Half a comb was enough for him. He felt satiated with sweetness. He rocked back on his heels and watched the others for a while. At last he stood up and left them to their gluttony. They took no notice of his departure. He picked up his rifle and sauntered idly into the bush, heading for where he thought the riverbed might be. The vegetation became thicker as he went deeper into it until he pushed his way through the last screen of branches and found himself on the bank. It had been cut back by flood water into a sheer wall that dropped six feet to a bed of fine white sand a hundred paces wide, trampled by the paws and hoofs of the animals that had used it as a highway.
On the far bank a massive wild fig tree’s roots had been exposed by the cutback. They twisted and writhed like mating serpents, and the branches that stretched out over the riverbed were laden with bunches of the small yellow figs. A flock of green pigeons had been gorging on the fruit and was startled into flight by Leon’s sudden appearance. Their wingbeats clattered in the silence as they arrowed away along the watercourse.
Beneath the spreading wild fig branches the white sand had been heaped into large mounds. Scattered around them were several pyramids of elephant dung, which commanded Leon’s attention. He held the rifle at arm’s length in front of him and jumped from the top of the bank. The soft sand broke his landing and he sank into it to his ankles, but soon recovered his balance and set off across the riverbed. When he reached the mounds he realized that the elephant had been digging for water. With their forefeet they had kicked away the dry sand until they had reached a firmer damp layer. Then they had used their trunks to burrow until they had come to the subterranean water table. The prints of their pads where they had stood over the seep holes were clearly visible. They had sucked up the water with their trunks into spongy cavities in their massive skulls, and when these were full, they had lifted their heads, thrust their trunk tips into the back of their throats and squirted the water into their bellies.
There were eight open seep holes. He went to each in turn to examine the tracks left by thirsty animals. Having been instructed by three grand-masters of the trade – Percy Phillips, Manyoro and Loikot – he had learned enough bushcraft to read them accurately. The shape and size of the footprints that the elephant had left around the first four seeps proved them to have been cows.
When he came to the fifth there was only one set of tracks. They were so large that his first glimpse of them made him pause in mid-stride. He drew a quick breath, sharp with excitement, then hurried forward and dropped to his knees beside the prints of the front feet, which were deeply embedded on the lip of the hole where the beast must have stood for hours to suck up water.
Leon stared at them in disbelief. They were enormous. The animal that had made them must have been a massive old bull: the soles of his feet had worn smooth with age. One side of the print he was studying slipped away in a trickle of soft sand – which meant that the bull had left the riverbed only recently: the disturbed earth had not had time to settle. Perhaps the animal had been frightened off by the sound of Loikot chopping open the entrance to the beehive.
Leon laid the twin barrels of his rifle across the pad print to gauge its size, and whistled softly. His barrels were two feet long, and the diameter of the footprint was only two inches less. Applying the formula that Percy Phillips had propounded to him, he calculated that this bull must stand more than twelve feet high at the shoulder, a giant among a race of giants.
Leon jumped up and ran back across the riverbed. He scrambled up the bank and pushed his way through the undergrowth to where his three companions were huddled over the last scraps of honeycomb. ‘Lusima Mama and her sweet singer have shown us the way,’ he told them. ‘I have found the spoor of a great bull elephant in the riverbed.’ The trackers snatched up their kit and ran after him, but Ishmael scooped the remains of the honeycomb into one of his pots before he hoisted his bundle on to his head and followed.
‘M’bogo, this is veritably the bull that I showed you the first time we travelled together,’ Loikot exclaimed, as soon as he saw the spoor, and danced with excitement. ‘I recognize him. This is a paramount chief of all the elephants.’
Manyoro shook his head. ‘He is so old he must be ready to die. Surely his ivory is broken and worn away.’
‘No! No!’ Loikot denied it vehemently. ‘With my own eyes I have seen his tusks. They are as long as you are, Manyoro, and thicker even than your head!’ He made a circle with his arms.
Manyoro laughed. ‘My poor little Loikot, you have been bitten by blow-flies, and they have filled your head with maggots. I will ask my mother to prepare for you a draught to loosen your bowels and clear these dreams from your eyes.’
