In the night I heard a lion speak several times as he was hunting. Miss Mary was sleeping soundly and breathing softly. I lay awake and thought about too many things but mostly about the lion and my obligation to Pop and to Bwana Game and to others. I did not think about Miss Mary except about her height, which was five feet two inches, in relation to tall grass and bush and that, no matter how cold the morning was, she must not wear too much clothing as the stock on the 6.5 Mannlicher was too long for her if her shoulder was padded and she might let the rifle off as she raised it to shoot. I lay awake thinking about this and about the lion and the way Pop would handle it and how wrong he had been the last time and how right he had been more times than I had ever seen a lion.
BEFORE IT WAS daylight when the coals of the fire were covered by the gray ashes that sifted in the early morning breeze I put on my high soft boots and an old dressing gown and went to wake Ngui in his pup tent.
He woke sullen and not at all my blood brother and I remembered that he never smiled before the sun was up and sometimes it took him longer to get rid of wherever he had been when he was asleep.
We talked at the dead ashes of the cook fire.
“You heard the lion?”
“Ndio, Bwana.”
This, a politeness, was also a rudeness as we both knew for we had discussed the phrase, “Ndio, Bwana,” which is what the African says always to the White Man to get rid of him through agreement.
“How many lions did you hear?”
“One.”
“Mzuri,” I said, meaning that was better and he was correct and had heard the lion. He spat and took snuff and then offered it to me and I took some and put it under my upper lip.
“Was it the big lion of Memsahib?” I asked, feeling the lovely quick bite of the snuff against the gums and the pocket of the upper lip.
“Hapana,” he said. This was the absolute negative.
Keiti was standing by the cooking fire now with his slashed flat doubting smile. He had wound his turban in the dark and there was an end that should have been tucked in. His eyes were doubting too. There was nothing of the feeling of a serious lion hunt.
“Hapana simba kubwa sana,” Keiti said to me, his eyes mocking but apologetic and absolutely confident. He knew it was not the big lion that we had heard so many times. “Nanyake,” he said to make an early morning joke. This meant, in Kamba, a lion old enough to be a warrior and marry and have children but not old enough to drink beer. His saying it and making the joke in Kamba was a sign of friendliness, made at daylight when friendliness has a low boiling point, to show, gently, that he knew I was trying to learn Kamba with the non-Moslem and alleged bad element and that he approved or tolerated.
I had functioned on this lion business almost as long as I could remember anything that had happened. In Africa you could remember around a month at a time if the pace was fast. The pace had been almost excessive and there had been the allegedly criminal lions of Salengai, the lions of Magadi, the lions of here, against whom allegations had now been repeated four times and this new intruding lion who had, as yet, no fiche nor dossier. This was a lion who had coughed a few times and gone about hunting the game that he was entitled to. But it was necessary to prove that to Miss Mary and to prove that he was not the lion she had hunted for so long who was charged with many offenses and whose huge pug marks, the left hind one scarred, we had followed so many times only finally to see him going away into tall grass that led to the heavy timber of the swamp or to the thick bush of the gerenuk country up by the old Manyatta on the way to the Chulu hills. He was so dark with his heavy black mane he looked almost black and he had a huge head that swung low when he moved off into country where it was impossible for Mary to follow him. He had been hunted for many years and he was very definitely not a picture lion.
Now I was dressed drinking tea in the early morning light by the built-up fire and waiting for Ngui. I saw him coming across the field with the spear on his shoulder stepping out smartly through the grass still wet with dew. He saw me and came toward the fire leaving a trail behind him through the wet grass.
“Simba dumi kidogo,” he said, telling me he was a small male lion. “Nanyake,” he said, making the same joke Keiti had made. “Hapana mzuri for Memsahib.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll let Memsahib sleep.”
“Mzuri,” he said and went off to the cooking fire.