is for as long as you live against as long as there is such and such an animal; just as the way to paint is as long as there is you and colours and canvas, and to write as long as you can live and there is pencil and paper or ink or any machine to do it with, or anything you care to write about, and you feel a fool, and you are a fool, to do it any other way. But here we were, now, caught by time, by the season, and by the running out of our money, so that what should have been as much fun to do each day whether you killed or not was being forced into that most exciting perversion of life; the necessity of accomplishing something in less time than should truly be allowed for its doing. So, coming in at noon, up since two hours before daylight, with only three days left, I was starting to be nervous about it, and there, at the table under the dining tent fly, talking away, was Kandisky of the Tyrolese pants. I had forgotten all about him.
‘Hello. Hello,’ he said. ‘No success? Nothing doing? Where is the kudu?’
‘He coughed once and went away,’ I said. ‘Hello, girl.’
She smiled. She was worried too. The two of them had been listening since daylight for a shot. Listening all the time, even when our guest had arrived; listening while writing letters, listening while reading, listening when Kandisky came back and talked.
‘You did not shoot him?’
‘No. Nor see him.’ I saw that Pop was worried too, and a little nervous. There had evidently been considerable talking going on.
‘Have a beer, Colonel,’ he said to me.
‘We spooked one,’ I reported. ‘No chance of a shot. There were plenty of tracks. Nothing more came. The wind was blowing around. Ask the boys about it.’
‘As I was telling Colonel Phillips,’ Kandisky began, shifting his leather-breeched behind and crossing one heavy-calved, well-haired, bare leg over the other, ‘you must not stay here too long. You must realize the rains are coming. There is one stretch of twelve miles beyond here you can never get through if it rains. It is impossible.’
‘So he’s been telling me,’ Pop said. ‘I’m a Mister, by the way. We use these military titles as nicknames. No offence if you’re a colonel yourself.’ Then to me, ‘Damn these salt-licks. If you’d leave them alone you’d get one.’
‘They ball it all up,’ I agreed. ‘You’re so sure of a shot sooner or later on the lick.’
‘Hunt the hills too.’
‘I’ll hunt them, Pop.’
‘What is killing a kudu, anyway?’ Kandisky asked. ‘You should not take it so seriously. It is nothing. In a year you kill twenty.’
‘Best not say anything about that to the game department, though,’ Pop said.
‘You misunderstand,’ Kandisky said. ‘I mean in a year a man could. Of course no man would wish to.’
‘Absolutely,’ Pop said. ‘If he lived in kudu country, he could. They’re the commonest big antelope in this bush country. It’s just that when you want to see them you don’t.’
‘I kill nothing, you understand,’ Kandisky told us. ‘Why are you not more interested in the natives?’
‘We are,’ my wife assured him.
‘They are really interesting. Listen ...’ Kandisky said, and he spoke on to her.
‘The hell of it is,’ I said to Pop, ‘when I’m in the hills I’m sure the bastards are down there on the salt. The cows are in the hills but I don’t believe the bulls are with them now. Then you get there in the evening and there are the tracks. They have been on the lousy salt. I think they come any time.’
‘Probably they do.’
‘I’m sure we get different bulls there. They probably only come to the salt every couple of days. Some are certainly spooked because Karl shot that one. If he’d only killed it clean instead of following it through the whole damn countryside. Christ, if he’d only kill any damn thing clean. Other new ones will come in. All we have to do is to wait them out, though. Of course they can’t all know about it. But he’s spooked this country to hell.’
‘He gets so very excited,’ Pop said. ‘But he’s a good lad. He made a beautiful shot on that leopard, you know. You don’t want them killed any cleaner than that. Let it quiet down again.’
‘Sure. I don’t mean anything when I curse him.’
‘What about staying in the blind all day?’
‘The damned wind started to go round in a circle. It blew our scent every direction. No use to sit there broadcasting it. If the damn wind would hold. Abdullah took an ash can to-day.’
‘I saw him starting off with it.’
There wasn’t a bit of wind when we stalked the salt and there was just light to shoot. He tried the wind with the ashes all the way. I went alone with Abdullah and left the others behind and we went quietly. I had on these crêpe-soled boots and it’s soft cotton dirt. The bastard spooked at fifty yards.
‘Did you ever see their ears?’
‘Did I ever see their ears? If I can see his ears, the skinner can work on him.’
‘They’re bastards,’ Pop said. ‘I hate this salt-lick business. They’re not as smart as we think. The trouble is you’re working on them where they are smart. They’ve been shot at there ever since there’s been salt.’
‘That’s what makes it fun,’ I said. ‘I’d be glad to do it for a month. I like to hunt sitting on my tail. No sweat. No nothing. Sit there and catch flies and feed them to the ant lions in the dust. I like it. But what about the time?’
‘That’s it. The time.’
‘So,’ Kandisky was saying to my wife. ‘That is what you should see. The big ngomas. The big native dance festivals. The real ones.’
‘Listen,’ I said to Pop. ‘The other lick, the one I was at last night, is fool-proof except for being near that bloody road.’
‘The trackers say it is really the property of the lesser kudu. It’s a long way too. It’s eighty miles there and back.’
‘I know. But there were four big bull tracks. It’s certain. If it wasn’t for that lorry last night. What about staying there to-night! Then I’d get the night and the early morning and give this lick a rest. There’s a big rhino there too. Big track, anyway.’
‘Good,’ Pop said. ‘Shoot the rhino too.’ He hated to have anything killed except what we were after, no killing on the side, no ornamental killing, no killing to kill, only when you wanted it more than you wanted not to kill it, only when getting it was necessary to his being first in his trade, and I saw he was offering up the rhino to please me.
‘I won’t kill him unless he’s good,’ I promised.
‘Shoot the bastard,’ Pop said, making a gift of him.
‘Ah, Pop,’ I said.
‘Shoot him,’ said Pop. ‘You’ll enjoy it, being by yourself. You can sell the horn if you don’t want it. You’ve still one on your licence.’
‘So,’ said Kandisky. ‘You have arranged a plan of campaign? You have decided on how to outwit the poor animals?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How is the lorry?’
‘That lorry is finished,’ the Austrian said. ‘In a way I am glad. It was too much of a symbol. It was all that remained of my shamba. Now everything is gone and it is much simpler.’
‘What is a shamba?’ asked P.O.M., my wife. ‘I’ve been hearing about them for months. I’m afraid to ask about those words every one uses.’
‘A plantation,’ he said. ‘It is all gone except that lorry. With the lorry