Now this morning with the day becoming hot and the cool wind from the Mountain not having risen we were working out a new trail out of the forest that the elephants had destroyed. After we came out into the open prairie land after having to cut our way through a couple of bad places we saw the first great flock of storks feeding. They were true European storks black and white and red-legged and they were working on the caterpillars as though they were German storks and under orders. Miss Mary liked them and they meant much to her since we had both been worried about the article that said that storks were becoming extinct and now we found that they had merely had good sense enough to come to Africa as we had done ourselves; but they did not take away her sorrow and we went on toward camp. I did not know what to do about Miss Mary’s sorrow. It was proofed against eagles and proofed against storks, against neither of which I had any defense at all, and I began to know how great a sorrow it really was.
“What have you been thinking of all morning when you’ve been so uncommonly silent?”
“About birds and places and how nice you are.”
“That was nice of you.”
“I didn’t do it as a spiritual exercise.”
“I’ll be all right. People don’t just jump in and out of bottomless pits.”
“They’re going to make it an event in the next Olympic Games.”
“You’ll probably win it.”
“I have my backers.”
“Your backers are all dead like my lion. You probably shot all your backers one day when you were feeling especially wonderful.”
“Look there’s another field of storks.”
Africa is a dangerous place for a great sorrow to live very long when there are only two people in a camp and when it gets dark shortly after six o’clock in the evening. We did not talk about lions nor think about them anymore and the emptiness where Mary’s sorrow had lived was filling again with the routine and the strange fine life and the coming of the night. When the fire burned down I pulled a long heavy dead tree from the pile of deadwood the lorry had brought in the afternoon onto the coals and we sat in our chairs and watched the night breeze blow the coals up and watched the wood catch fire. This night breeze was a small wind that came off the snows of the Mountain. It was so light that you only felt its coolness but you could see it in the fire. You can see the wind in many ways but the loveliest is at night in the brightening and the lowering and raising of the flame in your fire.
“We’re never alone with our fire,” Mary said. “I’m glad now there is only us and our fire. Will that log burn until morning?”
“I think so,” I said. “If the wind doesn’t rise.”
“It’s strange now without the lion to look forward to in the morning and you haven’t any problems or worries now, have you?”
“No. Everything is quiet now,” I lied.
“Do you miss all the problems you and G.C. had?”
“No.”
“Maybe now we can get some really beautiful pictures of the buffalo and other fine color pictures. Where do you think the buffalo have gone?”
“I think they are over toward the Chulus. We’ll find out when Willie brings the Cessna.”
“Isn’t it strange how the Mountain throwing all those stones hundreds and hundreds of years ago can make a place impossible to get to so that it is absolutely shut off from everyone and no one can reach it since men started to go on wheels.”
“They’re helpless now without their wheels. Natives won’t go as porters anymore and the fly kills pack animals. The only parts of Africa that are left are those that are protected by deserts and by the fly. The tsetse fly is the animal’s best friend. He only kills the alien animals and the intruders.”
“Isn’t it strange how we truly love the animals and still have to kill almost every day for meat?”
“It’s no worse than caring about your chickens and still having eggs for breakfast and eating spring chicken when you want it.”
“It is different.”
“Of course it is. But the principle is the same. So much game has come now with the new grass that we may not have any trouble lions for a long time. There is no reason for them to bother the Masai when we have so much game now.”
“The Masai have too many cattle anyway.”
“Sure.”
“Sometimes I feel as though we were fools protecting their stock for them.”
“If you don’t feel like a fool in Africa a big part of the time you are a bloody fool,” I said rather pompously, I thought. But it was getting late enough at night for generalizations to appear the way some stars showed reluctant in their distance and disinterest and others always seemed brazen in their clarity.
“Do you think we should go to bed?” I asked.
“Let’s go,” she said. “And be good kittens and forget anything that’s been wrong. And when we’re in bed we can listen to the night.”