Then he would call up the others. I felt a son of a bitch to have hit him and not killed him. I did not mind killing anything, any animal, if I killed it cleanly, they all had to die and my interference with the nightly and the seasonal killing that went on all the time was very minute and I had no guilty feeling at all. We ate the meat and kept the hides and horns. But I felt rotten sick over this sable bull. Besides, I wanted him, I wanted him damned badly, I wanted him more than I would admit. Well, we had played our string out with him.
Our chance was at the start when he was down and we missed him. We had lost that. No, our best chance, the only chance a rifleman should ever ask, was when I had a shot and shot at the whole animal instead of calling the shot. It was my own lousy fault. I was a son of a bitch to have gut-shot him. It came from over-confidence in being able to do a thing and then omitting one of the steps in how it is done. Well, we had lost him. I doubted if there was a dog in the world could trail him now in that heat. Still that was the only chance. I got out the dictionary and asked the old man if there were any dogs at the Roman’s place.
‘No,’ said the old man. ‘Hapana.’
We made a very wide circle and I sent the brother and the husband out in another circle. We found nothing, no trace, no tracks, no blood, and I told M’Cola we would start for camp. The Roman’s brother and the husband went up the valley to get the meat of the sable cow we had shot. We were beaten.
M’Cola and I ahead, the other following, we went across the long heat haze of the open country, down to cross the dry watercourse, and up and into the grateful shade of the trail through the woods. As we were going along through the broken sunlight and shadow, the floor of the forest smooth and springy where we cut across to save distance from the trail, we saw, less than a hundred yards away, a herd of sable standing in the timber looking at us. I pulled back the bolt and looked for the best pair of horns.
‘Doumi,’ Garrick whispered. ‘Doumi kubwa sana!’
I looked where he pointed. It was a very big cow sable, dark chestnut, white marks on the face, white belly, heavy built and with a fine curving pair of horns. She was standing broadside to us with her head turned, looking. I looked carefully at the whole lot. They were all cows, evidently the bunch whose bull I had wounded and lost, and they had come over the hill and herded up again together here.
‘We go to camp,’ I said to M’Cola.
As we started forward the sable jumped and ran past us, crossing the trail ahead. At every good pair of cow horns, Garrick said, ‘Bull, B’wana. Big, big bull. Shoot, B’wana. Shoot, oh shoot!’
‘All cows,’ I said to M’Cola when they were past, running in a panic through the sun-splashed timber.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
‘Old man,’ I said. The old man came up.
‘Let the guide carry that,’ I said.
The old man lowered the cow sable head.
‘No,’ said Garrick.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Bloody well yes.’
We went on through the woods toward camp. I was feeling better, much better. All through the day I had never thought once of the kudu. Now we were coming home to where they were waiting.
It seemed much longer coming home although, usually, the return over a new trail is shorter. I was tired all the way into my bones, my head felt cooked, and I was thirstier than I had ever been in my life. But suddenly, walking through the woods, it was much cooler. A cloud had come over the sun.
We came out of the timber and down on to the flat and in sight of the thorn fence. The sun was behind a bank of clouds now and then in a little while the sky was covered completely and the clouds looked heavy and threatening.
I thought perhaps this had been the last clear hot day; unusual heat before the rains. First I thought: if it had only rained, so that the ground would hold a track, we could have stayed with that bull for ever; then, looking at the heavy, woolly clouds that so quickly had covered all the sky, I thought that if we were going to join the outfit, and get the car across that ten-mile stretch of black cotton road on the way to Handeni, we had better start. I pointed to the sky.
‘Bad,’ M’Cola agreed.
‘Go to the camp of B’wana M’Kubwa?’
‘Better.’ Then, vigorously, accepting the decision, ‘N’Dio. N’Dio.’
‘We go,’ I said.
Arrived at the thorn fence and the hut, we broke camp fast. There was a runner there from our last camp who had brought a note, written before P.O.M, and Pop had left, and bringing my mosquito net. There was nothing in the note, only good luck and that they were starting. I drank some water from one of our canvas bags, sat on a petrol tin and looked at the sky. I could not, conscientiously, chance staying. If it rained here we might not even be able to get out to the road. If it rained heavily on the road, we would never get out to the coast that season. Both the Austrian and Pop had said that, I had to go.
That was settled, so. there was no use to think how much I wanted to stay. The day’s fatigue helped make the decision easy. Everything was being loaded into the car and they were all gathering up their meat from the sticks around the ashes of the fire.
‘Don’t you want to eat, B’wana?’ Kamau asked me.
‘No,’ I said. Then in English, ‘Too bloody tired.’
‘Eat. You are hungry.’
‘Later, in the car.’
M’Cola went by with a load, his big, flat face completely blank again.
It only ‘came’ alive about hunting or some joke. I found a tin cup by the fire and called to him to bring the whisky, and the blank face cracked at the eyes and mouth into a smile as he took the flask out of his pocket.
‘With water better,’ he said.
‘You black Chinaman.’
They were all working fast and the Roman’s women came over and stood a little way away watching the carrying and the packing of the car. There were two of them, good-looking, well built, and shy, but interested. The Roman was not back yet. I felt very badly to go off like this with no explanation to him. I liked the Roman very much and had a high regard for him.
I took a drink of the whisky and water and looked at the two pairs of kudu horns that leaned against the wall of the chicken coop hut. From the white, cleanly picked skulls the horns rose in slow spirals that spreading made a turn, another turn, and then curved delicately into those smooth, ivory-like points. One pair was narrower and taller against the side of the hut. The other was almost as tall but wider in spread and heavier in beam.
They were the colour of black walnut meats and they were beautiful to see. I went over and stood the Springfield against the hut between them and the tips reached past the muzzle of the rifle. As Kamau came back from carrying a load to the car I told him to bring the camera and then had him stand beside them while I took a picture. Then he picked them up, each head a load, and carried them over to the car.
Garrick was talking loudly and in a roostery way to the Roman’s women.
As near as I could make out he was offering them the empty petrol boxes in exchange for a piece of something.
‘Come here,’ I called to him. He came over still feeling smart.
‘Listen,’ I told him in English. ‘If I get through this safari without socking you it’s going to be a bloody marvel. And if I ever hit you I’ll break your mucking jaw. That’s all.’
He did not understand the words but the tone made it clearer than if I had got something out of the dictionary to tell him. I stood up and motioned to the women that they could have the petrol tins and the cases. I was damned if I could not have anything to do with them if I would let Garrick make any passes.
‘Get in the car,’ I told him. ‘No,’ as he started to make delivery of one of the petrol tins, ‘in the car.’ He went over to the car.
We were all packed now and ready to go. The horns were curling out the back of the car, tied on to the loads. I left some money for the Roman and one of the kudu hides with the boy. Then we got in the car. I got in the front seat with the Wanderobo-Masai. Behind were M’Cola, Garrick, and the runner, who was a man from the old
