06 African Adventure

by Willard Price

  Hal signalled Joro, and the truck set out in pursuit of the herd. At every jolt Hal thought he would be thrown out of the seat into a thorn-bush. He hung on like grim death with one hand, clutching the pole with the other.

  The long grass looked as smooth as velvet, but it concealed pot-holes made by the rain, pits made by burrowing animals, boulders, stumps, and logs.

  Now they were actually in the herd. Like a black river, it flowed along on both sides of the car. Some of the animals were within reach of the catching pole, but Hal ignored them. He wouldn’t be satisfied with just any buffalo. He wanted one of the big bulls.

  Ahead, he saw one, taller by a good eighteen inches than any of the animals around him. His back was as broad as a dining-room table. From his great head the horns swept out and up, ending in points as sharp as ice’ picks. On the nape of his neck an egret was taking a dizzy ride.

  Over the thunder of hooves and the roar of the car, Hal shouted:

  ‘Let’s get that one.’

  Joro could scarcely hear him, but he understood the pointing finger and speeded up the car. The bumper nudged the rears of some lumbering cows and they veered out of the way, leaving a fairly clear path ahead. Clear, but not smooth. The greater the speed, the rougher the ride.

  It would be a miracle if the wildly leaping car did not tear out its sump on a stump or wind up against a rock with a broken axle.

  A large acacia tree blocked the path. Joro threw the wheel over, the swerve nearly tossing Hal out of his seat. They barely missed striking the trunk of the tree. Joro did not turn for bushes. He ploughed straight through them. The worst were the thorn-bushes. They stood some fifteen feet high and as broad as the car, and they bristled with thousands upon thousands of thorns, each two inches long and as sharp as needles.

  They did not merely scratch Hal’s face and hands. They tore holes in his shirt and trousers and bloodied him from head to foot.

  For a moment he wondered if Joro was giving him this treatment on purpose. But he realised that there was no help for it. If they were to catch the big bull they could not stop for bushes.

  Nor even for anthills. The African anthill is a strange and wondrous thing. It may be anything from two feet to twenty feet high. Though called an anthill, it is really built by termites, millions of them, and every particle of the hill has passed through the body of a termite. On the way through, the clay is mixed with certain body-juices which turn it into a kind of cement.

  So the anthill is as hard as rock, and if you attack it with a pick, all you get is sparks. It defies sun and rain and may last more than a hundred years.

  It was up the slope of one of these anthills that the big bull rushed until he was twice as high as the roof of the car. Hal would long remember that great black body high against the blue sky. Then, instead of running down the other side, the bull leaped into space, trusting to his sturdy legs to give him safe landing.

  The truck would lose valuable time if it tried to go round the hill. Joro gave the engine the last squirt of power. The truck shot up like a rocket to the top of the bill. Then it left the earth entirely and took off into space. With bad luck, it could land upside-down. But with good luck, it you would call it that, it crashed down, right side up, into the worst thorn-bush yet.

  Porcupine quills growing on bushes, Hal thought as he added to his collection of scratches.

  The car ripped its way through the thorns and was once more in the open, now close to the big bull. It was too close for comfort, and the buffalo increased his speed. His hide glistened with sweat, and foam dripped from his mouth. Now both he and the truck had left most of the herd behind. The bumper of the car almost touched his flying heels. The pole extended over his back and the noose dangled above his head.

  Hal tried to settle the noose in place, but succeeded only in bumping the animal’s back with his pole. The egret flew up with a sharp cry of alarm. The buffalo wheeled about and went off to the right. Joro at once turned in pursuit, and the car went round the curve on two wheels.

  Again it drew close. Again the bull tried to throw it off by a sharp turn, this time to the left. The heavy truck spun about and followed.

  Suddenly the bull stopped dead and glared at the truck with savage red eyes. He was tired of being pestered by this smelly monster of metal and rubber.

  Joro stopped the truck. The buffalo was now on Hal’s side of the car. Before Hal could get the pole and noose into position, the beast charged.

  If he had struck the car low down, it would have gone over in a flash, pinning Hal underneath. Instead, he crashed into the door, horns first. He pierced the door as if it had been cardboard.

  He found himself locked to this strange, evil thing. He wrenched his head violently, and in doing so not only pulled his horns free but jerked open the door.

  Now he could see a human being inside and his fury was redoubled. He reared up on his hind feet and thrust his head and shoulders into the cab.

  But Joro was not waiting for him. There was a hatch in the roof of the catcher and it was open.

  Even as the great head plunged into the cab, Joro was scrambling through the hatch and on to the roof. He was quick, but not quick enough to escape one horn, which poked him in the rear and speeded him on his way.

  Hal and the men in the back of the truck could not help laughing at the way Joro shot up through that hole like a living cannon-ball.

  But what happened then was still more amusing, though a bit terrifying. The head of the buffalo burst up through the hatch. By drawing his hind feet into the cab, he even managed to get his forefeet on to the roof.

  He was mad with rage, determined that his enemy should not escape him. He swept the roof with his horns, and Joro could barely keep out of his way. The animal bellowed furiously and flung the spume from his foaming mouth. His eyes were like burning coals. He struggled desperately, but could not climb higher through the hatch.

  In the meantime his hind quarters and hooves were working havoc in the cab, battering the metal fittings, slashing the instrument board and smashing the windscreen.

  Hal wished he had a camera instead of a catching-pole. What a sight this was! A Ford truck with a bull buffalo in the driver’s seat!

  Game-wardens had told him of incidents like this -buffalo, rhino, lion, leopard, bursting their way into cars. And in America’s Yellowstone Park not a year went by without a report of a black bear or a grizzly breaking into a car. But it was one thing to hear about it and another to see it with his own eyes.

  He was so entertained that he almost forgot to act Then he suddenly woke up. Here was the best chance he could possibly ask for to catch a magnificent bull.

  He swung his pole about until the noose was above the animal’s head. This new annoyance, fluttering above like a bird, did not improve the buffalo’s temper. He roared at it, tried to stab it with his ice-picks.

  Hal opened the noose with a twist on the pole and lowered it. That should have dropped the loop neatly over the animal’s head. But the rope caught on one of the wide-spreading horns. A part of the loop fell into the buffalo’s mouth and he set out to destroy it with his powerful jaws. But a buffalo fights with his horns and hooves, not often with his teeth. His teeth are meant for grass-eating. The tough nylon cord resisted all attempts to torn it into chewing-gum.

  With a sudden jerk Hal managed to pull the rope loose.

  The buffalo had given up trying to reach Joro. He had drawn one of his forefeet down into the cab. Soon he might withdraw his head, then back out of the car and escape. Hal realized he had only one more chance.

  As skilfully as he knew how, he manipulated the pole so that the noose opened into a wide loop and dropped over his quarry’s head. It settled round the great black neck. The cord ran back along the pole to Hal’s hand. He gave it a yank that snugged it about the animal’s throat.

  The bull, with a savage bellow, tried to pull his head down through the hatch, but the rope tightened and held him fast. Hal was not trusting
to his own strength. He knew his strength was no match for the bull’s. He had already looped his end of the rope round the fender and made it fast.

  Now it was bull versus fender. Which would prove the stronger? The fender danced and buckled and groaned. If the fender went, Hal’s seat which was strapped to it would go too. The seat bounced up and down like a yoyo, and Hal bounced with it.

  The Powerwagon was coming. Hal waved it on. Mali speeded up, and the big cage in the back of the Land-Rover rattled and banged as the car crashed over stones and holes.

  Roger stared wide-eyed at this most unusual sight, a bull-headed truck. The Greeks had told stories of a centaur, half man and half horse. What would they think of this monster with an animal head, metal body, and wheels?

  He saw the desperate efforts the buffalo was making to back out of the trap in which he found himself. If the rope snapped, he would be lost.

  ‘Step on it, Mali!’ he urged.

  He saw Hal waving to him, directing him to the other side of the Ford. In a flash he caught his brother’s idea.

  He called back to the men in the rear around the cage.

  ‘Open the cage door!’ Then to Mali, ‘Swing round and back up.’

  Now they were close enough to hear the thrashing and crashing as the big bull turned the fittings of the cab into mincemeat in his fight to get loose. A lot of repairs would be necessary. This was taking ‘em alive the expensive way. It was hard on the car and it was also hard on the animal.

  Mali turned out, then backed up until the open cage door was against the open door of the Ford.

  ‘Slack away!’ Roger shouted. Hal loosed the catching-rope from the fender. The bull, with the strain on his neck relieved, promptly drew down his head and began to back out of the car.

  He could not see where he was going for a buffalo’s eyes are planted at the front of his head, not on the sides.

  Before he could realize what was happening to him, he had backed into the cage.

  Mali pulled forward a few feet so that the cage door would have room to swing shut, and Hal, who had already left his seat and run round to the back of the Powerwagon, closed the heavy iron door.

  The animal bellowed with rage and frustration, rushed from side to side, striking the iron bars with his bony helmet and making the heavy Powerwagon rock. He might break his horns on the bars, and certainly he would bruise his flesh even through that thick hide. He must be quieted or he would destroy both himself and his cage.

  Hal got out the curare gun. He watched for his chance to pump a shot into this red-eyed, foaming bunch of fury.

  Before he could do so, the bull’s rage suddenly simmered down. He stood with legs braced apart, dripping with sweat, blood, and foam, head hanging. He was a picture of weariness and despair. Then his legs buckled beneath him and he collapsed on the steel floor.

  Chapter 15

  Baby-sitter to a bull

  Heart attack, Hal thought. Even a bull buffalo cannot go on for ever. This bull had been one of the leaders in the attack upon the camp, and he had probably been well battered when he had collided head-on with the trucks. Then he had been chased until he was tired by an engine that never got tired, he had undergone the unusual experience of climbing into the driver’s seat and pursuing a man through a hole in the roof, he had been noosed, he had fought for liberty, and then he had tested his strength against iron bars. Now he was broken in spirit as well as in body. And Hal knew that unless he acted promptly he would have nothing but a dead animal for all his pains.

  This was no job for a curare gun. The animal did not need quieting, but reviving.

  Hal leaped back into the cab and got the coramine syringe.

  Coramine is a heart stimulant used by catchers when an animal shows signs of dying from exhaustion, fear, or shock.

  To inject the drug, the syringe must be placed against the hide. But the bull lay in the middle of the, cage and Hal could not reach any part of him through the bars. There was no help for it - he must join the dangerous beast inside the cage.

  He opened the cage door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. The bull snorted angrily and struggled to his feet. Here was his enemy just where he wanted him. He feared the thing in the man’s hand. It had a sharp end like a horn. But if he could get one of his own horns into the man first and push it home, he would be rid of this pest for good and all.

  He threw his ton at Hal, but the acrobatic naturalist was no longer there and the horns went harmlessly through the bars. The bull drew back and charged again, and again Hal side-stepped.

  This time Hal was not so lucky. He found himself pinned between the animal’s right hip and the iron grating. If enough of the animal’s weight was used against him, he could be minced between those iron bars like flesh in a meat-grinder.

  He was smeared with the sweat of the overstrained animal and blood from its bruises. The pressure on his body was tremendous, but his arm was free and he had the presence of mind to jab the syringe into the bull’s thigh and inject the stimulant. At the same instant the bull fell to the floor, his last spark of energy gone.

  It would take twenty minutes or half an hour for die stimulant to act. Perhaps it had been given too late and the bull was already dead.

  ‘Better get out of there,’ Roger called. ‘He’s apt to rear up again any minute.’

  ‘No,’ Hal said. ‘He’s pooped. I just hope we won’t lose him altogether.’

  Hal hovered over the beast like an anxious mother. He placed his hand over the nostrils. He felt nothing and his anxiety increased.

  Then there was a pulse of warmth against his hand. It -was very weak, but it showed that breathing and heart action had not stopped.

  Hal looked over the hide for wounds and made a mental note of them. They must be treated later - if the animal lived.

  It was a big ‘if. The sweat on the beast’s flanks had chilled. The great eyes that had glared so savagely were closed. Hal’s father would not think much of him if he lost his first buffalo.

  He could imagine him saying, as he had so often said before, ‘Remember, you’re here to take animals alive, not dead.’

  He felt a sort of tenderness towards this helpless, heartsick beast. From creases in the skin he plucked out ticks that the egrets had overlooked. His placed his hand again over the nostrils, but though he held it there for a long time he felt nothing.

  Roger was peering in through the bars.

  ‘How does it feel to be a baby-sitter to a buffalo?’ he laughed.

  Hal was not amused.

  ‘I only hope I’m not attending a funeral. What’s the matter with that coramine? It should have acted by this time.’

  Had the heart stopped? Hal was no fool as a naturalist, but he was still learning, and that was one thing he had forgotten to ask his father - how do you take a buffalo’s pulse?

  Another ten minutes of anxious waiting, and Hal again tested for breath. Was it just imagination, or did he feel a slight come-and-go of warm and cool? Yes, there was no doubt about it. His own heart leaped.

  ‘He’s coming through!’ he shouted.

  The bull came through fast. His breathing grew steadily stronger. His eyes opened and the first thing they lit upon was Hal. But in those eyes there was not the same hate as before.

  Perhaps the buffalo, being a highly intelligent animal, understood that this man could have killed him but had not Possibly he was not so bad after all. He could even be a friend. He felt Hal’s fingers plucking out the painful ticks from his hide. And he could even look at the syringe with appreciation. He had been stabbed by it, and now he felt better.

  He was just tired. Convinced that he did not need to fear this human, he closed his eyes and slept. Hal quietly left the cage.

  Take him to camp,’ he told Mali. ‘Go easy - don’t shake him up any more than necessary. You’ll have to give the Ford a tow. That bull dancing a jig in the cab didn’t do it any more good than a bull in a china-shop.’

  In half an ho
ur the boys were after their second buffalo.

  The Ford had been left in camp with a mechanic hard at work repairing or replacing the battered controls. The Powerwagon had also been left, rather than disturb the buffalo by removing the cage.

  Hal had strapped his seat to the fender of a Chev catcher driven by Joro, while Mali and Roger followed in a Powerwagon bearing another cage.

  The herd was grazing quietly about a mile from camp. Hal picked out a splendid bull which was wandering a little apart from the rest of the herd.

  Joro drove the car alongside, and Hal neatly slipped the noose over the bull’s head.

  It had all been very easy up to this point. Now it began to be difficult The bull did not take kindly to his new necklace. He tried to shake it off.

  When this did not work, he went plunging away and might have broken the line if Hal had not let it out bit by bit, as a fisherman plays a fish.

  Changing his tactics, the bull wheeled about, bellowed, then came on the run straight for the truck.

  ‘Face him!’ Hal shouted. ‘Take him on the bumper/

  Joro didn’t need to be told. He had had enough experience to know that when a buffalo, rhino or elephant charges, the car must be turned to face the charge. It cannot easily be overturned if struck in front But if the beast manages to give it a blow on the side it may spin upside-down.

  There was another good reason why Joro did not allow a flank attack. It would expose Hal to the ^greatest possible danger, for his small seat strapped to the fender was on the side towards the bull.

  ‘Swing round!’ Hal yelled, and accompanied the order with a swing of his hand.

  Joro seemed to be trying, but there were many stones and hummocks in the way.

  Then suddenly the engine went dead. Hal’s heart sank. Whether the motor had stopped by accident or Joro had deliberately stalled it, Hal would never know.

  But he did know that he stood a very good chance of being killed. He worked feverishly to unfasten the lifebelt that held him to his seat. The buckle was stubborn. He shouted again to Joro. Joro stepped on the starter, the engine roared, then stalled again. Joro waved his hands as if to say he cOuld do nothing more.