Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘What am I going to shoot with in the meantime?’ he lamented, still holding the rifle.

‘Luckily I brought my old service .303 Enfield as a back-up.’ Leon ran the needle through a flap of skin.

Kermit grimaced but clung to the subject doggedly. ‘That’s a pop gun.’ He sounded affronted. ‘It may be fine for Tommy, impala or even human beings, but it’s much too light for lion!’

‘If you get in close and put the bullet in the right place, it’ll do the job.’

‘Close? I know what that means to you! You want me to stick the barrel in the bloody cat’s earhole.’

‘Very well, you go ahead in your usual style and blaze away at half a mile. But I don’t think that’ll work.’

Kermit thought about it for a while, but he didn’t seem overjoyed with the idea. ‘How about you lend me that big old Holland of yours?’

‘I love you like my own brother, but I’d rather lend you my little sister for the night.’

‘Have you got a little sister?’ Kermit asked, with sudden interest. ‘Is she pretty?’

‘I don’t have a sister,’ Leon lied, anxious to protect his siblings from Kermit’s attentions, ‘and I’m not going to lend you my rifle.’

‘Well, I don’t want your pathetic little .303,’ Kermit said petulantly.

‘Good! Then I suggest you ask Manyoro to lend you his spear.’

Manyoro grinned expectantly at the mention of his name.

Kermit shook his head and gave him the sum total of his Kiswahili: ‘ Mazuri sana , Manyoro. Hakuna matatu! Very good, Manyoro. Don’t worry.’ The Masai looked disappointed, and Kermit turned back to Leon. ‘Okay, pal. I’ll try a few shots with your pop gun.’

In the morning Kermit’s eye was swollen and closed, and his torso was decorated with a few spectacular bruises. Fortunately the damage was to his left eye, so his shooting eye was still clear. Leon blazed the bark of a fever tree to give him a target at sixty paces, then handed him the .303. ‘At that range she’ll throw an inch high, so hold the pip of the foresight just a touch under,’ he advised. Kermit fired two shots, and they bracketed the mark, a finger’s breadth apart.

‘Wow! Not bad for a beginner.’ Kermit had impressed himself. He cheered up visibly.

‘Pretty darned good even for a marksman like Popoo Hima,’ Leon agreed. ‘But just remember, don’t shoot at anything that’s over the horizon.’

Kermit did not acknowledge the pleasantry. ‘Let’s go find a lion,’ he said.

They camped that evening beside a small waterhole, which still contained water from the last rains. They rolled into their blankets as soon as they had eaten, and both men were asleep within minutes.

In the wee hours Leon shook Kermit awake. He sat up groggily. ‘What’s happening? What time is it?’

‘Don’t worry about the time, just listen,’ Leon told him.

Kermit looked around and saw that the two Masai and Ishmael were sitting by the fire. They had fed it with wood chips and the flames danced brightly. Their faces were intent and rapt. They were listening. The silence drew out for many minutes.

‘What are we waiting for?’ Kermit demanded.

‘Patience! Just keep your ears open,’ Leon chided him. Suddenly the night was filled with sound, a mighty bass booming, rising and falling, like waves driven by a hurricane. It made the skin tingle and the hair rise along the forearms and up the back of the neck. Kermit threw aside his blanket and sprang to his feet. The sound died away in a series of sobbing grunts. The silence afterwards seemed to grip every man and beast in creation.

‘What the hell was that?’ Kermit gasped.

‘A lion. A big dominant male lion proclaiming his kingdom,’ Leon told him quietly. Manyoro added something in Maa, then he and Loikot laughed at the joke.

‘What did he say?’ Kermit demanded.

‘He said that even the bravest man is twice frightened by a lion. The first time when he hears his roar, the second and last time when he meets the beast face to face.’

‘He’s right about the first time,’ Kermit admitted. ‘It’s an incredible sound. But how do you know it’s a big male and not a lioness?’

‘How would I know the voice of Enrico Caruso from Dame Nellie Melba’s?’

‘Let’s go shoot him.’

‘Good plan, chum. I’ll hold the candle and you fire. It should be easy.’

‘Then what are we going to do?’

‘I, for one, am going to climb under my blanket and try to get some sleep. You should do the same. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.’ Once again they stretched out beside the fire, but they were both far from sleep when another thunderous roar echoed through the night.

‘Listen to him!’ Kermit murmured. ‘The son of a gun’s inviting me out to play. How can I sleep with that racket going on?’ The last sawing grunts died into silence, and then came another sound, almost a distant echo of the first roar, far away and faint. They shot upright, and the Masai exclaimed.

‘What the hell was that?’ Kermit asked. ‘It sounded like another lion.’

‘That’s exactly what it was,’ Leon assured him.

‘Is it a brother of the first?’

‘Anything but. It’s the first lion’s rival and enemy to the death.’ Kermit was about to ask another question, but Leon stopped him. ‘Let me talk to the Masai.’ The discussion was in quick-fire Maa, and at the end Leon turned back to Kermit. ‘All right, this is what’s going on out there. The first lion is the older and dominant male. This is his territory and he almost certainly has a large harem of females and their cubs. But he’s getting old now and his powers are fading. The second male is young and strong, in his prime. He feels ready to challenge for the territory and the harem. He’s prowling the boundary and getting up courage for the death battle. The old man’s trying to frighten him off.’

‘Manyoro could tell all that from listening to a few roars?’

‘Both Manyoro and Loikot speak lion language fluently,’ Leon told him, with a straight face.

‘Tonight I’ll believe anything you tell me. So we’ve got not one but two big lions?’

‘Yes, and they won’t be moving far. The old man dare not leave the door open, and the youngster can smell those ladies. He won’t be going anywhere either.’

After this, there was no question of anyone sleeping. They sat at the fire, planning the hunt with the Masai and drinking Ishmael’s number-one very best coffee until the first rays of the sun gilded the treetops. Then they ate breakfast of Ishmael’s renowned ostrich-egg omelettes and a batch of his equally famous scones, hot from the pot. One ostrich egg was the equivalent of two dozen large chicken eggs, but there were no leftovers. While they mopped up the last drops of grease from the pan with pieces of scone, Ishmael and the Masai broke camp and loaded the mules. The air was still sweet and cool when they rode out to see what the day would bring.

A mile down the riverbank they surprised a herd of several hundred buffalo returning from the water. Leon dropped two with consecutive shots from the left and right barrels of the Holland. They sliced open the paunches so that the smell of carrion would be broadcast on the sultry breeze, then the mules dragged them into the most favourable positions, with open ground around them and no thick cover close at hand into which a wounded lion could escape. While they were positioning the bait, the porters cut bundles of green branches and covered the carcasses so that vultures and hyena would have difficulty reaching them. On the other hand such a flimsy covering would not deter a big lion for more than a moment.

They rode on down the river, and into the area where the lions had been roaring during the night. Every mile or two Leon shot whatever large mammal offered itself: giraffe, rhino or buffalo. By sunset they had laid down, over a stretch of ten miles, a string of highly attractive lion bait.