Green Hills of Africa Read online

'You wait here with M'Cola,' I whispered over my shoulder.

  We followed Droopy into the thick, tall grass that was five feet above

  our heads, walking carefully on the game trail, stooping forward, trying to

  make no noise breathing. I was thinking of the buff the way I had seen them

  when we had gotten the three that time, how the old bull had come out of the

  bush, groggy as he was, and I could see the horns, the boss coming far down,

  the muzzle out, the little eyes, the roll of fat and muscle on his

  thin-haired, grey, scaly-hided neck, the heavy power and the rage in him,

  and I admired him and respected him, but he was slow, and all the while we

  shot I felt that it was fixed and that we had him. This was different, this

  was no rapid fire, no pouring it on him as he comes groggy into the open, if

  he comes now I must be quiet inside and put it down his nose as he comes

  with the head out. He will have to put the head down to hook, like any bull,

  and that will uncover the old place the boys wet their knuckles on and I

  will get one in there and then must go sideways into the grass and he would

  be Pop's from then on unless I could keep the rifle when I jumped. I was

  sure I could get that one in and jump if I could wait and watch his head

  come down. I knew I could do that and that the shot would kill him but how

  long would it take? That was the whole thing. How long would it take? Now,

  going forward, sure he was in here, I felt the elation, the best elation of

  all, of certain action to come, action in which you had something to do, in

  which you can kill and come out of it, doing something you are ignorant

  about and so not scared, no one to worry about and no responsibility except

  to perform something you feel sure you can perform, and I was walking softly

  ahead watching Droopy's back and remembering to keep the sweat out of my

  glasses when I heard a noise behind us and turned my head. It was P.O.M.

  with M'Cola coming on our tracks.

  'For God's sake,' Pop said. He was furious.

  We got her back out of the grass and up on to the bank and made her

  realize that she must stay there. She had not understood that she was to

  stay behind. She had heard me whisper something but thought it was for her

  to come behind M'Cola.

  'That spooked me,' I said to Pop.

  'She's like a little terrier,' he said. 'But it's not good enough.'

  We were looking out over that grass.

  'Droop wants to go still,' I said. 'I'll go as far as he will. When he

  says no that lets us out. After all, I gut-shot the son of a bitch.'

  'Mustn't do anything silly, though.'

  'I can kill the son of a bitch if I get a shot at him. If he comes he's

  got to give me a shot.'

  The fright P.O.M. had given us about herself had made me noisy.

  'Come on,' said Pop. We followed Droopy back in and it got worse and

  worse, and I do not know about Pop but about half-way I changed to the big

  gun and kept the safety off and my hand over the trigger guard and I was

  plenty nervous by the time Droopy stopped and shook his head and whispered

  'Hapana'. It had gotten so you could not see a foot ahead and it was all

  turns and twists. It was really bad and the sun was only on the hillside

  now. We both felt good because we had made Droopy do the calling off and I

  was relieved as well. What we had followed him into had made my fancy

  shooting plans seem very silly and I knew all we had in there was Pop to

  blast him over with the four-fifty number two after I'd maybe miss him with

  that lousy four-seventy. I had no confidence in anything but its noise any

  more.

  We were back trailing when we heard the porters on the hillside shout

  and we ran crashing through the grass to try to get a high enough place to

  see to shoot. They waved their arms and shouted that the buffalo had come

  out of the reeds and gone past them and then M'Cola and Droopy were

  pointing, and Pop had me by the sleeve trying to pull me to where I could

  see them and then, in the sunlight, high up on the hillside against the

  rocks I saw two buffalo. They shone very black in the sun and one was much

  bigger than the other and I remember thinking this was our bull and that he

  had picked up a cow and she had made the pace and kept him going. Droop had

  handed me the Springfield and I slipped my arm through the sling and

  sighting, the buff now all seen through the aperture, I froze myself inside

  and held the bead on the top of his shoulder and as I started to squeeze he

  started running and I swung ahead of him and loosed off. I saw him lower his

  head and jump like a bucking horse as he comes out of the chutes and as I

  threw the shell, slammed the bolt forward and shot again, behind him as he

  went out of sight, I knew I had him. Droopy and I started to run and as we

  were running I heard a low bellow. I stopped and yelled at Pop, 'Hear him?

  I've got him, I tell you!'

  'You hit him,' said Pop. 'Yes.'

  'Goddamn it, I killed him. Didn't you hear him bellow?'

  'No.'

  'Listen!' We stood listening and there it came, clear, a long, moaning,

  unmistakable bellow.

  'By God,' Pop said. It was a very sad noise.

  M'Cola grabbed my hand and Droopy slapped my back and all laughing we

  started on a running scramble, sweating, rushing, up the ridge through the

  trees and over rocks. I had to stop for breath, my heart pounding, and wiped

  the sweat off my face and cleaned my glasses.

  'Kufa!' M'Cola said, making the word for dead almost explosive in its

  force. 'N'Dio! Kufa!'

  'Kufa!' Droopy said grinning.

  'Kufa!' M'Cola repeated and we shook hands again before we went on

  climbing. Then, ahead of us, we saw him, on his back, throat stretched out

  to the full, his weight on his horns, wedged against a tree. M'Cola put his

  finger in the bullet hole in the centre of the shoulder and shook his head

  happily.

  Pop and P.O.M. came up, followed by the porters.

  'By God, he's a better bull than we thought,' I said.

  'He's not the same bull. This is a real bull. That must have been our

  bull with him.'

  'I thought he was with a cow. It was so far away I couldn't tell.'

  'It must have been four hundred yards. By God, you {can} shoot that

  little pipsqueak. '

  'When I saw him put his head down between his legs and buck I knew we

  had him. The light was wonderful on him.'

  'I knew you had hit him, and I knew he wasn't the same bull. So I

  thought we had two wounded buffalo to deal with. I didn't hear the first

  bellow.'

  'It was wonderful when we heard him bellow,' P.O.M. said. 'It's such a

  sad sound. It's like hearing a horn in the woods.'

  'It sounded awfully jolly to me,' Pop said. 'By God, we deserve a drink

  on this. That was a shot. Why didn't you ever tell us you could shoot?'

  'Go to hell.'

  'You know he's
a damned good tracker, too, and what kind of a bird

  shot?' he asked P.O.M.

  'Isn't he a beautiful bull?' P.O.M. asked. 'He's a fine one. He's not

  old but it's a fine head.'

  We tried to take pictures but there was only the little box camera and

  the shutter stuck, and there was a bitter argument about the shutter while

  the light failed, and I was nervous now, irritable, righteous, pompous about

  the shutter and inclined to be abusive because we could get no picture. You

  cannot live on a plane of the sort of elation I had felt in the reeds and

  having killed, even when it is only a buffalo, you feel a little quiet

  inside. Killing is not a feeling that you share and I took a drink of water

  and told P.O.M. I was sorry I was such a bastard about the camera. She said

  it was all right and we were all right again looking at the buff with M'Cola

  making the cuts for the headskin and we standing close together and feeling

  fond of each other and understanding everything, camera and all. I took a

  drink of the whisky and it had no taste and I felt no kick from it.

  'Let me have another,' I said. The second one was all right.

  We were going on ahead to camp with the chased-by-a-rhino spearman as

  guide and Droop was going to skin out the head and they were going to

  butcher and cache the meat in trees so the hyenas would not get it. They

  were afraid to travel in the dark and I told Droopy he could keep my big

  gun. He said he knew how to shoot so I took out the shells and put on the

  safety and handing it to him told him to shoot. He put it to his shoulder,

  shut the wrong eye, and pulled hard on the trigger, and again, and again.

  Then I showed him about the safety and had him put it on and off and snap

  the gun a couple of times. M'Cola became very superior during Droopy's

  struggle to fire with the safety on and Droopy seemed to get much smaller. I

  left him the gun and two cartridges and they were all busy butchering in the

  dusk when we followed the spearsman and the tracks of the smaller buff,

  which had no blood on them, up to the top of the hill and on our way toward

  home. We climbed around the tops of valleys, went across gulches, up and

  down ravines and finally came on to the main ridge, it dark and cold in the

  evening, the moon not yet up, we plodded along, all tired. Once M'Cola, in

  the dark, loaded with Pop's heavy gun and an assortment of water bottles,

  binoculars, and a musette bag of books, sung out a stream of what sounded

  like curses at the guide who was striding ahead.

  'What's he say?' I asked Pop.

  'He's telling him not to show off his speed. That there is an old man

  in the party.'

  'Who does he mean, you or himself?'

  'Both of us.'

  We saw the moon come up, smoky red over the brown hills, and we came

  down through the chinky lights of the village, the mud houses all closed

  tight, and the smells of goats and sheep, and then across the stream and up

  the bare slope to where the fire was burning in front of our tents. It was a

  cold night with much wind.

  In the morning we hunted, picked up a track at a spring and trailed a

  rhino all over the high orchard country before he went down into a valley

  that led, steeply, into the canyon. It was very hot and the tight boots of

  the day before had chafed P.O.M.'s feet. She did not complain about them but

  I could see they hurt her. We were all luxuriantly, restfully tired.

  'The hell with them,' I said to Pop. 'I don't want to kill another one

  unless he's big. We might hunt a week for a good one. Let's stand on the one

  we have and pull out and join Karl. We can hunt oryx down there and get

  those zebra hides and get on after the kudu.'

  We were sitting under a tree on the summit of a hill and could see off

  over all the country and the canyon running down to the Rift Valley and Lake

  Manyara.

  'It would be good fun to take porters and a light outfit and hunt on

  ahead of them down through that valley and out to the lake,' Pop said.

  'That would be swell. We could send the lorries around to meet us at

  what's the name of the place?'

  'Maji-Moto.'

  'Why don't we do that?' P.O.M. asked.

  'We'll ask Droopy how the valley is.'

  Droopy didn't know but the spearman said it was very rough and bad

  going where the stream came down through the rift wall. He did not think we

  could get the loads through. We gave it up.

  'That's the sort of trip to make, though,' Pop said. 'Porters don't

  cost as much as petrol.'

  'Can't we make trips like that when we come back?' P.O.M. asked.

  'Yes,' Pop said. 'But for a big rhino you want to go up on Mount Kenya.

  You'll get a real one there. Kudu's the prize here. You'd have to go up to

  Kalal to get one in Kenya. Then if we get them we'll have time to go on down

  in that Handeni country for sable.'

  'Let's get going,' I said without moving.

  Since a long time we had all felt good about Karl's rhino. We were glad

  he had it and all of that had taken on a correct perspective. Maybe he had

  his oryx by now. I hoped so. He was a fine fellow, Karl, and it was good he

  got these extra fine heads.

  'How do you feel, poor old Mama?'

  'I'm fine. If we {are} going I'll be just as glad to rest my feet. But

  I love this kind of hunting.'

  'Let's get back, eat, break camp, and get down there to-night.'

  That night we got into our old camp at M'utu-Umbu, under the big trees,

  not far from the road. It had been our first camp in Africa and the trees

  were as big, as spreading, and as green, the stream as clear and fast

  flowing, and the camp as fine as when we had first been there. The only

  difference was that now it was hotter at night, the road in was hub-deep in

  dust, and we had seen a lot of country.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We had come down to the Rift Valley by a sandy red road across a high

  plateau, then up and down through orchard-bushed hills, around a slope of

  forest to the top of the rift wall where we could look down and see the

  plain, the heavy forest below the wall, and the long, dried-up edged shine

  of Lake Manyara rose-coloured at one end with a half million tiny dots that

  were flamingoes. From there the road dropped steeply along the face of the

  wall, down into the forest, on to the flatness of the valley, through

  cultivated patches of green corn, bananas, and trees I did not know the

  names of, walled thick with forest, past a Hindu's trading store and many

  huts, over two bridges where clear, fast-flowing streams ran, through more

  forest, thinning now to open glades, and into a dusty turn-off that led into

  a deeply rutted, dust-filled track through bushes to the shade of M'utu-Umbu

  camp.

  That night after dinner we heard the flamingoes flighting in the dark.

  It was like the sound the wings of ducks make as they go over before it is

  light, b
ut slower, with a steady beat, and multiplied a thousand times. Pop

  and I were a little drunk and P.O.M. was very tired. Karl was gloomy again.

  We had taken the edge from his victories over rhino and now that was past

  anyway and he was facing possible defeat by oryx. Then, too, they had found

  not a leopard but a marvellous lion, a huge, black-maned lion that did not

  want to leave, on the rhino carcass when they had gone there the next

  morning and could not shoot him because he was in some sort of forest

  reserve.

  'That's rotten,' I said and I tried to feel bad about it but I was

  still feeling much too good to appreciate any one else's gloom, and Pop and

  I sat, tired through to our bones, drinking whisky and soda and talking.

  The next day we hunted oryx in the dried-up dustiness of the Rift

  Valley and finally found a herd way off at the edge of the wooded hills on

  the far side above a Masai village. They were like a bunch of Masai donkeys

  except for the beautiful straight-slanting black horns and all the heads

  looked good. When you looked closely two or three were obviously better than

  the others and sitting on the ground I picked what I thought was the very

  best of the lot and as they strung out I made sure of this one. I heard the

  bullet smack and watched the oryx circle out away from the others, the

  circle quickening, and knew I had it. So I did not shoot again.

  This was the one Karl had picked, too. I did not know that, but had

  shot, deliberately selfish, to make sure of the best this time at least, but

  he got another good one and they went off in a wind-lifted cloud of grey

  dust as they galloped. Except for the miracle of their horns there was no

  more excitement in shooting them than if they had been donkeys, and after

  the lorry came up and M'Cola and Charo had skinned the heads out and cut up

  the meat we rode home in the blowing dust, our faces grey with it, and the

  valley one long heat mirage.

  We stayed at that camp two days. We had to get some zebra hides that we

  had promised friends at home and it needed time for the skinner to handle

  them properly. Getting the zebra was no fun; the plain was dull, now that

  the grass had dried, hot and dusty after the hills, and the picture that

  remains is of sitting against an anthill with, in the distance, a herd of

  zebra galloping in the grey heat haze, raising a dust, and on the yellow

  plain, the birds circling over a white patch there, another beyond, there a

  third, and looking back, the plume of dust of the lorry coming with the

  skinners and the men to cut up the meat for the village. I did some bad

  shooting in the heat on a Grant's gazelle that the volunteer skinners asked

  me to kill them for meat, wounding him in a running shot after missing him

  three or four times, and then following him across the plain until almost

  noon in that heat until I got within range and killed him.

  But that afternoon we went out along the road that ran through the

  settlement and past the corner of the Hindu's general store, where he smiled

  at us in well-oiled, unsuccessful-storekeeping, brotherly humanity, and

  hopeful salesmanship, turned the car off to the left on to a track that went

  into the deep forest, a narrow brush-bordered track through the heavy

  timber, that crossed a stream on an unsound log and pole bridge and went on

  until the timber thinned and we came out into a grassy savannah that

  stretched ahead to the reed-edged, dried-up bed of the lake with, far

  beyond, the shine of the water and the rose-pink of the flamingoes. There

  were some grass huts of fishermen in the shade of the last trees and ahead

  the wind blew across the grass of the savannah and the dried bed of the lake

  showed a white-grey with many small animals humping across its baked surface

  as our car alarmed them. They were reed buck and they looked strange and

  awkward as they moved in the distance but trim and graceful as you saw them

  standing close. We turned the car out through the thick, short grass and on