated  so that I was soaked through my shirt and undergarments
and when we came out on the shoulder of the mountain and stood, looking down
at the bank of clouds quilting  over the entire valley below us, the morning
breeze  chilled  me and I  had  to put on my  raincoat while we glassed  the
country. I  was too  wet with sweat to sit down and I signed Garrick to keep
on going. We went around one  side of the mountain, doubled back on a higher
grade and crossed over,  out  of  the sun  that was drying  my wet shirt and
along  the  top of a series of grassy  valleys, stopping to  search each one
thoroughly  with  the  field  glasses.  Finally  we   came  to  a   sort  of
amphitheatre,  a bowl-like valley of  very green grass  with a small  stream
down the middle and timber along the far side and all the lower edge. We sat
in the shadow against  some  rocks,  out  of  any breeze,  watching with the
glasses as  the sun  rose and  lighted the opposite slopes,  seeing two kudu
cows and a  calf feed out from the timber, moving with the quickly browsing,
then  head  lifted,  long-staring  vigilance of  all  browsing animals in  a
forest. Animals on a plain can see so far that they have confidence and feed
very differently from animals  in the woods. We could see the vertical white
stripes on their grey flanks and it was very satisfying to watch them and to
be high in the mountain that early in the morning.  Then,  while we watched,
there was a  boom,  like a  rockslide. I  thought at  first it was a boulder
falling, but M'Cola whispered.
     'B'wana Kibor! Piga!' We listened for another shot but we  did not hear
one and I {was}  sure Karl had his kudu. The cows we were watching had heard
the shot and stood, listening, then went  on  feeding. But they fed into the
timber. I remembered the old saying of  the Indian in camp, 'One shot, meat.
Two shots, maybe. Three shots, heap s -- t,' and I got out the dictionary to
translate  it for M'Cola.  However it  came out seemed to amuse him  and  he
laughed and shook his head.  We glassed that valley until the sun came on to
us,  then hunted around the other  side of the mountain and in another  fine
valley saw the place where the other B'wana, B'wana  Doktor he still sounded
like, had shot a  fine bull kudu, but a Masai walked  down the centre of the
valley while we were glassing it  and  when I pretended I was going to shoot
him Garrick became very dramatic insisting it was a man, a man, a man!
     'Don't shoot men?' I asked him.
     'No! No! No!' he said putting his hand to his head. I took the gun down
with great reluctance, clowning for M'Cola who was grinning, and it very hot
now, we walked across a  meadow  where the  grass was  knee  high  and truly
swarming with long, rose-coloured,  gauze-winged locusts that rose in clouds
about us, making a whirring like a mowing machine,  and climbing small hills
and going down a long steep slope, we made our  way back to camp to find the
air of the valley drifting with flying locusts and Karl already in camp with
Us kudu.
     Passing  the  skinner's  tent  he  showed  me  the  head which  looked,
body-less and neck-less, the cape of hide hanging loose, wet and  heavy from
where the base of the  skull had been severed  from the  vertebral column, a
very strange and unfortunate kudu. Only the skin  running from the eyes down
to the nostrils, smooth grey and  delicately marked with white, and the big,
graceful  ears  were beautiful. The eyes were  already dusty and there  were
flies  around  them  and  the  horns  were  heavy, coarse,  and  instead  of
spiralling high they made  a heavy turn  and slanted  straight out. It was a
freak head, heavy and ugly.
     Pop was sitting under the dining tent smoking and reading.
     'Where's Karl?' I asked him.
     'In his tent, I think. What did you do?'
     'Worked around the hill. Saw a couple of cows.'
     'I'm awfully glad  you got him,'  I told Karl at the mouth of his tent.
'How was it?'
     'We  were in the blind and they  motioned  me  to keep my head down and
then when I looked up there he was right beside us. He looked huge.'
     'We heard you shoot. Where did you hit him?'
     'In the leg first, I think. Then we trailed him and finally I hit him a
couple of more times and we got him.'
     'I heard only one shot.'
     'There were three or four,' Karl said.
     'I guess the  mountain shut off some if  you were  gone  the other  way
trailing him. He's got a heavy beam and a big spread.'
     'Thanks,' Karl said.  'I hope you get a lot better one. They said there
was another one but I didn't see him.'
     I went back to the dining tent  where Pop and P.O.M. were. They did not
seem very elated about the kudu.
     'What's the matter with you?' I asked.
     'Did you see the head?' P.O.M. asked.
     'Sure.'
     'It's {awful} looking,' she said.
     'It's a kudu. He's got another one still to go.'
     'Charo and the trackers said  there was another  bull  with this one. A
big bull with a wonderful head.'
     'That's all right. I'll shoot him.'
     'If he ever comes back.'
     'It's fine he has one,' P.O.M. said.
     'I'll bet he'll get the biggest one ever known, now,' I said.
     'I'm sending him down with  Dan to the sable country,'  Pop said. 'That
was the  agreement. The  first to  kill a kudu to  get  first  crack  at the
sable.'
     'That's fine.'
     'Then as soon as you get your kudu we'll move down there too.'
     {'Good.'}


        PART III

        PURSUIT AND FAILURE

        CHAPTER ONE

     That all seemed a  year ago. Now, this afternoon in the car, on the way
out to the  twenty-eight-mile  salt-lick, the sun on our faces,  just having
shot the guinea  fowl, having, in the last five days,  failed  on  the  lick
where Karl shot his bull, having failed in the hills, the big  hills and the
small  hills, having failed on  the flats, losing a shot the night before on
this lick because of the Austrian's lorry, I  knew there were  only two days
more to hunt before we must leave. M'Cola knew it  too, and we were  hunting
together now, with no feeling of superiority on either side any more, only a
shortness  of time and our disgust that we did not know the country and were
saddled with these farcical bastards as guides.
     Kamau, the  driver, was a Kikuyu, a quiet man of about thirty-five who,
with an  old brown tweed coat some shooter had  discarded, trousers  heavily
patched on the knees and ripped open again, and a very ragged shirt, managed
always  to give an impression  of great  elegance. Kamau  was  very  modest,
quiet, and an  excellent driver, and now, as we came out of the bush country
and into an open,  scrubby, desert-looking  stretch, I looked  at him, whose
elegance,  achieved  with an  old coat  and  a  safety pin,  whose  modesty,
pleasantness and skill I admired so much now, and thought how, when we first
were out, he had very nearly died of fever, and that if he had died it would
have meant  nothing to me except that we would be  short a driver; while now
whenever or wherever  he should die I would feel badly. Then abandoning  the
sweet sentiment of the distant and improbable death of Kamau, I thought what
a pleasure it would be to shoot David Garrick in the behind, just to see the
look  on his face, sometime when he was dramatizing a stalk, and, just then,
we put up another  flock of  guineas.  M'Cola handed nie  the shotgun and  I
shook my  head. He nodded violently and said, 'Good. Very Good', and I  told
Kamau  to go on. This confused Garrick  who began an oration. Didn't we want
guineas? Those  were guineas. The finest kind. I had seen by the speedometer
that we were only about three miles from the salt and had no desire to spook
a bull off of it, by  a  shot, to  frighten him  in the way we  had seen the
lesser kudu  leave the  salt when he heard the lorry noise while we were  in
the blind.
     We  left  the lorry  under some scrubby trees about two miles from  the
lick and walked along the  sandy road towards the first salt place which was
in the open to the  left  of the  trail.  We had gone about a  mile  keeping
absolutely quiet and  walking in single file, Abdullah the educated  tracker
leading, then me, M'Cola, and Garrick, when we saw the road was wet ahead of
us. Where the sand was thin over the  clay there was a pool of water and you
could see that a heavy rain had drenched it  all on ahead. I did not realize
what  this meant  but  Garrick threw his arms wide, looked up to the sky and
bared his teeth in anger.
     'It's no good,' M'Cola whispered.
     Garrick started to talk in a loud voice.
     'Shut up, you bastard,' I said, and put my hand to my mouth. He kept on
talking in above normal tones  and I "looked up  'shut up' in the dictionary
while he pointed to the sky and the rained-out road. I couldn't  find  'shut
up' so I put the back of my hand against his mouth with some firmness and he
closed it in surprise.
     "Cola,' I said.
     'Yes,' said M'Cola.
     'What's the matter?'
     'Salt no good.'
     'Ah.'
     So that  was it. I had  thought of the rain only as something that made
tracking easy.
     'When the rain?' I asked.
     'Last night,' M'Cola said.
     Garrick  started to talk and I placed the  back of my  hand against his
mouth.
     "Cola.'
     'Yes.'
     'Other salt,' pointing  in the direction of the big  lick in the woods,
which I  knew was a good bit higher because  we  went  very slightly up hill
through the brush to reach it. 'Other salt good?'
     'Maybe.'
     M'Cola said something in a very low voice to Garrick who seemed  deeply
hurt  but kept his mouth  shut and we went on down the  road, walking around
the wet places, to where, sure enough,  the deep depression of  the saltlick
was  half filled with  water. Garrick started to  whisper a  speech here but
M'Cola shut him up again.
     'Come on,' I said, and, M'Cola ahead, we started  trailing up the damp,
sandy, ordinarily dry watercourse that led through the  trees  to  the upper
lick.
     M'Cola  stopped  dead,  leaned  over  to look at  the  damp  sand, then
whispered, 'Man', to me. There was the track.
     'Shenzi,' he said, which meant a wild man.
     We  trailed the man, moving slowly through the trees and  stalking  the
lick carefully, up and into the blind. M'Cola shook his head.
     'No good,' he said. 'Come on.'
     We went over to the lick. There  it was all written plainly. There were
the tracks  of three big bull kudu in  the moist bank beyond the  lick where
they had  come to the  salt. Then there were the  sudden, deep,  knifely-cut
tracks  where  they  made  a  spring when the bow  twanged and  the slashing
heavily cut prints of their hoofs as they had gone off up the bank and then,
far-spaced,  the tracks running into  the bush. We trailed them,  all three,
but no man's track joined theirs. The bow-man missed them.
     M'Cola  said, 'Shenzi!' putting great hate  into the word. We picked up
the  shenzi's  tracks and  saw where he had gone  on  back  to the road.  We
settled down in the  blind and waited there  until it was  dark  and a light
rain  began to fall. Nothing came to  the salt. In the  rain we made our way
back to the lorry. Some  wild-man had shot at our kudu and spooked them away
from the salt and now the lick was being ruined.
     Kamau had  rigged a tent out  of  a big canvas  ground cloth,  hung  my
mosquito  net inside,  and set up  the canvas cot.  M'Cola  brought the food
inside the shelter tent.
     Garrick and Abdullah built  a  fire and they, Kamau  and  M'Cola cooked
over it. They were going  to sleep in the lorry. It rained drizzlingly and I
undressed, got into mosquito boots and heavy pyjamas and sat on the cot, ate
a breast of roast guinea hen and drank a  couple of tin cups of  half whisky
and water.
     M'Cola came in, grave,  solicitous, and very awkward inside  a tent and
took my clothes out from where I had folded them to make a pillow and folded
them again, very  un-neatly, and  put  them under  the  blankets. He brought
three tins to see if I did not want them. opened.
     'No.'
     'Chai?' he asked.
     'The hell with it.'
     'No chai?'
     'Whisky better.'
     'Yes,' he said feelingly. 'Yes.'
     'Chai in the morning. Before the sun.'
     'Yes, B'wana M'Kumba.'
     'You sleep here. Out  of the rain.'  I pointed to the canvas  where the
rain  was making the finest sound that we, who live much outside  of houses,
ever hear. It was a lovely sound, even though it was hitching us.
     'Yes.'
     'Go on. Eat.'
     'Yes. No chai?'
     'The hell with tea.'
     'Whisky?' he asked hopefully.
     'Whisky finish.'
     'Whisky,' he said confidently.
     'All right,'  I said. 'Go eat,' and pouring  the cup half and half with
water got in under  the  mosquito bar,  found my clothes and again made them
into a pillow, and lying on my side drank the whisky very slowly, resting on
one elbow, then  dropped the  cup down under the bar on to  the ground, felt
under the cot for the Springfield, put the searchlight beside me in  the bed
under the  blanket,  and went to sleep listening to the rain.  I woke when I
heard M'Cola come in, make his bed  and go to sleep,  and I woke once in the
night and heard him  sleeping by me;  but  in the morning he  was up and had
made the tea before I was awake.
     'Chai,' he said, pulling on my blanket.
     'Bloody chai,' I said, sitting up still asleep.
     It was a grey, wet morning. The rain had stopped but the mist hung over
the ground  and we found the salt-lick  rained out and  not a track near it.
Then we hunted through  the wet scrub on the  flat hoping to find a track in
the soaked  earth and  trail a bull until  we could see him. There  were  no
tracks.  We  crossed the road and followed the edge  of the scrub  around  a
moor-like open stretch. I hoped we might find the rhino but while we came on
much  fresh  rhino dung  there  were no tracks since the rain. Once we heard
tick birds and looking up saw them  in jerky  flight above us headed  to the
northward over  the heavy scrub. We made  a  long  circle through there  but
found nothing but a fresh hyena track and a cow kudu track. In a tree M'Cola
pointed out a lesser kudu skull with one  beautiful, long, curling horn.  We
found the other horn below in the grass and I screwed it back on to its bone
base.
     'Shenzi,' M'Cola  said and imitated a man pulling a bow. The skull  was
quite  clean but the hollow horns  had  some  damp residue in them,  smelled
unbearably foul  and, giving no sign of having noticed  the stench, I handed
them to Garrick who promptly, without  sign gave them to  Abdullah. Abdullah
wrinkled  the  edge of his flat nose and shook his head. They really smelled
abominably. M'Cola and I grinned and Garrick looked virtuous.
     I  decided a  good idea might  be to drive along  the  road in the car,
watching for  kudu, and hunt any  likely-looking clearings. We  went back to
the car  and did this, working several clearings with  no luck. By then  the
sun  was  up  and  the  road  was  becoming  populous with travellers,  both
white-clothed and naked, and we decided to head for camp. On our way in,  we
stopped and stalked the other salt-lick. There was an  impalla on it looking
very red where the sun struck his hide in the patches between the grey trees
and there  were  many kudu tracks. We smoothed  them over  and drove on into
camp  to find a sky full  of locusts  passing over,  going to the  westward,
making the sky, as  you looked up, seem a pink dither of flickering passage,
flickering like an old cinema film, but pink instead of grey. P.O.M. and Pop
came out and were very disappointed. No rain had fallen in camp and they had
been sure we would have something when we came in.
     'Did my literary pal get off?'
     'Yes,' Pop said. 'He's gone into Handeni.'
     'He told me all about American women,' P.O.M. said. 'Poor old Poppa,  I
was sure you'd get one. Danin the rain.'
     'How are American women?'
     'He thinks they're terrible.'
     'Very sound fellow,' said Pop. 'Tell me just what happened to-day.'
     We sat in the shade of the dining tent and I told them.
     'A Wanderobo,' Pop said. 'They're frightful shots. Bad luck.'
     'I thought it might be one  of those travelling sportsmen you see  with
their bows  slung  going along  the road. He  saw the  lick  by the road and
trailed up to the other one.'
     'Not  very  likely.  They  carry  those  bows and arrows as protection.
They're not hunters.'
     'Well, whoever it was put it on us. '
     'Bad luck. That, and the  rain. I've had  scouts out  here on both  the
hills but they've seen nothing.'
     'Well, we're  not hitched  until  to-morrow  night. When  do we have to
leave?'
     'After to-morrow.'
     'That bloody savage.'
     'I suppose Karl is blasting up the sable down there.'
     'We  won't  be able  to get into  camp for  the horns.  Have you  heard
anything?'
     'No.'
     'I'm  going to  give up  smoking for  six months for  you to get  one,'
P.O.M. said. 'I've started already.'
     We had lunch and afterwards I went into the tent and lay down and read.
I knew we still had a chance on the lick in the  morning and I was not going
to worry about it. But I {was} worried and I did not want to go to sleep and
wake up feeling  dopey so I  came out  and sat  in one of the  canvas chairs
under the open dining tent  and read  somebody's life of Charles  the Second
and  looked up every once in a while to watch the locusts. The  locusts were
exciting to  see and it was difficult for me  to  take  them as a matter  of
course.
     Finally I  went  to sleep in the chair with my  feet on a  chop-box and
when  I woke  there was Garrick, the bastard, wearing a  large, very floppy,
black and white ostrich-plume head-dress.
     'Go away,' I said in English.
     He stood smirking proudly, then turned  so  I could see  the head-dress
from the side.
     I  saw Pop coming out of his tent with a pipe in his mouth.  'Look what
we have,' I called to him.
     He looked, said, 'Christ', and went back into the tent.
     'Come on,' I said. 'We'll just ignore it.'
     Pop came out,  finally, with  a book and we took no notice of Garrick's
head-dress at all, sitting and talking, while he posed with it.
     'Bastard's been drinking, too,' I said.
     'Probably.'
     'I can smell it.'
     Pop, without looking  at him, spoke a few words  to  Garrick in  a very
soft voice.
     'What did you tell him?'
     'To go and get dressed properly and be ready to start.'
     Garrick walked off, his plums waving.
     'Not the moment for his ostrich plumes,' Pop said.
     'Some people probably like them.'
     'That's it. Start photographing them.'
     'Awful,' I said.
     'Frightful,' Pop agreed.
     'On the last day if we  don't  get anything, I'm going to shoot Garrick
in the behind. What would that cost me?'
     'Might  make lots  of trouble. If you  shoot one, you have to shoot the
other, too.'
     'Only Garrick.'
     'Better not shoot then. Remember it's me you get into trouble.'
     'Joking, Pop.'
     Garrick, un-head-dressed and with Abdullah, appeared and Pop spoke with
them.
     'They want to hunt around the hill a new way.'
     'Splendid. When?'
     'Any time now. It looks like rain. You might get going.'
     I sent  Molo  for my  boots and a raincoat,  M'Cola  came out with  the
Springfield, and we  walked down to the  car. It had been heavily cloudy all
day although the sun had come through the clouds in the  forenoon for a time
and  again  at noon. The rains were moving up on us.  Now it was starting to
rain and the locusts were no longer flying.
     'I'm dopey with sleep,' I told Pop. 'I'm going to have a drink.'
     We were standing under the  big tree by the cooking fire with the light
rain pattering in the leaves. M'Cola brought the whisky flask and handed  it
to me very solemnly.
     'Have one?'
     'I don't see what harm it can do.'
     We both drank and Pop said, 'The hell with them'.
     'The hell with them.'
     'You may find some tracks.'
     'We'll run them out of the country.'
     In the car we turned to the right on the road, drove on up past the mud
village and turned off  the road to the left on to  a red, hard,  clay track
that circled  the edge of  the hills and was  close bordered on either  side
with trees. It was raining fairly hard now and we drove slowly. There seemed
to  be enough sand in the clay to keep the car from slipping. Suddenly, from
the back seat, Abdullah, very excited, told Kamau to stop. We stopped with a
skid, all got out, and  walked back.  There was a  freshly cut kudu track in
the wet clay. It could  not have been made more than five minutes  before as
it was sharp-edged and  the dirt,  that had been picked up by the inside  of
the hoof, was not yet softened by the rain.
     'Doumi,' Garrick said  and threw back his head and spread his arms wide
to show horns that hung back over his withers. 'Kubwa Sana!' Abdullah agreed
it was a bull; a huge bull.
     'Come on,' I said.
     It was easy tracking and  we knew we were close. In rain or snow it  is
much easier to come up close  to animals and I was sure we were going to get
a shot. We followed the tracks through thick brush and then out into an open
patch.  I  stopped  to wipe  the  rain off  my glasses  and blew through the
aperture in the rear sight of the Springfield. It was  raining hard now, and
I pulled my hat low down over my eyes to keep my glasses dry. We skirted the
edge of the open patch and then, ahead, there  was a crash and I saw a grey,
white-striped animal making  off  through  the brush. I threw the gun up and
M'Cola  grabbed  my arm, 'Manamouki!'  he  whispered. It was a cow kudu. But
when we came up  to where it had jumped there were no other tracks. The same
tracks we had followed led, logically and with no possibility of doubt, from
the road to that cow.
     'Doumi Kubwa Sana!' I said, full of sarcasm and disgust  to Garrick and
made a gesture of giant horns flowing back from behind his ears.
     'Manamouki Kubwa Sana,' he said very  sorrowfully and patiently.  'What
an enormous cow.'
     'You lousy  ostrich-plumed punk,' I  told  him  in English. 'Manamouki!
Manamouki! Manamouki!'
     'Manamouki,' said M'Cola and nodded his head.
     I got out the dictionary, couldn't find the words, and made it clear to
M'Cola with  signs that we would circle back in a long swing to the road and
see  if  we could find another track. We  circled back in the  rain, getting
thoroughly soaked,  saw nothing, found the car, and as the rain lessened and
the  roads  still  seemed firm decided to  go on until it was dark. Puffs of
cloud hung  on the hillside after the  rain and the trees dripped but we saw
nothing. Not in the open glades, not  in  the fields where the bush thinned,
not on the green hillsides.  Finally it was dark  and we went back  to camp.
.The Springfield was very  wet when we  got out of the car and I told M'Cola
to clean it carefully  and oil it  well. He said he would  and I went on and
into the tent  where a lantern was burning,  took off my clothes, had a bath
in  the  canvas tub and  came out to  the  fire comfortable and  relaxed  in
pyjamas, dressing-gown and mosquito boots.
     P.O.M.  and Pop were sitting in their chairs by the fire and P.O.M. got
up to make me a whisky and soda.
     'M'Cola told me,' Pop said from his chair by the fire.
     'A damned big cow,' I told him. 'I nearly busted her. What do you think
about the morning?'
     'The lick I suppose. We've scouts out to watch both of these hills. You
remember that  old man  from  the village? He's on a wild-goose  chase after
them in some country over beyond  the  hills.  He and the Wanderobo. They've
been gone three days.'
     'There's no reason why we shouldn't get one on the lick where Karl shot
his. One day is as good as another.'
     'Quite.'
     'It's the  last damned day though and the lick may  be rained  out.  As
soon as it's wet there's no salt. Just mud.'
     'That's it.'
     'I'd like to see one.'
     'When you  do,  take your time and make sure of him. Take your time and
kill him.'
     'I don't worry about that.'
     'Let's talk  about something  else,' P.O.M.  said. 'This  makes  me too
nervous.'
     'I wish we had old  Leather Pants,' Pop said. 'God, he was a talker. He
made the old man here talk too. Give us that spiel on modern writers again.'
     'Go to hell.'
     'Why don't  we have some  intellectual life?' P.O.M. asked.  'Why don't
you men ever discuss world topics? Why  am I kept in ignorance of everything
that goes on?'
     'World's in a hell of a shape,' Pop stated.
     'Awful.'
     'What's going on in America?'
     'Damned  if I know!  Some sort of Y.M.C.A. show.  Starry  eyed bastards
spending  money  that somebody will have to  pay. Everybody in our town quit
work  to  go on  relief. Fishermen  all turned  carpenters. Reverse  of  the
Bible.'
     'How are things in Turkey?'
     'Frightful.  Took  the  fezzes  away.  Hanged  any  amount of old pals.
Ismet's still around though.'
     'Been in France lately?'
     'Didn't like it. Gloomy as hell. Been a bad show there just now.'
     'By God,' said Pop, 'it must have been if you can believe the papers.'
     'When they riot they really riot. Hell, they've got a tradition.'
     'Were you in Spain for the revolution?'
     'I  got  there late.  Then we waited for two that didn't come. Then  we
missed another.'
     'Did you see the one in Cuba?'
     'From the start.'
     'How was it?'
     'Beautiful. Then lousy. You couldn't believe how lousy.'
     'Stop it,' P.O.M. said. 'I know about those things. I was crouched down
behind a marble-topped table while  they  were shooting in Havana. They came
by in cars shooting at everybody they saw. I took my drink with me and I was
very  proud  not  to have  spilled  it or forgotten  it. The  children said,
"Mother,  can we go out in the afternoon to see the shooting?"  They  got so
worked  up about  revolution  we  had  to  stop  mentioning it. Bumby got so
bloodthirsty about Mr. M. he had terrible dreams.'
     'Extraordinary,' Pop said.
     'Don't make  fun  of nie. I don't want to just  hear about revolutions.
All we see or hear is revolutions. I'm sick of them. '
     'The old man must like them.'
     'I'm sick of them.'
     'You know, I've never seen one,' Pop said.
     'They're beautiful. Really. For quite a while. Then they go bad.'
     'They're very exciting,' P.O.M. said. 'I'll admit that. But I'm sick of
them. Really, I don't care anything about them.'
     'I've been studying them a little.'
     'What did you find out?' Pop asked.
     'They  were all  very  different but  there  were some things you could
co-ordinate. I'm going to try to write a study of them.'
     'It could be damned interesting.'
     'If  you  have   enough  material.  You  need  an  awful  lot  of  past
performances. It's very hard to get  anything true  on anything  you haven't
seen  yourself because the ones  that fail  have  such  a bad press  and the
winners always  lie so. Then you can only  really follow anything  in places
where you speak the language.  That limits you of course. That's why I would
never go  to Russia.  When you can't overhear it's no  good. All you get are
handouts and sight-seeing. Any  one  who  knows  a  foreign language  in any
country is damned liable to lie to  you. You get your good dope  always from
the people and when you can't talk  with people and can't overhear you don't
get anything that's of anything but journalistic value.'
     'You want to knuckle down on your Swahili then.'
     'I'm trying to.'
     'Even then you  can't overhear because they're always talking their own
language.'
     'But  if  I ever write  anything about this  it  will just be landscape
painting until I know something about it. Your first seeing  of a country is
a very valuable one. Probably more valuable to yourself than to anyone else,
is the hell of it. But you ought to always write it to try to get it stated.
No matter what you do with it.'
     'Most of the damned Safari books are most awful bloody bores.'
     'They're terrible.'
     'The  only  one  I  ever liked  was  Streeter's.  What did he call  it?
{Denatured Africa}. He made you feel what it was like. That's the best.'
     'I liked  Charlie  Curtis's. It  was  very honest  and it  made  a fine
picture.'
     'That man  Streeter was  damned  funny though. Do  you remember when he
shot the kongoni?'
     'It was very funny.'
     'I've  never read anything, though, that  could make you feel about the
country  the way we feel about  it. They all  have Nairobi fast life or else
rot about shooting  beasts with horns half an inch longer than  someone else
shot. Or muck about danger.'
     'I'd like to try  to write  something about the country and the animals
and what it's like to someone who knows nothing about it.'
     'Have a try at it. Can't do any harm. You know I wrote a  diary of that
Alaskan trip.'
     'I'd love  to read it,' P.O.M. said. 'I  didn't know you were a writer,
Mr. J. P.'
     'No  bloody  fear,' said Pop. 'If you'd read it, though,  I'll send for
it.  You know it's just  what we did each day  and  how Alaska looked  to an
Englishman from Africa. It'd bore you.'
     'Not if you wrote it,' P.O.M. said.
     'Little woman's giving us compliments,' Pop said.
     'Not me. You.'
     'I've  read  things by him,' she said. 'I want to  read what Mr.  J. P.
writes.'
     'Is  the  old man really  a writer?' Pop  asked her.  <!  haven't  seen
anything to  prove it. You're  sure he doesn't  support you  by tracking and
wing shooting?'
     'Oh,  yes. He  writes. When he's going well  he's awfully easy  to  get
along with. But  just before he gets going he's frightful. His temper has to
go bad before  he can write. When  he talks about never writing again I know
he's about to get started.'
     'We  ought  to  get  more  literary  conversation from  him,' Pop said.
'Leather Breeches was the lad. Give us some literary anecdotes.'
     'Well,  the  last night we were in  Paris I'd  been out shooting at Ben
Gallagher's in the Sologne the  day before and he had  a {fermee}, you know,
they put up a low fence while  they're out feeding, and shot rabbits  in the
morning and in the afternoon we had several drives and shot  pheasants and I
shot a chevreuil.'
     'That isn't literary.'
     'Wait. The  last night  Joyce and his wife  came to dinner and we had a
pheasant and a quarter of the chevreuil with the  saddle and Joyce and I got
drunk because we were off for Africa the next day. God, we had a night.'
     'That's a hell of a literary anecdote,' Pop said. 'Who's Joyce?'
     'Wonderful guy,' I said. 'Wrote {Ulysses}.'
     'Homer wrote {Ulysses},' Pop said.
     'Who wrote {Aeschylus?'}
     'Homer,' said Pop. 'Don't try to trap me. D'you know many more literary
anecdotes?'
     'Ever heard of Pound?'
     'No,' said Pop. 'Absolutely no.'
     'I know some good ones about Pound.'
     'Suppose you and he ate some funny-sounding beast and then got drunk.'
     'Several times,' I said.
     'Literary life must be awfully jolly. Think I'd make a writer?'
     'Rather.'
     'We're going to chuck all this,' Pop told P.O.M., 'and both be writers.
Give us another anecdote.'
     'Ever heard of George Moore?'
     'Chap  that wrote  "But before I go, George Moore, here's  a last  long
health to you?" '
     'That's him.'
     'What about him?'
     'He's dead.'
     'That's a damned dismal anecdote. You can do better than that.'
     'I saw him in a book-shop once.'
     'That's better. See how lively he can make them?'
     'I went to call on him once in Dublin,' P.O.M. said. 'With Clara Dunn.'
     'What happened?'
     'He wasn't in.'
     'By God. I  tell  you the  literary life's the  thing,' Pop  said. 'You
can't beat it.'
     'I hate Clara Dunn,' I said.
     'So do I,' said Pop. 'What did she write?'
     'Letters,' I said. 'You know Dos Passos?'
     'Never heard of him.'
     'He and I used to drink hot kirsch in the winter time.'
     'What happened then?'
     'People objected, finally.'
     'Only  writer I ever met was  Stewart Edward White,' Pop said. 'Used to
admire his  writing no  end. Damned good, you know. Then I  met him.  Didn't
like him.'
     'You're  coming  on,'  I said. 'See. There's  no  trick  to a  literary
anecdote.'
     'Why didn't you like him?' P.O.M. asked.
     'Do I have to tell? Isn't the anecdote complete? It's just like the old
man tells them.'
     'Go ahead and tell.'
     'Too much the old timer about him. Eyes used to vast distances and that
sort  of  thing. Killed too many bloody lions. No credit kill so many lions.
Gallop 'em, yes.  Couldn't kill  that many.  Lion kill  you instead.  Writes
damned fine  things in {The Saturday Evening Post} about, what's the bloke's
name, Andy Burnett. Oh, damned fine. Took an awful  dislike to him,  though.
See  him in  Nairobi with his  eyes used to vast distances. Wore  his oldest
clothes in town. Hell of a fine shot, everybody says.'
     'Why you're  a  literary  bastard,'  I  said.  'Look  at  that  for  an
anecdote.'
     'He's marvellous,' P.O.M. said. 'Aren't we ever going to eat?'
     'Thought by God  we'd eaten,'  Pop said. 'Start these anecdotes. No end
to 'em.'
     After dinner we  sat  by the fire a little while  and then went to bed.
One thing seemed to be on Pop's mind and before I  went in the tent he said,
'After you've waited so long, when you get a shot take it easy. You're  fast
enough so you can take your time, remember. Take it easy. '
     'All right.'
     'I'll have them get you up early.'
     'All right. I'm plenty sleepy.'
     'Good night, Mr. J. P.,' P.O.M. called from the tent.
     'Good night,' Pop said. He moved toward his tent carrying himself  with
comic  stiffness,  walking  in the dark as carefully  as  though he  were an
opened bottle.


        CHAPTER TWO

     Molo waked  me  by  pulling  on  the blanket in the  morning and I  was
dressing, dressed, and out washing the  sleep  out of my eyes  before  I was
really awake. It was still  very  dark and  I could see Pop's back  shadowed
against the fire. I walked over holding the early morning cup of hot tea and
milk in my hand waiting for it to be cool enough to drink.
     'Morning,' I said.
     'Morning,' he answered in that husky whisper.
     'Sleep?'
     'Very well. Feeling fit?'
     'Sleepy is all.'
     I drank the tea and spat the leaves into the fire.
     'Tell your bloody fortune with those,' Pop said.
     'No fear.'
     Breakfast in the dark with  a lantern,  cool  juice-slippery  apricots,
hash, hot-centred, brown, and catsup  spread,  two  fried  eggs and the warm
promise-keeping coffee. On the third cup Pop, watching,  smoking  his  pipe,
said, 'Too early for me to face it yet.'
     'Get you?'
     'A little.'
     'I'm getting exercise,' I said. 'It doesn't bother me.'
     'Bloody  anecdotes,'  Pop  said.  'Memsahib  must   think  we're  silly
beggars.'
     'I'll think up some more.'
     'Nothing  better than drinking.  Don't know why it should make you feel
bad.'
     'Are you bad?'
     'Not too.'
     'Take a spot of Eno's?'
     'It's this damned riding in cars.'
     'Well, to-day's the day.'
     'Remember to take it very easy.'
     'You're not worried about that, are you?'
     'Just a touch.'
     'Don't. It never worries me a minute. Truly.'
     'Good. Better get going.'
     'Have to make a trip first.'
     Standing in front of the canvas circle of the latrine I looked, as each
morning, at that fuzzy blur of stars  that  the romanticists of  astronomers
called  the  Southern  Cross.  Each morning  at this  moment I observed  the
Southern Cross in solemn ceremony.
     Pop was at the car. M'Cola handed me the Springfield  and I got in  the
front. The  tragedian and  his tracker were in  the back. M'Cola  climbed in
with them.
     'Good  luck,' Pop  said. Someone  was coming from towards the tents. It
was P.O.M. in her blue robe and mosquito boots. '{Oh}, good luck,' she said.
{Please}, good luck.'
     I waved and we started, the headlights showing the way to the road.
     There was nothing on the salt when we  came up to it after leaving  the
car about three miles away and making a very careful stalk. Nothing came all
morning. We sat with our heads down in  the blind, each covering a different
direction through openings in the thatched withes, and always I expected the
miracle of a bull kudu coming majestic and beautiful  through the open scrub
to the grey, dusty  opening in  the trees where  the  salt  lick  was  worn,
grooved, and trampled. There were many trails to it through the trees and on
any one a bull  might come silently. But nothing came. When  the sun was  up
and we  were warmed after the misty  cold of  the morning I settled  my rump
deeper in  the  dust  and lay  back  against the wall  of  the hole, resting
against the small of my back  and my shoulders,  and still able to  see  out
through  the  slit  in the  blind. Putting the Springfield across my knees I
noticed that  there  was rust on the  barrel.  Slowly I pulled it along  and
looked at the muzzle. It was freshly brown with rust.
     'The bastard never cleaned it last night  after  that rain,' I thought,
and,  very  angry, I lifted the lug and  slipped  the bolt  out. M'Cola  was
watching me  with his head down. The  other two were looking out through the
blind. I held the rifle in one  hand for  him to look through the breech and
then put the  bolt back in and shoved it forward softly, lowering it with my
finger on the trigger so that it was ready to cock rather than keeping it on
the safety.
     M'Cola had seen the rusty bore. His face had not changed and I had said
nothing  but I was full of contempt and there had been indictment, evidence,
and condemnation without  a word  being spoken. So we sat there, he with his
head  bent so only  the bald top showed,  me leaning back  and  looking  out
through  the slit, and we were no longer  partners, no  longer good friends,
and nothing came to the salt.
     At  ten  o'clock the breeze, which had come  up  in the  east, began to
shift around and we knew it was no use. Our scent was being scattered in all
directions  around the blind as  sure  to frighten  any animals as though we
were revolving a searchlight in the dark. We  got up out  of the  blind  and
went over to look in the dust of the lick for tracks. The rain had moistened
it but it was not soaked and we saw several kudu tracks, probably made early
in  the night and  one big bull track, long,  narrow, heart-shaped, clearly,
deeply cut.
     We took  the  track  and followed it on the damp reddish earth for  two
hours  in thick  bush that was like second-growth timber at home. Finally we
had to  leave it  in stuff we could  not move  through. All this time  I was
angry  about the uncleaned rifle and yet happy  and  eager with anticipation
that we might jump the bull and  get a snap at him in the brush. But  we did
not  see him and now, in the big  heat of noon, we made three  long  circles
around some hills and finally came out into a meadow  full of little,  humpy
Masai  cattle  and, leaving  all shade behind, trailed back across  the open
country under the noon sun to the car.
     Kamau,  sitting in the car, had  seen  a kudu bull pass a hundred yards
away. He  was headed toward the saltlick at about nine o'clock when the wind
began  to  be tricky,  had evidently caught our scent and gone back into the
hills. Tired,  sweating,  and feeling  more  sunk than angry  now, I got  in
beside Kamau and we headed the car toward camp.  There  was only one evening
left now, and no reason to expect we would have any better luck than we were
having. As we came to  camp,  and the shade  of the heavy trees, cool  as  a
pool, I took the bolt out of the Springfield and handed the rifle, boltless,
to M'Cola without speaking or  looking at him. The bolt I  tossed inside the
opening of our tent on to my cot.
     Pop and P.O.M. were sitting under the dining tent.
     'No luck?' Pop asked gently.
     'Not a damn bit. Bull went by the car headed toward the salt. Must have
spooked off. We hunted all over hell.'
     'Didn't you see anything?' P.O.M. asked. 'Once we thought we heard  you
shoot.'
     'That was Garrick shooting his mouth off. Did the scouts get anything?'
     'Not a thing. We've been watching both hills.'
     'Hear from Karl?'
     'Not a word.'
     'I'd like to  have seen one,' I said. I was tired out and slipping into
bitterness fast. 'God damn them. What the hell did he have to blow that lick
to hell for  the first morning and gut-shoot a lousy bull and chase him  all
over the son-of-a-bitching country spooking it to holy bloody hell?'
     'Bastards,' said  P.O.M.,  staying with  me  in.  my  unreasonableness.
'Sonsabitches.'
     'You're a good girl,' I said. 'I'm all right. Or I will be.'
     'It's been. awful,' she said. 'Poor old Poppa.'
     'You have a drink,' Pop said. 'That's what you need.'
     'I've hunted them hard, Pop. I swear to God I have. I've enjoyed it and
I haven't worried up until to-day. I was so damned sure. Those damned tracks
all the time  -- what if I never see one? How do I know we can ever get back
here again?'
     'You'll  be back,' Pop  said. 'You don't have to  worry  about that. Go
ahead. Drink it.'
     'I'm just a lousy belly-aching bastard  but I swear they haven't gotten
on my nerves until to-day.'
     'Belly-ache,' said Pop. 'Better to get it out.'
     'What about lunch?' asked P.O.M. 'Aren't you frightfully hungry?'
     'The  hell with lunch. The thing is, Pop, we've  never seen them on the
salt in the evening and we've never seen  a bull in the hills. I've only got
to-night. It looks washed up. Three times  I've had them cold  and Karl  and
the Austrian and the Wanderobo beat us.'
     'We're not beaten,' said Pop. 'Drink another one of those.'
     We had lunch, a  very good lunch,  and it was just over when  Kati came
and said there  was someone  to  see Pop. We could see their shadows on  the
tent fly, then they came around to the front of the tent. It was the old man
of  the first day, the old farmer, but now he was gotten up as a  hunter and
carried a long bow and a sealed quiver of arrows.
     He looked older, more disreputable and tireder than ever and his get-up
was obviously a disguise. With him was the skinny, dirty, Wanderobo with the
slit and  curled up ears who stood  on one leg and scratched the back of his
knee with his toes. His head  was on one side and he had a  narrow, foolish,
and depraved-looking face.
     The old man was talking earnestly to Pop,  looking him in  the  eye and
speaking slowly, without gestures.
     'What's he done? Gotten himself up  like that  to get some of the scout
money?' I asked.
     'Wait,' Pop said.
     'Look at the pair  of  them,'  I said. 'That's goofy Wanderobo and that
lousy old fake. What's he say, Pop?'
     'He hasn't finished,' Pop said.
     Finally  the old man was  finished  and he  stood there leaning on  his
property bow.  They both looked  very  tired but  I  remember thinking  they
looked a couple of disgusting fakes.
     'He says,' Pop began, 'they have found a  country where there  are kudu
and sable. He has been there three days. They know where there is a big kudu
bull and he has a man watching him now.'
     'Do you believe it?' I could feel  the liquor and the fatigue drain out
of me and the excitement come in.
     'God knows,' said Pop.
     'How far away is the country?'
     'One  day's march. I suppose that's three  or four hours  in the car if
the car can go.'
     'Does he think the car can get in?'
     'None ever has been in but he thinks you can make it. '
     'When did they leave the man watching the kudu?'
     'This morning.'
     'Where are the sable?'
     'There in the hills.'
     'How do we get in?'
     'I can't  make  out  except that  you cross the  plain,  go around that
mountain and then  south. He says no one has  ever hunted there.  He  hunted
there when he was young. '
     'Do you believe it?'
     'Of course natives lie like hell, but he tells it very straight.'
     'Let's go.'
     'You'd  better start right away. Go as far  as  you  can in the car and
then use it for a base and hunt on from there. The Memsahib and I will break
camp in the morning, move the outfit and  go on to where Dan and Mr. T. are.
Once  the  outfit is over that  black  cotton stretch we're all right if the
rain  catches us. You come  on and join us. If  you're caught  we can always
send the  car back by Kandoa, if worst comes, and the  lorries down to Tanga
and around.'
     'Don't you want to come?'
     'No. You're better off alone on a show like this.  The  more people the
less game you'll see. You should hunt  kudu alone. I'll move the outfit  and
look after the little Memsahib.'
     'All right,' I said. 'And I don't have to take Garrick or Abdullah?'
     'Hell, no.  Take M'Cola, Kamau  and these two. I'll  teil Molo  to pack
your things. Go light as hell.'
     'God damn it, Pop. Do you think it could be true?'
     'Maybe,' said Pop. 'We have to play it.'
     'How do you say sable?'
     'Tarahalla.'
     'Valhalla, I can remember. Do the females have horns?'
     'Sure,  but you  can't make a mistake. The  bull  is black  and they're
brown. You can't go wrong.'
     'Has M'Cola ever seen one?'
     'I  don't  think so. You've got  four on your licence. Any time you can
better one, go ahead.'
     'Are they hard to kill?'
     'They're tough. They're  not like a kudu.  If you've  got one  down  be
careful how you walk up to him.'
     'What about time?'
     'We've got to get  out. Make  it back  to-morrow night if you  can. Use
your own judgment. I think this is the turning point. You'll get a kudu.'
     'Do you know what it's like?' I said. 'It's just like when we were kids
and we heard about a  river no one  had ever  fished out on the  huckleberry
plain beyond the Sturgeon and the Pigeon.'
     'How did the river turn out?'
     'Listen. We had a hell of a time to  get in and the night we got there,
just  before  dark, and saw it,  there was a deep  pool  and a long straight
stretch and the water so cold you couldn't keep your hand in it  and I threw
a cigarette butt in and a big trout hit it  and they kept snapping it up and
spitting it out as it floated until it went to pieces.'
     'Big trout?'
     'The biggest kind.'
     'God save us,' said Pop. 'What did you do then?'
     'Rigged up my rod  and made  a cast and it was dark,  and  there  was a
nighthawk  swooping around  and it was cold as a bastard and then I was fast
to three fish the second the flies hit the water.'
     'Did you land them?'
     'The three of them.'
     'You damned liar.'
     'I swear to God.'
     'I believe you. Tell  me  the  rest when you come back.  Were  they big
trout?'
     'The biggest bloody kind.'
     'God save us,' said Pop. 'You're going to get a kudu. Get started.'
     In the tent I found P.O.M. and told her.
     'Not really?'
     'Yes.'
     'Hurry up,' she said. 'Don't talk. Get started.'
     I  found  raincoat,  extra boots,  socks, bathrobe, bottle  of  quinine
tablets, citronella,  note  book,  a pencil,  my  solids, the  cameras,  the
emergency kit,  knife, matches,  extra  shirt and  undershirt, a  book,  two
candles, money, the flask . . .
     'What else?'
     'Have you got soap? Take a comb and a towel. Got handkerchiefs?'
     'All right.'
     Molo had  everything packed in a rucksack and I found my field glasses,
M'Cola taking Pop's big field glasses, a canteen with water and Kati sending
a chop-box with food. 'Take plenty of beer,' Pop said. 'You  can leave it in
the car. We're short on whisky but there's a bottle.'
     'How will that leave you?'
     'All right. There's more at the other camp. We sent two bottles on with
Mr. K.'
     'I'll only need the flask,' I said. 'We'll split the bottle.'
     'Take plenty of beer then. There's any amount of it.'
     'What's the bastard doing?' I said, pointing at Garrick who was getting
into the car.
     'He says you  and M'Cola wont be able  to talk  with the natives there.
You'll have to have some one to interpret.'
     'He's poison.'
     'You  {will}  need  someone  to  interpret  whatever  they  speak  into
Swahili.'
     'All  right. But  tell him he's not running the show  and to  keep  his
bloody mouth shut.'
     'We'll go to the  top of the hill  with you,' Pop said and  we  started
off,  the Wanderobo hanging to the side of the car.  'Going to pick  the old
man up in the village.'
     Everyone in camp was out to watch us go.
     'Have we plenty of salt?'
     'Yes.'
     Now we were standing by the  car on the road in the village waiting for
the old man and Garrick to come back from their huts. It was early afternoon
and the sky was  clouding over and I  was looking at P.O.M., very desirable,
cool, and  neat-looking in her khaki and her boots, her Stetson  on one side
of her head, and at Pop, big, thick, in the faded corduroy sleeveless jacket
that was almost white now from washing and the sun.
     'You be a good girl.'
     'Don't ever worry. I wish I could go.'
     'It's a one-man show,'  Pop said. 'You want to get in  fast  and do the
dirty and get out fast. You've a big load as it is.'
     The old man appeared and  got into the back of the car with M'Cola  who
was wearing my old khaki sleeveless, quail-shooting coat.
     'M'Cola's got the old man's coat,' Pop said.
     'He likes to carry things in the game pockets,' I said.
     M'Cola  saw  we  were  talking  about  him. I had forgotten  about  the
uncleaned rifle. Now I remembered it and said  to Pop, 'Ask him where he got
the new coat'.
     M'Cola grinned and said something.
     'He says it is his property.'
     I grinned at him  and he shook his old bald  head and it was understood
that I had said nothing about the rifle.
     'Where's that bastard Garrick?' I asked.
     Finally he came with his blanket and got in with M'Cola and the old man
behind. The Wanderobo sat with me in front beside Kamau.
     'That's  a lovely-looking friend  you have,'  P.O.M. said. 'You be good
too.'
     I kissed her good-bye and we whispered something.
     'Billing and cooing,' Pop said. 'Disgusting.'
     'Good-bye, you old bastard.'
     'Good-bye, you damned bullfighter.'
     'Good-bye, sweet.'
     'Good-bye and good luck.'
     'You've plenty of petrol and we'll leave some here,' Pop called.
     I waved and we were starting down hill through the village on  a narrow
track  that led  down and on to the  scrubby dry plain that spread out below
the two great blue hills.
     I looked  back as we went  down the hill  and saw the  two figures, the
tall thick  one and  the  small neat  one, each  wearing  big  Stetson hats,
silhouetted on the road as they walked back toward camp, then I looked ahead
at the dried-up, scrubby plain.


        PART IV

        PURSUIT AS HAPPINESS

        CHAPTER ONE

     The road was only a track and  the plain was very discouraging to  see.
As  we  went on we saw a few thin Grant's gazelles showing white against the
burnt yellow of the grass  and the grey trees. My exhilaration died with the
stretching out  of this  plain, the  typical  poor  game country, and it all
began  to {seem}.  very  impossible  and  romantic  and  quite  untrue.  The
Wanderobo had a very strong odour and I looked at  the way the lobes of  his
ear were stretched and then neatly wrapped on themselves and at his  strange
un-negroid, thin-lipped face. When  he saw me  studying his face  he  smiled
pleasantly and scratched his chest. I looked  around at the back of the car.
M'Cola  was  asleep.  Garrick  was  sitting  straight  up,  dramatizing  his
awakeness, and the old man was trying to see the road.
     By now  there was no more road, only a cattle track, but we were coming
to the edge of the plain. Then the plain was behind  us and ahead there were
big  trees and we were entering a country  the  loveliest that I had seen in
Africa. The grass was green and smooth, short as a meadow that has been mown
and is newly grown, and the trees  were big,  high-trunked,  and old with no
undergrowth but only the  smooth  green of the turf  like a deer park and we
drove on through shade and patches of  sunlight following  a faint trail the
Wanderobo pointed out. I could not  believe we had suddenly come to any such
wonderful country. It was a  country to  wake  from, happy to  have had  the
dream  and, seeing if  it  would  clown away, I reached  up  and touched the
Wanderobo's  ear. He jumped and Kamau snickered. M'Cola  nudged me from  the
back  seat  and  pointed  and  there, standing  in an open space between the
trees,  his head up, staring at us, the bristles  on his back  erect,  long,
thick,  white  tusks upcurving, his  eyes showing  bright, was a  very large
wart-hog boar watching us  from less than  twenty yards. I motioned to Kamau
to stop  and we sat looking at  him  and he  at us. I put  the rifle  up and
sighted on his chest. He watched and did not move. Then I motioned  to Kamau
to throw in the clutch and we went on and made a curve to the right and left
the wart-hog, who had never moved, nor showed any fright at seeing us.
     I could see that Kamau was excited and, looking back, M'Cola nodded his
head up  and  down in  agreement. None of  us had ever seen  a wart-hog that
would not bolt off, fast-trotting, tail in  air. This was a virgin  country,
an un-hunted pocket  in the million miles of bloody  Africa. I was  ready to
stop and make camp anywhere.
     This was the  finest country I had seen  but we went on,  winding along
through the big  trees over the softly rolling grass. Then ahead and  to the
right we  saw the high stockade of  a  Masai  village.  It was a  very large
village and out of it came running long-legged, brown, smooth-moving men who
all  seemed  to  be of  the same age  and who  wore their  hair  in a  heavy
club-like queue that swung against their shoulders as they ran. They came up
to the car and surrounded it, all laughing and smiling and talking. They all
were tall, their teeth were white and good, and their hair was stained a red
brown and arranged  in  a looped  fringe on their  foreheads.  They  carried
spears and they  were very  handsome and  extremely jolly, not  sullen,  nor
contemptuous like the northern Masai, and  they wanted to know what we  were
going to do. The Wanderobo evidently said we were hunting kudu and were in a
hurry. They had the  car surrounded so we could not move. One said something
and three or  four others joined  in and Kamau explained to me that they had
seen two kudu bulls go along the trail in the afternoon.
     'It can't be true,' I said to myself. 'It can't be.'
     I told  Kamau  to  start and  slowly we pushed  through them, they  all
laughing and trying  to  stop the car, making it all but run over them. They
were the tallest, best-built,  handsomest  people  I had  ever  seen and the
first truly light-hearted  happy people I had seen in Africa.  Finally, when
we were moving, they  started to run beside the car smiling and laughing and
showing how easily they could run and then, as the going was better,  up the
smooth valley of a stream, it became a contest and one after another dropped
out of the  running, waving  and smiling as they left until there  were only
two  still  running with  us, the  finest runners of  the lot, who kept pace
easily with the car as they moved  long-legged,  smoothly, loosely, and with
pride. They  were running too, at the pace  of  a fast  miler,  and carrying
their spears as well. Then we had  to turn to the right and climb out of the
putting-green smoothness of  the valley  into a rolling meadow  and,  as  we
slowed, climbing in first  gear, the whole pack  came up again, laughing and
trying not to seem winded. We  went  through  a little knot of  brush  and a
small  rabbit started out, zigzagging wildly and all the Masai behind now in
a mad sprint. They caught the rabbit and the tallest runner came up with him
to  the car and handed him to me. I  held him and could feel the thumping of
his heart through the soft, warm, furry body, and as I stroked him the Masai
patted my  arm.  Holding him  by the ears I  handed him back. No, no, he was
mine. He was  a present.  I  handed  him to M'Cola. M'Cola  did not take him
seriously and  handed him to one of the Masai. We were  moving and they were
running again now. The Masai stooped and put the rabbit on the ground and as
he ran  free  they all  laughed.  M'Cola shook  his  head. We  were all very
impressed by these Masai.
     'Good  Masai,'  M'Cola  said,  very moved. 'Masai many cattle. Masai no
kill to eat. Masai kill man.'
     The Wanderobo patted himself on the chest. 'Wanderobo . .  . Masai,' he
said,  very proudly, claiming  kin.  His ears were  curled  in  the same way
theirs were. Seeing them running and so damned handsome and so happy made us
all happy. I had never seen such quick disinterested friendliness, nor  such
fine-looking people.
     {'Good} Masai,' M'Cola repeated, nodding his head emphatically. {'Good,
good} Masai.' Only Garrick seemed impressed in a  different way. For all his
khaki  clothes  and his letter  from  B'wana  Simba, I  believe these  Masai
frightened  him  in a very old  place. They were our friends,  not his. They
certainly  were  our  friends though.  They  had  that  attitude  that makes
brothers, that unexpressed but instant and complete acceptance that you must
be  Masai wherever it is you come from. That  attitude you only get from the
best of the English, the best of the Hungarians and the very best Spaniards;
the thing that used to  be the most clear distinction of nobility when there
was nobility. It is an ignorant attitude  and  the people who have it do not
survive, but  very  few  pleasanter  things  ever  happen  to you  than  the
encountering of it.
     So now there were only the two of them left again, running, and  it was
hard  going and the  machine was beating  them. They were still running well
and still loose and long but  the machine was a  cruel pacemaker. So  I told
Kamau  to speed it up and get  it over with because  a sudden burst of speed
was  not  the  humiliation  of  a steady  using. They sprinted, were beaten,
laughed, and then  we were leaning  out, waving,  and they  stood leaning on
their spears and waved. We were  still great friends  but  now we were alone
again and there was no track, only  the general  direction to  follow around
clumps of trees and along the run of this green valley.
     After  a little the  trees grew  closer and we left the idyllic country
behind and  now  were picking our  way along a  faint  trail  through  thick
second-growth. Sometimes we  came to a dead halt and had to get out and pull
a  log  out of  the way or cut  a tree  that blocked the body  of  the  car.
Sometimes we had to back out of bush and look for a way to circle around and
come  upon  the trail again, chopping  our way through  with the long  brush
knives  that are called pangas.  The Wanderobo  was  a pitiful  chopper  and
Garrick was  little better.  M'Cola did everything well in which a knife was
used and  he swung a  panga with a fast yet heavy and vindictive  stroke.  I
used it badly. There was  too much wrist  in it  to learn  it quickly;  your
wrist tired and the blade seemed to have a weight  it did not have. I wished
that  I had  a Michigan double-bitted  axe, honed razor-sharp, to  chop with
instead of this sabring of trees.
     Chopping through  when we were  stopped,  avoiding all  we could, Kamau
driving  with  intelligence  and a  sound feeling for the country,  we  came
through the difficult  going and  out into  another  open-meadow stretch and
could  see a  range  of  hills off to our right.  But here there had been  a
recent heavy rain and  we had to be very careful about  the low parts of the
meadow where the tyres cut in through the turf to mud and spun  in the slick
greasiness. We cut brush and shovelled  out twice  and then,  having learned
not to trust any low part, we skirted  the high edge of the meadow and  then
were in  timber  again. As we  came out, after several  long  circles in the
woods to find places where we could get the car through, we were on the bank
of a stream, where there  was a sort of brushy bridging across the bed built
like  a  beaver  dam  and evidently designed to hold back the  water. On the
other side was a thorn-brush-fenced cornfield, a steep, stump-scattered bank
with  corn  planted  all  over  it  and  some  abandoned looking  corrals or
thorn-bush-fenced  enclosures with mud and stick buildings  and to the right
there  were cone-shaped grass huts projecting above a heavy thorn  fence. We
all got out, for this stream was a problem, and, on the other side, the only
place we could get up the bank led through the stump-filled maize field.
     The old man said the rain had come that day. There  had  been no  water
going over the brushy dam  when they had passed that  morning. I was feeling
fairly depressed. Here we  had  come  through a  beautiful country of virgin
timber where kudu had been once seen walking along the trail to end up stuck
on the bank of a little creek in someone's cornfield. I had not expected any
cornfield  and I resented it. I thought we would have to  get permission  to
drive through the maize, provided we could make it  across the stream and up
the bank  and  I took  off  my shoes and waded across the  stream to test it
underfoot.  The brush and saplings  on the  bottom were packed hard and firm
and  I was  sure we could cross if we took it fairly fast.  M'Cola and Kamau
agreed and we walked up the bank to see how it would be. The mud of the bank
was  soft but there was  dry  earth underneath and I figured we could shovel
our  way up if we could get through the stumps. But we would need to  unload
before we tried it.
     Coming  toward us, from the direction of the huts, were two men  and  a
boy. I  said  'Jambo', as they came up.  They answered 'Jambo', and then the
old man and the Wanderobo talked with  them. M'Cola shook his head at me. He
did not understand a word. I thought we were asking permission to go through
the corn. When the  old man finished talking the two men  came closer and we
shook hands.
     They looked like  no negroes I had ever  seen. Their  faces were a grey
brown, the oldest looked to be about fifty, had thin lips, an almost Grecian
nose,  rather  high cheekbones,  and  large, intelligent eyes. He  had great
poise and dignity and seemed to be very intelligent. The younger man had the
same  cast of features and I took him for a younger brother. He looked about
thirty-five.  The boy  was  as pretty as  a girl and looked rather  shy  and
stupid. I had thought he  was a  girl from his  face for an instant  when he
first  came up, as they all wore a  sort of Roman toga of unbleached  muslin
gathered at the shoulder that revealed no line of their bodies.
     They were  talking  with the  old man, who, now  that I looked  at  him
standing with  them,  seemed  to  bear  a sort  of  wrinkled and  degenerate
resemblance  to  the  classic-featured  owner  of  the shamba, just  as  the
Wanderobo-Masai was a shrivelled caricature of the handsome Masai we had met
in the forest.
     Then we all went down to the stream and Kamau and I rigged ropes around
the tyres  to act as chains while the Roman elder and the rest unloaded  the
car and carried the  heaviest things up the steep bank. Then we crossed in a
wild, water-throwing  smash and, all pushing heavily, made it halfway up the
bank before we stuck. We chopped and dug out and finally  made it to the top
of the  bank but ahead was that maize field and I could not  figure where we
were to go from there.
     'Where do we go?' I asked the Roman elder.
     They did not understand Garrick's interpreting and the old man made the
question clear.
     The Roman pointed  toward the heavy thorn-bush fence to the left at the
edge of the woods.
     'We can't get through there in the car.'
     'Campi,' said M'Cola, meaning we were going to camp there.
     'Hell of a place,' I said.
     'Campi,' M'Cola said firmly and they all nodded.
     'Campi! Campi!' said the old man.
     'There we camp,' Garrick announced pompously.
     'You go to hell,' I told him cheerfully.
     I walked toward the camp site  with the Roman who was talking  steadily
in a language  I could not understand a word of. M'Cola was  with me and the
others were loading and following with the car. I was remembering that I had
read you must never camp in abandoned native quarters because of  ticks  and
other hazards and I was preparing to hold  out against this camp. We entered
a break  in the  thorn-bush fence  and inside  was  a building of  logs  and
saplings stuck in the ground and crossed with branches. It looked like a big
chicken coop. The  Roman made us  free of this and  of the enclosure  with a
wave of his hand and kept on talking.
     'Bugs,' I said to M'Cola in Swahili, speaking with strong disapproval.
     'No,' he said, dismissing the idea. 'No bugs.'
     'Bad bugs. Many bugs. Sickness.'
     'No bugs,' he said firmly.
     The no-bugs had it and with the Roman talking steadily, I hoped on some
congenial  topic, the  car  came  up, stopped under a  huge tree about fifty
yards  from  the  thorn-bush  fence  and  they  all  commenced carrying  the
necessities in  for the  making  of  camp.  My ground-sheet  tent was  slung
between a tree and one side of the  chicken coop and I sat down  on a petrol
case to discuss the shooting  situation with  the  Roman,  the old  man, and
Garrick,  while  Kamau and  M'Cola  fixed  up a camp and the Wanderobo-Masai
stood on one leg and let his mouth hang open.
     'Where were kudu?'
     'Back there,' waving his arm.
     'Big ones?'
     Arms spread to show hugeness of horns and a torrent from the Roman.
     Me, dictionary-ing heavily, 'Where was the one they were watching?'
     No  results  on this  but a  long speech from the Roman which I took to
mean they were watching them all.
     It was  late afternoon now and the sky was heavy with clouds. I was wet
to the  waist and my socks were mud soaked. Also I was sweating from pushing
on the car and from chopping.
     'When do we start?' I asked.
     'To-morrow,' Garrick answered without bothering to question the Roman.
     'No,' I said. To-night.'
     'To-morrow,' Garrick said. 'Late now. One hour light.' He showed me one
hour on my watch.
     I dictionaried. 'Hunt to-night. Last hour best hour.'
     Garrick implied that the kudu were too far away. That it was impossible
to hunt and return, all this with gestures, 'Hunt to-morrow'.
     'You bastard,' I said  in English.  All this time the Roman and the old
man had  been standing saying  nothing. I shivered. It was cold with the sun
under the clouds in spite of the heaviness of the air after rain.
     'Old man,' I said.
     'Yes,  Master,'  said  the old man.  Dictionary-ing  carefully, I said,
'Hunt kudu to-night. Last hour best hour. Kudu close?'
     'Maybe.'
     'Hunt now?'
     They talked together.
     'Hunt to-morrow,' Garrick put in.
     'Shut up, you actor,' I said. 'Old man. Little hunt now?'
     'Yes,' said the old man and Roman nodded. 'Little while.'
     'Good,' I said, and went to  find a shirt  and undershirt and a pair of
socks.
     'Hunt now,' I told M'Cola.
     'Good,' he said. 'M'uzuri.'
     With the clean feeling of dry shirt, fresh socks and a  change of boots
I sat on the petrol case and drank a whisky and water while I waited for the
Roman to come back. I felt certain I was going to have a shot at kudu and  I
wanted to  take the edge off so I would not be nervous. Also I wanted not to
catch a cold. Also I wanted the whisky for itself, because I loved the taste
of  it and  because,  being  as happy  as I could be, it  made me feel  even
better.
     I saw the Roman coming and I pulled the zippers up on my boots, checked
the cartridges in the magazine  of the Springfield,  took  off the foresight
protector and blew through the rear aperture.  Then I drank what was left in
the tin cup that was on the ground by the box and stood up, checking  that I
had a pair of handkerchiefs in my shirt pockets.
     M'Cola came carrying his knife and Pop's big glasses.
     'You stay here,' I said to Garrick. He did not mind. He thought we were
silly to go out so late  and he  was glad to prove us  wrong. The  Wanderobo
wanted to go.
     'That's plenty,' I said, and  waved the old man back and we started out
of the corral with the Roman ahead, carrying  a spear, then me, then  M'Cola
with  glasses  and   the   Mannlicher,   full  of   solids,  and   last  the
Wanderobo-Masai with another spear.
     It was after five when we struck off across the maize field and down to
the stream, crossing where it narrowed in a high grass a hundred yards above
the  dam and then, walking slowly and carefully, went  up the grassy bank on
the far  side,  getting soaked to the waist as we stooped going through  the
wet  grass  and  bracken. We had  not been gone  ten minutes and were moving
carefully up the stream bank, when, without warning,  the  Roman grabbed  my
arm  and pulled me bodily down to the ground as he crouched; me pulling back
the bolt to cock the rifle as I  dropped. Holding his breath he pointed  and
across the stream on the far bank at the edge of the trees was a large, grey
animal, white stripes showing on his flanks and huge horns curling back from
his  head as he stood, broadside to us, head up, seeming to be listening.  I
raised the rifle, but  there was  a bush in the way of the shot. I could not
shoot over the bush without standing.
     'Piga,' whispered  M'Cola. I  shook my finger  and commenced  to  crawl
forward to be clear of the bush, sick afraid the bull would jump while I was
trying to make  the shot certain, but  remembering  Pop's 'Take  your time'.
When I saw I was clear I got on one knee, saw the bull through the aperture,
marvelling  at how  big  he looked, and  then,  remembering not  to  have it
matter, that  it was  the same  as  any other shot,  I saw the bead  centred
exactly where it should be just  below the  top of the shoulder and squeezed
off. At  the  roar he jumped and was  going into the brush, but I knew I had
hit him. I shot at a show of grey between the trees as he went in and M'Cola
was shouting, 'Piga! Piga!' meaning 'He's hit! He's hit!' and the Roman  was
slapping me on the shoulder, then he had his toga up around his neck and was
running naked, and the four of us were running now, full speed, like hounds,
splashing across the stream, tearing up the bank, the Roman  ahead, crashing
naked  through the  brush, then stooping and holding  up a  leaf with bright
blood, slamming me on the back, M'Cola saying, 'Damu! Damu!' (blood, blood),
then the deep cut tracks off  to the right, me reloading, we all trailing in
a  dead run, it almost dark in the timber, the  Roman, confused  a moment by
the trail, making a cast off to the right,  then picking up blood once more,
then pulling me down again with a jerk on my arm and none of us breathing as
we saw him  standing  in  a  clearing a  hundred yards ahead, looking to  me
hard-hit and  looking back, wide ears spread, big, grey,  white-striped, his
horns a marvel, as he looked straight toward us over his shoulder. I thought
I must make absolutely sure this time, now, with  the dark coming and I held
my breath and shot him a touch behind the fore-shoulder. We heard the bullet
smack  and saw him buck heavily with the shot. M'Cola shouted, 'Piga!  Piga!
Piga!' as he went  out  of sight and as we ran again, like hounds, we almost
fell  over something. It was a huge, beautiful kudu bull, stone-dead, on his
side, his horns in great dark spirals, widespread and unbelievable as he lay
dead five  yards from  where we stood when I had  just  that instant shot. I
looked at him, big,  long-legged,  a smooth grey with  the white stripes and
the great curling, sweeping horns, brown as walnut meats, and ivory pointed,
at  the big ears and the  great, lovely heavy-maned  neck, the white chevron
between his eyes and the white  of his muzzle and I stooped over and touched
him to try to believe it. He was lying on the side where the bullet had gone
in and there was not a  mark on him and he smelled sweet and lovely like the
breath of cattle and the odour of thyme after rain.
     Then the Roman had his arms around my neck and M'Cola was shouting in a
strange high sing-song voice and Wanderobo-Masai  kept slapping  me  on  the
shoulder and jumping up and down and then one after the other they all shook
hands in a strange way that I had never known in which they  took your thumb
in  their  fist  and  held it and shook it and pulled it and held  it again,
while they looked you in the eyes, fiercely.
     We all looked at him and M'Cola knelt and traced the curve of his horns
with his finger and  measured the spread  with  his arms and  kept crooning,
'Oo-oo-eee-eee', making small high noises of ecstasy and stroking the kudu's
muzzle and his mane.
     I  slapped the Roman on the back and  we went through the thumb-pulling
again,  me  pulling his thumb  too. I embraced  the Wanderobo-Masai and  he,
after a thumb-pulling of great  intensity and feeling, slapped his chest and
said very proudly, 'Wanderobo-Masai wonderful guide'.
     'Wanderobo-Masai wonderful Masai,' I said.
     M'Cola kept shaking  his  head,  looking at  the  kudu  and  making the
strange  small  noises. Then  he said, 'Doumi,  Doumi,  Doumi! B'wana  Kabor
Kidogo,  Kidogo'. Meaning  this was  a bull of bulls. That Karl's had been a
little one, a nothing.
     We all knew we had  killed the  other kudu that I had mistaken for this
one, while this first one was lying dead from the first shot, and it  seemed
of no importance beside the miracle of this kudu.  But  I  wanted to see the
other.
     'Come on, kudu,' I said.
     'He's dead,' said M'Cola. 'Kufa!'
     'Come on.'
     'This one best.'
     'Come on.'
     'Measure,' M'Cola pleaded. I ran the steel tape around the curve of one
horn, M'Cola holding it  down. It was  well over fifty inches. M'Cola looked
at me anxiously.
     'Big! Big!' I said. 'Twice as big as B'wana Rabor.'
     'Eee-eee,' he crooned.
     'Come on,' I said. The Roman was off already.
     We cut for where we saw the bull when I shot and  there were the tracks
with blood  breast high on the leaves in the  brush from  the  start.  In  a
hundred yards we came on him absolutely dead. He was not quite as big as the
first bull. The horns  were as long,  but narrower, but he was as beautiful,
and he lay on his side, bending down the brush where he fell.
     We  all  shook hands  again, using the  thumb  which evidently  denoted
extreme emotion.
     'This  askari,'  M'Cola explained.  This  bull  was  the  policeman  or
bodyguard for the  bigger one. He  had evidently been in the timber when  we
had seen  the first bull, had run with him, and  had looked back to  see why
the big bull did not follow.
     I wanted pictures and told M'Cola to go back to camp with the Roman and
bring the two cameras,  the Graflex and the cinema camera and my flashlight.
I knew we were on the same side of the stream and above the camp and I hoped
the Roman could make a short cut and get back before the sun set.
     They went off and now, at the end of the day, the sun came out brightly
below the clouds  and the WanderoboMasai and I looked at this kudu, measured
his  horns,  smelled  the  fine smell of him, sweeter  than an  eland  even,
stroked his nose, his neck, and  his shoulder, marvelling at his great ears,
and  the smoothness  and cleanness of his  hide, looked  at his hooves, that
were built long, narrow, and springy,  so he  seemed to walk on tiptoe, felt
under his shoulder for  the bullet-hole and then shook hands again while the
Wanderobo-Masai told what a man he was and I told him he was my pal and gave
him my best four-bladed pocket knife.
     'Let's go look at the first one, Wanderobo-Masai,' I said in English.
     The  Wanderobo-Masai nodded,  understanding perfectly,  and we  trailed
back to where the big one lay in the edge of the little clearing. We circled
him, looking at him and then the  Wanderobo-Masai, reaching underneath while
I held the shoulder up, found the bullet hole and put his finger in. Then he
touched  his forehead  with the  bloody  finger  and  made the speech  about
'Wanderobo-Masai wonderful guide!'
     'Wanderobo-Masai king of guides,' I said. 'Wanderobo-Masai my pal.'
     I was wet through with sweat  and I put on my raincoat that  M'Cola had
been carrying and left behind and turned the collar up around my neck. I was
watching the sun now  and  worrying about it being  gone before they got  up
with the  cameras. In a little  while we could hear them coming in the brush
and I shouted to let them know where we were. M'Cola answered and we shouted
back and forth and I could hear them talking and crashing in the brush while
I  would  shout and watch  the sun which was almost down. Finally I saw them
and  I shouted to M'Cola, 'Run, run', and pointed to  the sun, but there was
no  run left in them. They had made a fast trip uphill, through heavy brush,
and when I got  the camera, opened the lens wide and focused on the bull the
sun was only lighting the tops  of the trees.  I took half a dozen exposures
and used the cinema while they all dragged the kudu to where there seemed to
be a little more light, then the sun was down and, obligation to try  to get
a  picture over,  I put the  camera into its case and settled, happily, with
the darkness  into the unresponsibility of victory; only emerging  to direct
M'Cola  in where to  cut to make a full enough  cape when skinning  out  the
head-skin.  M'Cola  used  a  knife  beautifully  and  I liked  to  watch him
skin-out,  but to-night, after I had shown him where to make  the first cut,
well down on the legs, around the lower chest where it joined the  belly and
well back over the withers, I did not watch him because I wanted to remember
the bull as I had first seen him, so I went, in the dusk, to the second kudu
and waited there  until they came with the flashlight and  then, remembering
that I had  skinned-out or seen  skinned-out  every animal  that  I had ever
shot,  yet remembered every one  exactly as he was at every moment, that one
memory does not destroy another, and  that  the not-watching idea  was  only
laziness and a form of putting the dishes in the  sink until morning, I held
the flashlight  for M'Cola while he worked on the second  bull and, although
tired,  enjoyed as  always his  fast,  clean, delicate  scalpeling  with the
knife,  until,  the cape all  clear and  spread back he nocked  through  the
connection  of the skull and  the spine  and then, twisting  with the horns,
swung the head loose and  lifted  it, cape and all, free from  the neck, the
cape hanging heavy and wet in the light of the electric torch that shone  on
his  red  hands  and  on   the  dirty  khaki  of  his  tunic.  We  left  the
Wanderobo-Masai, Garrick, the Roman, and  his brother with a lantern to skin
out and pack in  the meat and M'Cola with a head,  the old  man with a head,
and me with the flashlight and the two guns, we started in the dark back for
camp.
     In the dark  the old man fell  flat and  M'Cola laughed; then  the cape
unrolled and came  down  over his  face  and  he  almost  choked and we both
laughed. The  old man laughed too. Then M'Cola fell in the  dark and the old
man  and  I laughed. A little farther on I went through the covering on some
sort of  game  pit  and  went  flat  on my  face and  got up to  hear M'Cola
chuckling and choking and the old man giggling.
     'What  the hell is this? A Chaplin  comedy?' I  asked them  in English.
They were both  laughing under  the  heads. We got  to the thorn-bush fence,
finally, after a nightmare  march through the  brush and saw the fire at the
camp and M'Cola  seemed to be delighted when the old man fell  going through
the thorns and got up cursing and seeming barely able to lift the head  as I
shone the flash ahead of him to show him the opening.
     We came up to the  fire and  I could see the old man's face bleeding as
he  put the head down against the stick  and mud cabin. M'Cola put  his head
down, pointed at the old man's face and laughed and shook his head. I looked
at the  old man. He was  completely done-in, his  face was badly  scratched,
covered with mud and bleeding, and he was chuckling happily.
     'B'wana  fell down,' M'Cola said and imitated me pitching forward. They
both chuckled.
     I made as though to take a swing at him and said, 'Shenzi!'
     He imitated  me falling down  again and  then  there was  Kamau shaking
hands  very gently and  respectfully and  saying, 'Good, B'wana! Very  good,
B'wana!' and then going  over to  the  heads, his eyes shining and kneeling,
stroking  the horns  and feeling  the ears and  crooning the same,  sighing,
'Ooo-ooo! Eee-eee!' noises M'Cola had made.
     I went into the dark of the tent, we had left the lantern with the meat
bringers, and washed, took  off my wet clothes and feeling in the dark in my
rucksack found a pair of pyjamas  and  a bath-robe. I came out to  the  fire
wearing  these  and mosquito  boots. I brought my wet things and my boots to
the  fire and  Kamau  spread  them on sticks,  and put the boots,  each  one
leg-down, on a stick and back far enough from the blaze where the fire would
not scorch them.
     In the firelight  I sat on a petrol box with my back against a tree and
Kamau  brought the  whisky flask and poured some in a cup and I  added water
from the canteen and sat drinking and looking in  the fire, not thinking, in
complete  happiness,  feeling  the  whisky  warm me  and smooth  me  as  you
straighten the  wrinkled sheet in a bed, while  Kamau brought tins  from the
provisions  to  see what  I  would eat for supper.  There were three tins of
Christmas special mincemeat, three tins of salmon, and three of mixed fruit,
there  were  also  a number  of  cakes  of  chocolate and  a  tin of Special
Christmas Plum Pudding. I  sent these back  wondering what Kati had imagined
the  mincemeat to  be. We had been  looking for that  plum pudding  for  two
months.
     'Meat?' I asked.
     Kamau brought  a thick, long chunk  of  roast Grant  gazelle tenderloin
from one  of the Grant Pop had shot on  the  plain while we had been hunting
the twenty-five-mile salt-lick, and some bread.
     'Beer?'
     He brought one of the big German litre bottles and opened it.
     It seemed too  complicated sitting on the petrol case  and I  spread my
raincoat on the ground in front of  the fire where the ground had been dried
by the heat  and stretched  my legs out, leaning my back against the  wooden
case. The old man was roasting meat on a stick. It was a choice piece he had
brought with him wrapped in his  toga.  In a little while  they all began to
come in carrying meat and the  hides and then I  was stretched  out drinking
beer and watching  the fire and all around they  were  talking and  roasting
meat on  sticks. It was getting cold  and the night was clear and there  was
the smell of the  roasting  meat, the smell of the  smoke of  the fire,  the
smell of  my boots steaming, and, where  he squatted close, the smell of the
good old Wanderobo-Masai.  But  I could remember the odour of the kudu as he
lay in the woods.
     Each man had his  own  meat or collection of  pieces of meat on  sticks
stuck around the fire, they turned them  and tended them, and there was much
talking. Two others that I had not seen had come over from the huts and  the
boy we  had seen in the afternoon was with them. I was eating a piece of hot
broiled liver I had lifted from one of the sticks of the Wanderobo-Masai and
wondering where  the  kidneys were. The liver was delicious. I was wondering
whether it was worth while getting up to get the dictionary to ask about the
kidneys when M'Cola said, 'Beer?'
     'All right.'
     He brought the bottle, opened it, and I lifted it  and drank half of it
off  to chase down  that  liver. 'It's  a  hell  of  a  life,' I told him in
English. He grinned and said, 'More beer?' in Swahili. My talking English to
him was an acceptable  joke. 'Watch,' I said, and  tipped the  bottle up and
let it all go down. It was an old trick we learned  in Spain drinking out of
wine skins  without swallowing.  This impressed  the Roman greatly.  He came
over, squatted down by the raincoat and  started  to talk.  He  talked for a
long time.
     'Absolutely,' I  told him in English. 'And furthermore he can take  the
sleigh.'
     'More beer?' M'Cola asked.
     'You want to see the old man tight, I suppose?'
     'N'Dio,' he said. 'Yes,' pretending to understand the English.
     'Watch it, Roman.'  I started to let the beer  go  down, saw the  Roman
following  the  motion  with  his  own  throat,  started  to  choke,  barely
recovered, and lowered the bottle.
     'That's  all.  Can't  do it more than twice  in  an  evening. Makes you
liverish.'
     The Roman went on talking in his language. I heard him say Simba twice.
     'Simba here?'
     'No,' he said. 'Over there,' waving at the dark,  and  I could not make
out the story. But it sounded very good.
     'Me  plenty  Simba,' I said.  'Hell of a man with Simba. Ask M'Cola.' I
could  feel that  I was  getting  the evening  braggies but  Pop and  P.O.M,
weren't here  to listen. It was not nearly so satisfactory  to brag when you
could not be understood, still it was better than nothing. I  definitely had
the braggies, on beer, too.
     'Amazing,' I told the Roman. He went on with his own story. There was a
little beer in the bottom of the bottle.
     'Old Man,' I said. 'Mzee.'
     'Yes, B'wana,' said the old man.
     'Here's some beer for you. You're old enough, so it can't hurt you.'
     I had seen the old man's eyes while he watched me drink  and I  knew he
was another of the same. He  took the  bottle, drained it to the last bit of
froth and crouched by his meat sticks holding the bottle lovingly.
     'More beer?' asked M'Cola.
     'Yes,' I said. 'And my cartridges.'
     The Roman had gone  on steadily  talking. He  could tell a longer story
even than Carlos in Cuba.
     'That's  mighty interesting,'  I told him. 'You're a hell of a  fellow,
too. We're both good. Listen.' M'Cola had brought the beer and my khaki coat
with  the cartridges in the pocket. I drank a little beer, noted the old man
watching and  spread out  six cartridges. 'I've got the braggies,'  I  said.
'You  have to stand  for  this, look!' I touched each of  the cartridges  in
turn, 'Simba, Simba, Faro,  Nyati, Tendalla, Tendalla.  What do you think of
that? You  don't have to  believe it.  Look, M'Cola!' and  I  named the  six
cartridges again. 'Lion, lion, rhino, buffalo, kudu, kudu.'
     'Ayee!' said the Roman excitedly.
     'N'Dio,' said M'Cola solemnly. 'Yes, it is true.'
     'Ayee!' said the Roman and grabbed me by the thumb.
     'God's truth,' I said. 'Highly improbable, isn't it?'
     'N'Dio,' said M'Cola, counting them over himself. 'Simba,  Simba, Faro,
Nyati, Tendalla, Tendalla!'
     'You can tell the  others,' I said in English. 'That's  a hell of a big
piece of bragging. That'll hold me for to-night.'
     The Roman went on talking to me  again and I listened carefully and ate
another piece  of the broiled  liver. M'Cola was  working on the heads  now,
skinning out one skull  and showing Kamau how to skin out the  easy  part of
the  other. It was  a big job to do for the  two of them, working  carefully
around the eyes and the muzzle and the cartilage of the ears, and afterwards
flesh all of  the head skins so  they would not spoil, and they were working
at it very delicately and  carefully  in the  firelight.  I  do not remember
going to bed, nor if we went to bed.
     I remember  getting the dictionary and  asking M'Cola to ask the boy if
he had a sister and M'Cola saying, 'No, No', to me very firmly and solemnly.
     'Nothing tendacious, you understand. Curiosity.'
     M'Cola was firm.  'No,'  he said and shook  his head. 'Hapana,'  in the
same tone he used when we followed the lion into the sanseviera that time.
     That disposed  of  the opportunities  for social life and  I  looked up
kidneys and the Roman's brother produced some from his lot and I put a piece
between two pieces of liver on a stick and started it broiling.
     'Make  an  admirable  breakfast,' I said  out loud.  'Much  better than
mincemeat.'
     Then  we  had  a  long talk about  sable.  The Roman  did not call them
Tarahalla and that name meant nothing to him. There was some confusion about
buffalo because the Roman kept saying  'nyati', but he meant they were black
like the buff. Then we drew pictures in  the dust of ashes from the fire and
what he meant were sable all  right. The  horns curved  back like scimitars,
way back over their withers.
     'Bulls?' I said.
     'Bulls and cows.'
     With the old man and Garrick interpreting, I believed  I made  out that
there were two herds.
     'To-morrow.'
     'Yes,' the Roman said. 'To-morrow.'
     ' 'Cola,' I said. 'To-day, kudu. To-morrow, sable, buffalo, Simba.'
     'Hapana, buffalo!' he said and shook his head. 'Hapana, Simba!'
     'Me  and  the  Wanderobo-Masai   buffalo,'  I  said.  'Yes,'  said  the
Wanderobo-Masai excitedly. 'Yes.'
     'There are very  big  elephants  near here,' Garrick  said. 'To-morrow,
elephants,' I said, teasing  M'Cola.  'Hapana  elephants!' He  knew  it  was
teasing but he did not even want to hear it said.
     'Elephants,' I said. 'Buffalo, Simba, leopard.'
     The Wanderobo-Masai was nodding excitedly. 'Rhino,' he put in.
     'Hapana!' M'Cola said shaking his head. He was beginning to suffer.
     'In those hills many buffalo,' the old man interpreted for the now very
excited Roman who was standing and pointing beyond where the huts were.
     'Hapana! Hapana!  Hapana!'  M'Cola said  definitely and finally.  'More
beer?' putting down his knife.
     'All  right,' I said. 'I'm just kidding you.' M'Cola was crouched close
talking, making  an explanation. I heard  Pop's title and  I thought  it was
that Pop would not like it. That Pop would not want it.
     'I  was  just  kidding  you,'  I  said  in  English.  Then in  Swahili,
'To-morrow, sable?'
     'Yes,' he said feelingly. 'Yes.'
     After that the Roman and I had a long talk in which I spoke Spanish and
he  spoke whatever  it  was  he spoke  and  I believe  we planned the entire
campaign for the next day.


        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 wif