Arap Meina would be in with the report on the big black-maned lion who had been reported by the Masai from a Manyatta up in the Western Hills to have killed two cows and dragged one away with him. The Masai had suffered under him for a long time. He traveled restlessly and he did not return to his kills as a lion would be expected to. Arap Meina had the theory that this lion had once returned and fed on a kill that had been poisoned by a former Game Ranger and that he had been made terribly sick by it and had learned, or decided, never to return to a kill. That would account for his moving about so much, but not for the haphazard way he visited the various Masai villages or Manyattas. Now the plain, the salt licks and the bush country were heavy with game since the good grass had come with the violent spot rains of November and Arap Meina, Ngui and I all expected the big lion to leave the hills and come down to the plain where he could hunt out of the edge of the swamp. This was his customary way of hunting in this district.
The Masai can be very sarcastic and their cattle are not only their wealth but something much more to them and the Informer had told me that one chief had spoken very badly about the fact that I had two chances to kill this lion and instead had waited to let a woman do it. I had sent word to the chief that if his young men were not women who spent all their time in Laitokitok drinking Golden Jeep sherry he would have no need to ask for me to kill his lion but that I would see he was killed the next time he came into the area where we were. If he cared to bring his young men I would take a spear with them and we would kill him that way. I asked him to come into camp and we would talk it over.
He had turned up at camp one morning with three other elders and I had sent for the Informer to interpret. We had a good talk. The chief explained that the Informer had misquoted him. Bwana Game, G.C., had always killed the lions that it was necessary to kill and was a very brave and skillful man and they had great confidence in him and affection for him. He remembered too that when we had been here last in the time of the dryness Bwana Game had killed a lion and Bwana Game and I had killed a lioness with the young men. This lioness had done much damage.
I answered that these facts were known and that it was the duty of Bwana Game, and for this time myself, to kill any lions that molested cattle, donkeys, sheep, goats or people. This we would always do. It was necessary for the religion of the Memsahib that she kill this particular lion before the Birthday of the Baby Jesus. We came from a far country and were of a tribe of that country and this was necessary. They would be shown the skin of this lion before the Birthday of the Baby Jesus.
As always I was a little appalled by my oratory after it was over and had the usual sinking feeling about commitments made. Miss Mary must, I thought, belong to a fairly warlike tribe if she, a woman, had to kill a longtime marauding lion before the Birthday of the Baby Jesus. But at least I had not said she had to do it every year. Keiti took the Birthday of the Baby Jesus very seriously since he had been on so many safaris with churchgoing and even devout Bwanas. Most of these Bwanas since they were paying so much for their safari and since the time was short did not let the Birthday interfere with their shooting. But there was always a special dinner with wine and, if possible, champagne, and it was always a special occasion. This year it was even more special since we were in a permanent camp and with Miss Mary taking it so seriously and it being so obviously such an important part of her religion and attended by so many ceremonials, especially that of the tree, that Keiti, loving order and ceremony, gave it a great importance. The ceremony of the tree appealed to him since in his old religion, before he had become a Moslem, a grove of trees had been of the highest importance.
The rougher pagan element of the camp thought that Miss Mary’s tribal religion was one of the sterner branches of religion since it involved the slaying of a gerenuk under impossible conditions, the slaughter of a bad lion and the worship of a tree which fortunately Miss Mary did not know produced the concoction which excited and maddened the Masai for war and lion hunting. I am not sure that Keiti knew this was one of the properties of the particular Christmas tree that Miss Mary had selected but about five of us knew it and it was a very carefully kept secret.