Mthuka drove the car over to the waiting tree and told Debba and the Widow to get in. The Widow’s little boy bumped his head against my stomach and I patted it. He got into the back seat with Debba and his mother but I stepped down and had Debba come and sit in the front seat. She had been a brave girl to come to the camp, bringing the mealies and to stay at the waiting tree until we had come in and I did not want her to ride back to the Shamba in any but her usual place. But Miss Mary being so nice about the Shamba had put us all on our honor as though we had been given our parole.
“Did you see the tree?” I asked Debba. She giggled. She knew what sort of a tree it was.
“We will go and shoot again.”
“Ndio,” she sat up very straight as we drove past the outer huts and stopped under the big tree. I got down to see if the Informer had any botanical specimens ready to transport, but could locate nothing. He probably has them in the herbarium, I thought. When I came back Debba was gone and Ngui and I got in the car and Mthuka asked where we were going.
“Na campi,” I said. Then thought and added, “By the big road.”
Today we were in suspense, suspended between our new African Africa and the old Africa that we had dreamed and invented and the return of Miss Mary. Soon there would be the return of whatever Game Scouts G.C. brought and the presence of the great Wilson Blake who could enunciate policy and move us or throw us out or close an area or see that someone got six months as easily as we could take a piece of meat to the Shamba.
None of us was very cheerful but we were relaxed and not unhappy. We would kill an eland to have for Christmas Day and I was going to try to see that Wilson Blake had a good time. G.C. had asked that I try to like him and I would try. When I had met him I had not liked him but that had probably been my fault. I had tried to like him but probably I had not tried hard enough. Perhaps I was getting too old to like people when I tried. Pop never tried to like them at all. He was civil or moderately civil and then observed them through his blue, slightly bloodshot and hooded eyes without seeming to see them. He was watching for them to make a mistake.
Sitting in the car under the tall tree on the hillside I decided to do something special to show my liking and appreciation for Wilson Blake. There was not much in Laitokitok he would care for and I could not picture him as truly happy at a party given for him in one of the illegal Masai drinking Shambas nor in the back of Mr. Singh’s. I had grave doubts if he and Mr. Singh would get on too well. I knew what I would do. It was absolutely an ideal present. We would charter Willie to fly Mr. Blake over the Chulus and all of his domain that he had never seen. I could not think of a finer nor more useful present and I began to like Mr. Blake and to give him almost most favored nation status. I would not go along but would stay modestly and industriously at home photographing my botanical specimens, perhaps, or identifying finches while G.C. and Willie and Miss Mary and Mr. Blake worked out the country.
“Kwenda na campi,” I told Mthuka and Ngui opened another bottle of beer so that we would be drinking while we crossed the stream at the ford. This was a very lucky thing to do and we all had a drink from the bottle while we watched the small fish in the pool above the long ripple of the ford. There were good catfish in the stream but we were too lazy to fish.
MISS MARY WAS waiting under the shade of the double fly of the mess tent. The back of the tent was up and the wind blew new and cool from the Mountain.
“Mwindi’s worried about you hunting barefoot and going out nights.”
“Mwindi’s an old woman. I took my boots off once because they squeaked and the reason they squeaked was his fault for not dubbing them properly. He’s too bloody righteous.”
“It’s easy to call someone righteous when they’re looking after your own good.”
“Leave it at that.”
“Well, why is it that you take so many precautions and sometimes you don’t take any at all?”
“Because sometimes they signal possibility of bad peoples and then you hear they’re somewhere else. I always take what precautions we need.”
“But when you go out by yourself nights.”
“Someone sits up with you and the guns and there are always the lights. You’re always guarded.”
“But why do you go out?”
“I have to go out.”
“But why?”
“Because the time is getting short. How do I know when we can get back? How do I know we’ll ever get back?”
“I worry about you.”
“You’re usually sound asleep when I go out and sound asleep when I come back.”
“I’m not always. Sometimes I touch the cot and you’re not there.”
“Well, I can’t go now until there’s a moon and the moon gets up very late now.”
“Do you really want to go so much?”
“Yes, truly, honey. And I always have somebody keep guard over you.”
“Why don’t you take somebody with you?”
“It isn’t any good with anybody with you.”
“It’s just another craziness. But you don’t drink before you do it, do you?”