This was something that he could not laugh about openly but that he felt superior to and wondered at the silliness of it. The Mohammedan religion was very fashionable and all the higher social grades among the boys were Mohammedans. It was something that gave caste, something to believe in, something fashionable and god-giving to suffer a little for each year, something that made you superior to other people, something that gave you more complicated habits of eating, something that I understood and M’Cola did not understand, nor care about, and he watched Charo watch for the sun to set with that blank look on his face that it put on about all things that he was not a part of. Charo was deadly thirsty and truly devout and the sun set very slowly. I looked at it, red over the trees, nudged him and he grinned. M’Cola offered me the water bottle solemnly. I shook my head and Charo grinned again. M’Cola looked blank. Then the sun was down and Charo had the bottle tilted up, his Adam’s apple rising and falling greedily and M’Cola looking at him and then looking away.
In the early days, before we became good friends, he did not trust me at all. When anything came up he went into this blankness. I liked Charo much better then. We understood each other on the question of religion and Charo admired my shooting and always shook hands and smiled when we had killed anything particularly good. This was flattering and pleasing. M’Cola looked on all this early shooting as a series of lucky accidents. We were supposed to shoot. We had not yet shot anything that amounted to anything and he was not really my gun bearer. He was Mr. Jackson Phillip’s gun bearer and he had been loaned to me. I meant nothing to him. He did not like me nor dislike me. He was politely contemptuous of Karl.
Who he liked was Mama.
The evening we killed the first lion it was dark when we came in sight of camp. The killing of the lion had been confused and unsatisfactory. It was agreed beforehand that P.O.M. should have the first shot but since it was the first lion any of us had ever shot at, and it was very late in the day, really too late to take the lion on, once he was hit we were to make a dogfight of it and anyone was free to get him. This was a good plan as it was nearly sundown and if the lion got into cover, wounded, it would be too dark to do anything about it without a mess. I remember seeing the lion looking yellow and heavy-headed and enormous against a scrubby looking tree in a patch of orchard bush and P.O.M. kneeling to shoot and wanting to tell her to sit down and make sure of him.
Then there was the short-barrelled explosion of the Mannlicher and the lion was going to the left on a run, a strange, heavy-shouldered, foot-swinging, cat run. I hit him with the Springfield and he went down and spun over and I shot again, too quickly, and threw a cloud of dirt over him. But there he was, stretched out, on his belly, and, with the sun just over the top of the trees, and the grass very green, we walked up on him like a posse, or a gang of Black and Tans, guns ready and cocked, not knowing whether he was stunned or dead. When we were close M’Cola threw a stone at him. It hit him in the flank and from the way it hit you could tell he was a dead animal. I was sure P.O.M. had hit him but there was only one bullet hole, well back, just below the spine and ranging forward to come to the surface under the skin of the chest. You could feel the bullet under the skin and M’Cola made a slit and cut it out.
It was a 220-grain solid bullet from the Springfield and it had raked him, going through lungs and heart.
I was so surprised by the way he had rolled over dead from the shot after we had been prepared for a charge, for heroics, and for drama, that I felt more let down than pleased. It was our first lion and we were very ignorant and this was not what we had paid to see. Charo and M’Cola both shook P.O.M.’s hand and then Charo came over and shook hands with me.
‘Good shot, B’wana,’ he said in Swahili. »Piga m’uzuri.»
‘Did you shoot, Karl?’ I asked.
‘No. I was just going to when you shot.’
‘You didn’t shoot him, Pop?’
‘No. You’d have heard it.’ He opened the breech and took out the two big 450 No. 2’s.
‘I’m sure I missed him,’ P.O.M. said.
‘I was sure you hit him.. I still think you hit him,’ I said.
‘Mama hit,’ M’Cola said.
‘Where?’ Charo asked.
‘Hit,’ said M’Cola. ‘Hit.’
‘You rolled him over,’ Pop said to me. ‘God, he went over like a rabbit.’
‘I couldn’t believe it.’
‘Mama ‘piga’,’ M’Cola said. ‘ ‘Piga Simba’.’
As we saw the camp fire in the dark ahead of us, coming in that night, M’Cola suddenly commenced to shout a stream of high-pitched, rapid, singing words in Wakamba ending in the word »Simb’a»’. Someone at the camp shouted back one word.
‘Mama!’ M’Cola shouted. Then another long stream. Then ‘Mama! Mama!’
Through the dark came all the porters, the cook, the skinner, the boys, and the headman.
‘Mama!’ M’Cola shouted. ‘Mama ‘piga Simba.»
The boys came dancing, crowing, and beating time and chanting something from down in their chests that started like a cough and sounded like »Hey la Mama! Hay la Mama! Hey la Mama!»
The rolling-eyed skinner picked P.O.M. up, the big cook and the boys held her, and the others pressing forward to lift and if not to lift to touch and hold, they danced and sang through the dark around the fire and to our tent.
»Hey la Mama! huh! huh! huh! Hay la Mama! huh! huh! huh!» they sang the lion dance with that deep, lion asthmatic cough in it. Then at the tent they put her down and everyone, very shyly, shook hands, the boys saying
»m’uzuri, Memsahib,’ and M’Cola and the porters all saying » m’uzuri’, Mama’ with much feeling in the accenting of the word ‘Mama’.
Afterwards in the chairs in front of the fire, sitting with the drinks, Pop said, ‘You shot it. M’Cola would kill anyone who said you didn’t.’
‘You know, I feel as though I did shoot it,’ P.O.M. said. ‘I don’t believe I’d be able to stand it if I really had shot it. I’d be too proud. Isn’t triumph marvellous?’
‘Good old Mama,’ Karl said.
‘I believe you did shoot him,’ I said.
‘Oh, let’s not go into that,’ P.O.M. said. ‘I feel so wonderful about just being supposed to have killed him. You know people never used to carry me on their shoulders much at home.’
‘No one knows how to behave in America,’ Pop said. ‘Most uncivilized.’
‘We’ll carry you in Key West,’ Karl said. ‘Poor old Mama.’
‘Let’s not talk about it,’ P.O.M. said. ‘I like it too much. Shouldn’t I maybe distribute largess?’
‘They didn’t do it for that,’ Pop said. ‘But it is all right to give something to celebrate.’
‘Oh, I want to give them all a great deal of money,’ P.O.M. said.
‘Isn’t triumph simply marvellous?’
‘Good old Mama,’ I said. ‘You killed him.’
‘No, I didn’t. Don’t lie to me. Just let me enjoy my triumph.’
Anyway M’Cola did not trust me for a long time. Until P.O.M.’s licence ran out, she was his favourite and we were simply a lot of people who interfered and kept Mama from shooting things. Once her licence was out and she was no longer shooting, she dropped back into non-combatant status with him and as we began to hunt kudu and Pop stayed in camp and sent us out alone with the trackers, Karl with Charo and M’Cola and I together, M’Cola dropped Pop visibly in his estimation. It was only temporary of course. He was Pop’s man and I believe his working estimations were only from day to day and required an unbroken series of events to have any meaning. But something had happened between us.
PART II PURSUIT REMEMBERED
CHAPTER ONE
It dated back to the time of Droopy, after I had come back from being ill in Nairobi and we had gone on a foot safari to hunt rhino in the forest.
Droopy was a real savage with lids to his eyes that nearly covered them, handsome, with a great deal of style, a fine hunter and a beautiful tracker.
He was about thirty-five, I should think, and wore only a piece of cloth knotted over one shoulder, and a fez that some hunter had given him. He always carried a spear. M’Cola wore an old U. S. Army khaki tunic, complete with buttons, that had originally been brought out for Droopy, who had been away somewhere and had missed getting it. Twice Pop had brought it out for Droopy and finally M’Cola had said, ‘Give it to me’.
Pop had let him have it and M’Cola had worn it ever since. It, a pair of shorts, his fuzzy wool curler’s cap, and a knitted army sweater he wore when washing the tunic, were the only garments I ever saw on the old man until he took my bird-shooting coat. For shoes he used sandals cut from old motor-car
