'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. The
n 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