‘Damn shame,’ Pop whispered. ‘She had a beautiful horn.’
‘I was all set to bust her,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t tell she was a cow.’
‘M’Cola saw the calf.’
M’Cola was whispering to Pop and nodding his head emphatically.
‘He says there’s another rhino in there,’ Pop said. ‘That he heard him snort.’
‘Let’s get higher, where we can see them if they break, and throw something in,’ I said.
‘Good idea,’ Pop agreed. ‘Maybe the bull’s there.’
We went a little higher up the bank where we could look out over the lake of high reeds and, with Pop holding his big gun ready and I with the safety off mine, M’Cola threw a club into the reeds where he had heard the snort. There was a wooshing snort and no movement, not a stir in the reeds. Then there was a crashing farther away and we could see the reeds swaying with the rush of something through them toward the opposite bank, but could not see what was making the movement. Then I saw the black back, the wide-swept, point-lifted horns and then the quick-moving, climbing rush of a buffalo up the other bank. He went up, his neck up and out, his head horn-heavy, his withers rounded like a fighting bull, in fast strong-legged climb. I was holding on the point where his neck joined his shoulder when Pop stopped me.
‘He’s not a big one,’ he said softly. ‘I wouldn’t take him unless you want him for meat.’
He looked big to nie and now he stood, his head up, broadside, his head swung toward us.
‘I’ve got three more on the licence and we’re leaving their country,’ I said.
‘It’s awfully good meat,’ Pop whispered. ‘Go ahead then. Bust him. But be ready for the rhino after you shoot.’
I sat down, the big gun feeling heavy and unfamiliar, held on the buff’s shoulder, squeezed off and flinched without firing. Instead of the sweet clean pull of the Springfield with the smooth, unhesitant release at the end, this trigger came to what, in a squeeze, seemed metal stuck against metal. It was like when you shoot in a nightmare. I couldn’t squeeze it and I corrected from my flinch, held my breath, and pulled the trigger. It pulled off with a jerk and the big gun made a rocking explosion out of which I came, seeing the buffalo still on his feet, and going out of sight to the left in a climbing run, to let off the second barrel and throw a burst of rock dust and dirt over his hind quarters. He was out of shot before I could reload the double-barrelled 470 and we had all heard the snorting and the crashing of another rhino that had gone out of the lower end of the reeds and on under the heavy trees on our side without showing more than a glimpse of his bulk in the reeds.
‘It was the bull,’ Pop said. ‘He’s gone down the stream.’
‘N’Dio. Doumi! Doumi!’ Droopy insisted it was a bull. ‘I hit the damned buff,’ I said. ‘God knows where.
To hell with those heavy guns. The trigger pull put me off.’
‘You’d have killed him with the Springfield,’ Pop said.
‘I’d know where I hit him anyway. I thought with the four-seven I’d kill him or miss him,’ I said. ‘Instead, now we’ve got him wounded.’
‘He’ll keep,’ Pop said. ‘We want to give him plenty of time.’
‘I’m afraid I gut-shot him.’
‘You can’t tell. Going off fast like that he might be dead in a hundred yards.’
‘The hell with that four-seventy,’ I said. ‘I can’t shoot it. The trigger’s like the last turn of the key opening a sardine can.’
‘Come on,’ Pop said. ‘We’ve got God knows how many rhino scattered about here.’
‘What about the buff?’
‘Plenty of time for him later. We must let him stiffen up. Let him get sick.’
‘Suppose we’d been down there with all that stuff coming out.’
‘Yes,’ said Pop.
All this in whispers. I looked at P.O.M. She was like someone enjoying a good musical show.
‘Did you see where it hit him?’