Warren Murphy: The Seventh Stone

"Good," said his father. "The jet's engines are warming. It's been ready for takeoff all morning."

Fortunately, there was Dom Perignon on the private jet but unfortunately there was this whitehunter type talking about guns and kills and saying what good sport it was all going to be.

The first thing about Zaire, other than the stench of human waste in the capital city, was that it was extraordinarily hot, Reggie noticed. And worse, there was no way to hunt elephants from an air-conditioned van. It was considered unsporting. The second thing about Zaire was that the best trackers were Pygmies, little black Africans who were at an even lower social scale than the dirt-poor starving farmers.

Reginald Woburn III saw some elephants at a distance from his Land Rover, saw lions, saw zebras, and would have preferred to see them all in the Bronx Zoo because that was a half-hour from Manhattan, whereas Zaire was a day by jet. Then the little trackers, downwind from the elephants but unfortunately upwind from Reginald Woburn III, started to run.

"Come. Run. We'll lose them," said the white hunter. He wore one of those khaki hunting jackets with places for big shells, and polished boots and a ridiculous wide-brimmed hat with some leopard band around it. He was running too.

"We can always follow the scent," said Reginald, who could barely move through the underbrush, much less run.

"Watch your rifle. Hold it down. You can set that thing off," said the white hunter. His name was Rafe Stokes, he drank warm Scotch, smoked a pipe and had talked incessantly the night before about a good kill. Reggie had thought that the only good kill would have been by a can of bug killer. The insects were all over the place.

Rafe Stokes, great white hunter, had talked so unendingly about the elephant as a friend, its nobility, its strength, its loyalty, Reggie had wondered if they were actually going to kill the beast or paint a medal on its smelly side.

Reggie knew that there had to be more about elephants, something unpleasant. He found out that hot day stumbling through the Zaire brush. The largest gooiest thing in the world was an elephant dropping. It was the size of a round lawn table. It was a fresh dropping, Reginald knew, because it felt warm around his knees. Even after that, Reggie didn't want to kill an elephant. He just wanted to wash. He wanted to cut off his clothes and swim in lye for a week.

Finally Rafe Stokes, great white hunter, signaled Reggie to stop. Now Reggie didn't want to stop. He wanted to run upwind from himself. But there he stood, with flies buzzing around, his leg warm and gooey to the knee, waiting for the hunter to tell him to shoot. He would shoot, he would go home and possibly delay the family for a year. Hopefully, he might even break a leg on this safari and make it two years.

The hunter pointed. There, less than a hundred yards away, was a massive building with legs and trunk and tusks. Its ears were big enough for awnings. Great whitish swashes like camouflage coated the thick gray skin. It had rolled in mud, the white hunter had said. Elephants were good at that. They were also good at overturning cars, trampling people into goo, and hurling persons through the air like peanuts.

Good reason to avoid them, Reggie had thought, when being told all this lore. He hated lore. Jungle lore was another phrase for elephant droppings. If it had any truth to it, they wouldn't call it lore, they would call it information.

"Go ahead, he's yours," whispered the white hunter. The Pygmies stood nearby grinning, looking at Reggie, loooking at the elephant.

Reggie sighted the middle of the thing between the V and the post of the sights.

Some sport, he thought. He'd have to strain his neck to miss that monster.

"Shoot," whispered the white hunter.

"I will," said Reggie. "Just leave me alone."

"He's getting ugly," said Rafe Stokes.

"Getting?" said Reggie. The little black people were starting to edge back into the brush. The elephant turned.

"The whole thing is ugly," Reggie said.

"Shoot," said Rafe Stokes, raising his own gun. But still he waited. Reggie Woburn's father had warned Stokes that his son had to taste blood. If the hunter shot the beast, he would not be paid. Strange old coot, too. Didn't want the trophy. As the old saying went, the apple never fell far from the tree. Both of these Woburns were fruits. The father had assured Rafe Stokes, twenty-eight years in the brush, never lost a hunter yet, that the son would be the most marvelous hunter he had ever seen. Now, with the bull elephant roaring down on them like a house sliding down a hill, making the very gound tremble, Rafe was one trigger pull away from not collecting the rest of his fee.

And then it happened. A shot went into the elephant's right-front kneecap. The fruitcake had missed, sending the bull elephant rolling toward them, crushing trees under its body. They sounded like little firecrackers going off as their trunks coughed up splinters at the sever point. Crack, crack, crack. And then the elephant's testicles exploded between its legs. The tenderfoot had missed a kill shot again as the hulk of the screaming beast rolled toward them, leaving a carpet of snapped trees and pressed bushes.

The tenderfoot was reloading. He missed again, getting another knee. The elephant stopped rolling just in time and tried to rise but its front knees had been shot out. And then its trunk went from the powerful blast of the 447 Magnum rifle.

The poor bastard screamed in agony.

"Finish it, dammit," the hunter yelled to Reggie. "Just point to the head and shoot. Shoot, dammit."

Rafe was pushing his rifle into the tenderfoot's hands. Use this, use this. Slowly, with measured pace, Reginald Woburn III took the elephant gun in his hands and felt the tooling of the stock and smiled at the sweating desperate white hunter.

The elephant screams were a tingle in Reggie's ears, like music he had heard once in Tangiers when he was given the best hashish in the country and he heard a note for what must have been a half-hour. An illusion, of course, but an ultimate pleasure too.

"I will finish it when I am ready," said Reginald. And then, very casually, shot off an ear piece by piece. It took four shells. They were big ears.

"You can't do this," screamed the white hunter. "You've got to finish your kill."

"I will. In my own way," said Reginald Woburn III. A great peace was on him now as the beast bellowed in pain. Reggie no longer minded the smell of his boots or the flies or the jungle because he had experienced that one great note of life and knew now what he should do. The white hunter's agony added to his joy.

"I'm going to finish it," said the hunter, snatching back his rifle. He jerked the gun to his shoulder and with one motion put a bullet through the elephant's eye.

Then he turned away from his client and let out a deep disgusted sigh.

"That was my kill," said Reggie. "Mine."

The hunter did not turn to look. "You have no right, Mr. Woburn, to torture the game. Just to kill it."

"My rights are what I say they are."

"Sonny, this is the brush. If you want to get back alive, you'll keep your mouth shut."

"No, thank you," said Reggie, who now understood why his ancestor had been unable to publicly pay the assassin. "I just can't allow that. You see, there are things I can allow and things I cannot. You just cannot talk to me like that. And most of all, you cannot take away my kill no matter how your sensitivities are bruised. Do you understand?"

Perhaps it was the softness of the voice, so strange after such a brutal kill. Perhaps it was the quiet of the brush, as if a great killer now stalked through it, but Rafe Stokes, white hunter, loaded his gun again, keeping it tight by his body. This tenderfoot is going to kill me, he thought. He had a gun and he was standing behind Stokes. Was it loaded? Had he fired off all his shots? Stokes didn't know why for certain, but years of hunting had taught him when he was in real danger and he was in real danger now.