‘Yes,’ M’Cola agreed. ‘I see him. You shoot him.’
I told it again. ‘Seven cows. Shoot biggest. Fifteen cows, one bull. Hit that bull.’
They all believed it now for a moment and circled, searching, but the faith died at once in the heat of the sun and the tall grass blowing.
‘All cows,’ Garrick said. The Wanderobo-Masai nodded, his mouth open. I could feel the comfortable lack of faith coming over me too. It was a damned sight easier not to hunt in that sun in that shadeless pocket and in the sun on that steep hillside. I told M’Cola we would hunt up the valley on both sides, finish skinning out the head, and he and I would come down alone and find the bull. You could not hunt them against that unbelief. I had had no chance to train them; no power to discipline. If there had been no law I would have shot Garrick and they would all have hunted or cleared out. I think they would have hunted. Garrick was not popular. He was simply poison.
M’Cola and I came back down the valley, quartered it like bird dogs, circled and followed and checked track after track. I was hot and very thirsty. The sun was something serious by now.
‘Hapana,’ M’Cola said. We could not find him. Whatever he was, we had lost him.
‘Maybe he was a cow. Maybe it was all goofy,’ I thought, letting the unbelief come in as a comfort. We were going to hunt up the hillside to the right and then we would have checked it all and would take the cow head into camp and see what the Roman had located.
I was dead thirsty and drained the canteen. We would get water in camp.
We started up the hill and I jumped a sable in some brush. I almost loosed off at it before I saw it was a cow. That showed how one could be hidden, I thought. We would have to get the men and go over it all again; and then, from the old man, came a wild shouting.
‘Doumi! Doumi!’ in a high, screaming shout.
‘Where?’ I shouted, running across the hill toward him.
‘There! There!’ he shouted, pointing into the timber on the other side of the head of the valley. ‘There! There! There he goes! There!’
We came on a dead run but the bull was out of sight in the timber on the hillside. The old man said he was huge, he was black, he had great horns, and he came by him ten yards away, hit in two places, in the gut and high up in the rump, hard hit but going fast, crossing the valley, through the boulders and going up the hillside.
I gut-shot him, I thought. Then as he was going away I laid that one on his stern. He lay down and was sick and we missed him. Then, when we were past, he jumped.
‘Come on,’ I said. Everyone was excited and ready to go now and the old man was chattering about the bull as he folded the head skin and put the head upon his own head and we started across through the rocks and up, quartering up on to the hillside. There, where the old man had pointed, was a very big sable track, the hoof marks spread wide, the tracks grading up into the timber and there was blood, plenty of it.
We trailed him fast, hoping to jump him and have a shot, and it was easy trailing in the shade of the trees with plenty of blood to follow. But he kept climbing, grading up around the hill, and he was travelling fast. We kept the blood bright and wet but we could not come up on him. I did not track but kept watching ahead thinking I might see him as he looked back, or see him down, or cutting down across the hill through the timber, and M’Cola and Garrick were tracking, aided by every one but the old man who staggered along with the sable skull and head skin held on his own grey head. M’Cola had hung the empty water bottle on him, and Garrick had loaded him with the cinema camera. It was hard going for the old man.