Killing Rhinos

by Herb Hughes

  The man passed a sentry, someone he had seen before but did not know. The sentry recognized him immediately and, without words, nodded and stepped aside to let him pass. A few meters more and the campers were suddenly aware of a lone rider entering their safe haven. The chattering continued, however, until, one-by-one, they recognized him. Silence slowly groped over the entire oasis as he moved forward. He dismounted and let Killer lower his head to the water.

  “Jack! Jack Wheat!” a withered and wrinkled little man whined loudly from his stance by the nearest campfire. The flesh on the old man’s face had sunk so low his cheeks looked like the insides of empty bowls. There wasn’t a hair on his head or face, only loose, wrinkled skin. It was Crazy Mac. “Am I glad to see you! Where you been so long?”

  “Desert.”

  “See anything,” Sam asked.

  “One.”

  “What'd it measure?” Bonner asked. With any other hunter, Greg Bonner would have first asked if he'd killed the beast. With Jack Wheat, he knew it was a wasted question.

  “Fifty-eight and a half.”

  “Wooo,” Sam whistled. There was a murmur throughout the oasis. “That's pretty good. I haven't heard about a horn that big in over a year.”

  “Not bad,” Greg added. “I had one almost sixty-two summer before last, but nothing close since.”

  “Aw, you ain't shit,” Crazy Mac cried at Greg. “If you got one bigger than Jack, you probably found it dead at the bottom of a cliff.”

  Jack smiled as he unbuckled his saddle.

  “Oh, shut up, old man,” Greg responded.

  “Shut up? Shut up yourself! Why you're just...”

  “Hey, old man,” Jack whispered as low as he could, giving the old man a quick stare. “Let it go.”

  “Why, sure, Jack. Sure,” Crazy Mac whispered back.

  “Where was it?” Bonner asked.

  “West,” Jack said, and he nodded briefly toward the direction from which he had ridden into the camp, some twenty degrees north of where the dead Rhino lay. It was enough to throw Greg or Sam off if they went looking, but not enough to raise suspicions about lying if they happened to stumble across the animal. “A day or so hard ride. Close to the Spine.” No need being too accurate.

  “You've been on the hunt for a while, haven't you Jack?” a man walking up from the other side of the oasis asked. It was Bill Miller, the local mail rider and part time Rhino hunter, as all mail riders were out of necessity. They traveled a lot, but more importantly, a mail rider’s job didn’t pay quite enough to support a family. A decent size Rhino would net them several months’ extra pay.

  “Three weeks.”

  “Then you don't know about Joe Riley or Brian Pickney.”

  Jack glanced up and listened. Riley was Borderton's blacksmith; lived a few kilometers outside town in a small cabin. Not a close friend. Jack didn’t have many close friends. But Joe Riley was a nice enough fellow who had done a few favors for Jack over the years. Brian Pickney was a clerk at Borderton Hardware, a young guy. He had gotten married to a lanky little girl a year or two ago, but the couple had no kids yet.

  “Big Rhino got into the Riley’s’ cabin the other morning,” Bonner said. Jack could have sworn that Bonner was fighting back a smile as he talked. “Killed Joe, his wife, and all five kids.”

  “Even the baby,” Sam added. “They said the cabin was ankle deep in blood.” Sam's voice cracked, and his eyes stretched wide with fear at the thought.

  “Pickney disappeared about the same time,” Bill Miller said. “No trace of him. The rangers figured the Rhino ate him not long before it got into the Riley’s’ cabin.”

  “Damned idiots!” Crazy Mac swore. He spit on the ground in disgust then said, “Rhinos don’t eat people.”

  “Of course Rhinos eat people,” Sam said. “Any fool knows that.”

  “Well, this fool don’t know it,” Mac said as he pointed a finger at his own chest.

  Bonner grinned broadly and said, “You’re sure right about that, Mac. On both accounts.”

  Laughter rolled through the oasis.

  “Something ate Brian Pickney,” Sam said. “Every bit of him. They couldn’t find nothing. Had to be the Rhino.”

  “Did you see it chew him up?” Crazy Mac asked.

  “No, but…”

  “See there?” Crazy Mac said triumphantly. “Ain’t a one of you ever seen a Rhino eat anyone, have you?”

  “I have,” Greg said. “Twice. Saw a big Rhino a few years ago swallow a small boy in one gulp. When I was a kid, I saw one eat a woman. Chewed her up then licked the blood off the grass. There wasn’t a trace left.”

  “You’re a lying dog!” Crazy Mac screamed.

  “Oh, shut up, old man,” Bonner responded. “Any fool knows that Rhinos eat people. Why else do people disappear?”

  Crazy Mac, the skin on his withered old face shaking in anger, started to scream something at Greg Bonner, but Jack touched the old man’s sleeve in a way that told him to keep quiet. Mac obeyed.

  “Anyway,” Greg said, picking up the previous story, “The rangers tracked the Rhino for a day and a half before they killed it. They almost lost the trail in a creek in the mountains.”

  “Yep,” Crazy Mac whined again. “The Rhinos are getting smarter. In the old days, there warn't no Rhino that knew it could cover its trail by wading down a creek. They've learned. Those monsters are getting smarter; I tell you.”

  “And I told you to shut up, old man,” Bonner said, his voice filled with impatience and disgust. “Damned animals aren't getting any smarter. I've been hunting for thirteen years, and they're as dumb now as they were then.”

  “That’s ‘cause the damned Rhinos was smarter than you then,” Crazy Mac screamed. “And they’re even more smarter than you now. You wouldn’t know the difference.”

  A rumble of low-level laughter ran through the oasis, and Greg’s face began to redden.

  “You’re gonna know the difference between the sharp edge of my knife and the dull edge, you crazy old coot,” Bonner said as he whipped out the long, wide blade that every Rhino hunter carried.

  “Now y’all calm down,” Sam said, holding his hands out in front of himself but leaning away from the two so he could run at a moment’s notice.

  “No need for that,” Jack added as he stepped between Mac and Bonner. The big man eyed Jack a moment, but Jack held his stance. Greg slowly put his knife back in its sheath, staring intently at Crazy Mac as he did. Mac was peeking around Jack’s shoulder.

  “I was talking about fifty years ago and longer,” Crazy Mac said, pointing his wrinkled face toward Greg Bonner, his eyes open extra wide for effect. He spoke each word slowly, enunciating clearly as though talking to an idiot.

  Bonner shook his head and threw his hand at the old man as if to say that conversation with him was a waste of time.

  “And I'll tell you another thing,” the old man whined further. “A hundred and fifty years ago, when the first colonists came, there weren't no Rhinos at all!”

  “Here we go with the 'no Rhino' stories again,” Bonner shrugged, rolling his eyes upward. “I'm going to sleep.”

  Greg Bonner stretched his huge, imposing frame, turned, then walked to where his bedroll lay open on the ground, his saddle resting at the opposite end. He lay down, covering everything but his head. Jack knew that even though Bonner's eyes might be closed, his ears would stay open until all the others were silent and asleep. Jack would do the same.

  “So how do you know what was around a hundred and fifty years ago?” Sam asked the old man. It was conversation. Sam had heard the story more than once, but there were variations each time, and sometimes it was downright different.

  “My pappy told me all about it, by Gawd,” the old man continued, moving his hand, palm down, in a slow arc to add emphasis to the tale. “He was a young man when the freighters landed, and nobody saw no Rhinos nowhere! It was five years before the first Rhino was ever seen. And those first ones were differe
nt, too. They were fewer, smaller, dumber, and they weren't as mean, though they were mean enough.”

  “So how old was your father when you were born?” Bill Miller, the mail rider, asked.

  “My father?” Crazy Mac said, a curious look on his face. “He was, oh, let's see. Thirty… thirty-two. Somewhere thereabouts. Why?”

  “And he was a grown man when he arrived on the freighters, right? We’ll say eighteen, but he was probably older. Let me figure this out,” Bill said as he rubbed his chin, a mocking smile creeping onto his face. “I’ll be damned, Mac. That would make you about, oh, pretty close to a hundred and forty. At the least. You look pretty old, Mac, but you don't look quite that old.”

  Crazy Mac shook his head in short strokes as if confused. “Maybe it was my grandpappy,” he said, groping for an answer. “Yeah, that’s it. It was my grandpappy that landed with the freighters. That’s how it was.”

  “And maybe the Rhinos were there all along,” Bill said. “Maybe your father, or grandfather or whichever one of your ancestors it was, forgot about them for five years.”

  “That's not so,” the old man tried to protest.

  Bill Miller stood, a triumphant smile on his face, and said, “Got to get up damned early. One of the pack mules they gave me to carry the mail pouches is as ornery as, as… as ornery as you Crazy Mac. Come to think of it, the two of you would make a good pair. Anyway, I have to get up early to load the son-of-a-bitch. It takes forever with him fighting me every step of the way. See you fellows later.” He turned and walked away, still smiling.

  “Guess I better be getting some sleep as well,” Sam said. “Bill and the others are taking two-hour watches, so we don't have to worry about it.”

  “Mind if I put my bedroll by your fire,” Jack asked Sam. “I'm out of firewood.”

  “Sure,” Sam said. “You wander around the desert without firewood? Man! You're either very brave or very crazy.”

  “Don't like to carry too much. Bad on Killer,” Jack answered. “I find enough scrap here and there.”

  Silently he was thinking how Sam might improve his lot as a Rhino hunter if he didn't weigh his horse down with bundles of firewood. It was true that the dense trees of the north yielded wood that would burn for hours, but a week's worth was a considerable load. Still, the safety of a campfire was a tradition. Traditions died hard.

  Jack placed his bedroll on top of the saddle blanket, unrolled it, then set the saddle at one end. He lay down, using the saddle as a pillow. This kept the laser rifle and its secret compartment well protected, a mere inch or so under his head. As was the habit with all travelers, whether Rhino hunter or not, he lay his homebuilt beside him. More than a few had shot themselves during the night. Jack had long ago learned to sleep without moving.

  Crazy Mac walked over to where Jack lay. “You believe me, don't you?” he whispered, his head shaking gently from side-to-side and the sagging skin flapping wildly about.

  “Sure, old man. But a lot of things could explain why nobody saw any Rhinos the first few years. There's nothing that strange about it.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe not.”

  Jack pulled a dried vegetable cake from his saddle pack and began to eat.

  “Uh,” Crazy Mac said, staring longingly at Jack’s cake, “You got a spare one of those.”

  “Sure,” Jack said. He opened his bag and pulled the next-to-last cake out and tossed it to the old man.

  “Thanks, much. Pickings have been slim lately.”

  Jack reached back for the last cake and tossed it to the old man, too.

  “You sure you don’t mind,” Crazy Mac said as he caught the second cake. Even though Mac was a mass of wrinkled skin, his reflexes were still good.

  “I got plenty,” Jack lied, then he settled back to listen to the old man's theories on why there were no Rhinos when the planet was originally colonized, and why no supply ships had ever come, leaving Agrilot cut off from the rest of humanity.

  Unlike the other Rhino hunters, Jack had patiently listened to Crazy Mac over and over through the years. Though the repetition had long since begun to wear thin and the crazy theories were little more than useless, every once in a while the old man would relate something he had seen from long ago or repeat some fact he had never mentioned before. These small tidbits made little sense by themselves, but Jack stored them away. Someday, he hoped, they might come together, like pieces of a puzzle. Perhaps that was unlikely, but sitting and listening made Crazy Mac consider Jack his best friend. Friends were nice to have in the desert, even if that friend was a crazy old hermit who slept on the ground at a desert oasis.

  “They didn't like us, Jack,” the old man continued as the first tale of the evening was drawing to a close, “Because we weren't colonists at all. We were prisoners. Did you know that, Jack? Agrilot is nothing more than a prison! The whole planet! It’s a Gawd-forsaken hell-hole of a bonafide prison.

  “Back on old Earth our ancestors were criminals, plain old common criminals,” the old man sobbed as he raved on. “Murderers and rapists! That's why the supply ships never came. And they sent those Gawd-awful Rhinos down here to punish us for crimes our ancestors committed. If they'd only come back now, they'd see we're different. ‘Cept maybe for Bonner. But they wouldn't have to take us back. All we want is for them to bring some supplies. Damned if I'd want to go back. This is home.” He rotated his arm as if taking in the entire desert. “Would you want to go back, Jack?”

  “No,” Jack answered. “Agrilot is home.”

  Everybody knew that Agrilot was originally a prison colony, a planet devoted to allowing thousands of prisoners from old Earth, political and otherwise, all of whom were sentenced to life – or the opposite – a chance to start over, to build a new future and a new culture. But for some reason the promised supply freighters with all the portable factories and mechanized equipment never arrived, leaving the colonists to start over with little more than their bare hands. There were plenty of farm animals and seeds on the original ship. Otherwise, the colony would not have survived at all. But there was little else outside a handful of laser rifles and a few thousand books. Unfortunately, the books were all non-technical or novels, of little value to colonists on a raw planet.

  Sometimes the old man would say that there was a great space war not long after the colony was started, and that the rest of humanity were either all dead or so battered by the devastation of war they no longer had the capability of space travel. Or that the few who were left had forgotten about the prisoner colonists on Agrilot because they were so busy rebuilding their own lives. There were many variations of this tale from telling to telling, but regardless of the details, Jack thought the space war made sense. It seemed to be the best explanation for losing all contact with Earth.

  “Hell, no,” Crazy Mac was saying as one story began to drift into another. “I'm going to stay right here when they come. But we could sure use some laser rifles so that ordinary folks like you and me could have one. And maybe a few more household inventions to make our lives a little easier.”

  Jack cocked his brow ever so slightly. That last seemed a rather odd request from an old man who lived in the desert without a roof over his head.

  “But mostly we need the lasers. I’m so tired of worrying about the damned Rhinos. You think they’re ever going to come back? You think we might get some more lasers and some nice things for our homes?”

  Even though Mac didn’t have a home, he sometimes talked that way, voicing concerns that he did not personally share, not in the real world. Perhaps somewhere in his imaginary world, things were quite different from his meager life at the oasis.

  “I don’t know, Mac. I don’t know. I do know I don’t want to leave Agrilot. This is home. It’s where we all grew up. But I would like to see old Earth. Just to visit. Tell me, did your grandfather ever tell you what Earth was like?”

  “Yeah, he sure did. Same as here, pretty much. Except old Earth don’t have no ancient ruins, not a millio
n years ancient like the Spine. Or tens of millions of years. Ever how old it is. Earth has deserts and forests and mountains and oceans like we do, only we got more deserts I think. The trees and the plants aren’t the same kinds, but they’re similar. Desert plants here look kinda like desert plants there. Sorta. Trees here look kinda like trees there. The big difference is the animals. There’s all kinds of animals on Earth, big and small. Not here, of course. There ain’t many native animals at all, especially now that the rats and farm animals that came with us have crowded them out. And what there is are small. Why, the biggest isn’t any larger than a mouse. Except for the Rhinos, of course. And they ain’t natural. They can’t be. They couldn’t have come from here, could they? Unless they evolved from trees somehow. What do you think?”

  “I'll have to give it some thought,” Jack said with a smile. Rhinos evolving from trees! It was time to find a way out of listening to another story. The old man was having extra trouble following his own thought patterns tonight, and Jack was tired and sleepy and weary of trying to make sense of it. “It's getting late, old man. Let's get some sleep.”

  “Oh, sure, Jack. I'm pretty tired. These yahoos around here wear me out,” he said, waving his hand in the direction of the rest of the people in the oasis. His eyes, though, were glued on Greg Bonner. “Yeah, guess I'll need to be going to sleep, too.”

  Crazy Mac wandered over toward his bed, a dirt bowl, a hollowed area in the ground filled with straw and tree fibers and anything else he could find to make a cushion. His old bones needed the softness. Everybody knew it was his space and nobody bothered it. In fact, they stayed well away from it. It was not the best smelling spot in the oasis.

  The old man had lived at this desert pool for as long as anyone could remember, lecturing and taunting Rhino hunters and all the others who passed through. At the same time, he lived off their handouts. Almost to a man, the Rhino hunters were tired of his stories and his ranting and wailing and would just as soon not have to put up with his company, but there was not another oasis within a day's ride so most humored him by pretending to listen. A few, like Bill Miller, enjoyed goading the old man. They got a sadistic pleasure out of cornering him with his own statements, then listening to his crazy ranting and raving as he exploded into a burst of incoherent screaming. That hadn’t happened tonight. Jack had been around to calm and quiet Crazy Mac. The old man respected Jack and did what Jack said.