Green Hills of Africa

CHAPTER THREE

Droopy’s country, when we reached it that evening, after a hot ride through red-soiled, bush-scrubby hills, looked awful. It was at the edge of a belt where all the trees had been girdled to kill the tsetse flies. And across from camp was a dusty, dirty native village. The soil was red and eroded and seemed to be blowing away, and camp was pitched in a high wind under the sketchy shade of some dead trees on a hillside overlooking a little stream and the mud village beyond. Before dark we followed Droopy and two local guides up past the village and in a long climb to the top of a rock-strewn ridge that overlooked a deep valley that was almost a canyon. Across on the other side, were broken valleys that sloped steeply down into the canyon. There were heavy growths of trees in the valleys and grassy slopes on the ridges between, and above there was the thick bamboo forest of the mountain. The canyon ran down to the Rift Valley, seeming to narrow at the far end where it cut through the wall of the rift. Beyond, above the grassy ridges and slopes, were heavily forested hills. It looked a hell of a country to hunt.

‘If you see one across there you have to go straight down to the bottom of the canyon. Then up one of those timber patches and across those damned gullies. You can’t keep him in sight and you’ll kill yourself climbing. It’s too steep. Those are the kind of innocent-looking gullies we got into that night coming home.’

‘It looks very bad,’ Pop agreed.

‘I’ve hunted a country just like this for deer. The south slope of Timber Creek in Wyoming. The slopes are all too steep. It’s hell. It’s too broken. We’ll take some punishment to-morrow.’

P.O.M. said nothing. Pop had brought us here and Pop would bring us out. All she had to do was see her boots did not hurt her feet. They hurt just a little now, and that was her only worry.

I went on to dilate on the difficulties the country showed and we went home to camp in the dark all very gloomy and full of prejudice against Droopy. The fire flamed brightly in the wind and we sat and watched the moon rise and listened to the hyenas. After we had a few drinks we did not feel so badly about the country.

‘Droopy swears it’s good,’ Pop said. ‘This isn’t where he wanted to go though, he says. It was another place farther on. But he swears this is good.’

‘I love Droopy,’ P.O.M. said. ‘I have perfect confidence in Droopy.’

Droopy came up to the fire with two spear-carrying natives.

‘What does he hear?’ I asked.

There was some talk by the natives, then Pop said: ‘One of these sportsmen claims he was chased by a huge rhino to-day. Of course nearly any rhino would look huge when he was chasing him.’

‘Ask him how long the horn was.’

The native showed that the horn was as long as his arm. Droopy grinned.

‘Tell him to go,’ said Pop.

‘Where did all this happen?’

‘Oh, over there somewhere,’ Pop said. ‘You know. Over there. Way over there. Where these things always happen.’

‘That’s m…