we had lost much time on him when he rim-rocked us on the hill.
Finally his trail crossed the dry watercourse about where we had first
come in sight of the meadow in the morning and led away into the sloping,
sparsely-wooded country on the far side. There were no clouds and I could
feel the sun now, not just as heat but as a heavy deadly weight on my head
and I was very thirsty. It was very hot but it was not the heat that
bothered. It was the weight of the sun.
Garrick had given up tracking seriously and was only contributing
theatrical successes of discovering blood when M'Cola and I were checked. He
would do no routine tracking any more, but would rest and then track in
irritating spurts. The Wanderobo-Masai was useless as a blue-jay and I had
M'Cola give him the big rifle to carry so that we would get some use out of
him. The Roman's brother was obviously not a hunter and the husband was not
very interested. He did not seem to be a hunter either. As we trailed,
slowly, the ground, hard now as the sun had baked it, the blood only black
spots and splatters on the short grass, one by one the brother, Garrick, and
the Wanderobo-Masai dropped out and sat in the shade of the scattered trees.
The sun was terrific and as it was necessary to track with heads bent
down and stooping, in spite of a handkerchief spread over my neck I had a
pounding ache in my head.
M'Cola was tracking slowly, steadily, and absolutely absorbed in the
problem. His bare, bald head gleamed with sweat and when it ran down in his
eyes he would pluck a grass stem, hold it with each hand and shave the sweat
off his forehead and bald black crown with the stem.
We went on slowly. I had always sworn to Pop that I could out-track
M'Cola but I realized now that in the past I had been giving a sort of
Garrick performance in picking up the spoor when it was lost and that in
straight, steady trailing, now in the heat, with the sun really bad, truly
bad so that you could feel what it was doing to your head, cooking it to
hell, trailing in short grass on hard ground where a blood spot was a dry,
black blister on a grass blade, difficult to see; that you must find the
next little black spot perhaps twenty yards away, one holding the last blood
while the other found the next, then going on, one on each side of the
trail; pointing with a grass stem at the spots to save talking, until it ran
out again and you marked the last bood with your eye and both made casts to
pick it up again, signalling with a hand up, my mouth too dry to talk, a
heat shimmer over the ground now when you straightened up to let your neck
stop aching and looked ahead, I knew M'Cola was immeasurably the better man
and the better tracker. Have to tell Pop, I thought.
At this point M'Cola made a joke. My mouth was so dry that it was hard
to talk.
'B'wana,' M'Cola said, looking at me when I had straiglitened up and
was leaning my neck back to get the crick out of it.
'Yes?'
'Whisky?' and he offered me the flask.
'You bastard,' I said in English, and he chuckled and shook his head.
'Hapana whisky?'
'You savage,' I said in Swahili.
We started tracking again, M'Cola shaking his head and very amused, and
in a little while the grass was longer and it was easier again. We crossed
all that semi-open country we had seen from the hillside in the morning and
going down a slope the tracks swung back into high grass. In this higher
grass I found that by half shutting my eyes I could see his trail where he
had shouldered through the grass and I went ahead fast without trailing by
the blood, to M'Cola's amazement, but then we came out on very short grass
and rock again and now the trailing was the hardest yet.
He was not bleeding much now; the sun and the heat must have dried the
wounds and we found only an occasional small starry splatter on the rocky
ground.
Garrick came up and made a couple of brilliant discoveries of blood
spots, then sat down under a tree. Under another tree I could see the poor
old Wanderobo-Masai holding his first and last job as gun-bearer. Under
another was the old man, the sable head beside him like some black-mass
symbol, his equipment hanging from his shoulders. M'Cola and I went on
trailing very slowly and laboriously across the long stony slope and back
and up into another tree-scattered meadow, and through it, and into a long
field with piled up boulders at the end. In the middle of this field we lost
the trail completely and circled and hunted for nearly two hours before we
found blood again.
The old man found it for us below the boulders and to the right half a
mile away. He had gone ahead down there on his own idea of what the bull
would have done. The old man was a hunter.
Then we trailed him very slowly, on to hard stony ground a mile away.
But we could not trail from there. The ground was too hard to leave a track
and we never found blood again. Then we hunted on our various theories of
where the bull would go, but the country was too big and we had no luck.
'No good,' M'Cola said.
I straightened up and went over to the shade of a big tree. It felt
cool as water and the breeze cooled my skin through the wet shirt. I was
thinking about the bull and wishing to God I had never hit him. Now I had
wounded him and lost him. I believe he kept right on travelling and went out
of that country. He never showed any tendency to circle back. To-night he
would die and the hyenas would eat him, or, worse, they would get him before
he died, hamstringing him and pulling his guts out while he was alive. The
first one that hit that blood spoor would stay with it until he found him.
Then he would call up the others. I felt a son of a bitch to have hit him
and not killed him. I did not mind killing anything, any animal, if I killed
it cleanly, they all had to die and my interference with the nightly and the
seasonal killing that went on all the time was very minute and I had no
guilty feeling at all. We ate the meat and kept the hides and horns. But I
felt rotten sick over this sable bull. Besides, I wanted him, I wanted him
damned badly, I wanted him more than I would admit. Well, we had played our
string out with him. Our chance was at the start when he was down and we
missed him. We had lost that. No, our best chance, the only chance a
rifleman should ever ask, was when I had a shot and shot at the whole animal
instead of calling the shot. It was my own lousy fault. I was a son of a
bitch to have gut-shot him. It came from over-confidence in being able to do
a thing and then omitting one of the steps in how it is done. Well, we had
lost him. I doubted if there was a dog in the world could trail him now in
that heat. Still that was the only chance. I got out the dictionary and
asked the old man if there were any dogs at the Roman's place.
'No,' said the old man. 'Hapana.'
We made a very wide circle and I sent the brother and the husband out
in another circle. We found nothing, no trace, no tracks, no blood, and I
told M'Cola we would start for camp. The Roman's brother and the husband
went up the valley to get the meat of the sable cow we had shot. We were
beaten.
M'Cola and I ahead, the other following, we went across the long heat
haze of the open country, down to cross the dry watercourse, and up and into
the grateful shade of the trail through the woods. As we were going along
through the broken sunlight and shadow, the floor of the forest smooth and
springy where we cut across to save distance from the trail, we saw, less
than a hundred yards away, a herd of sable standing in the timber looking at
us. I pulled back the bolt and looked for the best pair of horns.
'Doumi,' Garrick whispered. 'Doumi kubwa sana!'
I looked where he pointed. It was a very big cow sable, dark chestnut,
white marks on the face, white belly, heavy built and with a fine curving
pair of horns. She was standing broadside to us with her head turned,
looking. I looked carefully at the whole lot. They were all cows, evidently
the bunch whose bull I had wounded and lost, and they had come over the hill
and herded up again together here.
'We go to camp,' I said to M'Cola.
As we started forward the sable jumped and ran past us, crossing the
trail ahead. At every good pair of cow horns, Garrick said, 'Bull, B'wana.
Big, big bull. Shoot, B'wana. Shoot, oh shoot!'
'All cows,' I said to M'Cola when they were past, running in a panic
through the sun-splashed timber.
'Yes,' he agreed.
'Old man,' I said. The old man came up.
'Let the guide carry that,' I said.
The old man lowered the cow sable head.
'No,' said Garrick.
'Yes,' I said. 'Bloody well yes.'
We went on through the woods toward camp. I was feeling better, much
better. All through the day I had never thought once of the kudu. Now we
were coming home to where they were waiting.
It seemed much longer coming home although, usually, the return over a
new trail is shorter. I was tired all the way into my bones, my head felt
cooked, and I was thirstier than I had ever been in my life. But suddenly,
walking through the woods, it was much cooler. A cloud had come over the
sun.
We came out of the timber and down on to the flat and in sight of the
thorn fence. The sun was behind a bank of clouds now and then in a little
while the sky was covered completely and the clouds looked heavy and
threatening. I thought perhaps this had been the last clear hot day; unusual
heat before the rains. First I thought: if it had only rained, so that the
ground would hold a track, we could have stayed with that bull for ever;
then, looking at the heavy, woolly clouds that so quickly had covered all
the sky, I thought that if we were going to join the outfit, and get the car
across that ten-mile stretch of black cotton road on the way to Handeni, we
had better start. I pointed to the sky.
'Bad,' M'Cola agreed.
'Go to the camp of B'wana M'Kubwa?'
'Better.' Then, vigorously, accepting the decision, 'N'Dio. N'Dio.'
'We go,' I said.
Arrived at the thorn fence and the hut, we broke camp fast. There was a
runner there from our last camp who had brought a note, written before
P.O.M, and Pop had left, and bringing my mosquito net. There was nothing in
the note, only good luck and that they were starting. I drank some water
from one of our canvas bags, sat on a petrol tin and looked at the sky. I
could not, conscientiously, chance staying. If it rained here we might not
even be able to get out to the road. If it rained heavily on the road, we
would never get out to the coast that season. Both the Austrian and Pop had
said that, I had to go.
That was settled, so. there was no use to think how much I wanted to
stay. The day's fatigue helped make the decision easy. Everything was being
loaded into the car and they were all gathering up their meat from the
sticks around the ashes of the fire.
'Don't you want to eat, B'wana?' Kamau asked me.
'No,' I said. Then in English, 'Too bloody tired.'
'Eat. You are hungry.'
'Later, in the car.'
M'Cola went by with a load, his big, flat face completely blank again.
It only {came} alive about hunting or some joke. I found a tin cup by the
fire and called to him to bring the whisky, and the blank face cracked at
the eyes and mouth into a smile as he took the flask out of his pocket.
'With water better,' he said.
'You black Chinaman.'
They were all working fast and the Roman's women came over and stood a
little way away watching the carrying and the packing of the car. There were
two of them, good-looking, well built, and shy, but interested. The Roman
was not back yet. I felt very badly to go off like this with no explanation
to him. I liked the Roman very much and had a high regard for him.
I took a drink of the whisky and water and looked at the two pairs of
kudu horns that leaned against the wall of the chicken coop hut. From the
white, cleanly picked skulls the horns rose in slow spirals that spreading
made a turn, another turn, and then curved delicately into those smooth,
ivory-like points. One pair was narrower and taller against the side of the
hut. The other was almost as tall but wider in spread and heavier in beam.
They were the colour of black walnut meats and they were beautiful to see. I
went over and stood the Springfield against the hut between them and the
tips reached past the muzzle of the rifle. As Kamau came back from carrying
a load to the car I told him to bring the camera and then had him stand
beside them while I took a picture. Then he picked them up, each head a
load, and carried them over to the car.
Garrick was talking loudly and in a roostery way to the Roman's women.
As near as I could make out he was offering them the empty petrol boxes in
exchange for a piece of something.
'Come here,' I called to him. He came over still feeling smart.
'Listen,' I told him in English. 'If I get through this safari without
socking you it's going to be a bloody marvel. And if I ever hit you I'll
break your mucking jaw. That's all.'
He did not understand the words but the tone made it clearer than if I
had got something out of the dictionary to tell him. I stood up and motioned
to the women that they could have the petrol tins and the cases. I was
damned if I could not have anything to do with them if I would let Garrick
make any passes.
'Get in the car,' I told him. 'No,' as he started to make delivery of
one of the petrol tins, 'in the car.' He went over to the car.
br /> We were all packed now and ready to go. The horns were curling out the
back of the car, tied on to the loads. I left some money for the Roman and
one of the kudu hides with the boy. Then we got in the car. I got in the
front seat with the Wanderobo-Masai. Behind were M'Cola, Garrick, and the
runner, who was a man from the old man's village by the road. The old man
was crouched on top of the loads at the back, close under the roof.
We waved and started, passing more of the Roman's household, the older
and uglier part, roasting up piles of meat by a log fire beside the trail
that came up from the river through the maize field. We made the crossing
all right, the creek was down and the banks had dried and I looked back at
the field, the Roman's huts, and the stockade where we had camped, and the
blue hills, dark under the heavy sky, and I felt very badly not to have seen
the Roman and explain why we had gone off like this.
Then we were going through the woods, following our trail and trying to
make time to get out before dark. We had trouble, twice, at boggy places and
Garrick seemed to be in a state of great hysteria, ordering people about
when we were cutting brush and shovelling; until I was certain I would have
to hit him. He called for corporal punishment the way a showing-off child
does for a spanking. Kamau and M'Cola were both laughing at him. He was
playing the victorious leader home from the chase now. I thought it was
really a shame that he could not have his ostrich plumes.
Once when we were stuck and I was shovelling and he was stooping over
in a frenzy of advice and command-giving, I brought the handle of the
shovel, with manifest un-intention, up hard into his belly and he sat down,
backwards. I never looked toward him, and M'Cola, Kamau, and I could not
look --at each other for fear we would laugh.
'I am hurt,' he said in astonishment, getting to his feet.
'Never get near a man shovelling,' I said in English. 'Damned
dangerous.'
'I am hurt,' said Garrick holding his belly.
'Rub it,' I told him and rubbed mine to show him how. We all got into
the car again and I began to feel sorry for the poor, bloody, useless,
theatrical bastard, so I told M'Cola I would drink a bottle of beer. He got
one out from under the loads in the back, we were going through the
deer-park-looking country now, opened it, and I drank it slowly. I looked
around and saw Garrick was all right now, letting his mouth run freely
again. He rubbed his belly and seemed to be telling them what a hell of a
man he was and how he had never felt it. I could feel the old man watching
me from up under the roof as I drank the beer.
'Old man,' I said.
'Yes, B'wana.'
'A present,' and I handed what was left in the bottle back. There
wasn't much left but the foam and a very little beer.
'Beer?' asked M'Cola.
'By God, yes,' I said. I was thinking about beer and in my mind was
back to that year in the spring when we walked on the mountain road to the
Bains de Alliez and the beer-drinking contest where we failed to win the
calf and came home that niglit around the mountain with the moonlight on the
fields of narcissi that grew on the meadows, and how we were drunk and
talked about how you would describe that light on that paleness, and the
brown beer sitting at the wood tables under the wistaria vine at Aigle when
we came in across the Rhone Valley from fishing the Stockalper with the
horse chestnut trees in bloom, and Chink and I again discussing writing and
whether you could call them waxen candela-bras. God, what bloody literary
discussions we had; we were literary as hell then just after the war, and
later there was the good beer at Lipp's at midnight after Mascart-Ledoux at
the Cirque de Paris or Routis-Ledoux, or after any other great fight where
you lost your voice and were still too excited to turn in; but beer was