Chapter seven

In the morning Karl and his outfit started for the saltlick and

Garrick, Abdullah, M'Cola and I crossed the road, angled behind the village

up a dry watercourse and started climbing the mountains in a mist. We headed

up a pebbly, boulder-filled, dry stream bed overgrown with vines and brush

so that, climbing, you walked, stooping, in a steep tunnel of vines and

foliage. I sweated so that I was soaked through my shirt and undergarments

and when we came out on the shoulder of the mountain and stood, looking down

at the bank of clouds quilting over the entire valley below us, the morning

breeze chilled me and I had to put on my raincoat while we glassed the

country. I was too wet with sweat to sit down and I signed Garrick to keep

on going. We went around one side of the mountain, doubled back on a higher

grade and crossed over, out of the sun that was drying my wet shirt and

along the top of a series of grassy valleys, stopping to search each one

thoroughly with the field glasses. Finally we came to a sort of

amphitheatre, a bowl-like valley of very green grass with a small stream

down the middle and timber along the far side and all the lower edge. We sat

in the shadow against some rocks, out of any breeze, watching with the

glasses as the sun rose and lighted the opposite slopes, seeing two kudu

cows and a calf feed out from the timber, moving with the quickly browsing,

then head lifted, long-staring vigilance of all browsing animals in a

forest. Animals on a plain can see so far that they have confidence and feed

very differently from animals in the woods. We could see the vertical white

stripes on their grey flanks and it was very satisfying to watch them and to

be high in the mountain that early in the morning. Then, while we watched,

there was a boom, like a rockslide. I thought at first it was a boulder

falling, but M'Cola whispered.

'B'wana Kibor! Piga! ' We listened for another shot but we did not hear

one and I {was} sure Karl had his kudu. The cows we were watching had heard

the shot and stood, listening, then went on feeding. But they fed into the

timber. I remembered the old saying of the Indian in camp, 'One shot, meat.

Two shots, maybe. Three shots, heap s -- t, ' and I got out the dictionary to

translate it for M'Cola. However it came out seemed to amuse him and he

laughed and shook his head. We glassed that valley until the sun came on to

us, then hunted around the other side of the mountain and in another fine

valley saw the place where the other B'wana, B'wana Doktor he still sounded

like, had shot a fine bull kudu, but a Masai walked down the centre of the

valley while we were glassing it and when I pretended I was going to shoot

him Garrick became very dramatic insisting it was a man, a man, a man!

'Don't shoot men? ' I asked him.

'No! No! No! ' he said putting his hand to his head. I took the gun down

with great reluctance, clowning for M'Cola who was grinning, and it very hot

now, we walked across a meadow where the grass was knee high and truly

swarming with long, rose-coloured, gauze-winged locusts that rose in clouds

about us, making a whirring like a mowing machine, and climbing small hills

and going down a long steep slope, we made our way back to camp to find the

air of the valley drifting with flying locusts and Karl already in camp with

Us kudu.

Passing the skinner's tent he showed me the head which looked,

body-less and neck-less, the cape of hide hanging loose, wet and heavy from

where the base of the skull had been severed from the vertebral column, a

very strange and unfortunate kudu. Only the skin running from the eyes down

to the nostrils, smooth grey and delicately marked with white, and the big,

graceful ears were beautiful. The eyes were already dusty and there were

flies around them and the horns were heavy, coarse, and instead of

spiralling high they made a heavy turn and slanted straight out. It was a

freak head, heavy and ugly.

Pop was sitting under the dining tent smoking and reading.

'Where's Karl? ' I asked him.

'In his tent, I think. What did you do? '

'Worked around the hill. Saw a couple of cows.'

'I'm awfully glad you got him, ' I told Karl at the mouth of his tent.

'How was it? '

'We were in the blind and they motioned me to keep my head down and

then when I looked up there he was right beside us. He looked huge.'

'We heard you shoot. Where did you hit him? '

'In the leg first, I think. Then we trailed him and finally I hit him a

couple of more times and we got him.'

'I heard only one shot.'

'There were three or four, ' Karl said.

'I guess the mountain shut off some if you were gone the other way

trailing him. He's got a heavy beam and a big spread.'

'Thanks, ' Karl said. 'I hope you get a lot better one. They said there

was another one but I didn't see him.'

I went back to the dining tent where Pop and P.O.M. were. They did not

seem very elated about the kudu.

'What's the matter with you? ' I asked.

'Did you see the head? ' P.O.M. asked.

'Sure.'

'It's {awful} looking, ' she said.

'It's a kudu. He's got another one still to go.'

'Charo and the trackers said there was another bull with this one. A

big bull with a wonderful head.'

'That's all right. I'll shoot him.'

'If he ever comes back.'

'It's fine he has one, ' P.O.M. said.

'I'll bet he'll get the biggest one ever known, now, ' I said.

'I'm sending him down with Dan to the sable country, ' Pop said. 'That

was the agreement. The first to kill a kudu to get first crack at the

sable.'

'That's fine.'

'Then as soon as you get your kudu we'll move down there too.'

{'Good.'}