‘We’ll have just one,’ I said, ‘and then we’ll ‘bathi.»
»Bathi’, B’wana M’Kumba,’ Molo said. P.O.M. came toward the fire wearing her blue dressing-gown and mosquito boots.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You can have another when you come out. There’s nice, warm, muddy water.’
‘They bully us,’ Pop said.
‘Do you remember the time we were sheep hunting and your hat blew off and nearly fell on to the ram?’ I asked her, the whisky racing my mind back to Wyoming.
‘Go take your ‘bathi,» P.O.M. said. ‘I’m going to have a gimlet.’
In the morning we were dressed before daylight, ate breakfast, and were hunting the forest edge and the sunken valleys where Droop had seen the buffalo before the sun was up. But they were not there. It was a long hunt and we came back to camp and decided to send the lorries for porters and move with a foot safari to where there was supposed to be water in a stream that came down out of the mountain beyond where we had seen the rhinos the night before. Being camped there we could hunt a new country along the forest edge and we would be much closer to the mountain.
The trucks were to bring in Karl from his kudu camp where he seemed to be getting disgusted, or discouraged, or both, and he could go down to the Rift Valley the next day and kill some meat and try for an oryx. If we found good rhino we would send for him. We did not want to fire any shots where we were going except at rhino in order not to scare them, and we needed meat.
The rhino seemed very shy and I knew from Wyoming how the shy game will all shift out of a small country, a country being an area, a valley or range of hills, a man can hunt in, after a shot or two. We planned this all out, Pop consulting with Droopy, and then sent the lorries off with Dan to recruit porters.
Late in the afternoon they were back with Karl, his outfit, and forty M’Bulus, good-looking savages with a pompous headman who wore the only pair of shorts among them. Karl was thin now, his skin sallow, his eyes very tired looking and he seemed a little desperate. He had been eight days in the kudu camp in the hills, hunting hard, with no one with him who spoke any English, and they had only seen two cows and jumped a bull out of range. The guides claimed they had seen another bull but Karl had thought it was kongoni, or that they said it was a kongoni, and had not shot. He was bitter about this and it was not a happy outfit.
‘I never saw his horns. I don’t believe it was a bull,’ he said. Kudu hunting was a touchy subject with him now and we let it alone.
‘He’ll get an oryx down there and he’ll feel better,’ Pop said. ‘It’s gotten on his nerves a little.’
Karl agreed to the plan for us to move ahead into the new country, and for him to go down for meat.
‘Whatever you say,’ he said. ‘Absolutely whatever you say.’
‘It will give him some shooting,’ Pop said. ‘Then he’ll feel better.’
‘We’ll get one. Then you get one. Whoever gets his first can go on down after oryx. You’ll probably get an oryx to-morrow anyway when you’re hunting meat.’
‘Whatever you say,’ Karl said. His mind was bitterly revolving eight blank days of hill climbing in the heat, out before daybreak, back at dark, hunting an animal whose Swahili name he could not then remember, with trackers in whom he had no confidence, coming back to eat alone, no one to whom he could talk, his wife nine thousand miles and three months away, and how was his dog and how was his job, and god-damn it where were they and what if he missed one when he got a shot, he wouldn’t, you never missed when it was really important, he was sure of that, that was one of the tenets of his faith, but what if he got excited and missed, and why didn’t he get any letters, what did the guide say kongoni for that time, they did, he knew they did, but he said nothing of all that, only, ‘Whatever you say’, a little desperately.
‘Come on, cheer up, you bastard,’ I said.
‘I’m cheerful. What’s the matter with you?’
‘Have a drink.’
‘I don’t want a drink. I want a kudu.’
Later Pop said, ‘I thought he’d do well off by himself with no one to hurry him or rattle him. He’ll be all right. He’s a good lad.’
‘He wants someone to tell him exactly what to do and still leave him alone and not rattle him,’ I said. ‘It’s hell for him to shoot in front of everybody. He’s not a damned show-off like me.’
‘He made a damned fine shot at that leopard,’ Pop said.
‘Two of them,’ I said. ‘The second was as good as the first. Hell, he can shoot. On the range he’ll shoot the pants off of any of us. But he worries about it and I rattle him trying to get him to speed up.’
‘You’re a little hard on him sometimes,’ Pop said.
‘Hell, he knows me. He knows what I think of him. He doesn’t mind.’
‘I still think he’ll find himself off by himself,’ Pop said. ‘It’s just a question of confidence. He’s really a good shot.’
‘He’s got the best buff, the best waterbuck, and the best lion, now,’ I said. ‘He’s got nothing to worry about.’
‘The Memsahib has the best lion, brother. Don’t make any mistake about that.’
‘I’m glad of that. But he’s got a damned fine lion and a big leopard. Everything he has is good. We’ve got plenty of time. He’s got nothing to worry about. What the hell is he so gloomy about?’
‘We’ll get an early start in the morning so we can finish it off before it gets too hot for the little Memsahib.’
‘She’s in the best shape of any one.’
‘She’s marvellous. She’s like a little terrier.’
We went out that afternoon and glassed the country from the hills and never saw a thing. That night after supper we were in the tent. P.O.M. disliked intensely being compared to a little terrier. If she must be like any dog, and she did not wish to be, she would prefer a wolfhound, something lean, racy, long-legged and ornamental. Her courage was so automatic and so much a simple state of being that she never thought of danger; then, too, danger was in the hands of Pop and for Pop she had a complete, clear-seeing, absolutely trusting adoration. Pop was her ideal of how a man should be, brave, gentle, comic, never losing his temper, never bragging, never complaining except in a joke, tolerant, understanding, intelligent, drinking a little too much as a good man should, and, to her eyes, very handsome.
‘Don’t you think Pop’s handsome?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Droopy’s handsome.’
‘Droopy’s ‘beautiful’. But don’t you ‘really’ think Pop’s handsome?’
‘Hell, no. I like him as well as any man I’ve ever known, but I’m damned if he’s handsome.’
‘I think he’s lovely looking. But you understand about how I feel about him, don’t you?’
‘Sure. I’m as fond of the bastard myself.’
‘But ‘don’t’ you think he’s handsome, really?’
‘Nope.’
Then, a little later:
‘Well, who’s handsome to you?’
‘Belmonte and Pop. And you.’
‘Don’t be patriotic,’ I said. ‘Who’s a beautiful woman?’
‘Garbo.’
‘Not any more. Josie is. Margot is.’
‘Yes, they are. I know I’m not.’
‘You’re lovely.’
‘Let’s talk about Mr. J. P. I don’t like you to call him Pop. It’s not dignified.’
‘He and I aren’t dignified together.’
‘Yes, but I’m dignified with him. Don’t you think he’s wonderful?’
‘Yes, and he doesn’t have to read books written by some female he’s tried to help get published saying how he’s yellow.’
‘She’s just jealous and malicious. You never should have helped her. Some people never forgive that.’
‘It’s a shame, though, with all that talent gone to malice and nonsense and self-praise. It’s a goddamned shame, really. It’s a shame you never knew her before she went to pot. You know a funny thing; she never could write dialogue. It was terrible. She learned how to do it from my stuff and used it in that book. She had never written like that before. She never could forgive learning that and she was afraid people would notice it, where she’d learned it, so she had to attack me. It’s a funny racket, really. But I swear she was nice before she got ambitious. You would have liked her then, really.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t think so,’ said P.O.M. ‘We have fun though, don’t we? Without all those people.’
‘God damn it if we don’t. I’ve had a better time every year since I can remember.’
‘But isn’t Mr. J. P. wonderful? Really?’
‘Yes. He’s wonderful.’
‘Oh, you’re nice to say it. Poor Karl.’
‘Why?’
‘Without his wife.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Poor Karl.’
CHAPTER TWO
So in the morning, again, we started ahead of the porters and went down and across the hills and through a deeply forested valley and then up and across a long rise of country with high grass that made the walking difficult, and on and up and across, resting sometimes in the shade of a tree, and then on and up and down and across, all in high grass now, that you had to break a trail in, and the sun was very hot.
The five of us in single file, Droop and M’Cola with a big gun apiece, hung with musettes and water bottles and the cameras, we all sweating in
