The White Hunter

by Gilbert, Morris

  “I suppose we might as well start,” Jeanine said. “Why don’t you sing, Annie?”

  Annie had prepared for this first service. She had translated one of the gospel songs into the Masai language with a little help from Chief Mangu. It was a simple song, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.”

  In a very faltering way, she asked them to listen to her sing and then try to sing it with her. She was quite intimidated by the ranks of tall Masai warriors. She could not help but think of how, in the past, they had been the fiercest of all African tribes. No one could stand before them. Now those days were mostly gone, except for cattle raids that no one could seem to get out of their system. Their skins glistened and they seemed totally unaware of the heat of the sun. She had seen one of the Masai step on a burning coal and not even notice it, so tough were the soles of his feet. Now she began to sing, and when she had finished the song, she said, “Now you.” This time when she began to sing, a few joined her, and by the time she had sung it four times, the sounds were echoing through the whole village. “Wonderful!” she said. “We’ll just sing that one, but I’ll teach you another one the next time.”

  Jeanine stepped forward then and stood under the shade of the single tree that seemed to be flattened out by the pressure of the heat. Her black hair was tied with a jeweled string behind her head, and she made a fetching figure as she began to speak. John Winslow, who stood to her right, kept his eyes on her and listened carefully. He felt awkward translating a sermon, but somehow not as awkward as if it had been Annie who had been doing the preaching. Actually, he thought it rather odd for Jeanine Quintana to do it. He had seen some streaks of stubbornness and willfulness in her that he did not like. She’s so different from Annie, he thought, and his eyes went over to Annie, who was standing at a right angle to him, her eyes on the black faces that circled them. She’s just like she was when she was fifteen years old except she’s a woman now. But Jeanine . . . He looked back at Jeanine and refrained from shaking his head.

  Jeanine, at Annie’s insistence, kept the sermon short—no more than twenty minutes. She had been coached so that she would speak one phrase in English and wait until John had translated it into the language of the Masai. It was not an easy thing to do, for she longed to cry out and rush on ahead to tell them about the glories of God. She did not give her testimony, for a beer barrel would have meant nothing, nor would a ship. Her dramatic conversion would mean very little to any of the Masai. So she simply spoke of how people needed God in their lives.

  When the service was over, the crowd remained still. Jeanine remarked with a startled expression, “What are they waiting for, John?”

  “I think they want more singing and more preaching. Their ceremonies are very long. Some of them last two weeks. I believe,” he grinned, “they think this was kind of a preliminary.”

  Annie and Jeanine exchanged frantic glances, but John said, “Annie, why don’t you just sing some more? It doesn’t matter whether they understand it. They like your singing and so do I.”

  Annie quickly agreed and soon her clear soprano voice was filling the village again. She was startled when the men suddenly began to leap upward during one song. She had seen this before. It was a sport with the men. Standing flat-footed, they propelled themselves straight in the air. Some men, it was rumored, could leap as tall as their height. She never missed a beat, however, and glancing over at John, he winked at her and nodded encouragingly.

  Afterward, Jeanine preached some more and John tried his best to interpret. Both women suggested that he was taking some liberties, but he only smiled back at them.

  When the service was over, Jeanine and Annie went to the chief, and Jeanine put out her hand. It was a practice Chief Mangu was not familiar with, and he stared at her hand and looked at John, saying something. John responded and Chief Mangu’s white teeth shone as he reached out and his big hand swallowed that of Jeanine Quintana. He then shook hands with Annie, then with John, and then went back to Jeanine. He repeated this several times until it became apparent that he was not going to stop.

  John laughed and held up his hand. “It’s all right, Chief. Usually half a dozen handshakes are enough.” He listened as the chief replied, and then he turned and spoke to Annie. “He says that he’d like to hear more about this Jesus God.”

  “Wonderful!” Annie said. She looked at Jeanine and said, “See, it’s going to be fine.”

  “Why don’t we talk to them now about letting Christ come into their lives?”

  Both John and Annie stared at her. “It’s a little bit soon,” Annie said. “These things take time.”

  Jeanine Quintana did not like things that took time, and her whole body revealed it. She stood stiffly and then threw her hands up. “All right! It’ll take time.”

  As John watched her walk away, he said, “She’s impatient, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. She’s always had everything done for her. It aggravates her that she can’t get her own way. But she’s come a long way, John. You don’t know how far.”

  “So have you, Annie.”

  Startled, Annie looked up at John Winslow. Her eyes were wide, and there was an air of vulnerability about her, as there always had been. John remembered this from when she was just a girl. It was still there, though she was now a woman pleasing to the eyes with a face that was expressive and at the same time quietly pretty. He liked her eyes especially, dark blue, almond-shaped with long, dark lashes. “I remember the first time I saw you,” he said. “I think about it a lot.”

  The two turned and began to walk among the villagers, smiling and speaking to them. Annie was learning their names, and she kept a little notebook and wrote them down so she could practice saying them correctly. Ayoho had been helpful in teaching her new words. Now as she walked beside John, there was a peace in her, and she looked up at him. Who would have believed I would be walking beside John Winslow here in the middle of Africa?

  Right then he turned and caught her eyes, and said, “I’m glad you’re here, Annie.”

  “I’m very glad you’re here too, John. We couldn’t make it without you.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. You two are determined. You’re going to make it all right.”

  ****

  Two days after the first service, John came in when the sun was just beginning to fall out of the afternoon sky. Thin tendrils of clouds trailed across the blue canopy that spread itself around Masai country. He greeted Annie, saying, “Had good luck. We can have roasted antelope. I’m not much of a cook, but even I can’t mess that up.” He looked around and asked, “Where’s Jeanine?”

  “Why, she went hunting.”

  Instantly John’s face changed. His mouth drew into a tight line, and his voice was almost harsh as he said, “When did she go?”

  “Oh, about an hour or two ago. I told her she’d better not stay out late.”

  John turned and ran at once to pick up his gun from the tent. He had leaned it against the tent support pole and began to rummage for ammunition. As he stuck it in his pockets and started out of the camp, Annie said, “What is it, John?”

  “She’s a fool! She doesn’t have any business in a place like this. She thinks it’s like her backyard at home.”

  Looking up, Annie thought the sky looked somewhat ominous. “You really think it’s dangerous?”

  “Dangerous? Of course it’s dangerous!”

  “You mean lions?”

  “No. Not lions. It’s the hyenas.”

  “Why, I thought they were cowards.”

  “They don’t tackle a full-grown lion unless he’s wounded, but they have the strongest jaws in Africa, and they find anything weak that’s moving, especially after dark. They’ll kill it.” He pushed the bullets into the rifle, and there was a faint clicking sound as he put the safety on. He started to leave, then turned and said,
“You can’t go with me, but you’d better start praying for her. It just takes a few minutes to die here. A leopard could jump on her out of a tree and she’d never survive.”

  Annie nodded dumbly. “All right, John,” she whispered. “Go find her and bring her back.”

  ****

  Jeanine had enjoyed her jaunt. She had begun learning some of the names of the different flowers and plants and had recited them as she had gone stalking small game.

  As she walked along the narrow trail, she began to think of how different things were. Time for Jeanine had always been a hard master. She had a sharp business sense and knew that time was money in her world back in the States. Everything ran according to the clock and to the calendar. One had to be at a certain place at a certain time. There were appointments that had to be fulfilled, and she had learned to live in that world so controlled by time.

  The Masai, she had quickly discovered, had little sense of time. John Winslow had warned her of this, but she had learned it firsthand once when a warrior said he would come back soon. That could either mean ten minutes or a day or a week. It depended on what happened. She was only now beginning to understand why time had so little meaning. Their world was not complicated as hers had always been. They had no committees, they had no regular business hours, they lived by their cattle, and the young boys mostly took care of them. The women built their houses, but there was no hurry about that, either. Everything moved at a slow pace. It reminded her of a slow tide she had once seen coming in off the coast of New England, rolling slowly, never hurrying. So was life among the Masai people.

  For Jeanine this was almost a tragedy. She wanted to get on with things. She had come to Africa burning with a desire to preach the Gospel. Time and again she had had dreams of natives coming and falling before God and letting Jesus into their lives. Annie had warned her that it would not be like this, but secretly she had hoped that Annie would be wrong. Even now she wanted to build a building and had already ordered the timber to be brought, but she knew that the wood would be harvested by Africans and that the sawmill would be run by Africans, all with little sense of urgency. The trucks and bearers that brought the lumber back would not be in any hurry at all. So she was forced to bring her own busy life to, what seemed to her, a useless dead halt.

  Jeanine stopped suddenly, for a slight movement caught her eye. Quickly she lifted her rifle and held absolutely still. A small antelope no bigger than a dog, called a dik-dik, lifted his head nervously and then stepped out into the clearing. Jeanine pulled the trigger and the shot took the small animal in the heart. He was dead before he struck the ground, and Jeanine felt a surge of satisfaction—the dik-dik would provide good food for her and Annie and some to share. She moved quickly to where the animal lay. When she tried to pick it up, she realized it was heavier than it looked. Nevertheless, she stubbornly put her rifle and her flashlight down and struggled to get the animal over her shoulders. It weighed no more than thirty pounds, but she had not gone far, only about a quarter mile, before her shoulders began aching. She looked up and was startled to see how dark the sky was. The afternoon had gotten away from her, so she hurried on, suddenly anxious for the security of the village.

  Jeanine had always been healthy, but she underestimated the power of the African sun. She had not yet learned that it could drag the energy out of a person silently and without fanfare. She had noticed several times that she grew tired easily, but now, struggling along with the weight of the carcass, she began gasping for breath.

  She halted and looked around wildly. She had left the camp walking east, but she had grown so interested in the flowers and the plants and in hunting itself that she had forgotten to check her position. Dropping the dik-dik to the ground, she grasped the rifle with both hands and turned in a full circle. This was even more confusing, and she said aloud, “Steady now, Jeanine. Just stop and think a minute.”

  But even as she stopped and thought and tried to figure out her position, it seemed that the sun was dropping lower and lower beneath the rim of the horizon. She started to remember stories she had heard from missionaries of helpless people torn to pieces by fierce leopards or attacks by lions. Even the thought of a wild African buffalo charging sent a shiver up her spine. Taking a deep breath, she made a decision. Knowing she could not carry the dik-dik, she left it where it lay, knowing that jackals and vultures would find it and finally ants and bugs and worms would finish off what they left. Nothing was wasted in Africa. She had learned that much.

  She moved along a path, trying to convince herself that she was headed in the right direction, but after fifteen minutes, when it was almost too dark to see more than a few yards, she knew she was going the wrong way.

  “I’ve got to go back,” she said, and fear began to grow in her. It was an emotion she had not felt often, for she was a courageous woman, but this was not her world and she well knew it.

  As she quickly backtracked over the ground she’d covered, she looked for the body of the dik-dik, but she had lost that, too. Now she was completely confused. The darkness grew thicker, and from far off she heard the coughing roar of a lion. Fear gripped her heart and she began to trot. She walked and half ran for over half an hour. The moon began to shed its silvery beams, but it was a cold and lifeless moon, unlike the jungle that was teeming with all kinds of life.

  She did not know how long it was after that before something made her turn to her left. She caught a flicker of movement, and then it was gone at once. Instantly she lifted the rifle, ready to fire, but she saw nothing. Then suddenly to her right there was another movement. This time she did fire. The gunshot seemed to echo through the jungle much louder than when she had fired the rifle in the daytime. The echoes rolled through the forest and she thought, Maybe someone will hear it and come and find me.

  She moved on quickly, straining her eyes to catch any movement. She knew, however, that her eyes were not as keen as those of her enemies that lived by tracking their prey.

  The thought of leopards frightened her and she began to run again. But she had not gone far before she stepped in a hole and fell down with a cry. Her ankle twisted with a shooting pain, and the rifle went skittering across the grass. With a sob she threw herself forward, and just as she picked up the weapon, she saw other shadows. A baobab tree offered some shelter. With some thought of climbing, she started to make her way toward it. Her ankle would not bear the weight, however, and she had to crawl, dragging her rifle behind her. Finally she reached it but saw that the first limbs were too high for her to reach.

  Real panic set in now at being alone in the African jungle filled with savage beasts. She put her back against the tree and held the rifle so tightly that her fingers began to cramp. Time passed slowly and she was sure that something was out there stalking her, but she could not see it.

  Finally she sat down, for her ankle hurt so badly she could put no weight on it at all. Sitting there with her back against the tree, there was no question of sleep. She began to wonder what to do if something were to sneak up behind her. Awkwardly, she tried to move around, but she could not watch in all directions at once.

  Right then a hideous scream rent the air, and Jeanine jumped at the sound of hyenas. They were back so far in the darkness that she could not make them out clearly, but then as they drew closer she saw the ugly underslung jaws and the high shoulders and the underdeveloped hindquarters. They began making their hunting noises then. She fired and they scattered in all directions, but then almost before the echo had ceased to reverberate throughout the darkness of the jungle, they began appearing again. Forcing herself to be calm, she reached to get her ammunition belt and to her horror discovered it wasn’t there. She remembered then where it was. I left it with my flashlight by the dik-dik.

  She checked her gun and saw that she only had two shots left.

  The nightmare began then as the hyenas inched closer and closer. Ordinarily, they did not have prey like this. They were not bold as a rule, but there was s
omething helpless in front of them, and they began moving in closer, chuckling with a ghostly sound rattling deep in their chests.

  As they drew nearer, Jeanine began to pray aloud, “Oh, God, I’ve been so foolish. Get me out of this, please.”

  She continued to pray, and the sound of her voice kept the animals at bay for a time, but finally one came to stand no more than ten feet from her. He stared at her, and the coldness of his eyes sent a chill through Jeanine Quintana. She knew now that death was very close. She might shoot this one and one more. But when the bullets were gone, what would she do then? She shuddered at the thought of what their jaws could do.

  During the next hour she kept them away but used up her two last cartridges. She knew the end was near, so she struggled to her feet by putting her weight on her sound ankle. When one of the hyenas crept close to her, she struck out with the butt of her rifle. He backed off, but there was a boldness in all the animals now, and she could see that she was ringed by them. They were moving closer, and she saw the huge leader getting ready to leap. She held the rifle in her hands by the butt, ready to strike with the barrel, but she knew they would tear her to shreds in minutes.

  The muscles in the legs of the hyena bunched, and Jeanine saw him crouch. She heard the unearthly, evil laughter that rolled from his throat. Waves of fear and death washed over her. I’m going to die, she thought. Raising the rifle, she waited, and just as the animal was ready to leap, a shot rang out and the beast fell over, his legs kicking in the dust for a moment, then he lay still. More shots rang out. Two more hyenas went down and the rest vanished in the shadows.