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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 tyres. He had slim, handsome legs with well-turned ankles on the

style of Babe Ruth's and I remember how surprised I was the first time I saw

him with the tunic off and noticed how old his upper body was. It had that

aged look you see in photographs of Jeffries and Sharkey posing thirty years

after, the ugly, old-man biceps and the fallen pectoral muscles.

'How old is M'Cola? ' I asked Pop.

'He must be over fifty, ' Pop said. 'He's got a grown-up family in the

native reserve.'

'How are his kids? '

'No good, worthless. He can't handle them. We tried one as a porter.

But he was no good.'

M'Cola was not jealous of Droopy. He simply knew that Droopy was a

better man than he was. More of a hunter, a faster and a cleaner tracker,

and a great stylist in everything he did. He admired Droopy in the same way

we did and being out with him, it made him realize that he was wearing

Droopy's tunic and that he had been a porter before he became a gun bearer

and suddenly he ceased being an old timer and we were hunting together; he

and I hunting together and Droopy in command of the show.

That had been a fine hunt. The afternoon of the day we came into the

country we walked about four miles from camp along a deep rhino trail that

graded through the grassy hills with their abandoned orchard-looking trees,

as smoothly and evenly as though an engineer had planned it. The trail was a

foot deep in the ground and smoothly worn and we left it where it slanted

down through a divide in the hills like a dry irrigation ditch and climbed,

sweating, the small, steep hill on the right to sit there with our backs

against the hilltop and glass the country. It was a green, pleasant country,

with hills below the forest that grew thick on the side of a mountain, and

it was cut by the valleys of several watercourses that came down out of the

thick timber on the mountain. Fingers of the forest came down on to the head

of some of the slopes and it was there, at the forest edge, that we watched

for rhino to come out. If you looked away from the forest and the mountain

side you could follow the watercourses and the hilly slope of the land down

until the land flattened and the grass was brown and burned and, away,

across a long sweep of country, was the brown Rift Valley and the shine of

Lake Manyara.

We all lay there on the hillside and watched the country carefully for

rhino. Droopy was on the other side of the hilltop, squatted on his heels,

looking, and M'Cola sat below us. There was a cool breeze from the east and

it blew the grass in waves on the hillsides. There were many large white

clouds and the tall trees of the forest on the mountain side grew so closely

and were so foliaged that it looked as though you could walk on their tops.

Behind this mountain there was a gap and then another mountain and the far

mountain was dark blue with forest in the distance.

Until five o'clock we did not see anything. Then, without the glasses,

I saw something moving over the shoulder of one of the valleys toward a

strip of the timber. In the glasses it was a rhino, showing very clear and

minute at the distance, red-coloured in the sun, moving with a quick

waterbug-like motion across the hill. Then there were three more of them

that came out of the forest, dark in the shadow, and two that fought,

tinily, in the glasses, pushing head-on, fighting in front of a clump of

bushes while we watched them and the light failed. It was too dark to get

down the hill, across the valley and up the narrow slope of mountain side to

them in time for a shot. So we went back to the camp, down the hill in the

dark, edging down on our shoes and then feeling the trail smooth under foot,

walking along that deep trail, that wound through the dark hills, until we

saw the firelight in the trees.

We were excited that night because we had seen the three rhino and

early the next morning while we were eating breakfast before starting out,

Droopy came in to report a herd of buffalo he had found feeding at the edge

of the forest not two miles from camp. We went there, still tasting coffee

and kippers in the early morning heart-pounding of excitement, and the

native Droopy had left watching them pointed where they had crossed a deep

gulch and gone into an open patch of forest. He said there were two big

bulls in a herd of a dozen or more. We followed them in, moving very quietly

on the game trails, pushing the vines aside and seeing the tracks and the

quantities of fresh dung, but though we went on into the forest, where it

was too thick to shoot and made a wide circle, we did not see or hear them.

Once we heard the tick birds and saw them flying, but that was all. There

were numbers of rhino trails there in the woods and may strawy piles of

dung, but we saw nothing but the green wood-pigeons and some monkeys, and

when we came out we were wet to our waists from the dew, and the sun was

quite high. The day was very hot, now before the wind had gotten up, and we

knew whatever rhino and buffalo had been out would have gone back deep into

the forest to rest out of the heat.

The others started back to camp with Pop and M'Cola. There was no meat

in camp, and I wanted to hunt back in a circle with Droopy to see if we

could kill a piece. I was beginning to feel strong again after the dysentery

and it was a pleasure to walk in the easy rolling country, simply to walk,

and to be able to hunt, not knowing what we might see and free to shoot for

the meat we needed. Then, too, I liked Droopy and liked to watch him walk.

He strode very loosely and with a slight lift, and I liked to watch him and

to feel the grass under my soft-soled boots and the pleasant weight of the

rifle, held just back of the muzzle, the barrel resting on my shoulder, and

the sun hot enough to sweat you well as it burned the dew from the grass;

with the breeze starting and the country like an abandoned New England

orchard to walk through. I knew that I was shooting well again and I wanted

to make a shot to impress Droopy.

From the top of one rise we saw two kongoni showing yellow on a

hillside about a mile away and I motioned to Droop that we would go after

them. We started down and in a ravine jumped a waterbuck bull and two cows.

Waterbuck was the one animal we might get that I knew was worthless as meat

and I had shot a better head than this one carried. I had the sights on the

buck as he tore away, remembered about the worthless meat, and having the

head, and did not shoot.

'No shoot kuro? ' Droopy asked in Swahili. {'Doumi sana}. A good bull.'

I tried to tell him that I had a better one and that it was no good to

eat.

He grinned.

{'Piga kongoni m'uzuri.'}

Piga' was a fine word. It sounded exactly as the command to fire should

sound or the announcement of a hit. 'M'uzuri', meaning good, well, better,

had sounded too much like the name of a state for a long time, and walking I

used to make up sentences in Swahili with Arkansas and M'usuri in them, but

now it seemed natural, no longer to be italicized, just as all the words

came to seem the proper and natural words and there was nothing odd or

unseemly in the stretching of the ears, in the tribal scars, or in a man

carrying a spear. The tribal marks and the tattooed places seemed natural

and handsome adornments and I regretted not having any of my own. My own

scars were all informal, some irregular and sprawling, others simply puffy

welts. I had one on my forehead that people still commented on, asking if I

had bumped my head, but Droop had handsome ones beside his cheekbones and

others, symmetrical and decorative, on his chest and belly. I was thinking

that I had one good one, a sort of embossed Christmas tree, on the bottom of

my right foot that only served to wear out socks, when we jumped two

reedbuck. They went off through the trees and then stood at sixty yards, the

thin, graceful buck looking back, and I shot him high and a touch behind the

shoulder. He gave a jump and went off very fast.

'Piga.' Droopy smiled. We had both heard the whunk of the bullet.

'Kufa, ' I told him. 'Dead.'

But when we came up to him, lying on his side, his heart was still

beating strongly, although to all appearances he was dead. Droopy had no

skinning knife and I had only a penknife to stick him with. I felt for the

heart behind the foreleg with my fingers and feeling it beating under the

hide slipped the knife in but it was short and pushed the heart away. I

could feel it, hot and rubbery against my fingers, and feel the knife push

it, but I felt around and cut the big artery and the blood came hot against

my fingers. Once bled, I started to open him, with the little knife, still

showing off to Droopy, and emptying him neatly took out the liver, cut away

the gall, and laying the liver on a hummock of grass, put the kidneys beside

it.

Droopy asked for the knife. Now he was going to show me something.

Skilfully he slit open the stomach and turned it inside, tripe side, out,

emptying the grass in it on the ground, shook it, then put the liver and

kidneys inside it and with the knife cut a switch from the tree the buck lay

under and sewed the stomach together with the withe so that the tripe made a

bag to carry the other delicacies in. Then he cut a pole and put the bag on

the end of it, running it through the flaps, and put it over his shoulder in

the way tramps carried their property in a handkerchief on the end of a

stick in Blue Jay corn plaster advertisements when we were children. It was

a good trick and I thought how I would show it to John Staib in Wyoming some

time and he would smile his deaf man's smile (you had to throw pebbles at

him to make him stop when you heard a bull bugle), and I knew what John

would say. He would say, 'By Godd, Urnust, dot's smardt'.

Droop handed me the stick, then took off his single garment, made a

sung and got the buck up on his back. I tried to help him and suggested by

signs that we cut a pole and sling him, carrying him between us, but he

wanted to carry him alone. So we started for camp, me with the tripe bag on

the end of a stick over my shoulder, my rifle slung, and Droopy staggering

steadily ahead, sweating heavily, under the buck. I tried to get him to hang

him in a tree and leave him until we could send out a couple of porters, and

to that end we put him in the crotch of a tree. But when Droopy saw that I

meant to go off and leave him there rather than simply allow him to drain he

got him down on to his shoulders again and we went on into camp, the boys,

around the cooking fire, all laughing at the tripe bag over my shoulder as

we came in.

This was the kind of hunting that I liked. No riding in cars, the

country broken up instead of the plains, and I was completely happy. I had

been quite ill and had that pleasant feeling of getting stronger each day. I

was underweight, had a great appetite for meat, and could eat all I wanted

without feeling stuffy. Each day I sweated out whatever we drank sitting at

the fire at night, and in the heat of the day, now, I lay in the shade with

a breeze in the trees and read with no obligation and no compulsion to

write, happy in knowing that at four o'clock we would be starting out to

hunt again. I would not even write a letter. The only person I really cared

about, except the children, was with nie, and I had no wish to share this

life with anyone who was not there, only to live it, being completely happy

and quite tired. I knew that I was shooting well and I had that feeling of

well-being and confidence that is so much more pleasant to have than to hear

about.

As it turned out, we started soon after three to be on the hill by

four. But it was nearly five before we saw the first rhino come bustling

short-leggedly across the ridge of hill in almost the same place we had seen

the rhino the night before. We sat where he went into the edge of the forest

near where we had seen the two fighting and then took a course that would

lead us down the hill, across the grown-over gully at the bottom, and up the

steep slope to where there was a thorn tree with yellow blossoms that marked

the place where we had seen the rhino go in.

Coming straight up the slope in sight of the thorn tree, the wind

blowing across the hill, I tried to walk as slowly as I could and put a

handkerchief inside the sweatband of my hat to keep the perspiration out of

my glasses. I expected to shoot at any minute and I wanted to slow up enough

so my heart would not be pounding. In shooting large animals there is no

reason ever to miss if you have a clear shot and can shoot and know where to

shoot, unless you are unsteady from a run or a climb or fog your glasses,

break them or run out of cloth or paper to wipe them clean. The glasses were

the biggest hazard and I used to carry four handkerchiefs and change them

from the left to the right pocket when they were wet.

We came up to the yellow blossomed tree very carefully, like people

walking up to a bevy of quail the dogs have pointed, and the rhino was not

in sight. We went all through the edge of the forest and it was full of

tracks and fresh rhino sign, but there was no rhino. The sun was setting and

it was getting too dark to shoot, but we followed the forest around the side

of the mountain, hoping to see a rhino in the open glades. When it was

almost too dark to shoot, I saw Droopy stop and crouch. With his head down

he motioned us forward. Crawling up, we saw a large rhino and a small one

standing chest deep in brush, facing us across a little valley.

'Cow and calf, ' Pop said softly. 'Can't shoot her. Let me look at her

horn.' He took the glasses from M'Cola.

'Can she see us? ' P.O.M. asked.

'No.'

'How far are they? '

'Must be nearly five hundred yards.'

'My God, she looks big, ' I whispered.

'She's a big cow, ' Pop said. 'Wonder what became of the bull? ' He was

pleased and excited by the sight of game. 'Too dark to shoot unless we're

right on him.'

The rhinos had turned and were feeding. They never seemed to move

slowly. They either bustled or stood still.

'What makes them so red? ' P.O.M. asked. 'Rolling in the mud, ' Pop

answered. 'We better get along while there's light.'

The sun --was down when we came out of the forest and looked down the

slope and across to the hill where we had watched from with our glasses. We

should have back-tracked and gone down, crossed the gulch, and climbed back

up the trail the way we had come, but we decided, like fools, to grade

straight across the mountainside below the edge of the forest. So in the

dark, following this ideal line, we descended into steep ravines that showed

only as wooded patches until you were in them, slid down, clung to vines,

stumbled and climbed and slid again, down and down, then steeply,

impossibly, up, hearing the rustle of night things and the cough of a

leopard hunting baboons, me scared of snakes, and touching each root and

branch with snake fear in the dark.

To go down and up two hands-and-knee climbing ravines and then out into

the moonlight and the long, too-steep shoulder of mountain that you climbed

one foot up to the other, one foot after the other, one stride at a time,

leaning forward against the grade and the altitude, dead tired and gun

weary, single file in the moonlight across the slope, on up and to the top

where it was easy, the country spread in the moonlight, then up and down and

on, through the small hills, tired but now in sight of the fires and on into

camp.

So then you sit, bundled against the evening chill, at the fire, with a

whisky and soda, waiting for the announcement that the canvas bath had been

a quarter filled with hot water.

{'Bathi}, B'wana.'

'Goddamn it, I could never hunt sheep again, ' you say.

'I never could, ' says P.O.M. 'You all made me.'

'You climbed better than any of us.'

'Do you suppose we could hunt sheep again, Pop? '

'I wonder, ' Pop said. 'I suppose it's merely condition.'

'It's riding in the damned cars that ruins us.'

'If we did that walk every night we could come back in three nights

from now and never feel it.'

'Yes. But I'd be as scared of snakes if we did it every night for a

year.'

'You'd get over it.'

'No, ' I said. 'They scare me stiff. Do you remember that time we

touched hands behind the tree? '

'Rather, ' said Pop. 'You jumped two yards. Are you really afraid of

them, or only talking? '

'They scare me sick, ' I said. 'They always have.'

'What's the matter with you men? ' P.O.M. said. 'Why haven't I heard

anything about the war to-night? '

'We're too tired. Were you in the war, Pop? '

'Not me, ' said Pop. 'Where is that boy with the whisky? ' Then calling

in that feeble, clowning falsetto, 'Kayti... Katy-ay! '

{'Bathi, '} said Molo again softly, but insistently.

'Too tired.'

'Memsahib {bathi, '} Molo said hopefully.

'I'll go, ' said P.O.M. 'But you two hurry up with your drinking. I'm

hungry.'

'{Bathi, '} said Kayti severely to Pop.

{'Bathi} yourself, ' said Pop. 'Don't bully me.'

Kayti turned away in fire-lit slanting smile.

'All right. All right, ' said Pop. 'Going to have one? ' he asked.

'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.'