M’Cola’s water bottle made a noise against the cartridges in his pocket and I stopped and had him pass it to the Wanderobo-Masai. It seemed too many people to be hunting with, but they all moved quietly as snakes, and I was over-confident anyway. I was sure the sable could not see us in the forest, nor wind us.
Finally I was certain we were above them and that they must be ahead of us, and past where the sun was shining in a thinning of the forest, and below us, under the edge of the hill, I checked on the aperture in the sight being clean, cleaned my glasses and wiped the sweat from my forehead remembering to put the used handkerchief in my left pocket so I would not fog my glasses wiping them with it again.
M’Cola and I and the husband started to work our way to the edge of the timber; finally crawling almost to the edge of the ridge. There were still some trees between us and the open meadow below and we were behind a small bush and a fallen tree when, raising our heads, we could see them in the grassy open, about three hundred yards away, showing big and very dark in the shadow. Between us was scattered open timber full of sunlight and the openness of the gulch. As we watched two got to their feet and seemed to be standing looking at us.
The shot was possible but it was too long to be certain and as I lay, watching, I felt somebody touch me on the arm and Garrick, who had crawled up, whispered throatily, ‘Piga! Piga, B’wana! Doumi! Doumi!’ saying to shoot, that it was a bull. I glanced back and there were the whole outfit on their bellies or hands and knees, the Wanderobo-Masai shaking like a bird dog. I was furious and motioned them all down.
So that was a bull, eh, well there was a much bigger bull that M’Cola and I had seen lying down. The two sable were watching us and I dropped my head, I thought they might be getting a flash from my glasses. When I looked up again, very slowly, I shaded my eyes with my hand. The two sable had stopped looking and were feeding. But one looked up again nervously and I saw the dark, heavy-built antelope with scimitar-like horns swung back staring at us.
I had never seen a sable. I knew nothing about them, neither whether their eyesight was keen, like a ram who sees you at whatever distance you see him, or like a bull elk who cannot see you at two hundred yards unless you move. I was not sure of their size either, but I judged the range to be all of three hundred yards. I knew I could hit one if I shot from a sitting position or prone, but I could not say where I would hit him.
Then Garrick again, ‘Piga, B’wana, Piga!’ I turned on him as though to slug him in the mouth. It would have been a great comfort to do it. I truly was not nervous when I first saw the sable, but Garrick was making me nervous.
‘Far?’ I whispered to M’Cola who had crawled up and was lying by me.
‘Yes.’
‘Shoot?’
‘No. Glasses.’
We both watched, using the glasses guardedly. I could only see four.
There had been seven. If that was a bull that Garrick pointed out, then they were all bulls. They all looked the same colour in the shadow. Their horns all looked big to me. I knew that with mountain sheep the rams all kept together in bunches until late in the winter when they went with the ewes; that in the late summer you found bull elk in bunches too, before the rutting season, and that later they herded up together again. We had seen as many as twenty impalla rams together upon the Serenea.
All right, then, they could all be bulls, but I wanted a good one, the best one, and I tried to remember having read something about them, but all I could remember was a silly story of some man seeing the same bull every morning in the same place and never getting up on him. All I could remember was the wonderful pair of horns we had seen in the Game Warden’s office in Arusha. And here were sable now, and I must play it right and get the best one. It never occurred to me that Garrick had never seen a sable and that he knew no more about them than M’Cola or I.
‘Too far,’ I said to M’Cola.
‘Yes.’
‘Come on,’ I said, then waved the others down, and we started crawling up to reach the edge of the hill.
Finally we lay behind a tree and I looked around it. Now we could see their horns clearly with the glasses and could see the other three. One, lying down, was certainly much the biggest and the horns, as I caught them in silhouette, seemed to curve much higher and farther back. I was studying them, too excited to be happy as I watched them, when I heard M’Cola whisper ‘B’wana.’
I lowered the glasses and looked and there was Garrick, taking no advantage of the cover, crawling on his hands and knees out to join us. I put my hand out, palm toward him, and waved him down but he paid no attention and came crawling on, as conspicuous as a man walking down a city street on hands and knees. I saw one sable looking toward us, toward him, rather. Then three more got to their feet. Then the big one got up and stood broadside with head turned toward us as Garrick came up whispering, ‘Piga, B’wana! Piga! Doumi! Doumi! Kubwa Sana.’
There was no choice now. They were definitely spooked and I lay out flat on my belly, put my arm through the sling, got my elbows settled and my right toe pushing the ground and squeezed off on the centre of the bull’s shoulder. But at the roar I knew it was bad. I was over him. They all jumped and stood looking, not knowing where the noise came from. I shot again at the bull and threw dirt all over him and they were off. I was on my feet and hit him as he ran and he was down. Then he was up and I hit him again and he took it and was in the bunch. They passed him and I shot and was behind him.
Then I hit him again and he was trailing slowly and I knew I had him. M’Cola was handing me cartridges and I was shoving shells down into the damned-to-hell, lousy, staggered, Springfield magazine watching the sable making heavy weather of it crossing the watercourse. We had him all right. I could see he was very sick. The others were trailing up into the timber. In the sunlight on the other side they looked much lighter and the one I’d shot looked lighter, too.
They looked a dark chestnut and the one I had shot was almost black. But he was not black and I felt there was something wrong. I shoved the last shell in and Garrick was trying to grab my hand to congratulate me when, below us across the open space where the gully that we could not see opened on to the head of the valley, sable started to pass at a running stampede.
‘Good God,’ I thought. They all looked like the one I had shot and I was trying to pick a big one. They all looked about the same and they were crowding running and then came the bull. Even in the shadow he was a dead black and shiny as he hit the sun, and his horns swept up high, then back, huge and dark, in two great curves nearly touching the middle of his back.
He was a bull all right. God, what a bull.
‘Doumi,’ said M’Cola in my ear. ‘Doumi!’
I hit him and at the roar he was down. I saw him up, the others passing, spreading out, then bunching. I missed him. Then I saw him going almost straight away up the valley in the tall grass and I hit him again and he went out of sight. The sable now were going up the hill at the head of the valley, up the hill at our right, up the hill in the timber across the valley, spread out and travelling fast. Now that I had seen a bull I knew they all were cows including the first one I had shot. The bull never showed and I was absolutely sure that we would find him where I had seen him go down in the long grass.
The outfit were all up and I shook off handshaking and thumb pulling before we started down through the trees and over the edge of the gully and to the meadow on a dead run. My eyes, my mind, and all inside of me were full of the blackness of that sable bull and the sweep of those horns and I was thanking God I had the rifle reloaded before he came out. But it was excited shooting, all of it, and I was not proud of it. I had gotten excited and shot at the whole animal instead of the right place and I was ashamed, but the outfit now were drunk excited. I would have walked but you could not hold them,
