“Kwenda,” I said and to Ngui, “Two guns. You and me and Mthuka.”
“Hapana halal?”
“OK. Bring Charo.”
“Mzuri,” Ngui said since it would have been insulting to kill a good piece of meat and not have it legally butchered for the Moslem elders. Keiti knew only too well that we were all bad boys but now that we had the backing of a serious religion, and I had explained that this religion in its origin was as old if not older than the Mountain, Keiti would take it seriously. I think we could have conned Charo, which would have been a terrible thing to do since he had the comfort of his own faith which was much better organized than ours, but we were not proselytizing and we had made a great stride when Charo took the religion seriously.
Miss Mary hated what she knew of the religion, which was very little, and I am not sure that in our group everyone desired that she be a member. If she was a member by tribal right it was all right and she would be obeyed and respected as such. But on an elective entrance I am not positive she would have made it. With her own group, of course, headed by all the Game Scouts and led by the magnificent, well-starched, erect and handsome Chungo, she would have been elected to be the Queen of Heaven. But in our religion there was not going to be any Game Department and while we planned to abolish both flogging and capital punishment against anyone except our enemies and there was to be no slavery except by those we had taken prisoner personally and cannibalism was completely and absolutely abolished except for those who chose to practice it, Miss Mary might not have received the same number of votes that she would certainly have had from her own people.
So we drove to the Shamba and I sent Ngui to get Debba and with her sitting beside, one hand holding the carved holster of the pistol, we drove off, Debba receiving any salutes from children or old people as though she were taking the salute from any regiment of which she might have been Honorary Colonel. At this time she was patterning her public behavior after the photographs in illustrated weeklies I had given her and she had selected the dignity and grace of the better royalty as though she were going over the bolts of cloth in the duka. I never asked her who she was patterning her public behavior on but it had been a year of well-photographed pageantry and she had much to choose from. I had tried to teach her the lift of the wrist and undulation of the fingers with which the Princess Aspasia of Greece would greet me across the smoke-filled clamor of Harry’s Bar in Venice but we had as yet no Harry’s Bar in Laitokitok.
So now she was receiving salutes and I was maintaining a rigid amiability while we went off on the road that curved up the slope of the Mountain to where I hoped to kill a beast sufficiently large, fat and succulent to make everyone happy. We hunted diligently and lay until almost dark on an old blanket on the high side of a hill waiting for a beast to feed out onto the open hillside. But no beast fed out and when it was time to go home I killed a Tommy ram which was all we really needed. I lined up on him and with us both sitting down had her put her finger on the trigger ahead of mine and while I tracked him with the sight I felt the pressure of her finger and her head against mine and could feel her trying not to breathe. Then I said, “Piga,” and her finger tightened as mine tightened on the trigger only a tiny cheating shade faster and the ram, whose tail had been switching as he fed, was dead with his four legs oddly rigid toward the sky and Charo was running out to him in his ragged shorts and old blue blazer and his dingy turban to cut his throat and make him legal.
“Piga mzuri,” Ngui said to Debba and she turned to him and tried for her royal manner and couldn’t make it and started to cry and said, “Asanta sana.”
We sat there and she cried and then stopped it clean and well. We watched Charo do his business and the hunting car come down from behind the brow of the hill and drive to the beast and Mthuka get out and lower the tailgate and he and Charo, very small at the distance and the big car small too, stoop and lift and swing the carcass up into the back of the car. Then the car came up the hill toward us, larger every moment as it came. There had been a moment when I had wished to pace the distance of the shot. But it would have been a chicken thing to do and a man should be able to shoot at all distances giving the proper allowance for shooting downhill.
Debba looked at him as though it was the first antelope she had ever seen and put her finger in the hole where the solid had passed through the very top of both shoulders and I told her not to get dirty with the blood on the floor. The floor had strips of iron on it to lift the meat above the heat of the car and let the air circulate and although well washed always it was a sort of charnel house.
Debba left her beast and we drove downhill with her sitting between Mthuka and me and we both knew she was in a strange state but she did not talk at all and only held tight on to my arm and held tight to the carved holster. At the Shamba she became regal but her heart was not in it and Ngui butchered out the ram and threw the tripe and the lungs to the dogs and opened the stomach and cleaned it and put the heart, kidneys and liver in the stomach sack and handed it to a child to take in to Debba’s house. My father-in-law was there and I nodded to him. He took the white, wet sack with its red and purple content and went inside the house which was really quite a beautiful building with its conical roof and red walls.
I got out of the car and helped Debba down.
“Jambo, tu,” I said and she said nothing and went into the house.
It was dark by now and when we got to camp the fire was burning and my chair and the table with the drinks had been set out. Mwindi had bathwater ready and I took a bath, soaping carefully, and then dressed in pajamas, mosquito boots and a heavy bathrobe and came out to the fire. Keiti was waiting.
“Jambo, Bwana,” he said.
“Jambo, Mr. Keiti,” I said. “We killed a small Tommy. Charo will have told you he is OK.”
He smiled and I knew we were friends again. He had the nicest, cleanest smile of anyone I ever knew.
“Sit down, Keiti,” I said.
“No.”
“I am very grateful for what you did last night. You acted correctly and exactly as you should. I have seen the father of the girl for some time and have made the necessary visits and presents. There was no way you should know this. The father is worthless.”
“I know. Women rule that Shamba.”
“If I have a son by the girl he will be educated properly and may choose to be a soldier, a doctor or a lawyer. This is exact. If he wishes to be a hunter he can remain with me as my son. Is this clear?”
“It is very clear,” Keiti said.
“If I have a daughter I will give her a dowry or she may come to live with me as my daughter. Is that clear?”
“It is clear. Better, maybe, stay with the mother.”
“I will do everything according to Kamba law and custom. But I cannot marry the girl and take her home because of stupid laws.”
“One of your brothers can marry her,” Keiti said.
“I know.”
The case was now closed and we were the same good friends as always.
“I would like to come some night and hunt with the spear,” Keiti said.
“I am only learning,” I said. “I am very stupid and it is difficult without a dog.”
“Nobody knows the night. Not me. Not you. Nobody.”
“I want to learn it.”
“You will. But be careful.”
“I will.”
“No one knows the night except in a tree or in some safe place. The night belongs to the animals.”
Keiti was too delicate to speak about the religion but I saw the look in his eye of one who has been led up to the top of a high hill and seen the temptations of the world spread out before him and it reminded me that we must not corrupt Charo. I could see that we were winning now and that I could have had Debba and the Widow for dinner now with a written menu and place cards. So, winning, I crowded just a little for the extra point.