At the fire that had been built up by pushing the unburned ends of the logs together and putting a little brush on top of the ashes I sat down and drank my tea. It was cold by now and Mwindi brought another pot of tea with him. He was as formal and as conservative as Keiti and he had the same sense of humor except that his was rougher than Keiti’s. Mwindi spoke English and understood it better than he spoke it. He was an old man and looked like a very black, narrow-faced Chinese. He kept all my keys and was in charge of the tent, making the beds, bringing the baths, doing laundry and boots, bringing early morning tea and he also kept my money and all the money I carried to run the safari. This money was locked in the tin trunk and he kept the keys. He liked being trusted as people were trusted in the old days. He was teaching me Kamba but not the same Kamba I was learning from Ngui. He thought Ngui and I were bad influences on each other but he was too old and too cynical to be disturbed by anything except interruptions in the order of his work. He liked to work and he loved responsibility and he had made an orderly and pleasant pattern of safari life.
“Bwana wants something?” he asked, standing looking solemn and dejected.
“We have too many guns and too much ammunition in this camp,” I said.
“Nobody knows,” he said. “You bring hidden from Nairobi. Nobody sees anything at Kitanga. We always carry hidden. Nobody sees. Nobody knows. You always sleep with pistol by your leg.”
“I know. But if I were Mau Mau I would attack this camp at night.”
“If you were Mau Mau many things would happen. But you are not Mau Mau.”
“Good. But if you are not in the tent, someone must be in the tent armed and responsible.”
“Have them stand the watch outside please, Bwana. I do not want anyone in the tent. For the tent, I am responsible.”
“They will be outside.”
“Bwana, they have to cross an open plain to come to this camp. Everybody would see them.”
“Ngui and I came through the camp from end to end three times at Fig Tree and no one saw us.”
“I saw you.”
“Truly?”
“Twice.”
“Why did you not say so?”
“I do not have to say everything I see that you and Ngui do.”
“Thank you. Now you know about the guard. If Memsahib and I are gone and you leave the tent call the guard. If Memsahib is here alone and you are not here, call the guard.”
“Ndio,” he said. “You don’t drink the tea? It gets cold.”
“Tonight I make some booby traps around the tent and we will leave a lantern on that tree.”
“Mzuri. We will make a very big fire too. Keiti is sending out for wood now so the lorry driver can be free. He goes to one of the Shambas. But these people that they say come here will not come here.”
“Why do you say that so surely?”
“Because it is stupid to come here into a trap and they are not stupid. These are Wakamba Mau Mau.”
I sat by the fire with the new pot of tea and drank it slowly. The Masai were a pastoral and war-making people. They were not hunters. The Wakamba were hunters; the best hunters and trackers that I had ever known. And now their game had been killed off by the white men and by themselves on their Reserve and the only place they could hunt was in the Masai Reserves. Their own Reserve was overcrowded and overfarmed and when the rains failed there was no pasture for the cattle and the crops were lost.