‘I couldn’t tell?’ she whispered. ‘Do you suppose there are any more in there?’
‘Thousands,’ I said. ‘What do we do, Pop?’
‘That bull may be just around the bend,’ Pop said. ‘Come on.’
We went along the bank, our nerves cocked, and as we came to the narrow end of the reeds there was another rush of something heavy through the tall stalks. I had the gun up waiting for whatever it was to show. But there was only the waving of the reeds. M’Cola signalled with his hand not to shoot.
‘The calf,’ Pop said. ‘Must have been two of them. Where’s the bloody bull?’
‘How the hell do you see them?’
‘Tell by the size.’
Then we were standing looking down into the stream bed, into the shadows under the branches of the big trees, and off ahead down the stream when M’Cola pointed up the hill on our right.
‘Faro,’ he whispered and reached me the glasses.
There on the hillside, head-on, wide, black, looking straight towards us, ears twitching and head lifted, swaying as the nose searched for the wind, was another rhino. He looked huge in the glasses. Pop was studying him with his binoculars.
‘He’s no better than what you have,’ he said softly.
‘I can bust him right in the sticking place,’ I whispered.
‘You have only one more,’ Pop whispered. ‘You want a good one.’
I offered the glasses to P.O.M.
‘I can see him without,’ she said. ‘He’s huge.’
‘He may charge,’ Pop said. ‘Then you’ll have to take him.’
Then, as we watched, another rhino came into sight from behind a wide feathery-topped tree. He was quite a bit smaller.
‘By God, it’s a calf,’ Pop said. ‘That one’s a cow. Good thing you didn’t shoot her. She bloody well {may} charge too.’
‘Is it the same cow?’ I whispered.
‘No. That other one had a hell of a horn.’
We all had the nervous exhilaration, like a laughing drunk, that a sudden over-abundance, idiotic abundance of game makes. It is a feeling that can come from any sort of game or fish that is ordinarily rare and that, suddenly, you find in a ridiculously unbelievable abundance.
‘Look at her. She knows there’s something wrong. But she can’t see us or smell us.’
‘She heard the shots.’
‘She knows we’re here. But she can’t make it out.’
The rhino looked so huge, so ridiculous, and so fine to see, and I sighted on her chest.
‘It’s a nice shot.’
‘Perfect,’ Pop said.
‘What are we going to do?’ P.O.M. said. She was practical.
‘We’ll work around her,’ Pop said.
‘If we keep low I don’t believe our scent will carry up there once we’re past.’
‘You can’t teil,’ Pop said. ‘We don’t want her to charge.’
She did not charge, but dropped her head, finally, and worked up the hill followed by the nearly full-grown calf.
‘Now,’ said Pop, ‘we’ll let Droop go ahead and see if he can find the bull’s tracks. We might as well sit down.’
We sat in the shade and Droopy went up one side of the stream and the local guide the other. They came back and said the bull had gone on down.
‘Did any one ever see what son of horn he had?’ I asked.
‘Droop said he was good.’
M’Cola had gone up the hill a little way. Now he crouched and beckoned.
‘Nyati,’ he said with his hand up to his face.
‘Where?’ Pop asked him. He pointed, crouched down, and as we crawled up to him he handed me the glasses. They were a long way away on the jutting ridge of one of the steep hillsides on the far side of the canyon, well down the stream. We could see six, then eight buffalo, black, heavy necked, the horns shining, standing on the point of a ridge. Some were grazing and others stood, their heads up, watching.
‘That one’s a bull, ‘ Pop said, looking through the glasses.
‘Which one?’
‘Second from the right.’
‘They all look like bulls to me.’
‘They’re a long way away. That one’s a good bull. Now we’ve got to cross the stream and work down toward them and try to get above them.’