We both knew it and there was nothing to do about it and he covered the car and I walked over to the tent.
“Was the Shamba in good shape?” Miss Mary asked.
“It’s fine. It’s a little cold and rough.”
“Is there anything I can do for anyone there?”
You good lovely kind kitten, I thought and I said, “No. I think everything is fine. I’m going to get a medicine chest for the Widow and teach her to use it. It’s awful for the kids’ eyes not to be cared for when they’re Wakamba.”
“If they are anybody,” Miss Mary said.
“I’m going out to talk to Arap Meina. Would you please ask Mwindi to call me when the bath is ready?”
Arap Meina did not think that the lion would kill that night. I told him he had looked very heavy when he had gone off into the forest that morning. He doubted if the lionesses would kill that night either although they might and the lion might join them. I asked him if I should have made a kill and tied it up or covered it with brush to try to hold the lion. He said the lion was much too intelligent.
A large part of time in Africa is spent in talk. Where people are illiterate this is always true. Once you start the hunt hardly a word is spoken. You all understand each other and in hot weather your tongue is stuck dry in your mouth. But in planning a hunt in the evening there is usually much talking and it is quite rare that things come off as they are planned; especially if the planning is too complicated.
Later, when we were both in bed that night the lion proved us all to be wrong. We heard him roar to the north of the field where we had made the airstrip. Then he moved off roaring from time to time. Then another and less impressive lion roared several times. Then it was quiet for a long time. After that we heard the hyenas and from the way they called and from the high quavering laughing noise they made I was sure some lion had killed. After that there was the noise of lions fighting. This quieted down and the hyenas started to howl and laugh.
“You and Arap Meina said it was going to be a quiet night,” Mary said very sleepily.
“Somebody killed something,” I said.
“You and Arap Meina tell each other about it in the morning. I have to go to sleep now to get up early. I want to sleep well so I won’t be cross.”
I SAT DOWN to the eggs and bacon, the toast, coffee and jam. Mary was on her second cup of coffee and seemed quite happy. “Are we really getting anywhere?”
“Yes.”
“But he outsmarts us every morning and he can keep it up forever.”
“No he can’t. We’re going to start to move him a little too far out and he’ll make a mistake and you’ll kill him.”
That afternoon after lunch we did baboon control. We were supposed to keep the population of baboons down to protect the Shambas but we had been doing it in a rather stupid way trying to catch the bands in the open and fire on them as they made for the shelter of the forest. In order neither to sadden nor enrage baboon lovers I will give no details. We were not charged by the ferocious beasts and their formidable canine teeth by the time I reached them were stilled in death. When we got back to camp with the four disgusting corpses G.C. had already arrived.
He was muddy and he looked tired but happy.
“Good afternoon, General,” he said. He looked into the back of the hunting car and smiled. “Babooning I see. Two brace. A splendid bag. Going to have them set up by Roland Ward?”
“I’d thought of a group mounting, G.C., with you and me in the center.”
“How are you, Papa, and how is Miss Mary?”
“Isn’t she here?”
“No. They said she’d gone for a walk with Charo.”
“She’s fine. The lion’s been a little on her mind. But her morale is good.”
“Mine’s low,” G.C. said. “Should we have a drink?”
“I love a drink after babooning.”
“We’re going in for big-time babooning on a large scale,” G.C. said. He took off his beret and then reached into his tunic pocket and brought out a buff envelope. “Read this and memorize our role.”
He called to Nguili to bring drinks and I read the operation orders.
“This makes good sense,” I said. I read it on skipping, temporarily, the parts that had nothing to do with us and that I would have to check on the map, looking for where we came in.
“It does make sense,” G.C. said. “My morale’s not low because of it. It’s what’s holding my morale up.”
“What’s the matter with your morale? Moral problems?”
“No. Problems of conduct.”
“You must have been a wonderful problem child. You have more damned problems than a character in Henry James.”
“Make it Hamlet,” G.C. said. “And I wasn’t a problem child. I was a very happy and attractive child, only slightly too fat.”
“Mary was wishing you were back only this noon.”
“Sensible girl,” G.C. said.