Assegai

As soon as they had followed the spoor out of the riverbed and into the open savannah it became obvious that the bull elephant had been thoroughly alarmed by the sound of axe blows and their voices as they had raided the beehive.

‘He is in full flight.’ Manyoro pointed out the length of the bull’s strides. He had settled into the long swinging gait that covers the ground as fast as a man can run. They all knew that he could keep up that pace from dawn to dusk without pausing to rest.

‘He is going east. It seems to me that he is heading for the Nyiri desert, that dry land where there are no men and only he knows where to dig for water,’ Manyoro remarked after the first hour. ‘If he keeps up this pace, by sunrise tomorrow he will be over the top of the escarpment and deep into the desert.’

‘Do not listen to him, M’bogo,’ Loikot advised. ‘It is the habit of old men to be gloomy. They can smell shit in the perfume of the kigelia flower.’

After another hour they stopped for a swig from the water-bottles.

‘The bull has not turned aside from his chosen path,’ Manyoro observed. ‘Not once has he paused to feed or even slowed his pace. Already he is many hours ahead of us.’

‘Not only can this old man smell dung in the kigelia bloom, but he can smell it even in the flower between the thighs of the sweetest young virgin.’ Loikot grinned cheekily at Leon. ‘Pay him no heed, M’bogo. Follow me, and before sunset I will show you such tusks as will amaze your eyes and fill your heart with joy.’

But the spoor ran on straight and unwavering. Another hour, and even Loikot was beginning to wilt. When they stopped for a few minutes to drink and stretch out in the shade they were all quiet and subdued. Even though they had driven themselves hard since leaving the dry riverbed, they knew how far they had dropped behind the bull elephant. Leon screwed the stopper back on the water-bottle and stood up. Without a word the others came to their feet. They went on.

In the middle of the afternoon they stopped to rest again. ‘If my mother was with us she would work such a spell as would turn the bull aside and make him start feeding,’ said Manyoro, ‘but, alas, she is not with us.’

‘Perhaps she is watching over us, for she is a great magician,’ said Loikot brightly. ‘Perhaps she can hear me if I call to her.’ He jumped to his feet and broke into a leaping praise dance, hopping high in the air on his long skinny legs. ‘Hear me, Great Black Cow, hear me call to you.’ Leon laughed and even Manyoro grinned and began to clap in time to the dance.

‘Hear him, Mama! Hear our little baboon!’

‘Hear me, Mother of the Tribe! You have shown us the marks of his feet, now do not let him walk away from us. Slow his great feet. Fill his belly with hunger. Make him stop to feed.’

‘That’s enough magic for one day. Surely the bull cannot escape us now,’ Leon intervened. ‘On your feet, Manyoro. Let us go on.’

The spoor ran on. The bull was moving so fast that when it crossed areas of loose earth it kicked spurts of dust forward with each long stride. When Leon looked up at the sun his heart sank. There was no more than an hour of daylight left, no possibility of coming up with the elephant before darkness cloaked the spoor, forcing them to break off the pursuit until dawn on the morrow. By then he would be fifty miles ahead of them.

He was still gazing up at the sky so he bumped into Manyoro, who had stopped abruptly in his path. Both Masai were poring over the earth. They looked up at Leon and, with hand signals, urged him to remain silent. They were both grinning and their eyes shone. They had been revitalized and no longer showed any trace of fatigue. Manyoro indicated the altered spoor with an eloquent, graceful gesture.

Leon grasped that a little miracle had taken place. The bull had slowed, his pace had shortened, and he had turned aside from his determined flight towards the eastern escarpment of the valley. Manyoro pointed to a grove of ngong nut trees a quarter of a mile to their right. The tops of the trees were round in shape, taller and greener than the lesser trees surrounding them. He leaned over to Leon and placed his lips close to his ear. ‘At this season the trees are in bearing. He has smelled the ripe nuts and cannot resist them. We will find him in the grove.’ He took up a handful of earth and let it sift through his fingers. ‘There is still no wind. We can move straight in towards him.’ He looked back at Ishmael and signalled to him to stay where he was. Ishmael laid his bundle at his feet and lowered himself thankfully to the ground beside it.

With the two Masai still leading, they crept forward, moving from one patch of cover to the next, pausing to scan the forest ahead before going forward again. They reached the nearest ngong tree. The ground beneath it was littered with fallen nuts but the branches above were still thick with bunches of half-ripe ones. The bull had stood under this tree for a long time, picking up the hard nuts with the fingers at the tip of his trunk and stuffing them into his mouth. Then he had moved on. They followed his huge pad marks to the next tree, where he had fed again, then moved on once more. This time he had headed towards a shallow depression, above which only the tops of the nut trees showed. They crept forward until they could look down into it.

At the same instant all three saw the enormous black mass of the bull elephant. He was three hundred paces away, standing in the shade of one of the largest nut trees, angled half away from them. He rocked gently from one forefoot to the other, ears fanning lazily, trunk draped nonchalantly over the curve of the only visible tusk. The other was hidden from view by his massive bulk, but Leon stared at the one he could see, hardly able to believe its length and girth. To him, it seemed the size of a marble column from a Greek temple.

‘The wind?’ he breathed to Manyoro. ‘How is the wind?’ Manyoro scooped up another handful of earth and dribbled it through his fingers. Then he dusted his hand on his leg and made a sign that was as clear as any words. ‘No wind. Nothing.’

Leon broke open the barrels of his rifle and removed the fat brass cartridges from the breeches one at a time. He examined them for blemishes and polished them on his shirt before he slipped them back into place. He snapped the barrels shut and tucked the butt of the loaded rifle under his right armpit. Then he nodded to Manyoro, and as they moved forward, Leon took the lead. He angled towards the bull until the tree-trunk covered his approach, then turned straight towards it.

The tree blocked out the bull’s head but his body protruded on one side of it, while the curve of the nearest tusk stuck out beyond the other. A shaft of sunlight pierced the canopy of leaves above his head and struck the ivory like the beam of a limelight. Closer still, and Leon heard the animal’s belly rumble like distant thunder. He moved in steadily upon him, setting down each footstep with exaggerated care. Now he held the heavy rifle at the ready position across his chest.

The Holland was essentially a short-range weapon. He had fired several shots at a target before he had set out from Tandala Camp, and had discovered that the twin barrels were regulated to shoot to the same point of aim at precisely thirty yards. At any greater distance, the bullets would spread out unpredictably. He knew that to be completely certain of his shot he had to get closer than that. He wanted to reach the trunk of the nut tree and fire from behind its cover. Now he was so close that he could see the oxpeckers scrambling around on the elephant’s wrinkled grey skin. There were five or six of the slender little yellow birds, balancing themselves with their tails as they foraged with their sharp red beaks in the creases of the skin for ticks, blind flies and other blood-sucking insects. One crept into the ear and the bull flapped loudly to warn it away from the sensitive parts deep inside. Other birds hung upside-down under his belly or in his crotch, pecking busily at the sagging folds of grey skin. Then, suddenly, they became aware of Leon’s approach and ran up the bull’s flanks to stand in a line along his spine, staring with glittering eyes at the intruder.

Manyoro tried to warn Leon of what was about to happen but he dared not speak, and Leon was so intent on his stalk that he did not see the desperate hand signals behind him. He was still a dozen paces from the bole of the ngong tree when the row of oxpeckers on the bull’s back exploded into flight, uttered their frenzied twittering alarm call. It was a warning that the beast understood well, for the birds were not only his grooms but also his sentinels.

From comfortable somnolence he plunged forward, reaching his top speed in half a dozen strides. He had no idea where the danger lay, but he trusted the birds and simply ran in the direction he was facing. He was heading at a thirty-degree angle away from Leon. For a second Leon was stunned by the speed and agility of the massive creature. Then he raced forward in pursuit, aiming to get ahead of the bull before he could get clear away. For a short distance he gained ground, closing to just under the critical thirty-yard range. He fastened his eyes on the bull’s head. The wide sails of the ears were cocked back so Leon could see the long, vertical slit of the earhole. But the head nodded violently and rolled from side to side with each stride. The oxpeckers were shrilling, and behind Leon, the two Masai shouted unintelligibly. All around there was movement and wild confusion and the bull pulled rapidly away. Within a few more strides he would be out of range.

Leon slammed to a halt. All his vision and attention were concentrated on the long slit of the earhole in the centre of the swinging and swaying head. The rifle came up to his shoulder and he looked over the barrels, hardly seeing them, so intense was his concentration. Time and movement seemed to slow into a dreamlike unreality. His vision was as sharp as a diamond drill. He saw beyond the moving wall of grey skin and the spreading ears. He saw the brain. It was an extraordinary sensation – Percy Phillips had called it the hunter’s eye. With the hunter’s eye he could see through skin and bone, and descry the exact position of the brain. It was the size of a football, set low behind the line of the earhole.

The rifle crashed, and even in the sunlight he saw the flame spurt from the muzzle. He was startled. He had not been aware of touching the trigger. He hardly felt the recoil of five thousand foot-pounds of energy kicking back into his shoulder. His vision was not deflected by it: he saw the bullet strike two inches behind the earhole, precisely where he knew it should go. He saw the bull’s nearest eye blink shut, heard the heavy bullet strike bone with a sound like a woodman’s axe swung against a hardwood tree. With his new gift of the hunter’s eye he could imagine the bullet ploughing through bone and tissue, tearing into the brain.

The bull threw back his head, long tusks pointing for an instant at the sky. Then his front legs folded under him and he collapsed heavily into a kneeling position. The force of the impact sent up a cloud of dust and made the ground tremble beneath Leon’s feet. The elephant lay on his folded front legs as though waiting to be mounted by a mahout, head supported by the curves of the tusks, sightless eyes wide open. The tail flicked once, then all was still. The echoes of gunfire rang in Leon’s head, but all around was a deep hush.

‘It’s the dead elephant that kills you.’ He heard Percy’s warning in his memory. ‘Always put in the coup de grâce.’ Leon raised the rifle again and aimed for the crease in the bull’s armpit. Again the rifle boomed. The beast never so much as twitched as the second bullet drove through its heart.

Leon walked forward slowly and reached out to touch the staring amber eye with a fingertip. It did not blink. His legs felt as soft and limp as boiled spaghetti. He sank down, leaned his back against the elephant’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He felt nothing. He was empty inside. He felt no sense of triumph or elation, no remorse or sorrow for the death of such a magnificent creature. All that would come later. Now there was only the aching emptiness, as though he had just made love to a beautiful woman.