“It rained a little here.”
“Brother, I am a sick man.”
“Do you have fever?”
“Yes.”
He was not lying. His pulse was one hundred and twenty.
“Sit down and have a drink and take an aspirin and I’ll give you medicine. Go home and go to bed. Can the hunting car get through the road?”
“Yes. It is sandy to the Shamba and the car can go around the pools.”
“How is the Shamba?”
“It did not need the rain because it is irrigated. It is a sad Shamba with the cold from the Mountain. Even the chickens are sad. A girl came with me whose father needs medicine for his chest. You know her.”
“I will send medicine.”
“She is unhappy that you do not come.”
“I have my duties. Is she well?”
“She is well but sad.”
“Tell her I will come to Shamba when it is my duty.”
“Brother, what is this of the dream that I am hanged?”
“It is a dream that I had but I should not tell it to you before I have eaten breakfast.”
“But others have heard it before.”
“It is better that you do not hear it. It was not an official dream.”
“I could not bear to be hanged,” the Informer said.
“I will never hang you.”
“But others could misunderstand my activities.”
“No one will hang you unless you deal with the other people.”
“But I must constantly deal with the other people.”
“You understood the sense in which I speak. Now go to the campfire and get warm and I will make up the medicine.”
“You are my brother.”
“No,” I said. “I am your friend.”
He went off to the fire and I opened the medicine chest and got out Atabrine and aspirin and liniment and some sulfa and some cough lozenges and hoped I had made a small blow against uchawi. But I could remember all the details of the execution of the Informer in about the third of the nightmares and I was ashamed of having such a nocturnal imagination. I told him what medicines to take and what to give to the father of the girl. Then we walked out to the lines together and I gave the girl two tins of kipper snacks and a glass jar of hard candies and asked Mthuka to drive them to the Shamba and then come straight back. She had brought me four ears of corn and never looked up when I spoke to her. She put her head against my chest as a child does and when she got into the car on the off side where no one could see her she dropped her arm and with her whole hand gripped the muscles of my thigh. I did the same thing when she was in the car and she did not look up. Then I thought the hell with it all and kissed her on the top of the head and she laughed as impudently as ever and Mthuka smiled and they drove off. The tract was sandy with a little standing water but the bottom was firm and the hunting car went off through the trees and nobody looked back.
I told Ngui and Charo that we would go north on a routine look around as far as it was possible to go as soon as Miss Mary had wakened and had breakfast. They could get the guns now and clean them after the rain. I told them to be sure and wipe the bores dry of all oil. It was cold and the wind was blowing. The sun was overcast. But the rain was over except for possible showers. Everybody was very businesslike and there was no nonsense.
Mary was very happy at breakfast. She had slept well after she had wakened in the night and her dreams had been happy. Her bad dream had been that Pop, G.C. and I had all been killed. She did not remember the details. Someone had brought the news. She thought it was in an ambush of some kind. I wanted to ask her if she had dreamed about the hanging of the Informer but I thought that would be interference and the important thing was that she had waked happily and looked forward to the day. I thought that I was rough enough and worthless enough to become involved in the things that I did not understand in Africa but I did not want to involve her. She involved herself enough by going out to the lines and learning the music and the drum rhythms and the songs, treating everyone so well and so kindly that they fell in love with her. In the old days I know Pop would never have permitted this. But the old days were gone. No one knew that better than Pop did.
When breakfast was over and the hunting car was back from the Shamba Mary and I made a trip out as far as the ground was possible to drive over. The earth was drying fast but it was still treacherous and the wheels spun and dug in where tomorrow the car could go with security. This was so even on the hard ground and where the track had been firmed and hardened. To the north where the slippery clay was it was impassable.
You could see the new grass coming bright green across the flats and the game was scattered and paid little attention to us. There had been no great movement of game in yet but we saw the tracks of elephants that had crossed the track early in the morning after the rain stopped going toward the swamp. They were the lot we had seen from the plane and the bull had a very big track even allowing for the spreading by the wetness of the mud.
It was gray and cold and blowing and all over the flats and in and beside the tracks were the plover running and feeding busily and then calling sharply and wildly as they flew. There were three different kinds only one of which was really good to eat. But the men would not eat them and thought I wasted a cartridge to shoot them. I knew there might be curlew up on the flat but we could try for them another day.
“We can go on a little further,” I said. “There is a pretty good ridge of fairly high ground where we can turn,” I said to Mary.
“Let’s go on then.”
Then it began to rain and I thought we had better get turned around where we could and back to camp before we were stuck in some of the soft places.
Close to camp, which showed happily against the trees and the gray mist, the smoke of the fires rising and the white-and-green tents looking comfortable and home-like, there were sand grouse drinking at the small pools of water on the open prairie. I got out with Ngui to get some for us to eat while Mary went on to camp. They were hunched low beside the little pools and scattered about in the short grass where the sand burrs grew. They clattered up and they were not hard to hit if you took them quickly on the rise. These were the medium-sized sand grouse and they were like plump little desert pigeons masquerading as partridges. I loved their strange flight, which was like a pigeon or a kestrel, and the wonderful way they used their long back-swept wings once they were in full flight. Walking them up this way was nothing like shooting them when they came in great strings and packs to the water in the morning in the dry season when G.C. and I would take only the highest-crossing birds and high incomers and paid a shilling penalty any time we took more than one bird to a shot fired. Walking them up you missed the guttural chuckling noise the pack made as they talked across the sky. I did not like to shoot so close to camp either so I took only four brace, which would make at least two meals for the two of us or a good meal if anyone dropped in.
The safari crew did not like to eat them. I did not like them as well as lesser bustard, teal or snipe or the spur-winged plover. But they were very good eating and would be good for supper. The small rain had stopped again but the mist and the clouds came down to the foot of the Mountain.
Mary was sitting in the dining tent with a Campari and soda.
“Did you get many?”
“Eight. They were a little like shooting pigeons at the Club de Cazadores del Cerro.”
“They break away much faster than pigeons.”
“I think it just seems that way because of the clatter and because they are smaller. Nothing breaks faster than a really strong racing pigeon.”
“My, I’m glad we’re here instead of shooting at the Club.”