‘I can smell them close as hell,’ I whispered to Pop. ‘No kidding. Really.’
‘I believe you,’ Pop said. ‘Should we get up here on to the bank and skirt this bit? We’ll be above it.’
‘Good.’ Then, when we were up, I said. ‘That tall stun’ had me spooked. I wouldn’t like to hunt in that.’
‘How’d you like to hunt elephant in that?’ Pop whispered.
‘I wouldn’t do it.’
‘Do you really hunt elephant in grass like that?’ P.O.M. asked.
‘Yes,’ Pop said. ‘Get up on somebody’s shoulders to shoot.’
Better men than I am do it, I thought. I wouldn’t do it.
We went along the grassy right bank, on a sort of shelf, now in the open, skirting a slough of high dry reeds. Beyond on the opposite bank were the heavy trees and above them the steep bank of the canyon. You could not see the stream. Above us, on the right, were the hills, wooded in patches of orchard bush. Ahead, at the end of the slough of reeds the banks narrowed and the branches of the big trees almost covered the stream. Suddenly Droopy grabbed me and we both crouched down. He put the big gun in my hand and took the Springfield. He pointed and around a curve in the bank I saw the head of a rhino with a long, wonderful-looking horn.
The head was swaying and I could see the ears forward and twitching, and see the little pig eyes. I slipped the safety catch and motioned Droopy down. Then I heard M’Cola saying, ‘Toto! Toto!’ and he grabbed my arm. Droopy was whispering,
‘Manamouki! Manamouki! Manamouki!’ very fast and he and M’Cola were frantic that I should not shoot. It was a cow rhino with a calf, and as I lowered the gun she gave a snort, crashed in the reeds, and was gone. I never saw the calf. We could see the reeds swaying where the two of them were moving and then it was all quiet.
‘Damn shame,’ Pop whispered. ‘She had a beautiful horn.’
‘I was all set to bust her,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t tell she was a cow.’
‘M’Cola saw the calf.’
M’Cola was whispering to Pop and nodding his head emphatically.
‘He says there’s another rhino in there,’ Pop said. ‘That he heard him snort.’
‘Let’s get higher, where we can see them if they break, and throw something in,’ I said.
‘Good idea,’ Pop agreed. ‘Maybe the bull’s there.’
We went a little higher up the bank where we could look out over the lake of high reeds and, with Pop holding his big gun ready and I with the safety off mine, M’Cola threw a club into the reeds where he had heard the snort. There was a wooshing snort and no movement, not a stir in the reeds.
Then there was a crashing farther away and we could see the reeds swaying with the rush of something through them toward the opposite bank, but could not see what was making the movement. Then I saw the black back, the wide-swept, point-lifted horns and then the quick-moving, climbing rush of a buffalo up the other bank. He went up, his neck up and out, his head horn-heavy, his withers rounded like a fighting bull, in fast strong-legged climb. I was holding on the point where his neck joined his shoulder when Pop stopped me.
‘He’s not a big one,’ he said softly. ‘I wouldn’t take him unless you want him for meat.’
He looked big to nie and now he stood, his head up, broadside, his head swung toward us.
‘I’ve got three more on the licence and we’re leaving their country,’ I said.
‘It’s awfully good meat,’ Pop whispered. ‘Go ahead then. Bust him. But be ready for the rhino after you shoot.’
I sat down, the big gun feeling heavy and unfamiliar, held on the buff’s shoulder, squeezed off and flinched without firing. Instead of the sweet clean pull of the Springfield with the smooth, unhesitant release at the end, this trigger came to what, in a squeeze, seemed metal stuck against metal. It was like when you shoot in a nightmare. I couldn’t squeeze it and I corrected from my flinch, held my breath, and pulled the trigger.
It pulled off with a jerk and the big gun made a rocking explosion out of which I came, seeing the buffalo still on his feet, and going out of sight to the left in a climbing run, to let off the second barrel and throw a burst of rock dust and dirt over his hind quarters. He was out of shot before I could reload the double-barrelled 470 and we had all heard the snorting and the crashing of another rhino that had gone out of the lower end of the reeds and on under the heavy trees on our side without showing more than a glimpse of his bulk in the reeds.
‘It was the bull,’ Pop said. ‘He’s gone down the stream.’
‘N’Dio. Doumi! Doumi!’ Droopy insisted it was a bull. ‘I hit the damned buff,’ I said. ‘God knows where. To hell with those heavy guns. The trigger pull put me off.’
‘You’d have killed him with the Springfield,’ Pop said.
‘I’d know where I hit him anyway. I thought with the four-seven I’d kill him or miss him,’ I said. ‘Instead, now we’ve got him wounded.’
‘He’ll keep,’ Pop said. ‘We want to give him plenty of time.’
‘I’m afraid I gut-shot him.’
‘You can’t tell. Going off fast like that he might be dead in a hundred yards.’
‘The hell with that four-seventy,’ I said. ‘I can’t shoot it. The trigger’s like the last turn of the key opening a sardine can.’
‘Come on,’ Pop said. ‘We’ve got God knows how many rhino scattered about here.’
‘What about the buff?’
‘Plenty of time for him later. We must let him stiffen up. Let him get sick.’
‘Suppose we’d been down there with all that stuff coming out.’
‘Yes,’ said Pop.
All this in whispers. I looked at P.O.M. She was like someone enjoying a good musical show.
‘Did you see where it hit him?’
‘I couldn’t tell?’ she whispered. ‘Do you suppose there are any more in there?’
‘Thousands,’ I said. ‘What do we do, Pop?’
‘That bull may be just around the bend,’ Pop said. ‘Come on.’
We went along the bank, our nerves cocked, and as we came to the narrow end of the reeds there was another rush of something heavy through the tall stalks. I had the gun up waiting for whatever it was to show. But there was only the waving of the reeds. M’Cola signalled with his hand not to shoot.
‘The calf,’ Pop said. ‘Must have been two of them. Where’s the bloody bull?’
‘How the hell do you see them?’
‘Tell by the size.’
Then we were standing looking down into the stream bed, into the shadows under the branches of the big trees, and off ahead down the stream when M’Cola pointed up the hill on our right.
‘Faro,’ he whispered and reached me the glasses.
There on the hillside, head-on, wide, black, looking straight towards us, ears twitching and head lifted, swaying as the nose searched for the wind, was another rhino. He looked huge in the glasses. Pop was studying him with his binoculars.
‘He’s no better than what you have,’ he said softly.
‘I can bust him right in the sticking place,’ I whispered.
‘You have only one more,’ Pop whispered. ‘You want a good one.’
I offered the glasses to P.O.M.
‘I can see him without,’ she said. ‘He’s huge.’
‘He may charge,’ Pop said. ‘Then you’ll have to take him.’
Then, as we watched, another rhino came into sight from behind a wide feathery-topped tree. He was quite a bit smaller.
‘By God, it’s a calf,’ Pop said. ‘That one’s a cow. Good thing you didn’t shoot her. She bloody well ‘may’ charge too.’
‘Is it the same cow?’ I whispered.
‘No. That other one had a hell of a horn.’
We all had the nervous exhilaration, like a laughing drunk, that a sudden over-abundance, idiotic abundance of game makes. It is a feeling that can come from any sort of game or fish that is ordinarily rare and that, suddenly, you find in a ridiculously unbelievable abundance.
‘Look at her. She knows there’s something wrong. But she can’t see us or smell us.’
‘She heard the shots.’
‘She knows we’re here. But she can’t make it out.’
The rhino looked so huge, so ridiculous, and so fine to see, and I sighted on her chest.
‘It’s a nice shot.’
‘Perfect,’ Pop said.
‘What are we going to do?’ P.O.M. said. She was practical.
‘We’ll work around her,’ Pop said.
‘If we keep low I don’t believe our scent will carry up there once we’re past.’
‘You can’t fail,’ Pop said. ‘We don’t want her to charge.’
She did not charge, but dropped her head, finally, and worked up the hill followed by the nearly full-grown calf.
‘Now,’ said Pop, ‘we’ll let Droop go ahead and see if he can find the bull’s tracks. We might as well sit down.’
We sat in the shade and Droopy went up one side of the stream and the local guide the other. They came back and said the bull had gone on down.
‘Did any one ever see what son of horn he had?’ I asked.
‘Droop said he was good.’
M’Cola had gone up the hill a little way. Now he crouched and beckoned.
‘Nyati,’
