‘No,’ said the old man. ‘Hapana.’
We made a very wide circle and I sent the brother and the husband out in another circle. We found nothing, no trace, no tracks, no blood, and I told M’Cola we would start for camp. The Roman’s brother and the husband went up the valley to get the meat of the sable cow we had shot. We were beaten.
M’Cola and I ahead, the other following, we went across the long heat haze of the open country, down to cross the dry watercourse, and up and into the grateful shade of the trail through the woods. As we were going along through the broken sunlight and shadow, the floor of the forest smooth and springy where we cut across to save distance from the trail, we saw, less than a hundred yards away, a herd of sable standing in the timber looking at us. I pulled back the bolt and looked for the best pair of horns.
‘Doumi,’ Garrick whispered. ‘Doumi kubwa sana!’
I looked where he pointed. It was a very big cow sable, dark chestnut, white marks on the face, white belly, heavy built and with a fine curving pair of horns. She was standing broadside to us with her head turned, looking. I looked carefully at the whole lot. They were all cows, evidently the bunch whose bull I had wounded and lost, and they had come over the hill and herded up again together here.
‘We go to camp,’ I said to M’Cola.
As we started forward the sable jumped and ran past us, crossing the trail ahead. At every good pair of cow horns, Garrick said, ‘Bull, B’wana. Big, big bull. Shoot, B’wana. Shoot, oh shoot!’
‘All cows,’ I said to M’Cola when they were past, running in a panic through the sun-splashed timber.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
‘Old man,’ I said. The old man came up.
‘Let the guide carry that,’ I said.
The old man lowered the cow sable head.
‘No,’ said Garrick.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Bloody well yes.’
We went on through the woods toward camp. I was feeling better, much better. All through the day I had never thought once of the kudu. Now we were coming home to where they were waiting.
It seemed much longer coming home although, usually, the return over a new trail is shorter. I was tired all the way into my bones, my head felt cooked, and I was thirstier than I had ever been in my life. But suddenly, walking through the woods, it was much cooler. A cloud had come over the sun.
We came out of the timber and down on to the flat and in sight of the thorn fence. The sun was behind a bank of clouds now and then in a little while the sky was covered completely and the clouds looked heavy and threatening. I thought perhaps this had been the last clear hot day; unusual heat before the rains. First I thought: if it had only rained, so that the ground would hold a track, we could have stayed with that bull for ever; then, looking at the heavy, woolly clouds that so quickly had covered all the sky, I thought that if we were going to join the outfit, and get the car across that ten-mile stretch of black cotton road on the way to Handeni, we had better start. I pointed to the sky.
‘Bad,’ M’Cola agreed.
‘Go to the camp of B’wana M’Kubwa?’
‘Better.’ Then, vigorously, accepting the decision, ‘N’Dio. N’Dio.’
‘We go,’ I said.
Arrived at the thorn fence and the hut, we broke camp fast. There was a runner there from our last camp who had brought a note, written before P.O.M, and Pop had left, and bringing my mosquito net. There was nothing in the note, only good luck and that they were starting. I drank some water from one of our canvas bags, sat on a petrol tin and looked at the sky. I could not, conscientiously, chance staying. If it rained here we might not even be able to get out to the road. If it rained heavily on the road, we would never get out to the coast that season. Both the Austrian and Pop had said that, I had to go.