We could not follow the tracks the way the wind was blowing so we circled away from the stream and back to the edge of the burned place to get above him and then hunted very carefully against the wind along the stream through very thick bush, but we did not find him. Finally Droopy found where he had gone up the other side and on into the hills. From the tracks it did not seem a particularly large one.
We were a long way from camp, at least four hours as we had come, and much of it up-hill going back, certainly there would be that long climb out of the canyon; we had a wounded buffalo to deal with, and when we came out on the edge of the burned country again, we agreed that we should get P.O.M. and get started. It was still hot, but the sun was on its way down and for a good way we would be on the heavily shaded game trail on the high bank above the stream. When we found P.O.M. she pretended to be indignant at our going off and leaving her alone but she was only teasing us.
We started off, Droop and his spearsman in the lead, walking along the shadow of the trail that was broken by the sun through the leaves. Instead of the cool early morning smell of the forest there was a nasty stink like the mess cats make.
‘What makes the stink?’ I whispered to Pop.
‘Baboons,’ he said.
A whole tribe of them had gone on just ahead of us and their droppings were everywhere. We came up to the place where the rhinos and the buff had come out of the reeds and I located where I thought the buff had been when I shot. M’Cola and Droopy were casting about like hounds and I thought they were at least fifty yards too high up the bank when Droop held up a leaf.
‘He’s got blood,’ Pop said. We went up to them. There was a great quantity of blood, black now on the grass, and the trail was easy to follow.
Droop and M’Cola trailed one on each side, leaving the trail between them, pointing to each blood spot formally with a long stem of grass. I always thought it would be better for one to trail slowly and the other cast ahead but this was the way they trailed, stooped heads, pointing each dried splash with their grass stems and occasionally, when they picked up the tracks after losing them, stooping to pluck a grass blade or a leaf that had the black stain on it.
I followed them with the Springfield, then came Pop, with P.O.M. behind him. Droop carried my big gun and Pop had his. M’Cola had P.O.M.’s Mannlicher slung over his shoulder. None of us spoke and everyone seemed to regard it as a pretty serious business. In some high grass we found blood, at a pretty good height on the grass leaves on both sides of the trail where the buff had gone through the grass. That meant he was shot clean through.
You could not tell the original colour of the blood now, but I had a moment of hoping he might be shot through the lungs. But farther on we came on some droppings in the rocks with blood in them and then for a while he had dropped dung wherever he climbed and all of it was blood-spotted. It looked, now, like a gut shot or one through the paunch. I was more ashamed of it all the time.
‘If he comes don’t worry about Droopy or the others,’ Pop whispered.
‘They’ll get out of his way. Stop him.’
‘Right up the nose,’ I said.
‘Don’t try anything fancy,’ Pop said. The trail climbed steadily, then twice looped back on itself and for a time seemed to wander, without plan, among some rocks. Once it lead down to the stream, crossed a rivulet of it and then came back up on the same bank, grading up through the trees.
‘I think we’ll find him dead,’ I whispered to Pop. That aimless turn had made me see him, slow and hard hit, getting ready to go down.
‘I hope so,’ Pop said.
But the trail went on, where there was little grass now, and trailing was much slower and more difficult. There were no tracks now that I could see, only the probable line he would take, verified by a shiny dark splatter of dried blood on a stone. Several times we lost it entirely and, the three of us making casts, one would find it, point and whisper ‘Damu’, and we would go on again. Finally it led down from a rocky hillside with the last of the sun on it, down into the stream bed where there was a long, wide patch of the highest dead reeds that we had seen. These were higher and thicker even than the slough the buff had come out of in the morning and there were several game trails that went into them.
‘Not good enough to take the little Memsahib in there,’ Pop said.
‘Let her stay here with M’Cola,’ I said.
‘It’s not good enough for the little Memsahib,’ Pop repeated. ‘I don’t know why we let her come.’
‘She can wait here. Droop wants to go on.’
‘Right you are. We’ll have a look.’
‘You wait here with M’Cola,’ I whispered over my shoulder.
We followed Droopy into the thick, tall grass that was five feet above our heads, walking carefully on the game trail, stooping forward, trying to make no noise breathing. I was thinking of the buff the way I had seen them when we had gotten the three that time, how the old bull had come out of the bush, groggy as he was, and I could see the horns, the boss coming far down, the muzzle out, the little eyes, the roll of fat and muscle on his thin-haired, grey, scaly-hided neck, the heavy power and the rage in him, and I admired him and respected him, but he was slow, and all the while we shot I felt that it was fixed and that we had him. This was different, this was no rapid fire, no pouring it on him as he comes groggy into the open, if he comes now I must be quiet inside and put it down his nose as he comes with the head out.
He will have to put the head down to hook, like any bull, and that will uncover the old place the boys wet their knuckles on and I will get one in there and then must go sideways into the grass and he would be Pop’s from then on unless I could keep the rifle when I jumped. I was sure I could get that one in and jump if I could wait and watch his head come down. I knew I could do that and that the shot would kill him but how long would it take? That was the whole thing. How long would it take?
Now, going forward, sure he was in here, I felt the elation, the best elation of all, of certain action to come, action in which you had something to do, in which you can kill and come out of it, doing something you are ignorant about and so not scared, no one to worry about and no responsibility except to perform something you feel sure you can perform, and I was walking softly ahead watching Droopy’s back and remembering to keep the sweat out of my glasses when I heard a noise behind us and turned my head. It was P.O.M. with M’Cola coming on our tracks.
‘For God’s sake,’ Pop said. He was furious.
We got her back out of the grass and up on to the bank and made her realize that she must stay there. She had not understood that she was to stay behind. She had heard me whisper something but thought it was for her to come behind M’Cola.
‘That spooked me,’ I said to Pop.
‘She’s like a little terrier,’ he said. ‘But it’s not good enough.’
We were looking out over that grass.
‘Droop wants to go still,’ I said. ‘I’ll go as far as he will. When he says no that lets us out. After all, I gut-shot the son of a bitch.’
‘Mustn’t do anything silly, though.’
‘I can kill the son of a bitch if I get a shot at him. If he comes he’s got to give me a shot.’
The fright P.O.M. had given us about herself had made me noisy.
‘Come on,’ said Pop. We followed Droopy back in and it got worse and worse, and I do not know about Pop but about half-way I changed to the big gun and kept the safety off and my hand over the trigger guard and I was plenty nervous by the time Droopy stopped and shook his head and whispered ‘Hapana’. It had gotten so you could not see a foot ahead and it was all turns and twists. It was really bad and the sun was only on the hillside now.
We both felt good because
