As we crossed the meadow opening where we had first seen the seven and went beyond where the bull had gone out of sight, the grass suddenly was high and over our heads and every one slowed down. There were two washed-out concealed ravines ten or twelve feet deep that ran down to the watercourse and what had looked a smooth grass-filled basin was very broken, tricky country with grass that was from waist-high to well above our heads.
We found blood at once and it led off to the left, across the watercourse and up the hillside on the left toward the head of the valley. I thought that was the first sable but it seemed a wider swing than he had seemed to make when we watched him going from above in the timber. I made a circle to look for the big bull but I could not pick his track from the mass of tracks and in the high grass and the broken terrain it was difficult to figure just where he had gone.
They were all for the blood spoor and it was like trying to make badly-trained bird dogs hunt a dead bird when they are crazy to be off after the rest of the covey.
‘Doumi! Doumi!’ I said. ‘Kubwa Sana! The bull. The big bull.’
‘Yes,’ everybody agreed. ‘Here! Here!’ The blood spoor that crossed the watercourse.
Finally I took that trail thinking we must get them one at a time, and knowing this one was hard hit and the other would keep. Then, too, I might be wrong and this might be the big bull, he might possibly have turned in the high grass and crossed here as we were running down. I had been wrong before, I remembered.
We trailed fast up the hillside, into the timber, the blood was splashed freely; made a turn toward the right, climbing steeply, and at the head of the valley in some large rocks jumped a sable. It went scrambling and bounding off through the rocks. I saw in an instant that it was not hit and knew that, in spite of the back-swung dark horns, it was a cow from the dark chestnut colour. But I saw this just in time to keep from shooting. I had started to pull when I lowered the rifle.
‘Manamouki,’ I said. ‘It’s a cow.’
M’Cola and the two Roman guides agreed. I had very nearly shot. We went on perhaps five yards and another sable jumped. But this one was swaying its head wildly and could not clear the rocks. It was hard hit and I took my time, shot carefully, and broke its neck.
We came up to it, lying in the rocks, a large, deep chestnut-brown animal, almost black, the horns black and curving handsomely back, there was a white patch on the muzzle and back from the eye, there was a white belly; but it was no bull.
M’Cola, still in doubt, verified this and feeling the short, rudimentary teats said ‘Manamouki’, and shook his head sadly.
It was the first big bull that Garrick had pointed out.
‘Bull down there,’ I pointed.
‘Yes,’ said M’Cola.
I thought that we would give him time to get sick, if he were only wounded, and then go down and find him. So I had M’Cola make the cuts for taking off the head skin and we would leave the old man to skin out the head while we went down after the bull.
I drank some water from the canteen. I was thirsty after the run and the climb, and the sun was up now and it was getting hot. Then we went down the opposite side of the valley from that we had just come up trailing the wounded cow, and below, in the tall grass, casting in circles, commenced to hunt for the trail of the bull. We could not find it.
The sable had been running in a bunch as they came out and any individual track was confused or obliterated. We found some blood on the grass stems where I had first hit him, then lost it, then found it again where the other blood spoor turned off. Then the tracks had all split up as they had gone, fan-wise, up the valley and the hills and we could not find it again. Finally I found blood on a grass blade about fifty yards up the valley and I plucked it and held it up. This was a mistake. I should have brought them to it. Already everyone but M’Cola was losing faith in the bull.
He was not there. He had disappeared. He had vanished. Perhaps he had never existed. Who could say he was a real bull? If I had not plucked the grass with the blood on it I might have held them. Growing there with blood on it, it was evidence. Plucked, it meant nothing except to me and to M’Cola. But I could find no more blood and they were all hunting half-heartedly now.
The only possible way was to quarter every foot of the high grass and trace every foot of the gullies. It was very hot now and they were only making a pretence of hunting.
Garrick came up. ‘All cows,’ he said. ‘No bull. Just biggest cow. You killed biggest cow. We found her. Smaller cow get away.’
‘You wind-blown son of a bitch,’ I said, then, using my fingers.
‘Listen. Seven cows. Then fifteen cows and one bull. Bull hit. Here.’
‘All cows,’ said Garrick.
‘One big cow hit. One bull hit.’
I was so sure sounding that they agreed to this and searched for a while but I could see they were losing belief in the bull.
‘If I had one good dog,’ I thought. ‘Just one good dog.’
Then Garrick came up. ‘All cows,’ he said. ‘Very big cows.’
‘You’re a cow,’ I said. ‘Very big cow.’
This got a laugh from the Wanderobo-Masai, who was getting to look a picture of sick misery. The brother half believed in the bull, I could see.
Husband, by now, did not believe in any of us. I didn’t think he even believed in the kudu of the night before. Well, after this shooting, I did not blame him.
M’Cola came up. ‘Hapana,’ he said glumly. Then, ‘B’wana, you shot that bull?’
‘Yes,’ I said. For a minute I began to doubt whether there ever was a bull. Then I saw again his heavy, high-withered blackness and the high rise of his horns before they swept back, him running with the bunch, shoulder higher than them and black as hell and as I saw it, M’Cola saw it again too through the rising mist of the savage’s unbelief in what he can no longer see.
‘Yes,’ M’Cola agreed. ‘I see him. You shoot him.’
I told it again. ‘Seven cows. Shoot biggest. Fifteen cows, one bull. Hit that bull.’
They all believed it now for a moment and circled, searching, but the faith died at once in the heat of the sun and the tall grass blowing.
‘All cows,’ Garrick said. The Wanderobo-Masai nodded, his mouth open. I could feel the comfortable lack of faith coming over me too. It was a damned sight easier not to hunt in that sun in that shadeless pocket and in the sun on that steep hillside. I told M’Cola we would hunt up the valley on both sides, finish skinning out the head, and he and I would come down alone and find the bull. You could not hunt them against that unbelief. I had had no chance to train them; no power to discipline. If there had been no law I would have shot Garrick and they would all have hunted or cleared out. I think they would have hunted. Garrick was not popular. He was simply poison.
M’Cola and I came back down the valley, quartered it like bird dogs, circled and followed and checked track after track. I was hot and very thirsty. The sun was something serious by now.
‘Hapana,’ M’Cola said. We could not find him. Whatever he was, we had lost him.
‘Maybe he was a cow. Maybe it was all goofy,’ I thought, letting the unbelief come in as a comfort. We were going to hunt up the hillside to the right and then we would have checked it all and would take the cow head into camp and see what the Roman had located.
I was dead thirsty and drained the canteen. We would get water in camp.
We started up the hill and I jumped a sable in some brush. I almost loosed off at it before I saw it was a cow. That showed how one could be hidden, I thought. We would have to get the men and go over it all again; and then, from the old man, came a wild shouting.
‘Doumi! Doumi!’ in a high, screaming shout.
‘Where?’ I shouted, running across the hill toward him.
‘There! There!’ he shouted, pointing into the timber on the other side of the head of the valley. ‘There! There! There he goes! There!’
We came on a dead run but the bull was out of sight in the timber on the hillside. The old man said he was huge, he was black, he had great horns, and he came by him ten yards away, hit in two places, in the gut and high up in the rump, hard hit but going fast, crossing the valley, through the boulders and going up the hillside.
I gut-shot him, I thought. Then as he was going away I laid that one on his stern. He lay down and was sick and we missed him.
