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CHAPTER ONE. That all seemed a year ago

That all seemed a year ago. Now, this afternoon in the car, on the way

out to the twenty-eight-mile salt-lick, the sun on our faces, just having

shot the guinea fowl, having, in the last five days, failed on the lick

where Karl shot his bull, having failed in the hills, the big hills and the

small hills, having failed on the flats, losing a shot the night before on

this lick because of the Austrian's lorry, I knew there were only two days

more to hunt before we must leave. M'Cola knew it too, and we were hunting

together now, with no feeling of superiority on either side any more, only a

shortness of time and our disgust that we did not know the country and were

saddled with these farcical bastards as guides.

Kamau, the driver, was a Kikuyu, a quiet man of about thirty-five who,

with an old brown tweed coat some shooter had discarded, trousers heavily

patched on the knees and ripped open again, and a very ragged shirt, managed

always to give an impression of great elegance. Kamau was very modest,

quiet, and an excellent driver, and now, as we came out of the bush country

and into an open, scrubby, desert-looking stretch, I looked at him, whose

elegance, achieved with an old coat and a safety pin, whose modesty,

pleasantness and skill I admired so much now, and thought how, when we first

were out, he had very nearly died of fever, and that if he had died it would

have meant nothing to me except that we would be short a driver; while now

whenever or wherever he should die I would feel badly. Then abandoning the

sweet sentiment of the distant and improbable death of Kamau, I thought what

a pleasure it would be to shoot David Garrick in the behind, just to see the

look on his face, sometime when he was dramatizing a stalk, and, just then,

we put up another flock of guineas. M'Cola handed nie the shotgun and I

shook my head. He nodded violently and said, 'Good. Very Good', and I told

Kamau to go on. This confused Garrick who began an oration. Didn't we want

guineas? Those were guineas. The finest kind. I had seen by the speedometer

that we were only about three miles from the salt and had no desire to spook

a bull off of it, by a shot, to frighten him in the way we had seen the

lesser kudu leave the salt when he heard the lorry noise while we were in

the blind.

We left the lorry under some scrubby trees about two miles from the

lick and walked along the sandy road towards the first salt place which was

in the open to the left of the trail. We had gone about a mile keeping

absolutely quiet and walking in single file, Abdullah the educated tracker

leading, then me, M'Cola, and Garrick, when we saw the road was wet ahead of

us. Where the sand was thin over the clay there was a pool of water and you

could see that a heavy rain had drenched it all on ahead. I did not realize

what this meant but Garrick threw his arms wide, looked up to the sky and

bared his teeth in anger.

'It's no good, ' M'Cola whispered.

Garrick started to talk in a loud voice.

'Shut up, you bastard, ' I said, and put my hand to my mouth. He kept on

talking in above normal tones and I " looked up 'shut up' in the dictionary

while he pointed to the sky and the rained-out road. I couldn't find 'shut

up' so I put the back of my hand against his mouth with some firmness and he

closed it in surprise.

" Cola, ' I said.

'Yes, ' said M'Cola.

'What's the matter? '

'Salt no good.'

'Ah.'

So that was it. I had thought of the rain only as something that made

tracking easy.

'When the rain? ' I asked.

'Last night, ' M'Cola said.

Garrick started to talk and I placed the back of my hand against his

mouth.

" Cola.'

'Yes.'

'Other salt, ' pointing in the direction of the big lick in the woods,

which I knew was a good bit higher because we went very slightly up hill

through the brush to reach it. 'Other salt good? '

'Maybe.'

M'Cola said something in a very low voice to Garrick who seemed deeply

hurt but kept his mouth shut and we went on down the road, walking around

the wet places, to where, sure enough, the deep depression of the saltlick

was half filled with water. Garrick started to whisper a speech here but

M'Cola shut him up again.

'Come on, ' I said, and, M'Cola ahead, we started trailing up the damp,

sandy, ordinarily dry watercourse that led through the trees to the upper

lick.

M'Cola stopped dead, leaned over to look at the damp sand, then

whispered, 'Man', to me. There was the track.

'Shenzi, ' he said, which meant a wild man.

We trailed the man, moving slowly through the trees and stalking the

lick carefully, up and into the blind. M'Cola shook his head.

'No good, ' he said. 'Come on.'

We went over to the lick. There it was all written plainly. There were

the tracks of three big bull kudu in the moist bank beyond the lick where

they had come to the salt. Then there were the sudden, deep, knifely-cut

tracks where they made a spring when the bow twanged and the slashing

heavily cut prints of their hoofs as they had gone off up the bank and then,

far-spaced, the tracks running into the bush. We trailed them, all three,

but no man's track joined theirs. The bow-man missed them.

M'Cola said, 'Shenzi! ' putting great hate into the word. We picked up

the shenzi's tracks and saw where he had gone on back to the road. We

settled down in the blind and waited there until it was dark and a light

rain began to fall. Nothing came to the salt. In the rain we made our way

back to the lorry. Some wild-man had shot at our kudu and spooked them away

from the salt and now the lick was being ruined.

Kamau had rigged a tent out of a big canvas ground cloth, hung my

mosquito net inside, and set up the canvas cot. M'Cola brought the food

inside the shelter tent.

Garrick and Abdullah built a fire and they, Kamau and M'Cola cooked

over it. They were going to sleep in the lorry. It rained drizzlingly and I

undressed, got into mosquito boots and heavy pyjamas and sat on the cot, ate

a breast of roast guinea hen and drank a couple of tin cups of half whisky

and water.

M'Cola came in, grave, solicitous, and very awkward inside a tent and

took my clothes out from where I had folded them to make a pillow and folded

them again, very un-neatly, and put them under the blankets. He brought

three tins to see if I did not want them. opened.

'No.'

'Chai? ' he asked.

'The hell with it.'

'No chai? '

'Whisky better.'

'Yes, ' he said feelingly. 'Yes.'

'Chai in the morning. Before the sun.'

'Yes, B'wana M'Kumba.'

'You sleep here. Out of the rain.' I pointed to the canvas where the

rain was making the finest sound that we, who live much outside of houses,

ever hear. It was a lovely sound, even though it was hitching us.

'Yes.'

'Go on. Eat.'

'Yes. No chai? '

'The hell with tea.'

'Whisky? ' he asked hopefully.

'Whisky finish.'

'Whisky, ' he said confidently.

'All right, ' I said. 'Go eat, ' and pouring the cup half and half with

water got in under the mosquito bar, found my clothes and again made them

into a pillow, and lying on my side drank the whisky very slowly, resting on

one elbow, then dropped the cup down under the bar on to the ground, felt

under the cot for the Springfield, put the searchlight beside me in the bed

under the blanket, and went to sleep listening to the rain. I woke when I

heard M'Cola come in, make his bed and go to sleep, and I woke once in the

night and heard him sleeping by me; but in the morning he was up and had

made the tea before I was awake.

'Chai, ' he said, pulling on my blanket.

'Bloody chai, ' I said, sitting up still asleep.

It was a grey, wet morning. The rain had stopped but the mist hung over

the ground and we found the salt-lick rained out and not a track near it.

Then we hunted through the wet scrub on the flat hoping to find a track in

the soaked earth and trail a bull until we could see him. There were no

tracks. We crossed the road and followed the edge of the scrub around a

moor-like open stretch. I hoped we might find the rhino but while we came on

much fresh rhino dung there were no tracks since the rain. Once we heard

tick birds and looking up saw them in jerky flight above us headed to the

northward over the heavy scrub. We made a long circle through there but

found nothing but a fresh hyena track and a cow kudu track. In a tree M'Cola

pointed out a lesser kudu skull with one beautiful, long, curling horn. We

found the other horn below in the grass and I screwed it back on to its bone

base.

'Shenzi, ' M'Cola said and imitated a man pulling a bow. The skull was

quite clean but the hollow horns had some damp residue in them, smelled

unbearably foul and, giving no sign of having noticed the stench, I handed

them to Garrick who promptly, without sign gave them to Abdullah. Abdullah

wrinkled the edge of his flat nose and shook his head. They really smelled

abominably. M'Cola and I grinned and Garrick looked virtuous.

I decided a good idea might be to drive along the road in the car,

watching for kudu, and hunt any likely-looking clearings. We went back to

the car and did this, working several clearings with no luck. By then the

sun was up and the road was becoming populous with travellers, both

white-clothed and naked, and we decided to head for camp. On our way in, we

stopped and stalked the other salt-lick. There was an impalla on it looking

very red where the sun struck his hide in the patches between the grey trees

and there were many kudu tracks. We smoothed them over and drove on into

camp to find a sky full of locusts passing over, going to the westward,

making the sky, as you looked up, seem a pink dither of flickering passage,

flickering like an old cinema film, but pink instead of grey. P.O.M. and Pop

came out and were very disappointed. No rain had fallen in camp and they had

been sure we would have something when we came in.

'Did my literary pal get off? '

'Yes, ' Pop said. 'He's gone into Handeni.'

'He told me all about American women, ' P.O.M. said. 'Poor old Poppa, I

was sure you'd get one. Danin the rain.'

'How are American women? '

'He thinks they're terrible.'

'Very sound fellow, ' said Pop. 'Tell me just what happened to-day.'

We sat in the shade of the dining tent and I told them.

'A Wanderobo, ' Pop said. 'They're frightful shots. Bad luck.'

'I thought it might be one of those travelling sportsmen you see with

their bows slung going along the road. He saw the lick by the road and

trailed up to the other one.'

'Not very likely. They carry those bows and arrows as protection.

They're not hunters.'

'Well, whoever it was put it on us. '

'Bad luck. That, and the rain. I've had scouts out here on both the

hills but they've seen nothing.'

'Well, we're not hitched until to-morrow night. When do we have to

leave? '

'After to-morrow.'

'That bloody savage.'

'I suppose Karl is blasting up the sable down there.'

'We won't be able to get into camp for the horns. Have you heard

anything? '

'No.'

'I'm going to give up smoking for six months for you to get one, '

P.O.M. said. 'I've started already.'

We had lunch and afterwards I went into the tent and lay down and read.

I knew we still had a chance on the lick in the morning and I was not going

to worry about it. But I {was} worried and I did not want to go to sleep and

wake up feeling dopey so I came out and sat in one of the canvas chairs

under the open dining tent and read somebody's life of Charles the Second

and looked up every once in a while to watch the locusts. The locusts were

exciting to see and it was difficult for me to take them as a matter of

course.

Finally I went to sleep in the chair with my feet on a chop-box and

when I woke there was Garrick, the bastard, wearing a large, very floppy,

black and white ostrich-plume head-dress.

'Go away, ' I said in English.

He stood smirking proudly, then turned so I could see the head-dress

from the side.

I saw Pop coming out of his tent with a pipe in his mouth. 'Look what

we have, ' I called to him.

He looked, said, 'Christ', and went back into the tent.

'Come on, ' I said. 'We'll just ignore it.'

Pop came out, finally, with a book and we took no notice of Garrick's

head-dress at all, sitting and talking, while he posed with it.

'Bastard's been drinking, too, ' I said.

'Probably.'

'I can smell it.'

Pop, without looking at him, spoke a few words to Garrick in a very

soft voice.

'What did you tell him? '

'To go and get dressed properly and be ready to start.'

Garrick walked off, his plums waving.

'Not the moment for his ostrich plumes, ' Pop said.

'Some people probably like them.'

'That's it. Start photographing them.'

'Awful, ' I said.

'Frightful, ' Pop agreed.

'On the last day if we don't get anything, I'm going to shoot Garrick

in the behind. What would that cost me? '

'Might make lots of trouble. If you shoot one, you have to shoot the

other, too.'

'Only Garrick.'

'Better not shoot then. Remember it's me you get into trouble.'

'Joking, Pop.'

Garrick, un-head-dressed and with Abdullah, appeared and Pop spoke with

them.

'They want to hunt around the hill a new way.'

'Splendid. When? '

'Any time now. It looks like rain. You might get going.'

I sent Molo for my boots and a raincoat, M'Cola came out with the

Springfield, and we walked down to the car. It had been heavily cloudy all

day although the sun had come through the clouds in the forenoon for a time

and again at noon. The rains were moving up on us. Now it was starting to

rain and the locusts were no longer flying.

'I'm dopey with sleep, ' I told Pop. 'I'm going to have a drink.'

We were standing under the big tree by the cooking fire with the light

rain pattering in the leaves. M'Cola brought the whisky flask and handed it

to me very solemnly.

'Have one? '

'I don't see what harm it can do.'

We both drank and Pop said, 'The hell with them'.

'The hell with them.'

'You may find some tracks.'

'We'll run them out of the country.'

In the car we turned to the right on the road, drove on up past the mud

village and turned off the road to the left on to a red, hard, clay track

that circled the edge of the hills and was close bordered on either side

with trees. It was raining fairly hard now and we drove slowly. There seemed

to be enough sand in the clay to keep the car from slipping. Suddenly, from

the back seat, Abdullah, very excited, told Kamau to stop. We stopped with a

skid, all got out, and walked back. There was a freshly cut kudu track in

the wet clay. It could not have been made more than five minutes before as

it was sharp-edged and the dirt, that had been picked up by the inside of

the hoof, was not yet softened by the rain.

'Doumi, ' Garrick said and threw back his head and spread his arms wide

to show horns that hung back over his withers. 'Kubwa Sana! ' Abdullah agreed

it was a bull; a huge bull.

'Come on, ' I said.

It was easy tracking and we knew we were close. In rain or snow it is

much easier to come up close to animals and I was sure we were going to get

a shot. We followed the tracks through thick brush and then out into an open

patch. I stopped to wipe the rain off my glasses and blew through the

aperture in the rear sight of the Springfield. It was raining hard now, and

I pulled my hat low down over my eyes to keep my glasses dry. We skirted the

edge of the open patch and then, ahead, there was a crash and I saw a grey,

white-striped animal making off through the brush. I threw the gun up and

M'Cola grabbed my arm, 'Manamouki! ' he whispered. It was a cow kudu. But

when we came up to where it had jumped there were no other tracks. The same

tracks we had followed led, logically and with no possibility of doubt, from

the road to that cow.

'Doumi Kubwa Sana! ' I said, full of sarcasm and disgust to Garrick and

made a gesture of giant horns flowing back from behind his ears.

'Manamouki Kubwa Sana, ' he said very sorrowfully and patiently. 'What

an enormous cow.'

'You lousy ostrich-plumed punk, ' I told him in English. 'Manamouki!

Manamouki! Manamouki! '

'Manamouki, ' said M'Cola and nodded his head.

I got out the dictionary, couldn't find the words, and made it clear to

M'Cola with signs that we would circle back in a long swing to the road and

see if we could find another track. We circled back in the rain, getting

thoroughly soaked, saw nothing, found the car, and as the rain lessened and

the roads still seemed firm decided to go on until it was dark. Puffs of

cloud hung on the hillside after the rain and the trees dripped but we saw

nothing. Not in the open glades, not in the fields where the bush thinned,

not on the green hillsides. Finally it was dark and we went back to camp.

.The Springfield was very wet when we got out of the car and I told M'Cola

to clean it carefully and oil it well. He said he would and I went on and

into the tent where a lantern was burning, took off my clothes, had a bath

in the canvas tub and came out to the fire comfortable and relaxed in

pyjamas, dressing-gown and mosquito boots.

P.O.M. and Pop were sitting in their chairs by the fire and P.O.M. got

up to make me a whisky and soda.

'M'Cola told me, ' Pop said from his chair by the fire.

'A damned big cow, ' I told him. 'I nearly busted her. What do you think

about the morning? '

'The lick I suppose. We've scouts out to watch both of these hills. You

remember that old man from the village? He's on a wild-goose chase after

them in some country over beyond the hills. He and the Wanderobo. They've

been gone three days.'

'There's no reason why we shouldn't get one on the lick where Karl shot

his. One day is as good as another.'

'Quite.'

'It's the last damned day though and the lick may be rained out. As

soon as it's wet there's no salt. Just mud.'

'That's it.'

'I'd like to see one.'

'When you do, take your time and make sure of him. Take your time and

kill him.'

'I don't worry about that.'

'Let's talk about something else, ' P.O.M. said. 'This makes me too

nervous.'

'I wish we had old Leather Pants, ' Pop said. 'God, he was a talker. He

made the old man here talk too. Give us that spiel on modern writers again.'

'Go to hell.'

'Why don't we have some intellectual life? ' P.O.M. asked. 'Why don't

you men ever discuss world topics? Why am I kept in ignorance of everything

that goes on? '

'World's in a hell of a shape, ' Pop stated.

'Awful.'

'What's going on in America? '

'Damned if I know! Some sort of Y.M.C.A. show. Starry eyed bastards

spending money that somebody will have to pay. Everybody in our town quit

work to go on relief. Fishermen all turned carpenters. Reverse of the

Bible.'

'How are things in Turkey? '

'Frightful. Took the fezzes away. Hanged any amount of old pals.

Ismet's still around though.'

'Been in France lately? '

'Didn't like it. Gloomy as hell. Been a bad show there just now.'

'By God, ' said Pop, 'it must have been if you can believe the papers.'

'When they riot they really riot. Hell, they've got a tradition.'

'Were you in Spain for the revolution? '

'I got there late. Then we waited for two that didn't come. Then we

missed another.'

'Did you see the one in Cuba? '

'From the start.'

'How was it? '

'Beautiful. Then lousy. You couldn't believe how lousy.'

'Stop it, ' P.O.M. said. 'I know about those things. I was crouched down

behind a marble-topped table while they were shooting in Havana. They came

by in cars shooting at everybody they saw. I took my drink with me and I was

very proud not to have spilled it or forgotten it. The children said,

" Mother, can we go out in the afternoon to see the shooting? " They got so

worked up about revolution we had to stop mentioning it. Bumby got so

bloodthirsty about Mr. M. he had terrible dreams.'

'Extraordinary, ' Pop said.

'Don't make fun of nie. I don't want to just hear about revolutions.

All we see or hear is revolutions. I'm sick of them. '

'The old man must like them.'

'I'm sick of them.'

'You know, I've never seen one, ' Pop said.

'They're beautiful. Really. For quite a while. Then they go bad.'

'They're very exciting, ' P.O.M. said. 'I'll admit that. But I'm sick of

them. Really, I don't care anything about them.'

'I've been studying them a little.'

'What did you find out? ' Pop asked.

'They were all very different but there were some things you could

co-ordinate. I'm going to try to write a study of them.'

'It could be damned interesting.'

'If you have enough material. You need an awful lot of past

performances. It's very hard to get anything true on anything you haven't

seen yourself because the ones that fail have such a bad press and the

winners always lie so. Then you can only really follow anything in places

where you speak the language. That limits you of course. That's why I would

never go to Russia. When you can't overhear it's no good. All you get are

handouts and sight-seeing. Any one who knows a foreign language in any

country is damned liable to lie to you. You get your good dope always from

the people and when you can't talk with people and can't overhear you don't

get anything that's of anything but journalistic value.'

'You want to knuckle down on your Swahili then.'

'I'm trying to.'

'Even then you can't overhear because they're always talking their own

language.'

'But if I ever write anything about this it will just be landscape

painting until I know something about it. Your first seeing of a country is

a very valuable one. Probably more valuable to yourself than to anyone else,

is the hell of it. But you ought to always write it to try to get it stated.

No matter what you do with it.'

'Most of the damned Safari books are most awful bloody bores.'

'They're terrible.'

'The only one I ever liked was Streeter's. What did he call it?

{Denatured Africa}. He made you feel what it was like. That's the best.'

'I liked Charlie Curtis's. It was very honest and it made a fine

picture.'

'That man Streeter was damned funny though. Do you remember when he

shot the kongoni? '

'It was very funny.'

'I've never read anything, though, that could make you feel about the

country the way we feel about it. They all have Nairobi fast life or else

rot about shooting beasts with horns half an inch longer than someone else

shot. Or muck about danger.'

'I'd like to try to write something about the country and the animals

and what it's like to someone who knows nothing about it.'

'Have a try at it. Can't do any harm. You know I wrote a diary of that

Alaskan trip.'

'I'd love to read it, ' P.O.M. said. 'I didn't know you were a writer,

Mr. J. P.'

'No bloody fear, ' said Pop. 'If you'd read it, though, I'll send for

it. You know it's just what we did each day and how Alaska looked to an

Englishman from Africa. It'd bore you.'

'Not if you wrote it, ' P.O.M. said.

'Little woman's giving us compliments, ' Pop said.

'Not me. You.'

'I've read things by him, ' she said. 'I want to read what Mr. J. P.

writes.'

'Is the old man really a writer? ' Pop asked her.