When we got back to camp and had breakfast Mary understood why we had done what we did and agreed that it was right and necessary. But the corrida had been called off again when she was all set and tense for it and we were not popular. I felt so sorry that she felt ill and I wanted her to let down in tension if she could. There was no use going on talking about how the lion had made a mistake finally. Both G.C. and I were sure we had him now. He had not fed during the night and had come out to look for the bait in the morning. He had gone back into the forest again. He would lie up hungry and, if he were not disturbed, he should be out early in the evening; that is he should be. If he was not G.C. had to leave the next day no matter what happened and he would revert back to Mary and me on our own. But the lion had broken his pattern of behavior and made a very grave mistake and I did not worry anymore about our getting him. I might have been happier to hunt him with Mary without G.C. but I loved to hunt with G.C. too and I was not so stupid as to want any sort of bad show to happen with me alone with Mary. G.C. had pointed out too well how it could be. I always had the great illusion of Mary hitting the lion exactly where she should and the lion rolling over like anything else I had seen them do so many times and be as dead as only a lion can be. I was going to drive two into him if he rolled over alive and that was that. Miss Mary would have killed her lion and been happy about it always and I would only have given him the puntilla and she would know it and love me very much forever world without end amen. It was now the sixth month that we had looked forward to this. Just then a new Land Rover, one of the new, larger and faster models we had never seen before, drove into camp through the wonderful field of white flowers that had been dust a month ago and mud one week before. This car was driven by a red-faced man of middle height who wore a faded khaki uniform of an officer in the Kenya police. He was dusty from the road and there were white smile wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that cracked the dust.
“Anybody home?” he asked coming into the mess tent and taking off his cap. Through the open, muslin-screened end that faced toward the Mountain I had seen the car come up.
“Everybody home,” I said. “How are you, Mr. Harry?”
“I’m quite well.”
“Sit down and let me make you something. You can stay the night can’t you?”
He sat down and stretched his legs and moved his shoulders as pleasantly as a cat does.
“Couldn’t drink anything. No proper people drink at this hour.”
“What do you want?”
“Would you share a beer?”
I opened the beer and poured it out and watched him relax and smile with his dead tired eyes as we raised the glasses.
“Have them put your gear in young Pat’s tent. It’s that green one that’s empty.”
Harry Dunn was shy, overworked, kind and ruthless. He was fond of Africans and understood them and he was paid to enforce the law and carry out orders. He was as gentle as he was tough and he was not revengeful nor a hater nor was he ever stupid nor sentimental. He did not hold grudges in a grudge-holding country and I never saw him be petty about anything. He was administering the law in a time of corruption, hatreds, sadism and considerable hysteria and he worked himself, each day, past the limit that a man can possibly go, never working to seek promotion or advancement because he knew his worth at what he was doing. Miss Mary one time said that he was a portable fortress of a man.
“Are you having fun here?”
“Very much.”
“I’ve heard a little. What’s this about having to kill the leopard before the Birthday of the Baby Jesus?”
“That’s for that picture story for that magazine we were making the pictures for in September. Before we met. We had a photographer and he took thousands of pictures and I’ve written a short article and captions for the pictures they use. They have a beautiful picture of a leopard and I shot him but he isn’t mine.”
“How does that work?”
“We were after a big lion that was very smart. It was over on the other side of the Ewaso Ngiro beyond Magadi under the escarpment.”
“Well off my beat.”