Pop told him solemnly. The Masai shook my hand.
'Tell him he can always find me around Harry's New York Bar,' I said.
The Masai said something else and scratched one leg with the other.
'He says why did you shoot him twice?' Pop asked.
'Tell him in the morning in our tribe we always shoot them twice. Later
in the day we shoot them once. In. the evening we are often half shot
ourselves. Tell him he can always find me at the New Stanley or at Torr's.'
'He says what do you do with the horns?'
'Tell him in our tribe we give the horns to our wealthiest friends.
Tell him it is very exciting and sometimes members of the tribe are chased
across vast spaces with empty pistols. Tell him he can find me in the book.'
Pop told the Masai something and we shook hands again, parting on a
most excellent basis. Looking across the plain through the mist we could see
some other Masai coming along the road, earth-brown skins, and kneeing
forward stride and spears thin in the morning light.
Back in the car, the oryx head wrapped in a burlap sack, the meat tied
inside the mudguards, the blood drying, the meat dusting over, the road of
red sand now, the plain gone, the bush again close to the edge of the road,
we came up into some hills and through the little village of Kibaya where
there was a white rest house and a general store and much farming land. It
was here Dan had sat on a haystack one time waiting for a kudu to feed out
into the edge of a patch of mealy-corn and a lion had stalked Dan while he
sat and nearly gotten him. This gave us a strong historical feeling for the
village of Kibaya and as it was still cool and the sun had not yet burned
off the dew from the grass I suggested we drink a bottle of that
silver-paper-necked, yellow-and-black-labelled German beer with the horseman
in armour on it in order that we might remember the place better and even
appreciate it more. This done, full of historical admiration for Kibaya, we
learned the road was possible ahead, left word for the lorries to follow on
to the eastward and headed on toward the coast and the kudu country.
For a long time, while the sun rose and the day became hot we drove
through what Pop had described, when I asked him what the country was like
to the south, as a million miles of bloody Africa, bush close to the road
that was impenetrable, solid, scrubby-looking undergrowth.
'There are very big elephant in there,' Pop said. 'But it's impossible
to hunt them. That's why they're very big. Simple, isn't it?'
After a long stretch of the million-mile country, the country began to
open out into dry, sandy, bush-bordered prairies that dried into a typical
desert country with occasional patches of bush where there was water, that
Pop said was like the northern frontier province of Kenya. We watched for
gerenuk, that long-necked antelope that resembles a praying mantis in its
way of carrying itself, and for the lesser kudu that we knew lived in this
desert bush, but the sun was high now and we saw nothing. Finally the road
began to lift gradually into the hills again, low, blue, wooded hills now,
with miles of sparse bush, a little thicker than orchard bush, between, and
ahead a pair of high, heavy, timbered hills that were big enough to be
mountains. These were on each side of the road and as we climbed in the car
where the red road narrowed there was a herd of hundreds of cattle ahead
being driven down to the coast by Somali cattle buyers; the principal buyer
walked ahead, tall, good-looking in white turban and coast clothing,
carrying an umbrella as a symbol of authority. We worked the car through the
herd, finally, and coming out wound our way through pleasant looking bush,
up and out into the open between the two mountains and on, half a mile, to a
mud and thatched village in the open clearing on a little low plateau beyond
the two mountains. Looking back, the mountains looked very fine and with
timber up their slopes, outcroppings of limestone and open glades and
meadows above the timber.
'Is this the place?'
'Yes,' said Dan. 'We will find where the camping place is.'
A very old, worn, and faded black man, with a stubble of white beard, a
farmer, dressed in a dirty once-white cloth gathered at the shoulder in the
manner of a Roman toga, came out from behind one of the mud and wattle huts,
and guided us back down the road and off it to the left to a very good camp
site. He was a very discouraged-looking old man and after Pop and Dan had
talked with him he went off, seeming more discouraged than before, to bring
some guides whose names Dan had written on a piece of paper as being
recommended by a Dutch hunter who had been here a year ago and who was Dan's
great friend.
We took the seats out of the car to use as a table and benches, and
spreading our coats to sit on had a lunch in the deep shade of a big tree,
drank some beer, and slept or read while we waited for the lorries to come
up. Before the lorries arrived the old man came back with the skinniest,
hungriest, most unsuccessful looking of Wanderobos who stood on one leg,
scratched the back of his neck and carried a bow and quiver of arrows and a
spear. Queried as to whether this was the guide whose name we had, the old
man admitted he was not and went off more discouraged than ever, to get the
official guides.
When we woke next the old man was standing with the two official and
highly-clothed-in-khaki guides and two others, quite naked, from the
village. There was a long palaver and the head one of the two khaki-panted
guides showed his credentials, a To Whom It May Concern, stating the bearer
knew the country well and was a reliable boy and capable tracker. This was
signed by so and so, professional hunter. The khaki-clothed guide referred
to this professional hunter as B'wana Simba and the name infuriated us all.
'Some bloke that killed a lion once,' Pop said.
'Tell him I am B'wana Fisi, the hyena slaughterer,' I told Dan. 'B'wana
Fisi chokes them with his naked hands.'
Dan was telling them something else.
'Ask them if they would like to meet B'wana Hop-Toad, the inventor of
the hoptoads and Mama Tziggi, who owns all these locusts.'
Dan ignored this. It seemed they were discussing money. After
ascertaining their customary daily wage, Pop told them if either of 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.
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