I sat down and waited for him to stop and when he did, obviously anchored, I sat there, using the sling, and shot for his neck, slowly and carefully, missing him eight times straight in a mounting, stubborn rage, not making a correction but shooting exactly for the same place in the same way each time, the gun bearers all laughing, the truck that had come up with the outfit holding more amused niggers, P.O.M. and Pop saying nothing, me sitting there cold, crazy-stubborn-furious, determined to break his neck rather than walk up and perhaps start him off over that heat-hazy, baking, noontime plain. Nobody said anything. I reached up my hand to M’Cola for more cartridges, shot again, carefully, and missed, and on the tenth shot broke his damned neck. I turned away without looking toward him.
‘Poor Papa,’ P.O.M. said.
‘It’s the light and the wind,’ Pop said. We had not known each other very well then. ‘They were all hitting the same place. I could see them throw the dust.’
‘I was a bloody, stubborn fool,’ I said.
Anyway, I could shoot now. So far, and aided by flukes, my luck was running now.
We came on into sight of camp and shouted. No one came out. Finally Karl came out of his tent. He went back as soon as he saw us, then came out again.
‘Hey, Karl,’ I yelled. He waved and went back in the tent again. Then came toward us. He was shaky with excitement and I saw he had been washing blood off his hands.
‘What is it?’
‘Rhino,’ he said.
‘Did you get in trouble with him?’
‘No. We killed him.’
‘Fine. Where is he?’
‘Over there behind that tree.’
We went over. There was the newly severed head of a rhino that was a rhino. He was twice the size of the one I had killed. The little eyes were shut and a fresh drop of blood stood in the corner of one like a tear. The head bulked enormous and the horn swept up and back in a fine curve. The hide was an inch thick where it hung in a cape behind the head and was as white where it was cut as freshly sliced coco-nut.
‘What is he? About thirty inches?’
‘Hell, no,’ said Pop. ‘Not thirty inches.’
‘But he iss a very fine one, Mr. Jackson,’ Dan said.
‘Yes. He’s a fine one,’ Pop said.
‘Where did you get him?’
‘Just outside of camp.’
‘He wass standing in some bush. We heard him grunt.’
‘We thought he was a buffalo,’ Karl said.
‘He iss a very fine one,’ Dan repeated.
‘I’m damned glad you got him,’ I said.
There we were, the three of us, wanting to congratulate, waiting to be good sports about this rhino whose smaller horn was longer than our big one, this huge, tear-eyed marvel of a rhino, this dead, head-severed dream rhino, and instead we all spoke like people who were about to become seasick on a boat, or people who had suffered some heavy financial loss. We were ashamed and could do nothing about it. I wanted to say something pleasant and hearty, instead, ‘How many times did you shoot him?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. We didn’t count. Five or six, I guess.’
‘Five, I think,’ said Dan.
Poor Karl, faced by these three sad-faced congratulators, was beginning to feel his pleasure in the rhino drained away from him.
‘We got one too,’ said P.O.M.
‘That’s fine,’ said Karl. ‘Is he bigger than this one?’
‘Hell, no. He’s a lousy runt.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Karl said. He meant it, simply and truly.
‘What the hell have you got to be sorry about with a rhino like that?
He’s a beauty. Let me get the camera and take some pictures of him.’
I went after the camera. P.O.M. took me by the arm and walked close beside me.
‘Papa, please try to act like a human being,’ she said. ‘Poor Karl. You’re making him feel dreadfully.’
‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I’m trying not to act that way.’
There was Pop. He shook his head. ‘I never felt more of a four-letter man,’ he said. ‘But it was like a kick in the stomach. I’m really delighted, of course.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘I’d rather have him beat me. You know that. Truly. But why couldn’t he just get a good one, two or three inches longer? Why did he have to get one that makes mine ridiculous? It just makes ours silly.’
‘You can always remember that shot.’
‘To hell with that shot. That bloody fluke. God, what a beautiful rhino.’
‘Come on, let’s pull ourselves together and try to act like white people with him.’
‘We were ‘awful,” P.O.M. said.
‘I know it,’ I said. ‘And all the time I was trying to be jolly. You ‘know’ I’m delighted he has it.’
‘You were certainly jolly. Both of you,’ P.O.M. said.
‘But did you see M’Cola,’ Pop asked. M’Cola had looked at the rhino dismally, shaken his head and walked away.
‘He’s a wonderful rhino,’ P.O.M. said. ‘We must act decently and make Karl feel good.’
But it was too late. We could not make Karl feel good and for a long time we could not feel good ourselves. The porters came into camp with the loads and we could see them all, and all of our outfit, go over to where the rhino head lay in the shade. They were all very quiet. Only the skinner was delighted to see such a rhino head in camp.
‘M’uzuri sana,’ he said to me. And measured the horn with shiftings of his widespread hand. ‘Kubwa sana!’
‘N’Dio. M’uzuri sana,’ I agreed.
‘B’wana Kabor shoot him?’
‘Yes.’
‘M’uzuri sana.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘M’uzuri sana.’
The skinner was the only gent in the outfit. We had tried, in all the shoot, never to be competitive. Karl and I had each tried to give the other the better chance on everything that came up. I was, truly, very fond of him and he was entirely unselfish and altogether self-sacrificing. I knew I could outshoot him and I could always outwalk him and, steadily, he got trophies that made mine dwarfs in comparison. He had done some of the worst shooting at game I had ever seen and I had shot badly twice on the trip, at that grant and at a bustard once on the plain, still he beat me on all the tangible things we had to show.
For a while we had joked about it and I knew everything would even up. But it didn’t even up. Now, on this rhino hunt, I had taken the first crack at the country. We had sent him after meat while we had gone into a new country. We had not treated him badly, but we had not treated him too well, and still he had beaten me.
Not only beaten, beaten was all right. He had made my rhino look so small that I could never keep him in the same small town where we lived. He had wiped him out. I had the shot I had made on him to remember and nothing could take that away except that it was so bloody marvellous I knew I would wonder, sooner or later, if it was not really a fluke in spite of my unholy self-confidence. Old Karl had put it on us all right with that rhino. He was in his tent now, writing a letter.
Under the dining tent fly Pop and I talked over what we had better do.
‘He’s got his rhino anyway,’ Pop said. ‘That saves us time. Now you can’t stand on that one.’
‘No.’
‘But this country is washed out. Something wrong with it. Droopy claims to know a good country about three hours from here in the lorries and another hour or so on with the porters. We can head for there this afternoon with a light outfit, send the lorries back, and Karl and Dan can move on down to M’uto Umbu and he can get his oryx.’
‘Fine.’
‘He has a chance to get a leopard on that rhino carcass this evening, too, or in the morning. Dan said they heard one. We’ll try to get a rhino out of this country of Droopy’s and then you join up with them and go on for kudu. We want to leave plenty of time for them. ‘
‘Fine.’
‘Even if you don’t get an oryx. You’ll pick one up somewhere.’
‘Even if I don’t get one at all, it’s all right. We’ll get one another time. I want a kudu, though. ‘
‘You’ll get one. You’re sure to.’
‘I’d rather get one, a good one, than all the rest. I don’t give a damn about these rhino outside of the fun of hunting them. But I’d like to get one that wouldn’t look silly beside that dream rhino of his.’
‘Absolutely.’
So we told Karl and he said: ‘Whatever you say. Sure. I hope you get one twice as big. ‘ He really meant it. He was feeling better now and so were we all.
CHAPTER THREE
Droopy’s country, when we reached it that evening, after a hot ride through red-soiled, bush-scrubby hills, looked awful. It was at the edge of a belt where all the trees had been girdled to kill the tsetse flies. And across from camp was a dusty, dirty native village. The soil was red and eroded and seemed to be blowing away, and camp was pitched in a high wind under the sketchy shade of some dead trees on a hillside overlooking a little stream and the mud village beyond. Before dark we followed Droopy and two local guides up past the village and in a long climb to the top of a rock-strewn ridge that overlooked a deep valley that
