‘I love Droopy,’ P.O.M. said. ‘I have perfect confidence in Droopy.’
Droopy came up to the fire with two spear-carrying natives.
‘What does he hear?’ I asked.
There was some talk by the natives, then Pop said: ‘One of these sportsmen claims he was chased by a huge rhino to-day. Of course nearly any rhino would look huge when he was chasing him.’
‘Ask him how long the horn was.’
The native showed that the horn was as long as his arm. Droopy grinned.
‘Tell him to go,’ said Pop.
‘Where did all this happen?’
‘Oh, over there somewhere,’ Pop said. ‘You know. Over there. Way over there. Where these things always happen.’
‘That’s marvellous. Just where we want to go.’
‘The good aspect is that Droopy’s not at all depressed,’ Pop said. ‘He seems very confident. After all, it’s his show.’
‘Yes, but we have to do the climbing.’
‘Cheer him up, will you?’ Pop said to P.O.M. ‘He’s getting me very depressed.’
‘Should we talk about how well he shoots?’
‘Too early in the evening. I’m not gloomy. I’ve just seen that kind of country before. It will be good for us all right. Take some of your belly off, Governor.’
The next day I found that I was all wrong about that country.
We had breakfast before daylight and were started before sunrise, climbing the hill beyond the village in single file. Ahead there was the local guide with a spear, then Droopy with my heavy gun and a water bottle, then me with the Springfield, Pop with the Mannlicher, P.O.M. pleased, as always to carry nothing, M’Cola with Pop’s heavy gun and another water bottle, and finally two local citizens with spears, water bags, and a chop box with lunch. We planned to lay up in the heat of the middle of the day and not get back until dark. It was fine climbing in the cool fresh morning and very different from toiling up this same trail last evening in the sunset with all the rocks and dirt giving back the heat of the day. The trail was used regularly by cattle and the dust was powdered dry and, now, lightly moistened from the dew. There were many hyena tracks and, as the trail came on to a ridge of grey rock so that you could look down on both sides into a steep ravine, and then went on along the edge of the canyon, we saw a fresh rhino track in one of the dusty patches below the rocks.
‘He’s just gone on ahead,’ Pop said. ‘They must wander all over here at night.’
Below, at the bottom of the canyon, we could see the tops of high trees and in an opening see the flash of water. Across were the steep hillside and the gullies we had studied last night. Droopy and the local guide, the one who had been chased by the rhino, were whispering together. Then they started down a steep path that went in long slants down the side of the canyon.
We stopped. I had not seen P.O.M. was limping, and in sudden whispered family bitterness there was a highly-righteous-on-both-sides clash, historically on unwearable shoes and boots in the past, and imperatively on these, which hurt. The hurt was lessened by cutting off the toes of the heavy short wool socks worn over ordinary socks, and then, by removing the socks entirely, the boots made possible. Going down-hill steeply made these Spanish shooting boots too short in the toe and there was an old argument, about this length of boot and whether the bootmaker, whose part I had taken, unwittingly first, only as interpreter, and finally embraced his theory patriotically as a whole and, I believed, by logic, had overcome it by adding on to the heel. But they hurt now, a stronger logic, and the situation was unhelped by the statement that men’s new boots always hurt for weeks before they became comfortable. Now, heavy socks removed, stepping tentatively, trying the pressure of the leather against the toes, the argument past, she wanting not to suffer, but to keep up and please Mr. J. P., me ashamed at having been a four-letter man about boots, at being righteous against pain, at being righteous at all, at ever being righteous, stopping to whisper about it, both of us grinning at what was whispered, it all right now, the boots too, without the heavy socks, much better, me hating all righteous bastards now, one absent American friend especially, having just removed myself from that category, certainly never to be righteous again, watching Droopy ahead, we went down the long slant of the trail toward the bottom of the canyon where the trees were heavy and tall and the floor of the canyon, that from above had been a narrow gash, opened to a forest-banked stream.