Finally the road began to lift gradually into the hills again, low, blue, wooded hills now, with miles of sparse bush, a little thicker than orchard bush, between, and ahead a pair of high, heavy, timbered hills that were big enough to be mountains. These were on each side of the road and as we climbed in the car where the red road narrowed there was a herd of hundreds of cattle ahead being driven down to the coast by Somali cattle buyers; the principal buyer walked ahead, tall, good-looking in white turban and coast clothing, carrying an umbrella as a symbol of authority.
We worked the car through the herd, finally, and coming out wound our way through pleasant looking bush, up and out into the open between the two mountains and on, half a mile, to a mud and thatched village in the open clearing on a little low plateau beyond the two mountains. Looking back, the mountains looked very fine and with timber up their slopes, outcroppings of limestone and open glades and meadows above the timber.
‘Is this the place?’
‘Yes,’ said Dan. ‘We will find where the camping place is.’
A very old, worn, and faded black man, with a stubble of white beard, a farmer, dressed in a dirty once-white cloth gathered at the shoulder in the manner of a Roman toga, came out from behind one of the mud and wattle huts, and guided us back down the road and off it to the left to a very good camp site. He was a very discouraged-looking old man and after Pop and Dan had talked with him he went off, seeming more discouraged than before, to bring some guides whose names Dan had written on a piece of paper as being recommended by a Dutch hunter who had been here a year ago and who was Dan’s great friend.
We took the seats out of the car to use as a table and benches, and spreading our coats to sit on had a lunch in the deep shade of a big tree, drank some beer, and slept or read while we waited for the lorries to come up. Before the lorries arrived the old man came back with the skinniest, hungriest, most unsuccessful looking of Wanderobos who stood on one leg, scratched the back of his neck and carried a bow and quiver of arrows and a spear. Queried as to whether this was the guide whose name we had, the old man admitted he was not and went off more discouraged than ever, to get the official guides.
When we woke next the old man was standing with the two official and highly-clothed-in-khaki guides and two others, quite naked, from the village. There was a long palaver and the head one of the two khaki-panted guides showed his credentials, a To Whom It May Concern, stating the bearer knew the country well and was a reliable boy and capable tracker. This was signed by so and so, professional hunter. The khaki-clothed guide referred to this professional hunter as B’wana Simba and the name infuriated us all.
‘Some bloke that killed a lion once,’ Pop said.
‘Tell him I am B’wana Fisi, the hyena slaughterer,’ I told Dan. ‘B’wana Fisi chokes them with his naked hands.’
Dan was telling them something else.
‘Ask them if they would like to meet B’wana Hop-Toad, the inventor of the hoptoads and Mama Tziggi, who owns all these locusts.’
Dan ignored this. It seemed they were discussing money. After ascertaining their customary daily wage, Pop told them if either of us killed a kudu the guide would receive fifteen shillings.
‘You mean a pound,’ said the leading guide.
‘They seem to know what they’re up to,’ Pop said. ‘I must say I don’t care for this sportsman in spite of what B’wana Simba says.’
B’wana Simba, by the way, we later found out to be an excellent hunter with a wonderful reputation on the coast.
‘We’ll put them into two lots and you draw from them,’ Pop suggested, ‘one naked one and one with breeches in each lot. I’m all for the naked savage, myself, as a guide.’
On suggesting to the two testimonial-equipped, breeched guides that they select an unclothed partner, we found this would not work out. Loud Mouth, the financial and, now, theatrical, genius who was giving a gesture-by-gesture reproduction of How B’wana Simba Killed His Last Kudu interrupted it long enough to state he would only hunt with Abdullah.
Abdullah, the short, thick-nosed, educated one, was His Tracker. They always hunted together. He himself did not track. He resumed the pantomime of B’wana Simba and another character known as B’wana Doktor and the horned beasts.
‘We’ll take the two savages as one lot and these two Oxonians as the other,’ Pop said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
In the morning Karl and his outfit started for the saltlick and Garrick, Abdullah, M’Cola and I crossed the road, angled behind the village up a dry watercourse and started climbing the mountains in a mist. We headed up a pebbly, boulder-filled, dry stream bed overgrown with vines and brush so that, climbing, you walked, stooping, in a steep tunnel of vines and foliage. I sweated so that I was soaked through my shirt and undergarments and when we came out on the shoulder of the mountain and stood, looking down at the bank of clouds quilting over the entire valley below us, the morning breeze chilled me and I had to put on my raincoat while we glassed the country. I was too wet with sweat to sit down and I signed Garrick to keep on going. We went around one side of the mountain, doubled back on a higher grade and crossed over, out of the sun that was drying my wet shirt and along the top of a series of grassy valleys, stopping to search each one thoroughly with the field glasses.
Finally we came to a sort of amphitheatre, a bowl-like valley of very green grass with a small stream down the middle and timber along the far side and all the lower edge. We sat in the shadow against some rocks, out of any breeze, watching with the glasses as the sun rose and lighted the opposite slopes, seeing two kudu cows and a calf feed out from the timber, moving with the quickly browsing, then head lifted, long-staring vigilance of all browsing animals in a forest.
Animals on a plain can see so far that they have confidence and feed very differently from animals in the woods. We could see the vertical white stripes on their grey flanks and it was very satisfying to watch them and to be high in the mountain that early in the morning. Then, while we watched, there was a boom, like a rockslide. I thought at first it was a boulder falling, but M’Cola whispered.
‘B’wana Kibor! Piga!’ We listened for another shot but we did not hear one and I ‘was’ sure Karl had his kudu. The cows we were watching had heard the shot and stood, listening, then went on feeding. But they fed into the timber. I remembered the old saying of the Indian in camp, ‘One shot, meat.
Two shots, maybe. Three shots, heap s — t,’ and I got out the dictionary to translate it for M’Cola. However it came out seemed to amuse him and he laughed and shook his head. We glassed that valley until the sun came on to us, then hunted around the other side of the mountain and in another fine valley saw the place where the other B’wana, B’wana Doktor he still sounded like, had shot a fine bull kudu, but a Masai walked down the centre of the valley while we were glassing it and when I pretended I was going to shoot him Garrick became very dramatic insisting it was a man, a man, a man!
‘Don’t shoot men?’ I asked him.
‘No! No! No!’ he said putting his hand to his head. I took the gun down with great reluctance, clowning for M’Cola who was grinning, and it very hot now, we walked across a meadow where the grass was knee high and truly swarming with long, rose-coloured, gauze-winged locusts that rose in clouds about us, making a whirring like a mowing machine, and climbing small hills and going down a long steep slope, we made our way back to camp to find the air of the valley drifting with flying locusts and Karl already in camp with Us kudu.
Passing the skinner’s tent he showed me the head which looked, body-less and neck-less, the cape of hide hanging loose, wet and heavy from where the base of the skull had been severed from the vertebral column, a very strange and unfortunate kudu. Only the skin running from the eyes down to the nostrils, smooth grey and delicately marked with white, and the big, graceful ears were beautiful. The eyes were already dusty and there were flies around them and the horns were heavy, coarse, and instead of spiralling high they made a heavy turn and slanted straight out. It was a freak head, heavy and ugly.
Pop was sitting under the dining tent smoking and reading.
‘Where’s Karl?’ I asked him.
‘In his tent, I think. What did you do?’
‘Worked around the hill. Saw a couple of cows.’
‘I’m awfully glad you got him,’ I told Karl at the mouth of his tent.
‘How was it?’
‘We were in the blind and they motioned me to keep my head down and then when I looked up there he was right beside us.
