Standing in front of the canvas circle of the latrine I looked, as each morning, at that fuzzy blur of stars that the romanticists of astronomers called the Southern Cross. Each morning at this moment I observed the Southern Cross in solemn ceremony.
Pop was at the car. M’Cola handed me the Springfield and I got in the front. The tragedian and his tracker were in the back. M’Cola climbed in with them.
“Good luck,” Pop said. Some one was coming from toward the tents. It was P. O. M. in her blue robe and mosquito boots. “Oh, good luck,” she said. “Please, good luck.”
I waved and we started, the headlights showing the way to the road.
There was nothing on the salt when we came up to it after leaving the car about three miles away and making a very careful stalk. Nothing came all morning. We sat with our heads down in the blind, each covering a different direction through openings in the thatched withes, and always I expected the miracle of a bull kudu coming majestic and beautiful through the open scrub to the gray, dusty opening in the trees where the salt lick was worn, grooved, and trampled. There were many trails to it through the trees and on any one a bull might come silently. But nothing came. When the sun was up and we were warmed after the misty cold of the morning I settled my rump deeper in the dust and lay back against the wall of the hole, resting against the small of my back and my shoulders and still able to see out through the slit in the blind. Putting the Springfield across my knees I noticed that there was rust on the barrel. Slowly I pulled it along and looked at the muzzle. It was freshly brown with rust.
“The bastard never cleaned it last night after that rain,” I thought and, very angry, I lifted the lug and slipped the bolt out. M’Cola was watching me with his head down. The other two were looking out through the blind. I held the rifle in one hand for him to look through the breech and then put the bolt back in and shoved it forward softly, lowering it with my finger on the trigger so that it was ready to cock rather than keeping it on the safety.
M’Cola had seen the rusty bore. His face had not changed and I had said nothing but I was full of contempt and there had been indictment, evidence, and condemnation without a word being spoken. So we sat there, he with his head bent so only the bald top showed, me leaning back and looking out through the slit, and we were no longer partners, no longer good friends; and nothing came to the salt.
At ten o’clock the breeze, which had come up in the east, began to shift around and we knew it was no use. Our scent was being scattered in all directions around the blind as sure to frighten any animals as though we were revolving a searchlight in the dark. We got up out of the blind and went over to look in the dust of the lick for tracks. The rain had moistened it but it was not soaked and we saw several kudu tracks, probably made early in the night and one big bull track, long, narrow, heart-shaped; clearly, deeply cut.
We took the track and followed it on the damp reddish earth for two hours in thick bush that was like second-growth timber at home. Finally we had to leave it in stuff we could not move through. All this time I was angry about the uncleaned rifle and yet happy and eager with anticipation that we might jump the bull and get a snap at him in the brush. But we did not see him and now, in the big heat of noon, we made three long circles around some hills and finally came out into a meadow full of little, humpy Masai cattle and, leaving all shade behind, trailed back across the open country under the noon sun to the car.
Kamau, sitting in the car, had seen a kudu bull pass a hundred yards away. He was headed toward the salt lick at about nine o’clock when the wind began to be tricky, had evidently caught our scent and gone back into the hills. Tired, sweating, and feeling more sunk than angry now, I got in beside Kamau and we headed the car toward camp. There was only one evening left now, and no reason to expect we would have any better luck than we were having. As we came to camp, and the shade of the heavy trees cool as a pool, I took the bolt out of the Springfield and handed the rifle, boltless, to M’Cola without speaking or looking at him. The bolt I tossed inside the opening of our tent onto my cot.
Pop and P. O. M. were sitting under the dining tent.
“No luck?” Pop asked gently.
“Not a damn bit. Bull went by the car headed toward the salt. Must have spooked off. We hunted all over hell.”
“Didn’t you see anything?” P. O. M. asked. “Once we thought we heard you shoot.”
“That was Garrick shooting his mouth off. Did the scouts get anything?”
“Not a thing. We’ve been watching both hills.”
“Hear from Karl?”
“I’d like to have seen one,” I said. I was tired out and slipping into bitterness fast. “God damn them. What the hell did he have to blow that lick to hell for the first morning and gut-shoot a lousy bull and chase him all over the son-of-a-bitching country spooking it to holy bloody hell?”
“Bastards,” said P. O. M., staying with me in my unreasonableness. “Sonsabitches.”