Green Hills of Africa Read online

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 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 k
ippers 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 wha
tever 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,