by Ruark, R.
“How do you know the marksman touched him on the neck?” I asked. “Did the leopard write you a letter of complaint to Nairobi?”
“No,” Harry said gently. “I came back with another party after the rains, and here was this same chui up the same tree. This client couldn’t hit a running Tommy at six hundred yards and he couldn’t see any future to lemon-splitting even at 350. But his gun went off, possibly by accident, and the old boy tumbled out of the tree, and when we turned him over there was the scar across the back of his neck, and still reasonably fresh. Nice tom, too. About eight feet, I surmise. Not as big as Harriet Maytag’s, though. He was just on eight-four.”
“If I hear any more about Harriet Maytag’s lion, Harriet Maytag’s rhino, or even Harriet Maytag’s monkey, Mister Selby,” I said with considerable dignity, “it will not be leopards we shoot tomorrow. It will be white hunters, and the wound will be in the back. Not the first time it’s happened out here, either. I’m going to bed, possibly to pray that I will not embarrass you tomorrow. Even if I am not Harriet Maytag, I still shoot a pretty good lion.”
There was an awful row down by the river. The baboons set up a fearful cursing, the monkeys screamed, and the birds awakened. There was a regular, panting, wheezing grunt in the background, like the sound made by a two-handed saw on green wood.
“That’s your boy, chum,” Selby said brightly. “Come to test your courage. If you find him in the tent with you later on, wake me.”
We went to bed. I dreamed all night of a faceless girl named Harriet Maytag, whom I had not met and who kept changing into a leopard. I also kept shooting at lemons at three and a half feet, and I missed them every time. Then the lemons would turn into leopards, and the gun would jam.
Everybody I had met in the past six months had a leopard story. How you were extremely fortunate even to get a glimpse of one, let alone a shot. How they moved so fast that you couldn’t see them go from one place to another. How you only got one shot, and whoosh, the leopard was gone. How it was always night, or nearly night, when they came to the kill, and you were shooting in the bad light against a dark background on which the cat was barely perceptible. How if you wounded him, you had to go after him in the black, thick thorn. How he never growled, like a lion, betraying his presence, but came like a streak from six feet, or dropped quietly on your neck from a tree. How if four guys went in, three always got scratched. How the leopard’s fangs and claws were always septic because of his habit of feeding on carrion. How a great many professionals rate him over the elephant and buffalo as murderous game, largely because he kills for fun and without purpose. And how unfortunately most of what you heard was true.
I had talked recently with a doctor who had sewed up three hunters who had been clawed by the same cat. A big leopard runs only 150 pounds or so, but I had seen a zebra foal weighing at least two hundred pounds hanging thirty feet above ground and wedged into a crotch by a leopard, giving you some idea about the fantastic strength stored under that lovely, spotted, golden hide. I reflected that there are any amount of documented stories about leopards coming into tents and even houses after dogs and sometimes people and breaking into fowl pens and leaping out of trees at people on horseback.
“A really peculiar beast,” Harry had said when we jumped the big one coming back from the buffalo. “Here we find one in broad daylight right smack out in the open plain, when there are people who’ve lived here all their lives and have never seen one. Here is a purely nocturnal animal who rarely ever leaves the rocks or the river edge standing out in the middle of a short-grass plain like a bloody topi. They are supposed to be one of the shiest, spookiest animals alive, yet they’ll come into your camp and pinch a dog right out of the mess tent. They’ll walk through your dining room on some occasions and spit in your eye. They’re supposed to have a great deal of cunning, yet I knew one that came back to the same kill six nights in a row, being shot over and being missed every time. But they’ve a great fascination for me and for most people. The loveliest sight I have ever seen since I started hunting was a leopard sleeping in a fever tree, latish in the afternoon. The fever tree was black and yellow, the same color as the cat, and the late sun was coming in through the leaves, dappling the cat and the tree with a little extra gold. We weren’t after leopard at the time, already had one, so we just woke him up and watched him scamper. He went up that tree like a big lizard.”
I was getting to know quite a bit about my young friend by this time. He was a professional hunter and lived by killing, or by procuring things for other people to shoot, but he hated to use a gun worse than any man I had ever met. He has the fresh face and candid eyes of a man who has lived all his life in the woods, and when he talks of animals his face lights up like a kid’s. He had nearly killed us all a day earlier, coming back from a big ngoma—lion-dance party—in the Wa-Ikoma village. There were some baby francolin, spur fowl, in the trail, and he almost capsized the Land Rover trying to miss them. What he liked was to watch animals and learn more about them. He refused to allow anyone to shoot baboons. He hated even to shoot a hyena. The only things he loved to shoot were wild dogs because he disapproved of the way they killed: by running their prey in shifts, pulling it down finally, and eating it alive.
“You’re a poet, man,” I said. “The next thing you will be using the sonnet form to describe how old Katunga howls when his madness comes on him in the moonlight nights.”
“It would make a nice poem, at that,” Harry said. “But don’t spoof me about leopards in trees. Wait until you have seen a leopard in a tree before you rag me. It’s a sight unlike any other in the world.”
We got up that next morning, and the stench of the rotting pig and the rotting Grant was stronger than ever. Harry sniffed and summoned up Jessica, the Land Rover. We climbed in and drove down the riverbank, with the dew fresh on the grass and a brisk morning breeze rustling the scrub acacias. As we passed the leopard tree, there was a scrutching sound and a stir in the bush that was not made by the breeze. A brown batteleur eagle was sitting in the top of the tree.
We had made a daily ritual of this trip, after we had hung the bait the first day, in order to get the cat accustomed to the passage of the jeep. We had also made a swing back just around dusk to get him accustomed to the evening visit. We always passed close aboard the blind, a semicircle of thorn and leaves with a peephole and a crotched stick for a gun rest. The blind was open to the plain. It faced the tree with its camouflaged front. By now it would seem the leopard that was feeding on the two carcasses, which we had derricked up to an L-shaped fork about thirty feet above ground and tied fast with rope, was used to us. You could just define the shape of the pig, which was strung a little higher than the Grant, both hung conveniently from the same sloping limb and in easy reach of the forked feeding branch. The pig was nearly consumed, his body and neck all but gone, and his legs gnawed clean to the hairy fetlocks. The guts and about twenty pounds of hindquarter were eaten from the Grant. They smelled just lovely, for the steady wind was blowing from the tree and toward the blind.
Harry didn’t say anything until he had swung Jessica around and we were driving back to the camp and breakfast. “You heard the old boy leave his tree, I suppose?” he said. “I got a glimpse of him as we drove by. And did you notice the eagle?”
“I noticed the eagle,” I said. “How come eagles and leopards are so chummy?”
“Funny thing about a lot of animals,” Harry said. “You know how the tickbirds work with the rhino. Rhino can’t see very much, and the tickbirds serve as his eyes. In return for which they get to eat his ticks. I always watch the birds when I’m stalking a rhino. When the birds jump, you know the old boy is about to come barreling down on you. Similarly, you’ll always find a flock of egrets perched on a buffalo. You can trace the progress of a buff through high grass just by watching the egrets.
“I don’t know how they work out these agreements,” Harry said. “Often you’ll see a lion feeding on one end of a ki
ll and a couple of jackals or bat-eared foxes chewing away on the other. Yet a lion won’t tolerate a hyena or a vulture near his kill.
“Now our friend, this leopard which you may or may not collect tonight, or tomorrow night, or ever, has this transaction with the eagle. The eagle mounts guard all day over the leopard’s larder. If vultures or even another leopard comes by and takes a fancy to old chui’s free lunch, the eagle sets up a hell of a clamor and old chui comes bounding out of the swamp to protect his victuals. In return for this service the eagle is allowed to assess the carcass a pound or so per diem. It is a very neat arrangement for both.”
We went back to camp and had the usual tea, canned fruit, and crumbly toast. It was still cold enough for the ashy remnants of last night’s fire to feel good.
“We won’t hunt today,” Selby said. “We will just go sight in the .30-’06 again and you can get some writing done. I want you rested for our date with chui at four o’clock. You will be shaking enough from excitement, and I don’t want it complicated with fatigue.”
“I will not be shaking from excitement or fatigue or anything else,” I said. “I am well known around this camp as a man who is as icy-calm as Dick Tracy when danger threats. In nearby downtown Ikoma I am a household word amongst the ratepayers. I am Old Bwana Lisase Moja, Slayer of Simba, Protector of the Poor, Scourge of the Buffalo, and the best damn birdshooter since Papa Hemingway was here last. I promise you, you will not have to go into any bush after any wounded leopard this night. I am even going to pick the rosette I want to shoot him through. I intend to choose one of the less regular patterns because I do not want to mar the hide.”
“Words,” Selby said. “Childish chatter from an ignorant man. Let us go and sight in the .30. We sight her point-blank for fifty yards. They make a tough target, these leopards. Lots of times you don’t have but a couple of inches of fur to shoot at. And that scope has got to be right.”
“How come a scope? I thought you were the original scope-hater. At thirty-five yards I figure I can hit even one of those lemons you’re always talking about, with open sights, shooting from a forked stick.”
Harry was patient. He was talking to a child.
“This is the only time I reckon a scope to be actually necessary out here. The chances are, when that cat comes it will be nearly dark, well past shooting light. You won’t even be able to see the kill with your naked eye, let alone the cat. The scope’s magnification will pick him out against background, and you can see the post in the scope a hell of a lot easier than you could see a front sight a foot high through ordinary open sights. And if I were you, I’d wear those Polaroid glasses you’re so proud of, too. You will need any visual help you can get, chum.”
We sighted in the Remington, aiming at the scarred blaze on the old sighting-in tree, and trundled Jessica back to camp, pausing on the way long enough to shoot a Thomson gazelle for the pot. It was a fairly long shot, and I broke his neck.
“I think I can hit a leopard,” I said.
“A lousy little Tommy is a different thing from a leopard,” Harry said. “Tommies have no claws, no fangs, and do not roost in trees.”
We slopped around the camp for the rest of the morning, reading detective stories and watching the vultures fight the marabou storks for what was left of the waterbuck carcass. Lunchtime came and I made a motion toward the canvas water bag where the gin and vermouth lived.
“Hapana,” Harry said. “No booze for you, my lad. For me, yes. For Mama, yes. For you, no. The steady hand, the clear eye. You may tend bar if you like, but no cocktails for the bwana until after the bwana has performed this evening.”
“This could go on for days,” I said. “Bloody leopard may never come to the tree.”
“Quite likely,” Harry remarked, admiring a water glass full of lukewarm gin with some green lime nonsense in it. “The more for me and Mama. A lesson in sobriety for you.”
A bee from the hive in the tree behind the mess tent dive-bombed Harry’s glass and swam happily around in the gin-andlime. Harry fished him out with a spoon and set him on the mess table. The bee staggered happily and buzzed blowzily.
“Regard the bee,” said Selby. “Drunk as a lord. Imagine what gin does to leopard shooters whose glands are already overactivated by fear and uncertainty.”
“Go to hell, the both of you,” I said. “Juma, lette the bloody chacula, and I will eat while these bar flies consume my gin.”
The lunch was fine—yesterday’s guinea fowl, boiled, cold, and flanked by some fresh tomatoes we had swindled out of the Indian storekeeper in Ikoma, with hot macaroni and cheese Ali produced from his biscuit-tin oven, and some pork and beans in case we lacked starch after the spaghetti, bread, and potatoes. Harry allowed me a bottle of beer.
“Beer is a food,” he said. “It is not a tipple. Now go take a nap. I want you fresh. I hate crawling after wounded leopards who have been annoyed by amateurs. It is so lonesome in those bushes after dark, the leopard waiting ahead of you and the client apt to shoot you in the trousers the first time a monkey screams.”
I dozed a bit, and at 4 p.m. Harry came into the tent and roused me.
“Leopard time,” he said. “Let’s hope he comes early. It’ll give the bugs less chance to devour us. Best smear some of that bug dope on your neck and wrists and face. And if I were you, I’d borrow one of the memsaab’s scarves and tie it around most of my face and neck. If you have to cough, please cough now. If you have to sneeze, please sneeze now. If you have to clear your throat or scratch or anything else, do it now because for the next three hours you will sit motionless in that blind, moving no muscle, making no sound, and thinking as quietly as possible. Leopards are extremely allergic to noise.”
I looked quite beautiful with one of Mama’s fancy Paris scarves, green to match the blind, tied around my head like old peasant women do it. We climbed into Jessica. Harry was sitting on her rail from the front-seat position. The sharp edge of her after-rail was cutting a chunk out of my rear. We went past the blind at about twenty miles an hour and we both fell out, commando-style, directly into the blind. The jeep took off, with prior instructions to return at the sound of a shot or at black dark, if no shot.
I wriggled into the blind and immediately sat on a flock of safari ants, which managed to wound me severely before we scuffed them out. I poked the Remington through the peephole in the front of the blind and found that it centered nicely on the kill in the tree. Even at four-thirty the bait was indistinct to the naked eye. The scope brought it out clearly. I looked over my shoulder at Selby, his shock of black hair unfettered by shawl and un-smeared by insecticide. A tsetse was biting him on the forehead. He let it bite. My old Churchill .12, loaded with buckshot, was resting over his crossed knees. He looked at me, shrugged, winked, and pointed with his chin at the leopard tree.
We sat. Bugs came. Small animals came. No snakes came. No leopards came. I began to think of how much of my life I had spent waiting for something to happen—of how long you waited for an event to occur, and what a short time was consumed when the event you had been waiting for actually did come to pass. The worst thing about the war at sea was waiting. You waited all through the long black watches of the North Atlantic night, waiting for a submarine to show its periscope. You could not smoke. You did not even like to step inside the blacked-out wheelhouse for a smoke because the light spoiled your eyes for half an hour. You waited on islands in the Pacific. You waited for air raids to start in London, and then you waited some more for the all-clear. You waited in line at the training school for chow and for pay and for everything. You waited in train stations and you sat around airports waiting for your feeble priority to activate and you waited everywhere. From the day you got into it until the day you got out of it, you were waiting for the war itself to end, so that it was all one big wait.
Sitting in the blind, staring at the eaten pig and the partially eaten Grant and waiting for the leopard to come and hearing the sounds—the oohoo-oohoo-hoo of the
doves and the squalls and squawks and growls and mutters in the dark bush ahead by the Grumeti River—I thought profoundly that there was an awful good analogy in waiting for a leopard by a strange river in a strange dark country. I began to get Selby’s point about the importance of a leopard in a tree—waited for, planned for, suffered for—and to be seen for one swift moment or maybe not to be seen at all. These are the kinds of thoughts you have in a leopard blind in Tanganyika when the ants bite you and you want to cough and your nose itches and nothing whatsoever can be done about them. Five o’clock came. No leopard. Hapana chui, my head said in Swahili. I looked at Selby. He was scowling ferociously at a flock of guinea fowl that seemed to be feeding right into the blind. He made a swift, attention-getting gesture with his hand. The guineas got the idea and marched off. Selby pointed his chin at the leopard tree and shrugged. Now it was six o’clock. I thought about the three weeks I sweated out in Guam, waiting for orders to leave that accursed paradise, orders I was almost sure of but not quite. When they came, they came in a hurry. They came in the morning and I left in the afternoon. Six-thirty now. Hapana chui.
It was getting very dark now, so dark you couldn’t see the kill in the tree at all without training the rifle on it and looking through the scope. Even then it was indistinct, a blur of bodies against a green-black background of foliage. I looked at Selby. He rapidly undoubled both fists twice, which I took to mean twenty more minutes of shooting time.
My watch said twelve minutes to seven. It was dead black in the background, and the pig was nonvisible and the Grant only a blob, and even where it was lightest it was dark gray. I thought, God damn it, this is the way it always is with everything. You wait and suffer and strive, and when it ends it’s all wasted and the hell with all leopards when I felt Harry’s hand on my gun arm. Down the river to the left the baboons had gone mad. The uproar lasted only a second, and then a cold and absolute calm settled on the Grumeti. No bird. No monkey. No nothing. About a thousand yards away there was a surly, irritable cough. Harry’s hand closed on my arm and then came away. My eyes were on the first fork of the big tree.